“NICOLAE BĂLCESCU” LAND FORCES ACADEMY

THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED ORGANIZATION THE 14TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

FOREIGN LANGUAGES. ENGLISH CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 9

27-29 NOVEMBER 2008

Š “NICOLAE BĂLCESCU” LAND FORCES ACADEMY PUBLISHING HOUSE SIBIU, 2008

Scientific advisors: Prof. Gilder Eric, PhD Assoc.Prof. Pateşan Marioara, PhD Asst.Prof. Mihăilă-Lică Gabriela, PhD Asst.Prof. Obilişteanu Georgeta, PhD

Copyright: out of charge, all reproductions are authorized provided that specific references are made.

“Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy Address: 3-5 Revoluţiei Street, Sibiu Tel.: 0269/432990, Fax: 0269/215554 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] web: www.armyacademy.ro web: www.armyacademy.ro/editura

The authors take full responsibility of the content of their articles.

ISSN 1843 – 6722

FOREIGN LANGUAGES TABLE OF CONTENTS English Literature Four Field Orientations, Two Reasons, and Four Approaches to Knowledge, Prof. Gilder Eric, PhD, “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu, Romania; Cuttington University, Liberia ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7 Nature vs. Nurture in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Novel ‘Middlesex’, Dandel Richard, Ph.D., Munich, Germany ………………………………………………………………………….. 13 Economics of Art and Literature, Assoc.Prof. Cosma Sorinel, PhD, “Ovidius” University, Constanţa, Cosma Simona, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa ………………... 24 Childhood and Adolescence at Mark Twain, Asst.Prof. Mărăscu Elena, PhD, University Centre of Drobeta Turnu Severin ……………………………………………….. 29 Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait’ – the Destructive Power of Art, Asst.Prof. Mihăilă-Lică Gabriela, PhD, “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu …………. 38 ‘Ligeia’ by Edgar Allan Poe – a Typical Romantic Short Story, Asst.Prof. Mihăilă-Lică Gabriela, PhD, “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu ………………………… 44 A Power Show under the Sign of Contingency in ‘A Word Child’, Asst.Prof. Mihăilescu Clementina, PhD, “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu ………………………………………. 51 The Vitality of Animal Life in Ted Hughes’s Poetry, Asst.Prof. Obilişteanu Georgeta, PhD, “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu …………………………..……….. 61 Ted Hughes’s Outlook on the Power of Myth in Poetry, Asst.Prof. Obilişteanu Georgeta, PhD, “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu ………….…………….. 69 Americans vs. Europeans in Henry James’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’, Asst.Prof. Pîrnuţă Oana-Andreea, PhD, “Transilvania” University, Braşov ………………………………….. 76 The Joycean Ephiphany: Theory and Practice, Asst.Prof. Pîrnuţă Oana-Andreea, PhD, “Transilvania” University, Braşov ………………………………………………………….. 83 Shakespeare’s Influence on Eminescu’s Prose, TA Geana Corina, University of Craiova ………………………………………………………………………………..…….. 91 The Complex Question of Identity in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry, Jr.TA Dârnă Amada, University Centre of Drobeta Turnu Severin …………………………………………….…. 99 Mary Shelley’s ‘The Last Man’ and the Discourse of Species, Jr. TA Ghidel Liliana, University Centre of Drobeta Turnu Severin ……………………………………………… 105 3

Kitsch as an Antidote to Fin-de-Siècle Angst – Sentimentality, Melodrama and ‘Victoriana’: John William Waterhouse and Dante Gabriel Rossetti – A Case Study, CiocoiPop Ana-Blanca, “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu ………………………………….….. 114 The Autobiographical Element in Byron’s Childe Harold Pilgrimage, Marin Cristina Gabriela, Faculty of Letters, Craiova ………………………………………………….….. 119 Sacred Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’, Matiu Ovidiu, “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu ……………………………………………………….………….. 125 Two Poets for All Seasons, Corina Turcu, Secondary School No. 12, Sibiu ………. 132

English Methodology Academic Studies in English in a Non-English Speaking Country, Prof. Tacheva Violeta, PhD, Medical University, Varna, Bulgaria, Skocheva Evdokia, Medical University, Varna, Bulgaria, Karastateva Violeta, Technical University, Varna, Bulgaria, Hristova Sevda, Medical University, Varna, Bulgaria, Dobreva Albena, Medical University, Varna, Bulgaria …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 140 A Psycholinguistic Approach to Communication in English Language Teaching, Prof. Nădrag Lavinia, PhD, “Spiru Haret” University, Constanţa …………………………..… 148 Designing Effective English Courses, Assoc.Prof. Chisega-Negrilă Ana-Mariana, PhD, “Carol I” National Defense University, Bucharest ………………………………….…….. 156 Rhetorical Style in the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Assoc.Prof. Cosma Sorinel, PhD, “Ovidius” University, Constanţa, Cosma Simona, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa ………………………………………..…………………….… 163 The Latest Developments in Teacher Training in the Romanian Armed Forces – The Implementation of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in ELT in the Romanian Military, Assoc.Prof. Lungu Delia, PhD, Boeru Mariana, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa ………………………………………………………….……. 168 Early English Loans and Cultural Conjunctions – in the Works of Three Romanian Writers of the Late 19th Century, Assoc.Prof. Manea Constantin, PhD, Assoc.Prof. Manea Maria-Camelia, PhD, TA Pruneanu Dănuţa-Magdalena, University of Piteşti ………… 176 Terms Belonging to the Military Vocabulary that are Metaphorically Used by Today’s Romanian Press, Assoc.Prof. Manea Constantin, PhD, Assoc.Prof. Săvoiu Gheorghe, PhD, University of Piteşti ………………………………………………………………….……. 186 Passive Motivation, Assoc.Prof. Pateşan Marioara, PhD, “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu …………………………………………………………..……….. 202 The Language of Brands as a Symbol of Globalization, Assoc.Prof. Vinţean Adriana, PhD, “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu ……………………………………………….….. 210 Communication Apprehension and Communication Competence Among Maritime Students, Asst.Prof. Alibec Camelia, PhD, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 218 Common Errors in the Process of Translating Legal Texts, Asst.Prof. Badea Simina, PhD, University of Craiova ……………………………………………………………….. 225 4

ESP Evaluation. Computer versus Teacher Testing, Asst.Prof. Balagiu Alina, PhD, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa ………………………………………….. 232 A Framework for Teaching Business Communication, Asst.Prof. Horea Ioana, PhD, University of Oradea …………………………………………………..……….………….. 238 Puns – a Challenge for Effective Communication, Asst.Prof. Horea Ioana, PhD, University of Oradea …………………………………………………………….………… 243 Scientific Vulgarization Speech, Asst.Prof. Predescu Elena, PhD, “Andrei Şaguna” University, Constanţa …………………………………………………………….……….. 250 Key Skills for Translators, Asst.Prof. Teodorescu Adriana, PhD “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest …………………………………………………………… 259 Key Skills for Interpreters, Asst.Prof. Teodorescu Adriana, PhD, “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest ………………………………………………………..….. 264 Research into Reading-Writing Connections in English for Specific Purposes, Asst.Prof. Zechia Dana, PhD, „Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa …………………… 269 Considerations regarding Latin Terms and Expressions in Legal Language, Asst.Prof. Burtea-Cioroianu Cristina Eugenia, University of Craiova ………………………..……. 276 The Problem of Terminological Equivalence in Legal English, Asst.Prof. Grecu Onorina, “Spiru Haret” University, Constanţa ………………………………………..….. 282 Complementary Teaching Methodology for Technical University Students Inspired from Industrial Training Programs, Asst.Prof. Indolean Daciana, Technical University, Cluj Napoca …………………………………………………………………………………….. 287 The Use of Indirect Language in the Delivery of Medical Bad News, Asst.Prof. Moga Liliana, Asst.Prof. Moga Adrian PhD, “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu ……….………. 294 The Role of Dictionary in Learning Abstract Words. A Contrastive Approach, Asst.Prof. Ţuţuianu Diana, “Carol I” National Defence University, Bucharest …………………….. 304 An Approach to Translation Theory in Terms of Neologisms, TA Sîrbu Anca, PhD, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa …………………………………….…… 312 Sequence of Tenses (SOT) and Complement Clauses, TA Badea Oana, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Craiova ………………………………………………..….…….. 317 The Role of the (English) Teacher in the Process of (English) Learning, TA Badea Oana, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Craiova ……………………………..……. 323 A Linguistic Analysis of Advertisment Headlines, TA Bogdan Slivia, “Alma Mater” University, Sibiu ……………………………………………………………….………….. 329 The Hierarchy and Functions of Houses in 19th Century English Novels, TA Boghian Ioana, University of Bacău ……………………………………………………………….. 339 The Hierarchy and Functions of Rooms in 19th Century English Novels, TA Boghian Ioana, University of Bacău ……………………………………………………………….. 347 Toward a Social History of the English Police Vocabulary. An Introduction, TA Chersan Ileana, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Police Academy, Bucharest …………………… 354 The Life of Words, TA Cizer Laura, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa …………………………………………………………………………..…………………. 362 5

Dilemmas in International Business Communication, TA David Irina, TA Rotariu Raluca-Elena, University of Economics, Bucharest …………………………………..….. 366 Air Force Slang, TA Mateş Raluca, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa ……………………………………………………………………………………..………. 373 Key Issues in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Curriculum Design, TA Pielmuş Cristina, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Police Academy, Bucharest …………………………… 377 Revisiting Persuasive Discourse, TA Tănase Robescu Delia, Polytechnic University of Timişoara …………………………………………………………………….……………. 385 Learning a Foreign Language Through Group Activities Based on Simulation, TA Truţia Daniela, National Defense University, Bucharest ………………………………… 393 World by ... Words, Jr.TA Kaiter Edith, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy Constanţa ………………………………………………………………………………………….….. 400 Testing Strategies, Călinescu Mihaela, Negomir Elementary School …..…………… 407 Classroom Management, Curteanu Codruţa Teodora Domnica, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Craiova …………………………………………………………. 412 Error Correction, Curteanu Codruţa Teodora Domnica, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Craiova ………………………………………………………………………… 416 Active Learning – a ‘Must Have’ of Today’s Teaching Process, Dragomir Izabela, Foreign Language Center, Sibiu, T.A. Cosma Brânduşa-Oana, “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu ……………………………………………………………………. 421 Description and Evaluation of the STANAG Listening Section for the Romanian Military Personnel, Eftimescu Gabriela, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa ………….. 430 Classroom Observation: Principles and Procedures. A Reflective Approach for an Insett Programme, Eftimescu Gabriela, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa ………... 442 Effective Communication Skills Achieved through Public Speaking, Ion Ana, “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa ………………………………………………….. 451 An Approach to the Historical Development of English, Mincă Nicoleta Florina, University of Piteşti ……………………………………………………………………….. 455 Critical Perspectives on Writing Book Reviews, Nistor Virgil-Cosmin, Arapu Laura, Foreign Language Center, Sibiu …………………………………………………………... 462 The Influence of Military Jargon on the English Language, Oana Simina-Ioana, “Alma Mater” University, Sibiu …………………………………………………………………... 470 Developing Spoken Language Functions at Intermediate Students, Poşa Oana-Alida, Foreign Language Center, Sibiu …………………………………………………………… 476 Effective Organizational Patterns – Groupwork, Poşa Oana-Alida, Dragomir Isabela Anda, Foreign Language Center, Sibiu ………………………………..………………….. 483 English as an Instrument of Communication, Moise Judith, Para Iulia, West University, Timişoara …………………………………..…………………………………. 489

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Knowledge Based Organization 2008 International Conference

FOUR FIELD ORIENTATIONS, TWO REASONS, AND FOUR APPROACHES TO KNOWLEDGE Prof. Gilder Eric, PhD

“Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu (Romania), Cuttington University (Liberia) [email protected]

Abstract In performing the intellectual acts of interpreting “reality,” theorizing about that “reality,” and then applying conclusions predicated upon that understanding of “reality” in the scientific arts of teaching, research and community outreach, we all bring some unspoken “ways of knowing” to the processes. This presentation will outline three such inter-related grounding elements that the author has found heuristically useful in the enactment of his own varied academic life.

Keywords: Fields of knowledge, epistemology, scientific/ humanistic understanding, CPC cycle, intellectual life, teaching Introduction Following philosopher E.E. Schumacher [1], I find it clarifying to first consider thinking of reading and producing research in light of four “fields of knowledge” of what and how we can know of the world and ourselves when “making sense” of thoughts, people and things. That is, what do we really know of: 1. The reality of our own inner world?; 2. The reality of what is going on in the inner world of others around us?; 3. How we are seen and made sense of in the eyes of others?; and, 4. What does each one of us actually observe in the world around us? In summation, I see ties between these questions of “four fields of orientation” and the two reasons to know something: 7

Knowledge Based Organization 2008 International Conference

To understand it; or to seek to “Circumspect, Pre-empt and/or Control” it. [2] The first reason for inquiry is usually given over to the Arts and the Humanities, the second to the Sciences. Cultural theorist Homi K. Bhabha’s concern is about the humanities’ role in engaging the very real effects of globalization post 9/11. He asks: “What can the humanities contribute to the creation of global community and interdisciplinary knowledge? How do humanists engage in the process of inter-cultural and intertextual translation?” He observes: An obvious difficulty lies in the fact that the humanities – arts, literature, philosophy, history, languages, art history, the classics – do not relate directly to something “real” in the external world such as the economy, class structure, voting patterns, nor do they establish methods and protocols that evolve towards some final result or conclusive truth (in the way in which claims are sometimes made for the sciences or the social sciences). The humanities do not propose an instrumental or causal relation between the medium and the message, the object and its use, or technique and telos. [3]

As he concludes, “the humanities build communities rather than models,” (the unstated implication being that social sciences build models and not communities.) 2. Making Sense of Ideas and Ideologies: Applying a PersonalFunctional and Social-Roles Pedagogical Model in Teaching/Research Since my first year of social science teaching in Romania (19921993) and subsequently, I [4] have found the following quadrant model heuristically useful in encouraging students (and professors and researchers) to both perceive the world around them clearly and act reflectively [5]: 1. The intuitive/personal experiencing of reality, that is, how do our students (and we professors) construe their pasts, make sense of their present situation and anticipate their future? In short, what do 8

Knowledge Based Organization 2008 International Conference

they feel about their social and political life, positively or negatively? In line with this question, I would posit that it is necessary for social scientists to practice an empathic reconstruction of their subjects’ life challenges as they build social critique. With Jean-Pierre Tétreault and Ronnie D. Lipschutz [6], I would agree that one purpose of their teaching is to provide “emancipatory knowledge” [7] to students for consideration, yet to do this well requires that they must first define with them what they see as important in life, that is, what they believe is a sustaining value. 2. The logical/personal construction of vision, i.e., what is the argumentative structure of the statements we teachers might put forward concerning our varied constructions of reality? What are the underlying foundations of these statements? How do differing populations in Romania or Liberia traditionally think as individuals in their society? How do they logically explain their world to themselves and others? 3. The analytical/social embodiment of scientific argument, or, what are the governing cultural structures (of language, customs or politics) that limit what our students (or us) are able to conjure, say or do in the social realm? How do we, as teachers, deal with this environment? One approach that has been productive for in the past for me was to look to the organic model of political discourse as articulated by Antonio Gramsci and summarized by Raymond Williams.[8] In their view, social change occurs over time, governed by traditional norms that inform current practice; dominant norms that control current practice; oppositional norms that challenge current practice; and, alternative norms that ignore current practice. By positing an organic synthesis of these varied sociological processes, Gramsci and Williams then advance that new emergent social norms will be forthcoming. I ask, in the teaching of students in a globalizing “age of transition,” how much can we aid this historic process along (or not)?

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4. The synthetic/social realization of argument, or, what if what we “preach” to our students or readers as an ideal becomes a categorical imperative, to echo Kant? Will the incorporation of a western-oriented “marketplace of ideas” really work in Romania or Liberia, given the possible lack of appropriate historical foundations to support it? If we are to build an epistemic foundation from scratch would it be better to adopt a model of knowledge that is based more upon empathy and cooperation and less upon competitive debating practices – as Tétreault and Lipschutz suggest? Is the dialogical/critical mode of teaching that Paulo Freire [9] calls us to uphold really practical or wildly idealistic? If it is to become a practical approach to teaching our students, how can it best be achieved? 2.1. Diagram

Getting ready for the future (based on a pedagogical model by Gilder, 1995)

3. Summary Approaching the problems mentioned above theoretically, the above diagram synthesizes four directions towards correcting these behavioural impediments set out in the way of developing a broader vision of intellectual issues, given that no individual is left out from 10

Knowledge Based Organization 2008 International Conference

the encroaching global village and its threat of “babelization.” All approaches are sensible, starting from asking ourselves who “we” are and where “we” come from, making sense of the realities of our age, exceeding the biased social segregation and finally developing a thirst for knowledge, our only beacon in surviving the challenges imposed by the new international environment. Acknowledgements The text of this article was derived from a Faculty Development Seminar presented at Cuttington University, Liberia, on 29 August, 2008, and (in part) from Ciocoi-Pop, Ana-Blanca & Gilder, Eric, “Theory and Practice in Teaching ‘International Relations and Institutions’ within a Humanistic Study Program” East/West Cultural Passage (2008, in press). References [1] A Guide for the Perplexed (New York, et al: Harper & Row, 1977). [2] “Circumspection is the stage in which we consider issues propositionally, from a variety of angles. In the preemption stage, we select what we believe to be the critical issue and eliminate the other options from consideration. Finally, in the control phase we choose the alternative action through which we anticipate the greater possibility for extension or definition of our construct system.” “The C-P-C cycle,” Scheer, Jörn and Beverly Walker (Eds.) The Internet Encyclopaedia of Personal Construct Psychology Available at http://www.pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/cpc.html (accessed 29 October, 2008). The C-P-C cycle was a construct of knowing developed by American psychologist George A. Kelly. [3] Bhabha, Homi K. “Global Pathways to Knowledge: Narration and Translation” (Keynote Address, UNESCO Forum Colloquium on Research and Higher Education Policy, Paris, 1-3 December, 2004). Available at http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpURL_ID=36955&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.htm l (accessed 30 March 2008). [4] “Turning Personal Experiences into Social Reality: Communication as a ‘Third Culture’ Building Tool in a Romanian Classroom.” Communication in Eastern Europe: The Role of History, Culture and Media in Contemporary Conflicts. Fred L. Casmir [Ed.]. (pp. 197-222). Mahwah [NJ]: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1995. 11

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[5] Global Politics As If People Mattered. New Millennium Books in International Studies. Lanham [MD]: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. [6] Kenneth Boulding provides another, complementary model of so doing. See A Primer on Social Dynamics: History as Dialectics and Development. New York: Free Press, 1970. [7] Habermas, Jürgen. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971. [8] The Modern Prince and Other Writings. (Trans. L. Marks.) New York: International Publishers; and, Williams, Raymond. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory” New Left Review 82 (1973): 3-16. Available at http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=1568 (accessed 26 February, 2007). [9] The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (Trans. M. Ramos). London: Continuum, 1970.

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NATURE VS. NURTURE IN JEFFREY EUGENIDES’ NOVEL ‘MIDDLESEX’ Dandel Richard, PhD

Munich, Germany Abstract The dispute between nature and nurture in shaping who we are has been dealt with and explored by many writers. In “Middlesex”, this is a dominant issue, which inevitably leads to Calliope’s metamorphosis. She is struggling to choose between being the woman she was raised to be and the man that she feels she is. In the course of time, a shift has taken place from the strictly pro-nurture views of the 70s to our days when people tend to say that everything about a human being is genetically determined. In 2004, the International Genome Project published its results after cracking the code of life, which is engraved in the genome consisting of 38,000 genes. The author of “Middlesex” believes that especially in the popular media the idea of genetic determination is being overemphasised because “some other things are coming into place to create us and in that place we have a certain amount of free will. “Middlesex” places Cal on middle ground between nature and nurture, but the way he confronts, fights, and eventually handles his genetic reality sets forth the writer’s conviction that genetics doesn’t rule our world. The mythological idea of fate is being dealt with in a more American way. To an extent, Cal escapes his fate, but not completely. For him the nature vs. nurture battle ends in a compromise because his own free will partially bends to his biological destiny. Cal’s triumph over genetics consists in his coming to grips with his intersex condition, which he cannot undo, but merely accept. In “Middlesex”, the gene becomes the modern vehicle for exploring the classic idea of fate and free will. In the 70s, Eugenides says, it was believed that nurture, not nature, was the decisive factor in determining fate. Now, he adds, the prevailing belief seems to be that biology is destiny. However, the author considers the current explanations like ‘chemical’ or ‘genetic’ to be very 13

Knowledge Based Organization 2008 International Conference

reductive. What he aims at is “to give humans back their free will,” so they can make their own choices. Cal’s choice refers to his gender identity, regardless of nurture or social norms that still assert ambivalent feelings towards androgyny. Cal is in the middle of this debate, and her or his life dramatises this idea of how free we are and how much is biologically predetermined. “Middlesex” is indeed a book about gender and identity, yet at no time the book becomes theoretical. On the contrary, these major issues are dealt with lightly and in an appealing way. In “Middlesex”, the author admits the possibility that genetic determinism has revived ancient beliefs in fate, disrupting post-Freudian theories that a person’s character is primarily the result of experience. Although the ancient notion of fate has been replaced by the term genetics, it is still the outcome of a fierce battle between encoded genes and free will.

Keywords: nature, nurture, Middlesex “If you were going to devise an experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture, you couldn’t come up with anything better than my life” [1].

1. Introduction: The Nature vs. Nurture Debate The debate, whether nature or nurture is the driving force that shapes human cognitive abilities and behaviour, has been a classic and enduring controversy among experts and defenders of either doctrine for centuries. So far, there is no clear conclusion to the dispute; nevertheless, there are many hypotheses, which are the result of thorough research on both sides of this controversy. Any scientist can give an apparently plausible answer to the Nature-Nurture question, yet the answer will reflect his own ideas and convictions, favouring the concepts he is trying to defend. Thus, one can create a scientific environment that will produce an exclusively genetic answer to the question, or he can engender a scientific environment that will produce a totally environmental answer. The answer will doubtlessly depend on the situation the scientist will set up, in order to suit his purpose. Nature refers to traits, abilities, and capacities that are genetically passed on from parents to their children. Nature encompasses any factor 14

Knowledge Based Organization 2008 International Conference

that is produced by the predetermined unfolding of genetic information and it “determines our physical layout” [2]. The outstanding experimental Harvard psychologist Dr. Steven Pinker argues that children’s characters are moulded primarily by their genes. When it comes to sexual reassignment, it seems that the nature theory needs no longer to be questioned. For many years, doctors argued that reassigning sex was easy, because they erroneously believed that it was not nature, but nurturing which determined the psychological make-up of a person and his gender assignment. Supporters of the nurture theory do not altogether deny that genetic tendencies may exist, but they believe that these ultimately do not really matter. They are firmly convinced that behavioural aspects and patterns are directly determined by nurture, i.e., by the environmental factors of an individual’s upbringing. Researchers have long struggled to define the relationship of how much is nature, that is genetic, and how much is nurture, that is the way a person is brought up, yet the dispute is still far from having been settled. The link between a gene and behaviour is not the same as cause and effect, yet by changing environmental factors, one can influence it if and to what degree the information encoded in the genes is being expressed. Kimberly J. Allen believes that nature and nurture “influence each other greatly, and their effects can almost never be disentangled. […] Nature provides some immutable scaffold, which nurture then builds upon” [3]. The phenotype and the genotype depend on each other and one’s self is the interface of nature and nurture. 2. Middlesex – Middle Ground between Nature and Nurture The dispute between nature and nurture in shaping who we are has been dealt with and explored by many writers. In Middlesex, this is a dominant issue, which inevitably leads to Calliope’s metamorphosis. She is struggling to choose between being the woman she was raised to be and the man that she feels she is. In the course of time, a shift has taken place from the strictly pro-nurture views of the 70s to our days when people tend to say that everything about a human being is genetically determined. In 2004, the International 15

Knowledge Based Organization 2008 International Conference

Genome Project published its results after cracking the code of life, which is engraved in the genome consisting of 38,000 genes. “Not enough genes,” Eugenides argues, “to make us the way we are. So some other things are coming into place to create us and in that place we have a certain amount of free will” [4]. The author of Middlesex believes that especially in the popular media the idea of genetic determination is being overemphasised because “we have more free will than people think in terms of our genetic destiny” [5]. Middlesex places Cal on middle ground between nature and nurture, but the way he confronts, fights, and eventually handles his genetic reality sets forth the writer’s conviction that genetics doesn’t rule our world. The mythological idea of fate is being dealt with in a more American way. To an extent, Cal escapes his fate, but not completely. For him the nature vs. nurture battle ends in a compromise because his own free will partially bends to his biological destiny. Cal’s triumph over genetics consists in his coming to grips with his intersex condition, which he cannot undo, but merely accept. At the age of 41, Cal Stephanides decides to tell the incredible story of his life, lest it be forgotten. Some people, he muses, inherit houses or other properties, what he was bequeathed is a genetic defect on the fifth chromosome that has adventurously travelled half a century over continents and has eventually ended its journey in his mother’s womb. Mimicking Homer’s opening lines of the Iliad, Cal invokes the Muse of epic poetry, yet in a moment of self-reflection he exclaims, “Sorry if I get Homeric at times. That’s genetic, too” [6]. However, finding the proper words for his narration doesn’t seem to be easy at all, especially because there is a difference in tone as he speaks about the events taking place before and after his birth. One encoded gene, carrying all the relevant information to turn Cal into a hermaphrodite, becomes the clandestine witness of his own ancestral past. When Cal is born, the old and presbyopic Dr. Philobosian inspects the newborn baby and declares it to be a beautiful and healthy girl. However, if he had pulled the folds of her genitalia apart, the decrepit doctor wouldn’t have failed to notice that Callie was, in fact, a hermaphrodite. Cal is raised as a girl and her parents have no clue at 16

Knowledge Based Organization 2008 International Conference

all that something is wrong about their daughter. At the age of eight, Callie exposes her genitals to the amazed and fascinated glances of her brother, satisfying his curiosity. However, he is not able to detect anything about his sister that would hint at her hermaphroditic condition. All he sees are “pink folds, a cleft” [7]. Nurture, Cal realises, does not decide a person’s real gender identity: “[…] fetal hormones affect brain chemistry and histology. I’ve got a male brain. But I was raised as a girl” [8]. Among the many tests Dr. Luce runs Callie through, he analyses her/his prose in order to see if she writes in a circular, typically feminine way, or in a linear, masculine way. In an act of self-analysis, Callie realises that in spite of having an androgenised brain, “there’s an innate feminine circularity in the story” [9] she/he wants to tell. Following this imperative, Callie tells his story that follows the lines in concentric circles akin to a cocoon of a silk worm, which is gently unravelled to its very core. Cal is aware that he is “the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you have to read it from the beginning to get to the end,” which is his/her birth [10]. In Middlesex, the gene becomes the modern vehicle for exploring the classic idea of fate and free will. In the 70s, Eugenides says, it was believed that nurture, not nature, was the decisive factor in determining fate. Now, he adds, the prevailing belief seems to be that biology is destiny. However, the author considers the current explanations like ‘chemical’ or ‘genetic’ to be very reductive. What he aims at is “to give humans back their free will” [11], so they can make their own choices. Cal’s choice refers to his gender identity, regardless of nurture or social norms that still assert ambivalent feelings towards androgyny. Cal is in the middle of this debate, and her or his life dramatises this idea of how free we are and how much is biologically predetermined. Middlesex is indeed a book about gender and identity, yet at no time the book becomes theoretical. On the contrary, these major issues are dealt with lightly and in an appealing way. When Cal enters puberty, she discovers her true nature, although there had been obvious signs that things were developing along a quite unusual path: lack of menstruation, a boy-like flat chest, abundant facial hair growth, and tall and lanky stature. She discovers that a 17

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young man who claimed its biological rights in fact inhabited her body, which she had been taught to perceive as a female one. Having Greek ancestors, Cal should have more easily complied with the almighty force of destiny, which man is unable to influence or alter. When she is confronted with a choice few people will ever have to make, Cal decides to live her life as a man, although her parents have raised her as a girl. In spite of the change in gender and all the efforts to fit the pattern of a man, inside Cal the girl is always present like a second self. He wears an oversize black suit and short hair. Yet not even the man-like swagger he is trying hard to impersonate can turn him completely into the young man he wants to be. Cal notices that “Callie rises up inside me, wearing my skin as a loose robe” [12]. She sticks her little hands into the baggy sleeves of my arms. She inserts her chimp’s feet through the trousers of my legs. On the sidewalk, I’ll feel her girlish walk take over, and the moment brings back a kind of emotion, a desolate and gossipy sympathy for the girls I see coming home from school [13].

Not even at the age of 41 Cal can dispose of this second female self that is there in spite of his musketeer looks with a moustache, a goatee and his trained brawny body. Calliope’s hair tickles the back of my throat […]. The sick fluid of adolescent despair that runs through her veins overflows again into mine. But then, just as suddenly, she is leaving, shrinking and melting away inside me. And when I turn to see my reflection in a window, there’s this, a 41-year old man with longish wavy hair, a thin mustache and a goatee [14].

Evolutionary psychologists brought forward theories that explained human behaviour in a simplistic way. In the 70s it was generally believed that the influence of the environment on the individual is the only parameter that makes a person what it is. In our days, especially after the astounding results of the International Genome Project, which managed to crack the genetic code, scientists hold the genes responsible for the physical but also for the psychic make-up of an individual. However, even geneticists admit that the 18

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input in shaping a human being is equally split into 50 percent genetic heritage and 50 percent environmental influence. Invoking the Muse in a Homeric manner, Cal betrays the strong commitment to her Greek roots, and myths are inherent in them. Although mimicking an ancient author preoccupied by the tension between preordained fate and self-determination, Cal indirectly asks a very modern question: Is Middlesex or any other novel the story of its hero/heroine or is the history of a particular DNA configuration? From the many mythological references like Tiresias, Muses, Hermaphroditos, or Minotaurus, fate plays an essential role in deciphering Cal’s true identity, which is born on the battlefield of fate, nurture, and free will. Modern sciences equal fate with the genetic make-up of a person, and from this point of view, Cal’s fate was sealed when his incestuous grandparents passed a mutation on the fifth chromosome to their offspring. In Greek mythology, the Fates whom the ancient Greeks called Moirai, were three goddesses who were watching over a person’s destiny. In his Theogony, Hesiod describes the fates as daughters of Zeus and Themis (or Nyx), explaining the nature of their involvement in a man’s destiny. At their birth, mortals receive from Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos their share of good and evil. Myths said that human fate was spun around a person at birth by the divine Spinners or Fates. Clotho was the spinner who selected the thread, Lachesis drew the lots and measured the thread, and Atropos, who represented the inevitable end, cut the thread to limit a person’s life. The thread that was spun around Calliope at her birth is similar to the thin silk thread that wraps the pupae of silk worm. Through her ancestral background, Callie is also under the impact of ancient Greek myths and the Fates. It has been her fate to inherit the chromosomal defect from her grandparents, and no matter how hard people try to outwit fate, they have to admit their defeat. Using information from a popular science magazine, Uncle Pete keeps counselling Milton on the right moment for conception so he can influence the gender of the baby. Desdemona, who has incessantly been living with the fear that God might punish her for her incestuous marriage, rages against any attempt of influencing fate. “God decides what baby is. Not you […],” 19

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[15] she scolds her son Milton who is bent on having a girl.

Nevertheless, Desdemona’s silver spoon predicts the contrary. When Callie is born, Desdemona’s prediction proves to be wrong. However, returning home after an odyssey in search of her true self, Callie confronts his grandmother with the news that he is a boy now. Desdemona isn’t surprised in the least, because fate had thrown the dice over Callie regardless of her/his parents’ wishes. Cal envies the ancestors who are responsible for her affliction because they lived “in a time before genetics, before everyone was in the habit of saying about everything, ‘It’s in the genes!’ A time before our present freedom and so much freer!” [16] Yet although Cal is a victim of her/his DNA, by this interpretation of things, we all run the risk of being turned into prisoners of inheritance. Consequently, free will and all the decisions forged by it are controlled by our genetic make-up. When Cal is confronted with the news that he is a hermaphrodite, she approves of Chekhov saying, “If there’s a gun on the wall, it’s got to go off. In real life, however, you never know where the gun is hanging” [17]. This hidden gun is nothing else than the gene, which had hidden for generations until it would fire in Cal’s body, not with a big bang, but devoid of any sound at all. High tension comes up while the action speeds on and the reader is watching out nervously when and how this weapon of inheritance will eventually go off, after having been passed from Cal’s grandparents to his parents. This gun on the wall is in fact a metaphor for Callie’s fate, which had laid the cards for her long before she would be aware of it. Her share of free will in the matter centres on the question if she is willing to accept fate for what it is, or if she allows to be crashed by it. Moreover, the question arises if Cal’s condition is to be interpreted as the result of chance or of fate. Describing her/his own conception, Cal says, “The timing of the thing had to be just so in order for me to become the person I am. Delay the act by an hour and you change the gene selection” [18]. Cal intuitively knows that certain things like birth, death, love, “and what love bequeaths to us before we’re born” are all beyond our own will or influence [19]. In a self-mocking attitude which lays aside any tinge of self-pity, Cal comments on her rare genetic mutation that will quite unexpectedly turn her world 20

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upside-down. “My genitals have been the most significant thing that ever happened to me,” Cal reports. “Some people inherit houses; others paintings or highly insured violin bows […]. I got a recessive gene on my fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed” [20]. The novel begins with an astounding statement that forecasts the whole extend of Cal’s unusual experience: “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974” [21]. The trigger for this annulment of birth and the chance or rather the necessity of being born again is to be found in Cal’s genetic heritage, which is in fact the legacy of perpetual incest in her family. Emotional and psychological chaos engulfs Calliope when this charming and untroubled girl enters adolescence, and all her physical changes signal that she is indeed not like all the other girls. One of the finest and most engrossing passages in the book reveals Callie’s crush on her red-haired schoolmate, a girl she simply calls The Obscure Object. There is a Sappho-like sensuousness in Cal’s palpable description of her adolescent infatuation for the succulent girl in flower when she renders her feelings of wild ecstasy: “And then my body, like a cathedral, broke out into ringing” [22]. This budding sexuality is perceived as something emphatically earthy as well as heavenly, or even sacred. Cal’s attraction to girls is genuine and will outlast puberty, yet there is a certain poignancy about the way she feels, because this is just the beginning of a long list of incomplete seductions. “In optimistic, postwar America […] everybody was the master of his own destiny, so it only followed that my father would try to be the master of his” [23]. A notorious self-made man, successful in his hotdog business and always boasting to be the owner of a brand new Cadillac model, Milton challenges fate and nature implicitly, being convinced that he can also control the gender of his newborn child by a minute planning of his wife’s conception. However, Desdemona isn’t very enthusiastic at all about Milton and Tessie challenging fate a second time, arguing, “Why you want more children, Tessie? […] More children, more trouble” [24]. When Cal confronts her with her 21

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change of gender identity, her grandmother’s fears appear to have been absolutely legitimate. When Tessie learns about the condition of her daughter, she is haunted by nightmares and she keeps permanently blaming herself for Cal’s misfortune, asking herself, “Was it her fault? Should she have resisted Milton when he tried to bend nature to his will” [25]. Confronted with Cal’s weird condition, Milton has an epiphany of the inevitable in human existence, “Watching from the cab, Milton came face-to-face with tragedy, which is something determined before you’re born, something you can’t escape or do anything about, no matter how hard you try” [26]. Throughout Middlesex, genetics rewrites the family epic, and DNA becomes something like a ghostwriter. However referring to the nature/nurture issue in Middlesex, Eugenides points out that these two components are closely related. [Cal] is determined by her genes, she has this genetic mutation there’s no escape of. But the mutation does not make her who she is, does not determine everything about her life. There is still a great amount of free will and possibility in her life, and that’s one of the things the book is strongly determined in [27].

In Middlesex, the author admits the possibility that genetic determinism has revived ancient beliefs in fate, disrupting postFreudian theories that a person’s character is primarily the result of experience. Although the ancient notion of fate has been replaced by the term genetics, it is still the outcome of a fierce battle between encoded genes and free will. References [1] Eugenides, Jeffrey, Middlesex, New York: Picador, 2003, p. 21. [2] Vermeulen, Robert, How is the brain structured and what is the inner eye?, 1997-1999 http://www.objana.com/frog/innereye.html [3] Allen, Kimberly J., Nature/Nurture: An Artificial Division?, Network of Emerging Scientists, 1 Nov. 1997. [4] Kostaki, Maria, Gender Bender, http://theopinion.com 2003. [5] ibid. [6] Eugenides, Jeffrey, Middlesex, New York: Picador, 2003, p. 4. [7] ibid. p. 316. 22

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[8] ibid. [9] ibid. p. 22. [10] ibid. [11] Lyden, Jacki, Profile: Jeffrey Eugenides’ Novel ‘Middlesex’ And How It Deals With The Subject Of The Narrator’s Hermaphroditism. All Things Considered, 17 Oct. 2002. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl [12] Eugenides, Jeffrey, Middlesex, New York: Picador, 2003, p. 47. [13] ibid. [14] ibid. [15] Eugenides, Jeffrey, Middlesex, New York: Picador, 2003, p. 14. [16] ibid. [17] ibid. p. 447. [18] ibid. p. 12. [19] ibid. p. 439. [20] ibid. [21] ibid. p. 3. [22] ibid. p. 438. [23] ibid. p. 10. [24] ibid. p. 14. [25] ibid. p. 476. [26] ibid. p. 426. [27] Moorhem, Bram van, 3am Interview with J. Eugenides. The novel as a mental picture of its era, 3 A.M. Magazine, 2003.

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ECONOMICS OF ART AND LITERATURE Assoc.Prof. Cosma Sorinel, PhD, Cosma Simona

“Ovidius” University, Constanţa “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract Humankind has been engaged in the production of art and literature for thousands of years – museums around the world will testify for that. Economic thinking has been applied in ever more areas in the last decennia, including pollution, corruption and education. Cultural economics is concerned with arts in a broad sense. Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes. Economics of the arts and literature or, for ease of reference below, cultural economics, is a branch of economics that studies the economics of creation, distribution, and the consumption of works of art and literature. Usage has widened since the beginning of the 1980s with the study of cultural industry, and the economy of cultural institutions.

Keywords: art, literature, supply, value, cost Humankind has been engaged in the production of art and literature for thousands of years – museums around the world will testify for that. The arts reflect the state of a larger political, economic and social environment. Society is experiencing accelerated, consumer-driven, global, post-industrial, technological communications development. Is art just another commodity? Or is art beyond the normal laws of economics? We have to examine markets and policy in the arts to determine how and why the arts are special. Topics may include the value of priceless art, the starving artist, subsidies for the arts, the role 24

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of non-profits, patronage, and investing in art. Research on the relation between culture and economics is growing in recent years and requires an interdisciplinary approach and attitude. Economic thinking has been applied in ever more areas in the last decennia, including pollution, corruption and education. Cultural economics is concerned with arts in a broad sense. Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes. It is widely recognized as beginning with John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1960 book The Liberal Hour. Over the last 30 or 40 years a substantial literature has grown up in which the tools of economic theory and analysis have been applied to problems in the arts and culture. Economists who have surveyed the field generally locate the origins of contemporary cultural economics as being in 1966, the year of publication of the first major work in modern times dedicated specifically to the economics of the arts. It was a book by Baumol and Bowen which showed that economic analysis could illuminate the supply of and demand for artistic services, the contribution of the arts sector to the economy, and the role of public policy. Following the appearance of the Baumol and Bowen work, interest in the economics of the arts grew steadily, embracing areas such as demand for the arts, the economic functions of artists, the role of the nonprofit sector, and other areas. Cultural economics also expanded to include the cultural or entertainment industries (the media, movies, the publishing industry, popular music), as well as heritage and museum management, property right questions (in particular copyright) and the role of new communication technologies such as the internet. The field is therefore located at the crossroads of several disciplines: economics and management, but also art history, art philosophy, sociology and law. The Handbook is placed firmly in economics, but it also builds bridges across these various disciplines and will thus be of interest to researchers in all these different fields, as well as to those who are engaged in cultural policy issues and the role of culture in the development of our societies. Economics of the arts and literature, cultural economics, is a branch of economics that studies the economics of creation, 25

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distribution, and the consumption of works of art and literature. Usage has widened since the beginning of the 1980s with the study of cultural industry (cinema and music publishing), and the economy of cultural institutions (museums, libraries, historic buildings). Defining what a cultural good mean is not an easy task. Cultural goods are those which value is determined by their symbolic content, and not their physical characteristics. For instance, designer goods are not considered to be works of art or culture. Works of art and culture have a specific quality, which is their uniqueness. As there is no equivalent item for each, classical economist Adam Smith held it was impossible to value them. One important distinction is that between economic and cultural value. Economic value is rooted in marginal utility. In contrast, cultural value, which transcends economic value, can be defined as a set of attitudes, beliefs, customs and practices of a group. Cultural value of an activity or thing has as sources characteristics such as aesthetic value, spiritual value, social value, historical value, symbolic value and authenticity value. Cultural value can be purely subjective, which makes it a mere subset of economic value, at most a reason why someone might value a good economically, instead of a value set distinct from economic value. Collective valuation is also important – the motivation people have to produce and experience culture is a collective impulse. Much art is produced and consumed as a group activity. Cultural capital can exist in tangible goods such as buildings, museums, and paintings, as well as in intangible things such as techniques, ideas, beliefs, and customs. Capital goods are produced means of production that are separable from humans and their labor, whereas beliefs, customs and ideas do not live outside those holding them. In the range of business workers are continually getting more productive (due to technological innovations), but in the field of the performing arts there is almost no growth in productivity over time. For instance, the same number of musicians is needed to play a Beethoven string quartet today as were needed in the 1800s; that is the 26

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productivity of Classical music performance has not increased. On the other hand wages of musicians have increased greatly since the 1900s. Or we can compare the change in the cost of perform the Molière play “Tartuffe” in 1664 and in 2007 with the change in cost of calculating a large number of sums from an accounting ledger. In 1664, you needed two hours and twelve actors to perform Moliere's play, and it would take twelve accountants working for two hours to add up all the sums in an accounting ledger. In 2007, a single accountant with a calculator can add the sums in 20 minutes, but you still need two hours and twelve actors for the Moliere play. But, the same performance can be viewed by an ever larger audience by improvements in the design of theatres, and by the introduction of microphones, television and recording. This phenomenon goes against the theory that wages and labor productivity are always closely tied. It is known as Baumol’s cost disease or the Baumol Effect. William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen described it in 1966 in Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma. Economics of the arts and literature or, for ease of reference below, cultural economics, is a branch of economics that studies the economics of creation, distribution, and the consumption of works of art and literature. Usage has widened since the beginning of the 1980s with the study of cultural industry (cinema and music publishing), and the economy of cultural institutions (museums, libraries, historic buildings). Art world economics is a relatively unexplored area of financial exchange that exists at the edges of the regular financial industry. Investment in art has been an accepted form of deposit investment for several decades such as the purchase of works by Matisse, Van Gogh and Picasso. However these works only have an assured value as long as there is a restricted supply of works on the open market – that is the artist is dead or producing small numbers of works and that the authenticity of works can be verified by a small number of sources. In the case of contemporary artists it is the interest of collectors and therefore dealers to ensure a tightly controlled line of supply. 27

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The economics of the fine art market are similar to the economics of most other markets. The prices are driven by supply and demand. Contemporary artists are very volatile since they can dramatically increase supply, diminish the quality or fall out of favor. The variables are large on both sides of the equation. This is reason for the high-risk level of investing with contemporary artists. When an artist dies the supply of his or her art becomes fixed or diminishing. Both the quality and the quantity of the works from his or her life are known. Strangely enough, the death of an artist is the most pivotal point of his or her career. The only events that really have a large effect on the art market are depressions or large changes in the supply. The art world can be seen as structured as an interdependent network of social-economic actors who cooperate – often contentiously or unknowingly – to enact and perpetuate the art world, while at the same time negotiating kinds and levels of cooperation in a mutually understood careerist and competitive context. Arts and literature must be seen as an economic factor of production that pervades every aspect of the economy from automobiles and aircraft to entertainment and education to health care and highways to temples of worship and tourism. Like the air, art is everywhere that human life exists, has existed and will ever exist.

References [1] http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=OL484NVVBiAC&dq=cultural+e conomics&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=ukpnRPzDuY&sig=1djsP JoS-TEMPa5fOhr6RrrB6Q&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result [2] http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=btk0riITTgQC&dq=cultural+eco nomics&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=QAUZQAasVF&sig=APY uY9ID2I6OnQWe7sPv2_zhFQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

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CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE AT MARK TWAIN Asst.Prof. Mărăscu Elena, PhD

University Centre of Drobeta Turnu Severin [email protected]

Abstract Every child has to go through the stage of adolescence following a slow and hard transition but never forgotten; childhood is time when “children are children all over the world” and adolescence is a developmental period when a person must grow and mature. Huck, the character created by Mark Twain goes through drastic changes from a little boy to an independent and mature person, a real self-thinker. In his “Autobiography” Mark Twain affirms that “a boy’s life is not all comedy much of the tragic enters into it.”

Keywords: childhood, adolescence, adventure, freedom, moral Samuel Langhorne Clements, or Mark Twain, was born on the Missouri frontier, in a little village called Florida. When he was four years old his parents moved to Hannibal on the banks of the Missisippi River, which was to become the town of Twain’s boyhood. The panorama of his recollections of boyhood, which he sensitively evoked in later years included – along with schoolboy pranks and idyllic rafts – some very disturbing experiences, such as the side of slave beating, of Negroes chained like animals for transportations to richer slave markets in the south. On the whole we learned from his writing a fair amount about the living conditions in the those days, about how it felt to grow up in an Missouri black country town through which the picturesque pilgrims of 29

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restlessly expanding America passed up and down its river side or across it westward to seek opportunities in newly opened lands. Then, once more from his remembrance of boywood days, came his masterpieces, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – social and moral record of an epoch in American history serving as a conscience for an entire era and culture – the book which together with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, has attained a position of a classical in world literature. Whether considered from the point of view of historical, social and moral significance, style, or characterization, the book with its two great characters, Huck himself and Nigger Jim provides variegated panorama of life along the Mississippi Valley in terms both realistic and imaginative. A writer possessed of a peculiarity American idiom, author of a truly great novel – Huckleberry Finn – and a homespun, philosopher Mark Twain is America’s greatest humorous, not only because of his unsurpassed mastery of that esential idiom, but because his humour served to point out errors in American life, expressing at the same time its permanent faith on a better future. Beyond this we should not care to go in prophecy, and in trying to guess Mark Twain’s future from the past of other humorists we should not care to be comparative. These are only three or four whom he may be lined with, and, not to begin with be ancients, we may speak in the same breath of Cervantes, of Moliere, Swift, Dickens, among the moderns. None of these may be compared with him humanity except Dickens alone, whose humanity into sentimentally and scarcely counts more than the others. The remembrance of Mark Twain does not depend upon the presence of a like property in his humour, and its absence has little to do with question we have been inviting the reader to evade with us. His books are instinctively treated as the prime events of the author’s life. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer describes the youthful adventures of young protagonists, who embody the ideal of America youth during the front era that preceded Industrialization. Critics agreed that the story is often overshadowed by the novel’s sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; but there is no doubt that Tom Sawyer is considered 30

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among one of the greatest pieces of American fiction, particularly with Twain’s exceptional ability to capture the „idylls of boyhood” with such vivid and dramatic detail. This sense of innocence and youthfulness that pervades the work is in extreme contrast with the pessimistic attitude for which Twain was known. Made popular by his sayings and anecdotes as much as his works of literature, the author often doted upon the weak nature of man, citing his inherent selfishness and his obsession with monetary value. As a idealist who saw his ideals betrayed by a morally corrupted society, Twain seems to use Tom as a symbol of a transition between the world of adults and children, the society where justice is served versus a social network lacking all scruples. Although based on Twain's own personal experiences as a child, critics have suggested several other sources for the novel, including Southwestern humorist, George W. Harris. However, he novel is clearly indicative of the folklore surrounding life on the Mississippi River. Tom's adventures are closely tied with ghost lore, haunted houses, witchcraft and animal lore; this theme of the superstition and folklore is a common thread in many of Twain's works and exhibits his first hand knowledge of the popular beliefs of the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley. When the novel begins Tom is a. mischievous child who envies Huck's lazy lifestyle and freedom. As Tom adventures proceed, however, critical moments show Tom moving away from his childhood concerns and making mature responsible decisions. These moments include Tom's testimony at Moff Potter's trial, his saving from punishment and his heroic navigation out of the cave. By the end of the novel, Tom is coaxing Huck into staying at the widow Douglas's urging his friend to accept tight collars, Sunday school and good table manners. H e is no longer a disobedient character underdetermining the adult order but a defender of respectability and responsibility. In the end, growing-up for Tom means embracing social custom and sacrificing the freedoms of childhood. Yet Tom's development isn't totally coherent. The novel jumps back and forth among several narrative strands: Tom's general misbehavior, which climaxes in the Jackson's island adventure, his courtship of 31

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Becky, which culminates in his acceptance of blame for the book that she rips; and his straggle with Huck, which end with Tom ends Huck's discovery of the treasure. Because of the picaresque, or episodic nature of the plot, Tom's character can seem inconsistent, as it varies depending upon his situation. Tom is a paradoxical figure in some respects – for example, he has no determinate age. Sometimes Tom shows the naivety of a smaller child, with his interests of make-believe and superstitions. On the other hand, Tom's romantic interest in Becky, and his fascination with Huck's smoking and drinking seem more the concerns of an adolescent. Whether or not a single course of development characterizes Tom's adventures, a single character trait – Tom's unflagging energy and thirst for adventure – propels the novel from episode to episode. Disobedient as he may be, Tom ends up as St. Petersburg's hero. As the town gossips say, “[Tom] would be president, yet, if he escaped hanging”. (Mark Twain, p. 249) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with its episodes designed to pleasantly remind adults what they once were themselves catapulted its author into fame. Twain himself called the book a “hymn” to boyhood, it being a sympathetically humorous portrayal of childhood in a Mississippi town. Mark Twain has taken the boy of the Southwest for the hero of his new book, and has presented him with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction. The town where Tom Sawyer was born and brought up is some such idle, shabby little Mississippi River town as Twain has so well described in his piloting reminiscences, but Tom belongs to the better sort of people in it, and has been bred to fear God and dread the Sundayschool according to the strictest rite of the faiths that have characterized all the respectability of the west. His subjection in these respects does not so deeply affect his inherent tendencies but that he makes himself a beloved burden to the poor-tender old aunt who brings him up with his orphan brother and sister, and struggles vainly with his manifold sins, actual and imaginary. 32

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Tom is mischievous, but not vicious; he is ready for almost any degradation that involves the danger and honors of adventure, but profanity he knows may provoke a thunderbolt upon the heart of the blasphemer and he almost never swears; he reasorts to any stratagem to keep out of school, but he is not a downright liar, except upon terms of after shame and remorse that make his falsehood bitter to him. He is cruel, as all children are, but chiefly because he is ignorant; he is not mean, but there are definite bounds to his generosity; and his courage is the Indian sort, full of prudence and mindful of retreat as one of the conditions of prolonged hostilities. In a word, he is a boy, and merely an exactly an ordinary boy on the moral side. What makes him delightful to the reader is that on the imaginative side he is very much more, and though every boy has wild and fantastic dreams, this boy cannot rest till he has somehow realized them. Till he has actually run off with two other boys in the character of buccaneer, and lived for a week on an island in the Mississippi, he has lived in vain; and his passage is but the prelude to more thrilling adventures, in which he finds hidden treasures, traces the bandits to their cave, and is himself lost in its recesses. When the half-breed has murdered the young doctor, Tom and his friend, Huckleberry Finn, are really in then boyish terror and. superstition, going to let the poor old town-drunkard be hanged for the crime till the terror of that becomes unendurable. The story is a wonderful study of the boy-mind, which inhabits a world quite distinct from that in which he is bodily present with his elders, and in this lies its great charm and its universality, for boy nature, however human nature varies, is the same everywhere. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is Mark Twain masterpiece and it came from his remembrance of boyhood days. It is a social and moral record of an epoch in American history, serving as a conscience for an entire era and culture. It is a book, which together with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has attained the position of classic in world literature. Huck's intense and even complex moral quality may possibly not appear on a first reading, for the reader may be convinced by Huck's own estimate of himself, but this brags about his lazy hedonism, his 33

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avowed preference for being alone, his dislike of civilization. In fact, he is very much “involved” (Mark Twain, p. 52) in civilization. Responsibility is the very essence of his character. Huck has indeed all the capacities of simple happiness, but the circumstances and his own moral nature make him the least carefree of boys; he is always “in a sweet” (Mark Twain, p. 25) over the predicament of someone else. He has a great sense of sadness of human life and, although he likes to be alone, the words “lonely” and “loneliness” (Mark Twain, p. 20) are frequent with him. His sympathy for other people, however, wicked or wretched, is quick and direct, but never sentimental. His tenderness for people goes along with the assumption these fellow men are likely to be dangerous and wicked. Consequently, he travels incognito, never telling the truth about himself and never twice telling the same lie, for he trusts no one and a lie comforts him even when it is not necessary. Huck discovers Negro Jim to be not only a human being, but also a very admirable one. To his astonishment, he begins to have feelings of brotherhood toward him. He is, to a certain degree, aware of the contradiction between these feelings and his prejudices. He has only to consult his conscience of a South even boy in the middle of the last century, to know that he ought to return Jim to slavery. And as soon as he makes the decision according to his conscience and decides to inform on Jim, he has all warmly gratifying emotions of conscious virtue. And when at last he finds that he cannot endure his decision but must change it and help Jim in his escape, it is not because he has acquired and new ideas about slavery. Huck has not ran away from Miss Watson, the Widow Douglas and his brutal father to a completely individualistic liberty, for in Jim he finds his true father, very much as Stephan Dedalus in James Joyce's Ulysses finds him true father in Leopold Bloom. The boy and Negro slave form a "family, a primitive community. Whenever Huck stops to think rationally socially, he feels the only goodness lies in betraying Jim. This is most dramatic metaphor, which highlights Hack's midway position between two worlds: the world of men (the shore) and the world of nature (the river and Jim), and his dilemma to being torn between inculcated morality and instinctive humanity. 34

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Huck's instinct is to help anybody in trouble, no matter how they have been mistreated. And display of human cruelty sickens him, no matter what the putative rights and wrongs of the matter. Huck is curiously alone, he is almost impersonally melancholic (although never self-piteous), he has a desire to wander, to leave no tracks and he betrays a premature nostalgia as though he had intimations of paradise whose very existence is now dubious. In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain created a character who exemplifies freedom within and from American society. Huck lives on the margins of society because, as the son of the town drunk, he is pretty much an orphan. He sleeps where he pleases, provided nobody chases him off, and he eats when he pleases, provided he can he con find a morsel. No one requires him to attend school or church, bathe, or dress respectably. It is understandable, if not expected, that Huck smokes and swears. Years of having to fend for himself have invested Huck with a solid common sense and a practical competence that complement Tom's dreamy idealism and fantastical approach to reality (Tom creates worlds for himself that are based on those in stories he has read). But Huck does have two things in common with Tom: love for adventure and belief in superstition. Through Huck, Twain weights the costs and benefits of living in a society against those of living independently of society. For most of the novel, adult society disapproves of Huck, but because Twain renders Huck such a likable boy, the adults' disapproval of Huck generally alienates us from them and not from Huck himself. After Huck saves the treasure and gets rich, the scale tips in the direction of living in society. But Huck, unlike Tom, isn't convinced that the exchange of freedom for stability is worth it. He has little use for the money he has found and is quite devoted to his rough, independent lifestyle. When the novel ends, Huck, like Tom, is still a work in progress, and we aren't sure whether the Widow Douglas's attempts to civilize him will succeed. In Huckleberry Finn, the narrator is the: major character. He speaks his own dialect, and relates everything that happens to him and the thoughts and ideas that cross his mind. 35

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The strategy of a naive narrator who is honest and unpretentious is useful of gaining the audience's sympathy. The naive-vernacular character, when allowed to speak from his own point of view, with an economical and blunt vocabulary and unpretentious syntax, reveals a new way of getting the living world into words. If Twain had used the third person narrative the story would not have been so effective; freshness and stylistic authenticity would have been lost. Huck is a very intelligent boy and shrewd psychologist. He has achieved this not by education, but by facing life on his own. In the fragment, he knows how and when to say certain things to the two men, giving transparent hints that would make them believe his lie. He is also a skilful actor: he is able to cry, not only cheating the two grownups, but also making them feeling pity for him and give him money. His lie gets even more plausible when he pretends to avoid telling them the truth about his “father's sickness” (Mark Twain, p. 162). In fact, he never utters the word “smallpox” (Mark Twain, p. 165) it is his two interlocutors who come to this conclusion, taking into account the boy's evasive answers and his apparent distress. Bibliography Allen, Walter, The English Novel, A Short Criticai History, Pelican Books, 1958. Botez, Monica, Aspects of the Victorian Novei: Dickens, Bucureşti, TUB, 1985. David, Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature, Seeker & Warburg, 1975. Dallas, E.S., Reviewing ‘Great Expectations’, in: The Times, 17 October 1861. Dickens, Charles, The Personal History of David Copperfield, Oxford University Press, 1960. Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Everyman's Library, 1991. Dickens, Charles, The Adventures of Oliver Twist - Introduction, Bernhard Tauclinitz, 1843, Leiptzig. Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations, Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1864. Dumitriu, Geta, American Literature, the 19th century, Bucureşti, TUB, 1985. Levintchi, Leon, Preda, Ion, Istoria literaturii engleze, Bucureşti, Editura Ştiinţifică, Bucureşti, 1961. Mărăscu, Elena, English Literature, Editura Radical, 2001. Morehead, A.H. & Blum, Harold, 100 Great American Novels, Signet Book, New York, 1966. 36

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Orwell, George, Charles Dickens, in Critical Essays, London, 1946. Salinger, J.D., The Catcher in the Rye, Bucureşti, Editura Univers, 1992. Slater, Michael, David Copperfield - Introduction, Everyman's Library, 1907. Twain, Mark, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Books Foundations, Chicago, 1955. Twain, Mark, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Ed. Copyright, 1917. Watt, Homer, A Dictionary of English Literature, London, 1987. Watt, William W., Webster's New Biographical Dictionary, Merrion-Webster, 1988.

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EDGAR ALLAN POE'S ‘THE OVAL PORTRAIT’ – THE DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF ART Asst.Prof. Mihăilă-Lică Gabriela, PhD

“Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), an American poet and short-story writer, who also worked as an editor and a literary critic, is considered to illustrate the American Romantic Movement. The themes that he deals with most often are questions of death, decomposition, fear of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning, the relationship between art and life. Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a reaction to transcendentalism. In the present paper we have chosen to analyze the short story entitled ‘The Oval Portrait’ because, despite its succinctness, only two pages, it encompasses a richness of symbols and interpretations.

Keywords: Poe, Romanticism, art, symbols The entire 19th century is under the influence of Romanticism, a cultural movement that is perceived as a revolt against the norms promoted by the Enlightenment and against the scientific rationalization of nature. Mihai Zamfir demonstrates that the core of this century is “of a romantic essence”, a century that is dramatic not only “due to its achievements, but especially due to its illusions”. [1] At the end of the 18th century one can notice the prevalence of feeling over reason and that of imagination over criticism. It is the moment when the romanticism emerges, almost simultaneously, in England and Germany, affecting decisively the literature of the beginning of the 19th 38

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century in Spain, Italy, and, a little later, in France. The Romantic writers try to evade into dreams, exotic places or in the past, they love the mystery and the fantastic. Irina Petraş, advocating a theory supported by the majority of the literary theoreticians, shows, that “by the free expression of the sensitivity” and “by the cult of the self”, the romanticism is opposed to the classical ideal. [2] Norms and barriers are now abolished by the romantic aesthetics. Lyricism acquires the value of a major dimension of literature and hypersensitivity is now considered a fundamental condition of the literary creation. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), an American poet and short-story writer, who also worked as an editor and a literary critic, is considered to illustrate the American Romantic Movement. The themes that he deals with most often are questions of death, decomposition, fear of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning [3]. Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a reaction to transcendentalism [4]. We have chosen to analyze the work entitled The Oval Portrait because, despite its short length, of only two pages, it encompasses a richness of symbols and interpretations. In this short story, Poe puts into practice the principles he presented in his criticism and in essays like The Poetic Principle. He was opposed to the literature that was didactic and had an evident meaning, because, according to him, it ceased to be art. Poe supported the idea that a literary works should be short and focus on a specific single effect. [5] The story begins with the arrival of the narrator, in “a desperately wounded condition” and of his valet to an abandoned château in the Apennines, a pile of “commingled gloom and grandeur”. The two men establish themselves in one of the smallest and most modest apartments, in a remote turret of the building. The room has rich, antique decorations, walls hung with tapestry and adorned with armorial trophies, but the attention of the raconteur is drawn to the “unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque”. In order to analyze them in detail and to read about their stories in a book he found under his pillow, he asks Pedro to 39

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close the shutters, light a tall candelabrum, and open the curtains of the bed. After many hours of reading and contemplating, at midnight, the man finds the position of the candelabrum inconvenient and tries to adjust it so as to have more light upon the pages he is reading. His action has a surprising effect. In a corner of the room he discovers a picture that has escaped his attention, the portrait of “a young girl just ripening into womanhood”, only the head and shoulders, done in a vignette manner. The frame of the painting is oval, “richly gilded and filagreed in Moresque”. The narrator is fascinated by that work of art, but he realizes that the impression it has on him is not due to the talent of its author, nor to the beauty of the woman, but to its realism, its “absolute life-likeliness of expression”. His fascination soon turns to horror and he feels the need to seek the story of the oval portrait in the volume discussing the paintings and their histories. Using the technique of the story within a story, Poe offers us the explanation for the life-likeliness of the picture. An artist wanted to paint his beautiful wife, but he grew so obsessed with the work he was doing that he started to neglect the real woman who was his model. The American writer does not forget to announce the reader of the tragic fate that awaits the heroine: “And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter”. He already had a bride in his Art. His imagination, like that of all great artists, is tortured by the desire to create something unique and faultless. The young woman starts to hate his Art because for her it has become a rival which deprives her “of the countenance of her lover”. But she loves her husband more and, humble and obedient, sits for many weeks in the chamber in the turret so that he can portray her. She assumes her destiny without complaining because she knows that what he is going through, she understands the intensity of his ague; in the absence of artistic achievement the life of the man by her side would be meaningless. The more passionate the painter becomes, the more his wife’s health and spirits wither, but he is lost in reveries. The character seems to be driven by supernatural forces, the passion that dominates him, a demon, the daimon that Plato speaks about in his Symposium. The man cannot be subjected to any sort of judgment because he has passed 40

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beyond the frontiers of good and evil; it is a god the one that uses his human body. We can say about this romantic spirit the same words that have been said about Suskind’s main character in The Perfume, that he has “only one goal, one sole devouring, implacable and insomniac desire: capturing the formula of eternity, finding the elixir that can preserve the essence of life, the splendor contained in all the ephemeral things. This desire, similar to Schopenhauer’s ‘blind will’ guides our hero all along the action (…)”. [6]. But the young wife does not complain and continues to smile because she loves him. In Sylvie Richards’ opinion “along with the personification of Art, there occurs a de-personification of the woman … . The copy becomes the reality, thereby achieving the ultimate of man's ego fantasies: the need to preserve himself, and that which he loves, against the ravages of time, to create a stasis, but at the same time to enclose and capture the ephemeral beauty of life”. [7] The portrait is considered to be “a mighty marvel and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well”. When the last brush is given, he exclaims entranced before his work “This is indeed Life itself!”. Unfortunately, turning to regard his beloved he sees that she is dead. Robert N. Mollinger and Shernaz Mollinger believe that The Oval Portrait is an expression of Poe’s dilemma regarding the fact that art imitates life. For Poe, the artist not only creates, but also destroys: “Artistic creation is, in a sense, murder”. [8]. We prefer to take this interpretation further. The creation which has transcendental powers requires the bricking of a soul in the work. This is the modality adopted by Manole, from the well-known Romanian legend, who kills his great love by burying her in the walls of the cathedral he is building so that it does not crumble; the same method is used by Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who kills 13 avatars of his “anima”, actually, of the feminine principle, “in order to create opera magna, the perfect perfume whose power of seduction is absolute”. [9] In a way, the novel of the Swiss writer can be seen as a reiteration of the story in The Oval Portrait and of that in Monastirea Argeşului. The idea of the sacrifice made for the sake of artistic creation appealed to Lucian Blaga too. In his play entitled Meşterul Manole, the 41

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protagonist, Manole is simultaneously a mythical hero, who becomes exemplary through his own sacrifice and a tragic one, his conscience questions the essence of art: this is a moral one, “but the sacrifice imposed to the artist is associated to a sin”. [10] The aesthetic beauty requires a sacrificial killing and the superior man can not possibly agree with this. In comparison with the interpretation of the main character from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, the protagonist is conceived as a dilemmatic hero, compelled to agree with a sacrifice that is as great as his artistic endowment. His soul is torn by the desire to create a perfect work of art, something that will be admired for ever, the responsibility for the life of his companions, the grief produced by the thought that he has to sacrifice his wife and his child, the fear of humiliation due to professional failure and the fear of death. The American author, believing in the brevity of quality literature, interrupts his story the moment the painting is finished and the young wife dies. He does not give any indication that the artist, consumed by his craving for perfection, is aware of the sufferance of his beloved. E. A. Poe’s great talent resides in the fact that he allows the reader to contribute to his story by imagining what happens after the portrait is finished, by imagining the intensity of the two character’s emotions and feelings. The Oval Portrait is the story of the artist who, dominated by the daymon, needs to sacrifice what he values the most in order to achieve undying perfection. For the artist, the desired ideal and the long hard work that it requires are above family, love and other worldly preoccupations. The exceptional man is obsessed to create a durable masterpiece before disappearing into infinity; he must leave a mark of his passing through life. Poe’s short story has inspired many creators. Oscar Wilde borrowed the idea of a portrait revealing the evil of its subject rather than that of the artist, for his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. [11] A similar plot is used by Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Birth-Mark and the French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard cites passages from the story in his film Vivre Sa Vie. [12]

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Primary Bibliography Poe, Edgar Allan, Selected Tales, Berkshire, Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading, 1994

Secondary Bibliography [1] Zamfir, Mihai, Din secolul romantic, Bucureşti, Editura Cartea Românească, 1989, p. 51. [2] Petraş, Irina, Teoria literaturii, Bucureşti, Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică R.A., 1996, p. 83. [3] Kennedy, J. Gerald, Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing, Yale University Press, 1987, p. 3. [4] Koster, Donald N., Influences of Transcendentalism on American Life and Literature, Literary Movements for Students Vol. 1. David Galens, ed. Detroit, Thompson Gale, 2002, p. 336. [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe#cite_note-Krutch225-89. [6] http://atelier.liternet.ro/arhiva/6258/Ilinca-Bernea/Parfumullui-Suskind-13chei-de-lectura-si-parabola-perfecta.html [7] Richards, Sylvie L. F. The Eye and the Portrait: The Fantastic in Poe, Hawthorne and Gogol, Studies in Short Fiction 20, Fall, 1983, p. 307-315. [8] Mollinger, Robert N. and Mollinger, Shernaz, Edgar Allan Poe's ‘The Oval Portrai’t: Fusion of Multiple Identities. American Imago 36 ,1979, p. 152. [9] http://atelier.liternet.ro/arhiva/6258/Ilinca-Bernea/Parfumullui-Suskind-13chei-de-lectura-si-parabola-perfecta.html. [10] http://www.referatele.com/referate/romana/online21/Mesterul-Manole--Monastirea-Argesului---comparatie-referatele-com.php. [11] Meyers, Jeffrey, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy, New York, Cooper Square Press, 1992, p. 290. [12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oval_Portrait.

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‘LIGEIA’ BY EDGAR ALLAN POE – A TYPICAL ROMANTIC SHORT STORY Asst.Prof. Mihăilă-Lică Gabriela, PhD

“Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract Romanticism originated, almost simultaneously, in England and Germany, at the end of the 18th century, and afterwards it influenced decisively the literature of the 19th century in Spain, Italy and, a little later, in France. It is a revolt against the norms promoted by Enlightenment and against the scientific rationalization of nature. The Romantic writers seek their escape into dreams, exotic places or in the past. They love the mystery and the fantastic. Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be an illustrative representative of the American Romantic Movement. In the present paper we have chosen to analyze one of his most known short stories entitled ‘Ligeia’, as we consider it has all the characteristics specific to a typical Romantic work.

Keywords: Romanticism, Poe, ‘Ligeia’ Romanticism originated, almost simultaneously, in England and Germany, at the end of the 18th century, and, afterwards, it influenced decisively the literature of the 19th century in Spain, Italy and, a little later, in France. It is a revolt against the norms promoted by Enlightenment and against the scientific rationalization of nature. The Romantic writers seek their escape into dreams, exotic places or in the past. They love the mystery and the fantastic. Irina Petraş, expressing the ideas of the great majority of literary theoreticians, shows that through “the free expression of the sensitivity” and through the cult of the self”, Romanticism is opposed to the classical ideal. [1] The rules 44

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and the barriers are rejected and the lyricism acquires the status of major dimension of the Romantic literature. Hypersensitivity is now considered to be the most important element of any literary work. The adepts of this movement preferred “strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and awe – especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and custom to something noble, and argued for a ‘natural’ epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage”. [2] The Romantic movement was influenced by the ideologies and events of the French Revolution, by the Industrial Revolution and, in the second half of the 19th century, “Realism” emerged as an opposite to Romanticism. The Romantic Movement reached America around 1820, very soon after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had published their Lyrical Ballads. The main characteristic of the American Romanticism is that it coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The contouring of a national identity and the emerging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of ‘the American Renaissance’. [3] Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), an American poet and short-story writer, who also worked as an editor and a literary critic, is considered to be a famous representative of the American Romantic Movement. The themes that he deals with most often are questions of death, decomposition, fear of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning [4]. Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a reaction to transcendentalism [5]. We have chosen to analyze the short story entitled Ligeia as we consider it has all the characteristics specific to a typical Romantic work. E. A. Poe begins the narration in Ligeia with a quotation from Joseph Glanvill which illustrates the idea that the will is immortal, stronger than death, mysterious, even God Himself being “a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness”. According to this 45

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quotation man is capable of yielding himself to the angels, or to death “only through the weakness of his feeble will”. The narrator of the story does not remember when, where or how he became acquainted with lady Ligeia. He announces the reader that the story is going to be a sad one: he had lost the memory of the details of the encounter due to the long period of time that has elapsed and to the much sufferance that he has endured since then. Unlike other Romantic relationships, that of the narrator’s with Ligeia is not love at first sight. His love for her grows slowly and insidiously. At first she is a friend, then a betrothed, afterwards a partner of studies, and finally a wife. However, according to the Romantic tradition, the man attributes his misfortune to a higher power: “indeed, if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine”. Lady Ligeia, his beloved, is endowed with rare learning and a musical language. We do not know if she is an orphan but she does not speak too much of her family, which was, no doubt, an ancient one. Like most Romantic female characters, she is the possessor of a “singular beauty”. The description of the woman contains all the Romantic ingredients: tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated”, majestic, with a light footfall, with a low sweet voice, and marble hands. “In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream – an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered vision about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.” Her beauty defies the regular classical patterns; it is strange, but “exquisite”: “the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet, "hyacinthine!"”. As in all Romantic portraits the insistence is upon the eyes to the description of which the author dedicates almost half a page: “They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad”. Their expression made the narrator 46

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struggle to fathom it: “What was it – that something more profound than the well of Democritus – which lay far within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover”. The references to mythology and literature pervade the presentation, the beloved becoming a Turkish houri with eyes like “the twin stars of Leda”. One of the favorite themes of the Romantics, the communion with nature, can be encountered here as well, but in a more subtle way. The expression of Ligeia’s large and luminous eyes has analogies in “the commonest objects of the universe”. The feeling aroused by them can also be awoken by the “contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water”. Music and books alone can also help alleviate the sufferance the man feels for the loss of the loved one. George Călinescu affirms in Principii de estetică that the Romantic is always a very passionate person; the rigidity that he shows is a false one: „The Romantic is always fervent, delirious, a Sicilian. There exists a false rigidity that originates in a lower temperature or in a sudden pallor”. [6] It takes the man many years to realize that behind the outward calmness and placidity of Ligeia, there is a tumultuous passion, passion expressed by the miraculous expansion of her eyes which delighted and, at the same time, appalled their admirer, as well as by “the wild words” she uttered. The angelic and the demonic dimensions of the character suggest the attraction of contraries, the perfection, the whole. Unlike other Romantic heroines for whom beauty is enough, the author insists upon the great learning of Ligeia, and in order to give the reader an idea of how great it was, he uses an accumulation of augmentative epithets: her learning was “immense”, her acquisitions were “gigantic”, “astounding”. Her husband even accepted to be guided by her in his studies, especially in the field of metaphysics. The Romantic individual is the “utopia of a completely abnormal person” [7] and Poe’s character is no exception. Ligeia grew ill and her husband was left to watch her pathetical struggle with the Shadow: “The wild eyes blazed with a too – too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and the blue 47

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veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle emotion. I saw that she must die – and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael”. The confessions made by Ligeia, during her hours of agony, give the narrator the opportunity to understand the depth of her love for him, a love that verges idolatry. She dies listening to her husband reading one of her poems much in the same way as Sofia, the character created by Eminescu, dies singing a “divine song”. The poem encompasses most of the literary themes and motives the authors under the influence of Romanticism loved: the night, the teary angel, the world as a stage, the music of the spheres, the history that repeats itself, the “Conqueror Worm”. Her last words are the quotation from Glanvill referring to the power of the human will: “Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will”. As all the romantic loves, the one described by Poe ends in death. The man, no longer being able to bear the loneliness and the dwelling in the “decaying city by the Rhine”, where everything reminds him of his lost love, leaves for England where he buys an old isolated abbey. He embellishes the house and lets himself fall prey to opium. Not long after his movement, the widower, “in a moment of mental alienation”, remarries “fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine”. J. Gerald Kennedy considers Ligeia and Rowena aesthetic opposites [8]: Ligeia, the raven-haired beauty from the city by the Rhine, and Rowena, a blonde Anglo-Saxon (critics believe she was named after a character in Ivanhoe) represent the symbolic contrast between the German and the English romanticism. [9] The huge bridal chamber, adorned with luxurious and exotic objects, is pervaded by a ghastly atmosphere. The Lady of Tremaine dreads the fierce moodiness of her consort’s temper and does not love him, but this situation pleases the husband because he loathes her “with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man”. He can not help thinking of Ligeia’s purity and wisdom, of her idolatrous love. In his opium dreams he calls aloud upon her name and thinks of a way to bring her back upon the earth. At the beginning of the second month of marriage, Lady Rowena falls ill and the recovery that follows is a very slow one. The second 48

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time the illness attacks, her feeble body is no longer able to fight and her physicians do not know how to cure her. She grows obsessed with the sounds and the unusual motions of the tapestries of the room. One night, when Rowena’s situation worsens, the narrator pours her a gobletful of wine. When he gives the drink to her, he has the impression that “three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid” have fallen into the wine. After the incident with the ruby drops, which the man attributes to the influence of his opium intoxication, the woman dies and her body is prepared for the burial. As the raconteur sits alone with the deceased, he feels the presence of his former wife, but he remains gazing upon the body of Rowena until he perceives some sounds and color flushing her cheeks. Horrified, he understands that the preparations for burial had been precipitated and that Rowena still lived. The man struggles several times “to call back the spirit ill hovering”, but to no avail. “In a short period it was certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous illness immediately supervened”. The dawn finds him emotionally drained while the shrouded corpse was walking around the apartment. He rushes to remove the bandages to see his former lover standing in front of him: Rowena has become Ligeia. We believe that E.A. Poe bases his short story on the idea of metempsychosis, in the same way Eminsecu does with his Avatarii faraonului Tlà. We are convinced that Rowena is an avatar of Ligeia. Ligeia’s vast knowledge in the field of “metaphysical investigation”, her desire to live, as well as Joseph Glanvill’s quotation, all these elements support this idea. The Romantic writers aspire to recreate the Whole and Poe is no exception. A. Béguin is of the opinion that “love creates the individuals, and when the two poles are separated, the nostalgia of the reunion is awoken in them: this is the universal voice of ascension through Love”.[10] 49

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Primary Bibliography Poe, Edgar Allan, Selected Tales, Berkshire, Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading, 1994 Secondary Bibliography [1] Irina Petraş, Teoria literaturii, Bucureşti, Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică R.A., 1996, p. 83. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism [3] http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/lit3.htm. [4] Kennedy, J. Gerald, Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing, Yale University Press, 1987, p. 3. [5] Koster, Donald N., Influences of Transcendentalism on American Life and Literature, Literary Movements for Students Vol. 1. David Galens, ed. Detroit, Thompson Gale, 2002, p. 336. [6], [7] George Călinescu, Clasicism,romantism,baroc, în Principii de estetică, E.P.L., 1968. [8] Kennedy, J. Gerald, Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing, Yale University Press, 1987, p 83. [9] Kennedy, J. Gerald, Poe, 'Ligeia,' and the Problem of Dying Women collected in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, edited by Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge University Press, 1993. pp. 119-20. [10] A. Béguin, Sufletul romantic şi visul, Bucureşti, Univers, 1970, p. 147.

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A POWER SHOW UNDER THE SIGN OF CONTINGENCY IN ‘A WORD CHILD’ Asst.Prof. Mihăilescu Clementina, PhD

“Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu Abstract The paper is focused on Murdoch's Platonism reflected in her novel ‘A Word Child’. Murdoch claims that goodness is distant goal which can be reached only by getting rid of one's selfishness and by discovering and accepting the reality of the other people.

Keywords: Murdoch, child, violence A Word Child, Iris Murdoch's realistic novel, develops the idea that goodness is an impossibly distant goal. In the case of Hilary Burde, the main character in A Word Child, this is due to his obsession with his past. He re-enacts crucial moments of his past life, exactly as Monty Small did in Sacred and Profane Love Machine. Throughout the novel he comes to discover that the past which he thought to be static can be changed through the discovery of new knowledge regarding the reality of the other people. Frederich J. Hoffman in The Miracle of Contingency: The Novels of Iris Murdoch shows a possible way that might lead towards such a revelation, when he comments upon one of Murdoch's statements. She is in favour of giving up the abstract philosphical speculations in novels and “see how human beings do, after all, torture one another; perhaps if we do, we can see eventually how they may come to love one another” [1]. 51

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The ensuing assumption would be that people are “baffling and perplexing” [2] creatures, that they are both deceivers, sources of falsehood and error and the deceived, victims of their own selfgenerating illusions, human beings subject to confusion and contingency as Hilary Burde is. Hilary tortures those whom he loves – or is supposed to love – and he himself is tormented by love, partly because of fate, partly because of his unusual character and reactions. Although Hilary is, by his own admission “a monster of egoism” in whom there will be “no improvement” [3], he is nonetheless presented throughout the novel with a certain degree of understanding and tolerance. This does not undermine Murdoch's moral concerns but makes the reader aware that the human ego is there and must be accepted and understood as an aspect of reality. This interpretation is confirmed by Murdoch in Existentialists and Mystics by saying that even mystical novels retain something of the existentialist hero. Murdoch informs us that Hilary's “wounded” [4] existentialism, his desire to lash back at the world, is a natural response to his past and all his inadequacies stem from there. He tells us that he was a violent boy and that nobody paid any attention to him: “I had, with my selfconsciousness, an awareness of myself, as 'bad', a bad boy, one who had to be sent away” [5]. This offered him “a sense of having been incurably maimed by injustice” [6]. But the injustice he speaks of is not that of the ordinary individuals. He thought of himself as a “victim of a malvolent world” [7] and responded to it with aggression. “Violence is a kind of magic, the sense that the world will always yield” [8]. Hilary's predisposition towards violence which became obvious after his separation from his step-sister Crystal as a result of his having been taken to an orphanage, symbolizes his lack of background and his being misunderstood. Despite his lack of parental guidance, at the orphanage he seems to be looking for stability, for some sense of “truth” [9]. He finds it in the person of the schoolmaster, Mr. Osmand, who saves him through discovering Hilary's talent for learning languages. Becoming Osmand's pupil, the professor gave Hilary his full attention. Well-guided Hilary began to want to excel by learning French, Latin, Greek and German. Hilary states: “I discovered words, and words were 52

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my salvation. I was not a love child. I was a word child” [10]. Later he stresses that he was “a favourite and favoured child” [11]. Consequently, his relationship to the world, which had been one of blind distinctiveness, has changed due to his growing knowledge of words and his resentment has been replaced by his desire to win. This desire doubled by his ability in languages paves his path away from the orphanage, away from suffering and poverty. He devises a conscious and desperate strategy: “Like a knight upon a quest I was dedicated under orders. I had to rescue myself and Crystal, to get us out of the dark hole in which we had grown up and out into the sunlight, into freedom. I had to win the inalienable advantages necessary for the completion of the rescue. I had to make myself absolutely safe. Until this was done nothing else really mattered” [12]. Exactly as in his childhood the grammar structures and Osmand's guidance had directed and improved his relationship to the world, now he wants a social equivalent to provide him with a sense of safety. As it always happens in Murdoch's novels which deal with the teacher-pupil relationship, a disguised form of power relationships, under rather new and exciting circumstances Hilary fails to help Osmond when, in extremes, he addresses Hilary for help. Critics have attributed the failure to Hilary's “peculiarly appalling form of willed accidental proneness” [13]. Due to this particular weakness Osmand is later discovered to have committed suicide, as we learn through a letter sent to Hilary by his landlady. In spite of this accident Hilary pursues his study at Oxford. This is the background for the relationship between Hilary and Gunnar, another hypostasis of the pupil-teacher relationship, which is central to the narrative. At Oxford Hilary impresses his teacher Jopling Gunnar, becomes his protegee and is elected to a fellowship at Gunnar's college. There he meets Gunnar's wife and falls desperately in love with her in spite of every reason why he ought not to. Murdoch, subtly, comments that it happened because she had looked with her shining eyes “right into his eyes” and as Hilary puts it “I felt myself known for the first time” [14]. Hilary tries to persuade Ann to leave Gunnar and their son Tristram. Confused and frightened by her recent discovery of being pregnant again Ann asks to be taken back home to her husband. In 53

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despair Hilary crashes the car on the motorway, he gets seriously wounded and Ann killed. Hilary had in fact destroyed her by his terrible love, by “the sort of black certain metaphysical love that cuts deeper than anything” [15]. Hilary abruptly and completely loses the world of learning, of social status and ease for himself and Crystal. He feels himself deprived of “his moral self-respect and; with it the ability to control his life” [16]. The problem regarding responsibility for his past action becomes almost “a problem of identity” [17] with Hilary. His responsibility comes to be dramatically accompanied by his old resentment at the world. He becomes a constant sufferer. An open exposure or accusation would have made it easier for Hilary to bear his guilt eternally. Shut in this trap, marked by his guilt, he can only create stability through his fixed routine. He claims: “I relied upon routine, had done so perhaps ever since I realized that grammatical rules were to be my salvation, even more so. Routine; in my case, at least, discouraged thought ... The patterned sameness of the days of the week gave a comforting sense of absolute subjection to history and time” [18]. In this way his life acquires mechanical connotations. He knows exactly where and with whom he will spend most evenings of the week and each week the order is the same. Time appears to be comfortingly cyclical. Things happen for him in a predictable, uniform way. Only within this pattern he hopes to feel safe from the world around and especially from his past. The period of time which included the Oxford events seems alien to him. This is in fact Hilary's deliberate attempt to escape his past and to exclude it from his present life. However, it only succeeds in so far as time scales are established, because those memories from the Oxford days continue to haunt him. Murdoch's genius consists in the way she manipulates both the narrative and time devices. As the novel opens we learn that “nearly twenty years have passed” [19] but for Hilary “It's yesterday” [20]. He knows that any significant improvement is not related to any modification in his own mind but to some “huge absolute change” [21] from outside. It occurs when Hilary becomes again involved with the present. The two time scales have painfully been pulled close together, creating a new situation in which Hilary does not know how to act. 54

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Kitty, Gunnar's second wife, provides the missing element. She thinks that the two men have come together “so surprisingly that it seems the work of providence” [22] and she decides to handle the opportunity and help her husband, thus evidencing her symbolic power. She tries to convince Hilary of the necessity of seeing and talking to Gunnar who was terribly suffering because of what happened in the past. Hilary finally comes to see her plan as conceivable and senses how much he himself desires it: “How terrible suddenly to want this almost impossible thing, to realize that it could be, and yet it might never be. This was a new suffering which the damned had not imagined, as if Christ should open a window into hell, look through, and then close it again” [22]. His obsession with his guilt has acquired a focus: the reconciliation between himself and Gunnar, between past events and present suffering. He knew that there must be a solution: “Something had to be done, there was some ordeal, some service to be performed, but what? All I knew was that she had ordained it. I was to do her will and then die. I was a man destined to vanish, and in vanishing to achieve my call: to serve and then to disappear into solitude” [23]. Lady Kitty reveals him that she and Gunnar have also failed to see Hilary as he is, entertaining a distorted picture of him: “You've been a sort of huge mythological figure to both of us for years, you've been there, behind everything. You've been a sort of fate – or a kind of awful-god-in our lives – or a huge ghost that's got to be laid, only it seemed you never would be” [24]. The alliterative structure 'god-ghost' containing die dramatic association between supreme reality and appearance is impressive. Their association with the word 'fate' brings two issues into focus. They have to move beyond a childish sense that the universe has done them an injury and accept the power of chance and accident in their lives. They have also to learn to forgive those who seem to bring disaster to them. When Hilary and Gunnar meet they are able to talk together quietly and openly as Kitty had intended. They both sense that it is important to see and accept Ann's death as partly accidental and partly as Hilary's fault. As Hilary agrees, Gunnar's remark sounds as if he could stop hating him: 55

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“I imagined you as - as if you were a sort of - killer'. His voice trembled. ' Suppose 1 was' 'No.That's the point. You were just a – just a –' 'Poor fish, victim of chance, muddler...' “ [25]. The syntagm 'victim of chance' although voiced but once echoes throughout the novel in direct connection with the characters' mischance. The long desired peace and the possibility of settling past is again marred by Hilary's falling in love with Gunnar's second wife. Kitty reveals him that Gunnar's child Tristram had committed suicide and Gunnar, as an effect of an operation, is sterile. She suggests that Hilary should provide her with a child, as she and Gunnar desperately wanted one. Gunnar was never to find it out and she adds “You owe me” [26], Hilary, although deeply in love with her, notices that he is to get into a course of action that once proved so destructive. Ironically and disastrously Gunnar, who was announced by Hilary's jealous fiancee Tomy, shows up in the scene of their last meeting when Hilary was determined to put an end to their affair. Kitty, accidentally, falls into the Thames, is finally saved, but subsequently dies of exposure. Her death is particularly tragic because it has still happened although Hilary has wasted ten years of his life and Crystal's to prevent it. This tragic circumstance evidences that he has never been favoured by luck and is also tied to Hilary's idea of fate and his debt to it. This does not exclude Hilary's predisposition towards “role-playing” [27]. He is used to imposing forms and routines both upon himself and upon the others leading to his domination exercised over them. Towards the end of the novel, Christopher, a young ex-pop singer, who lived in his flat, annoyed by Hilary's lack of concern for the others states “You simply tread on people. You are a destroyer, a murderer” [28]. Hilary is a murderer in that he causes accidentally the death of two women. In addition, he 'murders' by treating people as means instead of ends, by destroying their self-confidence. He has a special relation with his step-sister Crystal, with whom, he describes himself as “one in love” [29]. This statement clearly implies his selfish approach to her. The same line of thought becomes evident when he says: “I had trained her so well that I knew she would not 56

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communicate with me, could not alter the routine one iota” [30]. He states about his fiance'e Tomy and about Crystal: “they could both read me as dogs read their masters, probably noticing tiny traits of behaviour of which I was myself unconscious” [31]. Hilary's “existential spleen” [32] is intensified by Crystal's revelation about Gunnar's love affair with her, twenty years before, when Ann died. To this Hilary remarks: “You have changed the past” [33]. What Crystal appears to mean here is that Gunnar is an ordinary individual with needs and desires of his own. Her action shows that Gunnar is not merely an agent of Hilary's life, which is how he sees him, but a distinct person. Hilary must come to accept that there is much that is random and accidental in the history of his relation with Gunnars and cease to see it as a humiliating plot. She wants in fact to show him that moral progress can be made at a simple level of paying attention to others and of forgiving. But Hilary comes to see that, only after his egotism has provoked the second tragedy – the death of Lady Kitty. At the end of the novel he expresses his conviction that he has enslaved Crystal and has limited her life, stifling her with his terrible feeling of guilt: “Then (i.e. after Anne's death) I had someone, a passive spectator who was also a fellow sufferer, to enact it all to. I suffered before Crystal as believers suffer before God; only doubtless the latter derived more benefit from their suffering than I did. And she, innocent loving darling, connived act of her sheer goodness and her identification with me, at an establishment of pure desolation. I was determined that our lives should be wrecked and she, poor sparrow, had so readily made her little nest in the wreckage. How profitless it had all been I could now very clearly see. Repentance, penance, redemptive suffering? Nothing of the sort. I had destroyed my chances in life and destroyed Crystal’s happiness out of sheer pique, out of the spiteful violence which was stiff in me… But I deliberately made Crystal suffer with me. Could her pure suffering have redeemed me? In some ideal theory, yes, in reality, no [34]. From the quotation everybody can learn Crystal's slavish devotion to him and her extreme potential to share his suffering. Crystal’s love nourished by the irrational and lusty aspects of Hilary's personality enters a serious crisis after her confession. Their subsequent alienation 57

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leads to a feeling of separation coupled with a sense of freedom which allows Crystal to finally marry Arthur. He is the novel's spokesman for good. When Hilary accuses him of being simple – minded and speaking in a moralizing way, he replies: “I think – one should try to stick to simplicity and truth” [35] In The Idea of Perfection Murdoch stated that “good is indefinable”, totally separated from selfishness. Rorty Richards in Consequences of Pragmatism, cited by A.S. Byatt, claims that Murdoch “wants to recapture the vocabulary of moral reflection in which perfection is the central element, in which assignment of moral responsibility is a rather incidental element and in which the discovery of self – one's own or another's – is the endless task of love” [36]. Two retorts are of utmost importance to be mentioned, particularly as they are uttered on Christmas day when Crystal's wedding takes place. Tomy's question: “Can you forgive me?” and Hilary's answer: “I expect so”, articulating his newly discovered power of forgiveness represent the whole point. This retort occurs when Tomy reveals him that it was she who had sent the letter to Gunnar and informed him about Hilary's affair with Kitty. The religion of love and forgiveness discovered by Hilary on Christmas Eve seem to have enabled him to realize for the first time, of course, in his usual sardonic way, the meaning of selflessness and attention directed towards the others summed up in the following words: “The Christ Child, at any rate, had managed to get himself born” [37]. After Crystal's wedding, Tomy proposes Hilary again to marry her. As if under a spell in the chiming of Christmas bells, Hilary begins reinstating Tomy's formerly fragmented name, first into Thomas, then Thomasina: “I'm going to marry you, Hilary. Are you, Thomas? Yes, I'm going to marry you. Are you, Thomasina?” [38] Ironically, through the language game, a certainty is offered to the reader by Murdoch regarding the future of this “word child” who has finally learnt to decode the value of communication and the mysterious force of Hope and Love. 58

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References [1] Murdoch, Iris, A Word Child, p. 2. [2] Ibidem, p. 6. [3] Ibidem, p. 7. [4] Ibidem, p. 8. [5] Ibidem, p. 9. [6] Ibidem, p. 11. [7] Ibidem, p. 12. [8] Ibidem, p. 15. [9] Edwards, S.L., Playful Platonist: The developing of Ideas in the Novels of Iris Murdoch, p. 194. [10] Murdoch, Iris, A Word Child, p. 19. [11] Ibidem, p. 133. [12] Ibidem, p. 26. [13] Haywood, H.,. Chance and Control in the Novels of Iris Murdoch. Doctoral Dissertation, East England, 1981, p. 252. [14] Murdoch, Iris, A Word Child, p. 134. [15] Ibidem, p. 146. [16] Ibidem, p. 147. [17] Haywood, H., op.cit., p. 254. [18] Murdoch, Iris, A Word Child, p. 34. [19] Ibidem, p. 109. [20] Ibidem, p. 110. [21] Ibidem, p. 94. [22] Ibidem, p. 192. [23] Ibidem, p. 196. [24] Ibidem, p. 249. [25] Ibidem, p. 219. [26] Ibidem, p. 297. [27] Ibidem, p. 391. [28] Edwards, S.L., op.cit., p. 198. [29] Murdoch, Iris, op.cit., p. 257. [30] Ibidem, p. 74. [31] Ibidem, p. 82. [32] Ibidem, p. 435. [33] Ibidem, p. 432. [34] Ibidem, p. 325. [35] Ibidem, p. 253. [36] Byatt, A.S., Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch. Chatto and Windus, 1965, re-edited by Vintage, 1995, p. 51. 59

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[37] Murdoch, Iris op.cit., p. 445. [38] Ibidem, p. 446.

Bibliography Byatt, A.S., Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch. Chatto and Windus, 1965, re-edited by Vintage, 1995. Edwards, S.L., Playful Platonist: The developing of Ideas in the Novels of Iris Murdoch. Haywood, H. Chance and Control in the Novels of Iris Murdoch, Doctoral Dissertation, East England, 1981.

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THE VITALITY OF ANIMAL LIFE IN TED HUGHES’S POETRY Asst.Prof. Obilişteanu Georgeta, PhD

“Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract In his early poetry Hughes works towards creating a sense of awe in the face of a life that maintains itself apart from man; he is reintroducing his readers to a nature that possesses the only genuine power outside man’s control. Several poems share the aim of leading the readers away from the assumption of human dominance and towards a new disposition based on respect for nature as the irrevocable source of reality.

Keywords: violent, energies, nature, vitality, death Ted Hughes writes frequently of animal life, of nature and the elemental forces of non-human life and the inner turmoil of modern man who is seen as cut off from the instinctual sources of his power. His themes express the powerful, often violent energies of nature, as well as the relationship between these energies and the divided nature of modern man. The Hawk in the Rain [1] (1957) and Lupercal [2] (1960) are both particularly powerful in expressing the physical presence of the animal world, the relationship of man to nature and Hughes’s sense of the reality of natural energies. The task he assumes to perform in his poetry is to explore and express what he has called ‘the war between vitality and death’ [3]. It is a war he sees most clearly waged in the natural world where no 61

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consciousness of self intervenes to manipulate an animal’s response to his condition. What Hughes admires about animals is their singlemindedness and self-centredness. For him, they have a substantiality, a realness about them that conveys qualities of security, stability and permanence that human beings simply do not have. It is as if the physical vitality of nature, unchecked by the doubts and burdens of self-consciousness, is admired for its instinctive poise and unquestioning right to life and action. With human beings it is otherwise. As a result of the power of their consciousness, they are able to stand back from the situations that confront them and not just respond instinctually. Their capacity to do so is more a weakness than a strength. Hughes seems to be suggesting that in modern man it has become a serious weakness because he has allowed too large a gap to develop between his consciousness and his instinctual reaction to his condition. Moreover, poems for Hughes seem to have a life like that of animals, a life quite separate from even Hughes himself. Poems in which animals fly, swim, or crawl live perpetually in exactly the same way without change or alteration; the poems themselves about animals represent for him a shamanistic participation in a realm whose existence is unquestionably stable, permanent and exempt from change. Beyond this, Hughes’s animal poems are his reaction against a rationalistic demand for civilization carried so far that everything around one is habitually humanized, tainted with the rationalistic self. Through his animal poems Hughes counters this trend by immersing himself in the dark, irrational forces around and within him, so purging himself of the artificial, social features of personality. Hughes’s famous animals – Jaguar, Fox, Otter, Hawk, Cat, Pike, Bull and so on – come to represent the instinctual element in man’s own nature which the conventional social structure tends to ignore or suppress. As he himself said, ‘These spirits or powers [of nature which are manifested through animals] won’t be messed up by artificiality or arrangements. This is what “The Otter” is about and “The Bull” is what the observer sees when he looks into his own head. Mostly these 62

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powers are just waiting while life just goes by and only find an outlet in moments of purity or crisis.... Maybe my poems are about the split personality of modern man, the one behind the constructed, spoilt part.’ [4]

Hughes’s animal poems (‘The Hawk in the Rain’, ‘The Jaguar’, ‘Pike’, ‘An Otter’, ‘Thrushes’, ‘The Horses’, ‘Hawk Roosting’, ‘The Skylarks’) are not descriptive nature poems, but are intended as comments on aspects of human life, particularly on man’s relationship with nature. These poems are essentially symbolic, evoking the delights and burdens of human experience. The animals are more like emblems in a developing mythology than portraits of actual beasts. In ‘The Hawk in the Rain’, the title poem and the very first piece in the collection (HIR., p. 11), we are presented with the image of man’s drowning in the rain and the image of the earth as a beast that swallows its human victims. The earth is seen as an open grave that ‘dogs’ our life, following us at every step, further suggesting that this is not just a walk across a field, but a lifelong condition: ‘I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up, Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earth’s mouth, From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle With the habit of the dogged grave …’

The verbal alliterative sequence ‘drown’, ‘drumming’, ‘drag’, ‘dogged’ pathetically evokes human fragility and despair, while the / ai / - assonance present in ‘I’ and ‘my’ induces the idea that man’s condition is consciously assumed. The bird is above the struggle that the man is engaged in; it is detached and seemingly weightless in its riding of the air: ‘… but the hawk Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye. His wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet, Steady as a hallucination in the streaming air.’

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The assonance of / ai / in ‘height and ‘eye’ acquires new connotations. The penetrating effects of this phonological and semantic association are felt as an intended opposition to the implacable defeat of man depicted in the previous stanza. The lines of the second stanza acquire some sort of moral dignity, emotionally and phonologically suggested by the h – alliterative structure that brings together such words as ‘hawk’, ‘height’, ‘hangs’, ‘hold’ and ‘hallucination’. Man’s desperate and uncertain struggle for life against forces of nature looks limited, pitiful and doomed against the hawk’s masterful calmness. The weight and bodily limitations of the man contrast dramatically with the hawk’s steady balance on the wind and his commanding view embracing ‘all creation’. The hawk is a part of the elements in a way that man cannot be. The difference between hawk and man is not that the hawk can escape eventual destruction but that it can accommodate itself to those forces that threaten its survival. It is a creature of instinct whose will is in accord with nature, not pitted against it. Through his unexpected juxtapositions, Hughes always makes the reader feel as if he had been pushed into sharing the poetic illusions compressed in his poems. A good example in this respect is the poem ‘Hawk Roosting’ from Lupercal (L., p. 26), where the bird is not described from the outside. The poem is a dramatic monologue entirely from the subjective point of view of the hawk. We are plunged into the hawk’s head, and it is its state of mind that is imagined and re-created. It is this state of mind which gives the poem its forceful, confident, even arrogant tone. This poem also emphasizes the strength and power of the bird, but does so with a greater insistence on the isolation of the bird and on its brutish strength which has no room for feelings of compassion. The hawk sees himself as the apotheosis of power. The repetition of the word ‘Creation’ in ‘It took-the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot.’

supports our previously stated conviction that the poet’s intention is to convert us into sharing such optical illusions. Unlike man, the hawk 64

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has no doubts, ‘no sophistry in my body’, no delicate and weakening scruples that prevent it from accomplishing its will, its nature: ‘I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads – The allotment of death.’

There is an unmistakable tone of menace in the hawk’s assumption of godlike powers and its utterly amoral, inhuman attitude in thinking itself the arbiter of the world. The amoral nature of the hawk is emphasized and the awful power of non-human life is contrasted with the limitations of the power of human nature: ‘Nothing has changed since I began My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.’

The homonyms ‘eye’ / ‘I’ communicate, if they are sensitively read, how far Hughes has moved towards conveying the nihilistic delights of the hawk. Here, it is just fair to remark Hughes’s extraordinary power of expressiveness resulting from his choice of words and of phonological patterns. In ‘The Jaguar’ (HIR., p. 12), every facet of the jaguar Hughes picks out also separates him from ordinary humanity – an effect strengthened by the beast’s swelling to completely non-human size. The jaguar’s rage protects him, engulfs him and provides the real environment within which he moves. His rage not only makes him oblivious, but it frees him from the necessity of coming to terms with his caged environment. The jaguar is looked at by a crowd ‘mesmerized’ precisely by his predatory ferocity and rage, which have been preserved intact in spite of his imprisonment. The experience we are invited to participate in, namely the animal’s preserved wilderness, can be properly depicted by scanning the last two lines of the third stanza and the first line of the fourth one: 65

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‘… at a jaguar hurrying enraged Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom –’

The juxtaposition of disyllabic words in the first two lines and of monosyllabic ones in the next line assures us that his condition is not hopeless. At the level of sound symbolism, the d – alliteration brings together allegedly contradictory words, such as: ‘enraged’, ‘darkness’, ‘drills’ and ‘boredom’. It is the negative signifier ‘not’ from ‘Not in boredom’ which makes the reader intuitively credit the previously mentioned noun ‘drills’ with the unusual intensity of the jaguar’s field of vision. It also convinces us that his instinctual predatory ability is entirely concentrated in his eyesight. The rhythmic embodiment of his preserved instinctuality and predatory characteristics, materialized in the fact that each word which carries meaning is highly stressed, is well supported and increased throughout the fourth stanza by the f – alliteration which relates the epithet ‘fierce’ to the word ‘fire’, the latter suggesting unyielding ferocity. The b – alliteration in ‘bang’, ‘blood’, ‘brain’, ‘bars’ improves our response to the jaguar as not being mere fantasy, but a concrete entity growing real in spite of his being deprived of freedom. As imprisonment has penetrated neither his body, nor his mind, the end of the third and the fourth stanzas emphasize not the drama of imprisonment, but the celebration of real freedom. The paradoxical condition of the jaguar that is objectively caged, but subjectively free is also semantically suggested by the dichotomy ‘under’ / ‘over’ of the last two lines: ‘On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom – The eye satisfied to be blind in fire, By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear – He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him More than to the visionary his cell: His stride is wildernesses of freedom: The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel. Over the cage floor the horizons come.’ 66

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The jaguar’s instinctual unity of being acknowledges no gap between inner intention and outer act: its very stride is ‘wilderness of freedom’ (in contrast to the restless forever dissatisfied running of the crowd after new distractions). After reading Hughes’s ‘jaguar’ poem and remembering that Hughes changed from English to archeology and anthropology in his third year at Cambridge, we cannot but agree with Keith Sagar’s statement that Hughes’s ‘grounding in these disciplines has proved of immense and growing value in his creative work.’ [5] The knowledge he acquired by studying these subject matters, combined with his enormously intuitive, sensuous and direct grasp of the animals he writes about, communicated in a manner that seems ineffably right. Drawn from an uncommon endowment of visual imagination and intelligence especially, the elements of his animal poems fuse in the act of composition and leave the finished work with an absolute immediacy, nothing to come between the object presented to the readers and their experiencing of it. His animal poems never centre on generalized abstractions, but begin and end with startling images, clear visual marvels of concentrated power. They fuse an almost naïve vision with the power, always grounded in an immediate perception of his animal subjects, that convinces the readers of the integrity of his vision. His selection of language is concise, vivid, enormously controlled, and yet filled with spontaneity and a sense of discovery. His grasp is unerring, at once spontaneous and studied. The more of Hughes’s animal poetry one reads, the more one becomes aware of his sense of the ultimate untouchability of nature. We feel that Hughes is speechless with admiration, intimidated with respect for what he both loves and fears. Whereas human characters in his early work are frequently portrayed as being powerless, the animals are images of enormous strength and unity. Hughes’s long-term concern is to bring his readers back into fruitful contact with nature’s indispensable energy. The two most obvious impressions the animal poems leave are, on the one hand, the tremendous sense of the animals’ vital and potent energies and, on the other hand, the complete otherness of non-human life. What fascinates 67

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the poet most is the rich, instinctual life of feeling and action displayed by the animals he chooses to describe. His response to the life of nature is a mixture of awe and fear. The very vitality of animal life is what makes them least like human beings. Unlike man, animals live by instinct and achieve a unity of feeling and action that fascinates Hughes. References [1] Hughes, Ted, The Hawk in the Rain (HIR.), Faber and Faber, London, 1957. [2] Hughes, Ted, Lupercal (L.), Faber and Faber, London, 1960. [3] Ted Hughes Writes in: The Poetry Book Society Bulletin, No. 15, September 1957. [4] Lucie-Smith, Edward, ed., British Poetry since 1945, pp. 389-90. [5] Sagar, Keith, The Art of Ted Hughes 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 9.

Bibliography Draper, R.P., An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, Macmillan, London, 1999. Keegan, Paul, ed., Ted Hughes Collected Poems, Faber and Faber, London, 2003. Sagar, Keith, The Art of Ted Hughes 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978.

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TED HUGHES’S OUTLOOK ON THE POWER OF MYTH IN POETRY Asst.Prof. Obilişteanu Georgeta, PhD

“Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract Hughes believes that poetry is a magical and powerful way of reaching our feelings and emotions – our subconscious, natural energies. He believes that these energies have been repressed by an emphasis on the scientific approach to life and teaching. His artistic purpose has always been to use imagination and the creative arts to re-establish the connection between our inner and outer worlds. Myth, in particular, impresses Hughes with its power to restate the laws of human nature. He considers it a powerful tool through which the story-telling poet can influence the consciousness of others.

Keywords: imagination, inner world, outer world, influence, tool Poetry, for Ted Hughes, is to do with the world of imagination. He calls it ‘a journey into the inner universe’, and ‘an exploration of the genuine self’. Poetry, as he wrote, is one way to ‘unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside the head and express something – perhaps not much, just something – of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are, … something of the inaudible music that moves us along in 69

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our bodies from moment to moment like water in a river … And when words can manage something of this, and manage it in a moment of time, and in that same moment make out of it all the vital signature of a human being … we call it poetry.’

Hughes believes that poetry is a magical and powerful way of reaching our feelings and emotions – our subconscious, natural energies. He believes that these energies have been repressed by an emphasis on the scientific approach to life and teaching. Hughes has written that ‘There’s no question of reversing the trend, abandoning science’ [1], but his artistic purpose has always been to use imagination and the creative arts to re-establish the connection between our inner and outer worlds. Hughes believes that the work of great artists is an imaginative restatement of those universal laws which reconcile the inner and outer worlds: ‘The character of great works is exactly this: that in them the full presence of the inner world combines with and is reconciled to the full presence of the outer world … laws that only the greatest artists are able to restate. They are the laws, simply, of human nature. And men have recognised, all through history that the restating of these laws, in one medium or another, in great works of art, are the greatest human acts. They are the greatest acts and they are the most human.’ [2]

For him, art not only expresses the human spirit, it also has the power to reconcile the divisions we have made and to demonstrate that the laws of our divided worlds ‘are not contradictory at all; they are one all-inclusive system’ [3]. These laws, Hughes believes, are the laws of human nature and, in restating them, great works of art not only display a pattern of struggle which is imaginatively recognisable to us, they provide us, also, with a ‘formula that reconciles everything, and balances every imbalance’ [4]. Myth, in particular, impresses Hughes with its power to restate the laws of human nature. He describes it as ‘tribal dreams of the highest order of inspiration and truth, at their best’ [5]. And, because of the common patterns and the vivid images which myth embodies, 70

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he sees it as ‘an archive of draft plans’ on which the imagination can work and through which we can better understand and reconcile the conflicting energies with which we live: ‘The myths and legends which Plato proposed as the ideal educational material for his young citizens, can be seen as largescale accounts of negotiations between the powers of the inner world and the stubborn conditions of the outer world, under which ordinary men and women live. They are immense and at the same time highly detailed sketches of the possibilities of understanding and reconciling the two ... they were originally the genuine projection of genuine understanding. They were tribal dreams of the highest order of inspiration and truth, at their best.’ [6]

Hughes’s faith in the imaginative power of myth is based, in part, on his being knowledgeable about Ancient Greek, Sufi, and Hermetic philosophies and practices. For each of these groups, ritual story-telling had an important educative, spiritual and psychological purpose, being deliberately used to cause imaginative change in the listener and, thereby, to alter that person’s ideas, beliefs and understanding. Another important reason for incorporating myth in his work was his belief in the need for controls in any evocation of the universal energies. He was aware that mythology had been a valued part of the ritual and dogma traditionally employed to control spiritual energies. As he explained to Faas: ‘In the old world God and divine power were invoked at any cost – life seemed worthless without them. In the present world we dare not invoke them – we wouldn’t know how to use them or stop them destroying us. We have settled for the minimum practical energy and illumination – anything bigger introduces problems, the demons get hold of it. This is the psychological stupidity, the ineptitude, of the rigid rationalist outlook – it’s a form of hubris, and we’re paying the traditional price.’ [7]

In addition, there was Hughes’s belief that mythology presents us with an analogy for our inner conflicts, and that it can provide a vehicle for the resolution of those conflicts. He believes that all mythology, 71

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Greek mythology in particular, allows us to make an imaginative identification with its heroes and, thereby, to participate in their attempts at reconciliation of the subconscious and conscious elements of the human personality. Through the imagination, we can vicariously share the heroic deeds, struggles and torments of the mythological hero, whose actions objectify the inner turmoils of the human psyche: in so doing, we gain valuable insight into our own condition. Writing about the way in which traditional myths and legends work on the imagination through ‘the brain’s fundamental genius for metaphor’, Hughes suggests that the brain ‘uses the pattern of one set of images to organize quite a different set. It uses one image, with slight variations, as an image for related and yet different and otherwise imageless meanings. In this way, the simple tale of a beggar and the princess begins to transmit intuitions of psychological, perhaps spiritual, states and relationships. What began as an idle reading of a fairy tale ends, by simple natural activity of the imagination, as a rich perception of values of feeling, emotion and spirit which would otherwise have remained unconscious and languageless. The inner struggle of worlds, which is not necessarily a violent and terrible affair, though at bottom it often is, is suddenly given the perfect formula for the terms of a truce. A simple tale, told at the right moment, transforms a person’s life with the order its pattern brings to incoherent energies. And while its pattern proliferates in every direction through all levels of consciousness, its images are working too. ... a simple image in a simple story ... somehow focus[ses] all the pressures of an age — collisions of spirit and nature and good and evil and a majesty of existence that seemed uncontainable. But it [brings] all that into a human pattern, and [makes] it part of our understanding.’ [8]

Myths and legends, then, are powerful tools through which the story-telling poet can influence the consciousness of others; and the commonality of their basic patterns and images ideally suits the quest 72

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for healing mana which Hughes is undertaking in his work. Linked to Hughes’s emphasis on the importance of uniting myth with poetry is the poet’s interest in shamanism. In Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow [9], Hughes, for the first time, wrote a sequence of poems within a framework which was supposed to take the form of a folk-mythology of his own construction. Through the quasi-human figure of Crow, he continued his own journey of exploration into the human psyche. This took on the aspect of a quest, a Shamanic journey to the underworld, which Hughes believed to be the basic theme in many folktales, myths and narrative poems. [10] The strange combination of roles we find in Crow – all-suffering everyman, questing hero, clown-devil – links him unmistakably with one of the oldest figures in all mythology, Trickster. The comparison of Crow with the Trickster figure common in many mythologies was made by Keith Sagar [11], the leading authority on Hughes’s poetry in the UK. By adopting and developing the Trickster characteristics in the quasi-human figure of Crow, Hughes extended his exploration into the human psyche. In so doing, Hughes extended the death/rebirth theme of his poetry to include the idea of spiritual growth and rebirth for man, which is a most important part of the Trickster cycle. The Trickster element in Crow’s behaviour is obvious in ‘A Childish Prank’ (Crow, p.15), where Hughes creates with force and black humour an alternative to the traditional biblical creation story. Human sexuality is bequeathed to Adam and Eve by a Trickster Crow for his own amusement while God lethargically doses. Like Trickster, Crow is mentally a child who does not have any ethical values. By infusing man with sexuality instead of a soul, Crow plays a trick on God who is not only presented as indecisive and sleepy, but incompetent as well, since the problem of infusing a soul was so great ‘It dragged him asleep’. Playfully and maliciously, Crow infuses man with an animal lust which bewilders and torments him: ‘He bit the Worm, God’s only son, Into two writhing halves. 73

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He stuffed into man the tail half With the wounded end hanging out. He stuffed the head half headfirst into woman And it crept in deeper and up To peer out through her eyes Calling its tail-half to join up quickly, quickly Because O it was painful.’

After playing his first prank by creating an intensely painful conflict between the sexes, Crow is ready for school in ‘Crow’s First Lesson’ (Crow, p. 16). God attempts to instruct Crow and civilize him, especially in view of his irresponsible behaviour in the previous poem. No matter how hard he tries, Crow just cannot learn something that goes against his nature. Each of Crow’s attempts to say ‘love’ produces evil, first in the form of ‘the white shark’, then ‘a blue fly, a tsetse, a mosquito’ – disease carrying insects, and finally an agonized and urgent sexual drive (‘woman’s vulva dropped over man’s neck and tightened’). Despite God’s attempts to teach Crow to speak the word ‘love’, what results is destruction, disease and desire. Love is something that Crow quite literally cannot swallow: ‘Crow convulsed, gaped, retched’. While Crow is incapable of love, as the Trickster, it is interesting that Crow doesn’t laugh as in the preceding poem. Crow seems to be becoming aware of his ability to create both good and evil, which marks another step in his development. God, defeated, goes back to sleeping, leaving Crow to his own devices and Crow takes advantage of God’s slumber by inventing his own ‘communion’. In ‘Crow Communes’ (Crow, p.25), Crow is a novice to be initiated in the divine mysteries. Crow decides to have a chat with God, but finds God too tired to even talk. He takes a bite of God’s shoulder to become an interpreter of sacred mysteries, but hardly has he taken it when he becomes speechless and gapes ‘appalled’. He discovers that the more of God he ingests, the less he understands. This is a devastating parody of the Christian rite, in which Crow literally partakes of God’s body: 74

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‘God lay, agape, a great carcase. Crow tore off a mouthful and swallowed.’

This sacrilegious reconstruction of Biblical lore, which is responsible for the stunning impact of some of the poems, is a clear indication of the way in which Crow resembles Trickster. It also illustrates the extent to which Hughes has adopted the Crow ‘mask’ in the exploration of the unconscious, the irrational side of the human psyche, and how he takes on himself the role of Trickster as a breaker of taboos and twister of holies. References [1] Hughes, Ted, ‘Myth and Education’ (ME-1.), Children’s Literature in Education, APS Publications, 1970, p. 60. [2] Hughes, Ted, Winter Pollen, Faber, 1995, pp. 150-1. [3] Hughes, Ted, ‘Myth and Education’ (ME-2.), Writers, Critics and Children, Heinemann, 1976, p. 92. [4] ibid. [5] ibid. p. 93 [6] Hughes, Ted, Winter Pollen, Faber, 1995, p. 151. [7] Faas, E., Ted Hughes and Crow (interview), London Magazine, vol. 10, January 1971, p. 10. [8] Hughes, Ted, Winter Pollen, Faber, 1995, pp. 152-3. [9] Hughes, Ted, Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, Faber and Faber, London, 1970. [10] Faas, E., Ted Hughes and Crow, London Magazine, January 1971, p. 17. [11] Keith Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 114.

Bibliography Faas, Edgar, Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe, Black Sparrow Press, 1980. Sagar, Keith, The Art of Ted Hughes 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 1978. Scigaj, Leonard, The Poetry of Ted Hughes, ‘Form and Imagination’, Univ. of Iowa Press, 1986. 75

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AMERICANS VS. EUROPEANS IN HENRY JAMES’S ‘PORTRAIT OF A LADY’ Asst.Prof. Pîrnuţă Oana-Andreea, PhD

“Transilvania” University, Braşov [email protected]

Abstract The present paper analyses the distinction between the Americans and the Europeans in Henry James’s novel entitled ‘The Portrait of a Lady’, one of James’s best novels which has as a central theme the transformation of an American girl, her portrait growing slowly, stroke by stroke as touches are added bringing out highlights and shadows. The focus is laid upon the heroine of the novel, Isabel Archer, a young American who has the luck to inherit a fortune that changed her life. Her social, cultural and spiritual evolution is presented throughout the novel. Because her drama is one of lost illusions and cheated confidence, she wants to pass beyond her condition and get more than she has. Life in Europe changed her, offering knowledge, understanding and the triumph of intellectuality to the American girl. The female protagonist is analysed and perceived through the eyes of various characters. ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ is Isabel Archer’s novel, a novel about a woman whose experiences have brought excitement, joy, pain and knowledge, enduring beauty and dignity.

Keywords: Americans, Europeans, psychological realism, expatriation 1. Introduction His comprehensive vision of life and artistic recreation of life, his conception about the writer’s responsibility about the quality of the message expressed in words – all these aspects stand proof that Henry James was a conscious creator, who successfully integrated his 76

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achievements with those of the European masters of the time: George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola. He joins his creative efforts with those of the great European novelists in order to discipline the novel as a literary form, to give it the stylistic dignity that poetry had always enjoyed, to provide it with a theory. James was a professional; he devoted himself to the act of literary creation and throughout his career he produced novels, tales, traveling sketches and critical essays that place him in the middle of the endeavors to bridge over the gap between the New and the Old World, to make the American writing part of the cultural heritage of the whole mankind. 2. The Fictional Creation Henry James’s fiction is ranked among the main contributions to the development of psychological realism; in his writings he was interested in the subject adventure of the individual, in his attempt at defining himself. James expands the seeds of his personal inner experience into thorough investigations of human nature and he sets all these against the general background of the ‘international theme’. The substance of James’s fictional masterpieces is rooted in the dramatic confrontation of the New World with the Old one. This confrontation reveals the Americans’ moral and spiritual innocence and their lack of cultural values as well as the Europeans’ refined manners and culture doubled with superficiality and artificiality in affection. James’s fictional creation does not display a variety of themes, diversity of situations and human types. The focus is laid upon the depth of investigations, the minuteness in exploring ‘cases’, human personalities through the gradual diversification of the narrative techniques. The main theme is the search of an individual for his reality. The process of search supposes a continuous confrontation of the characters with the external world where they themselves test the value of their moral attitudes. 77

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In The Art of Fiction, James defines the novel as a personal, direct impression of life. The intensity of impression, a major condition for the artistic accomplishment of a novel, is future related to the sense of reality, which depends, on its turn, on the quality of the author’s experience. According to James, this experience is a kind of huge spider-web. It is not the outward experience of events, but the reflection of such external events and the human attitude towards them. It also explains James’s search for methods of placing the conflicts inside the protagonists. That is why their function in the narrative construction is not only that of performing an action, but also that of commenting on it, of understanding it, of explaining it to others. Characters are involved in the story in various degrees, in addition to the central ones, which are directly implied in the conflict, there are also the so-called ‘functional characters’ which have a mediating role between author and reader. Endowed with intelligence and a fine sense of perception, such characters highlight the meaning of the subtle moral conflicts for the readers; they interpret, they suggest alternatives, they see deeper into the matter than other characters, they ultimately filter the moral debate through their conscience. For the central consciousness characters, the process of rational and intuitional evolution is an epistemological process which leads to self-knowledge. Released for the tight control of the author’s knowledge, the reader is let to go through the very process of discovery and self-discovery through which the central intelligence is supposed to pass. 3. The International Theme. Americans vs. Europeans Ever since the beginning of his writing career, James felt attracted to the international theme: the confrontation between Americans and Europeans on the cultural and ethical level. His experience as a frequent traveler in Europe, his own contact with the ‘wonders’ of Old Europe might explain this peculiar interest in a theme which James tackled throughout his career. James discovered in it wide possibilities 78

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for suggesting the ambiguous relationship between victim and victimizer in the social relation. James specialized in drawing the portrait of the gentle, pure American girl who had to learn that behind the smiling façades of castle and picturesque ruins, there lay centuries of wrong doing and evil. James played out variations of the American-European legend in a lot of pieces of success. He worked out stories about English noblemen who marry Americans but despise them; about Americans unable to grasp the duplicity of certain sophisticated but superficial Europeans. In the reaction of the American girl’s portrait, he could find: poetry, drama, comedy or tragedy, a depth of pathos that came from the contrast between naturalness and spontaneity on the one hand, and the forcible submission to a standardized social pattern, on the other. In almost all cases, one can discern the persistent idea that Europe is a romantic mirage for the innocent Americans who are almost pathologically attracted by the cultural and spiritual values of the Old World. The experience is, in many cases, bitter, disappointing and yet it has an inexhaustible force of attraction. In order to convey the Americans’ feeling about the precious values of the old civilization, James makes use of the pictorial recreation of setting, the detailed minuteness in the description of towns, castles, gardens, historical conflicts under study, by creating an international atmosphere in the description of which everything is at once static as a painting and yet possessed with the dynamic sense of life. 4. Expatriation in The Portrait of a Lady and its Influence on the Characters In The Portrait of a Lady, James made use of all the artistic acquisitions of the piece he had written on the same theme. He had treated the topic in two early novels, in Roderick Hudson and The Americans, in which he dealt with two types of American expatriation: the artist in Rome and the businessman in Paris, respectively. 79

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In The Portrait of a Lady, James focuses on the female type of American expatriation, presenting Isabel Archer, the young girl from Albany whom he places among the ‘suitors’ of the Old World. To a certain extent, Isabel’s drama is one of lost illusion and cheated confidence. Clever, intellectually refined, she wants to surpass the social and cultural condition in which she was born. Life in Europe, the freedom of thought and spiritual evolution, the possibility to develop her rich capabilities through training and experience are essential for Isabel’s character and the shaping of her personality. The girl is described in her immature days, with her restless curiosity, her idealistic view of the world as a ‘place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action’ [1]; marriage does not appeal to her and she rejects the proposal of Lord Warburton and the perspective of getting into the world of European aristocracy, implicitly. When she makes her choice, it is to marry the man who would apparently only limit her freedom, but who, in fact, entraps her and makes her into the victim of a carefully laid plot. Gilbert Osmond, an American dilettante who has had the opportunity to refine his taste and to passionately devote to collecting art objects, is a case of expatriation that James has also dealt with previously. He is the American whom a long stay in Europe could adjust to the system of conventional artificial values. Madame Merle, his former mistress, who has now become Isabel’s friend, subtly arranges the two in order to ensure the future of her illegitimate daughter with Osmond. The plot is concentrated on the social and psychological experiment Isabel is subjected to. Ralph Touchett, her cousin, who gives her a large sum of money out of curiosity, says: ‘I want to satisfy my imagination. I call people rich when they are able to meet the requirements of their imagination. Isabel has a great deal of imagination’ [1] about the changes which a clever and rich American girl may have in the European setting, bearing the moral responsibility of Isabel’s entrapment ‘England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as diverted as a child at a pantomime’ [1]. The largest part of the novel is concentrated on the heroine’s gradual understanding of the obscure evil forces. Isabel goes through a 80

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painful process of initiation. The way from innocence to experience is marked by moments of disappointment, by a frustrating sense of being cheated. It is artistically rendered through the mythic pattern of fall and redemption that underlies the heroine’s evolution. The mythic significance is given by the use of a relevant system of opposition. The opposition Gardencourt-Rome is thus directly related to the contract between Ralph and Osmond. Gardencourt, Touchett’s place, suggests an endemic quality; it is also the place of happiness where Isabel starts her European career. Gardencourt is the place that has changed her life: ‘The rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world and gratified a need’ [1]. Rome is the place of her gradual initiation into sorrow and misery; it is the place where she is victimized by the forces of evil, where she is subdued and purposely deceived. If Ralph ensures her material means through which she can really preserve her independence, Osmond destroys any sense of freedom in her. Deceived by the appearance of civilized manners, by his culture and his good nature, Isabel fails to perceive his true character from the beginning. The process of gradual realization rewards her since at the end she reaches a state of higher innocence, she acquires knowledge and superiority over the others. This explains her decision to go back to Rome, to her husband, after Ralph’s death: ‘She came here yesterday and spent the night. But this morning she started for Rome’ [1]. Triumph consists not in revenge or in simple withdrawal, but in the force to intellectually and lucidly control the situation through knowledge and understanding. The Portrait of a Lady is a landmark in James’s career, a climax in the treatment of the international theme and its complex moral implication. 5. Conclusion With Henry James, the psychological analysis had become deeper, the investigation of human consciousness had grown much more complex. Interested in catching the atmosphere of the mind, James anticipated a modernist manifestation which became more and more 81

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frequent in the British and American fiction after him. This might explain the fact that his work achieved recognition especially after his death. The productivity of James’s literary creation, the subtle insight into human psychology and the tight stylistic control of his best achievements have determined some critics to name him a sort of Shakespeare of the novel. The Portrait of a Lady is one of James’s best novels highlighting the transformation of an American girl: Isabel Archer. Her portrait slowly grows, stroke by stroke, as touches are added that bring out highlights and shadows until Isabel Archer stands at the end of the novel as a woman whose experiences have brought excitement, joy, pain and knowledge, enduring beauty and dignity. References [1] James, H., The Portrait of a Lady, Everyman’s Library, p. 54, p. 156, p. 186, p. 267, 1996. [2] James, H., The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces, The Scribner Library, 1937. [3] Williams, M.A., Henry James and The Philosophical Novel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. [4] Zéraffa, M., L’art de la fiction. Henry James: neuf études, Ed. Klincksieck, 1978.

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THE JOYCEAN EPIPHANY: THEORY AND PRACTICE Asst.Prof. Pîrnuţă Oana-Andreea, PhD

“Transilvania” University, Braşov [email protected]

Abstract James Joyce’s severe Jesuit education influenced his later literary attitude. As a writer concerned with the value and complexity of his work, with aesthetics in general, Joyce has always tried to improve and develop his skills even to the point of introducing new concepts in the already existing exhaustive literary theory. The concept of epiphany is recurrent in Joyce’s work. It can be first noticed in ‘Stephen Hero’. Some of Joyce’s first sketches have been called epiphanies. A lot of writers and mystics have experienced numberless insights that seemed detached from the flow of everyday perception. Thus, Joyce is not the first and surely not the last one to use this concept. Joyce describes the epiphany as a revelation, a sudden illumination, a moment of intense selfawareness or intense understanding of the essence. His theory on epiphany is a complex one; epiphany is more than a concept, it is a process that gradually leads the reader to the essence. The process involves several stages: wholeness, harmony and radiance, each characterized by certain relations of the object that is to be epiphanised with the whole. More than an aesthetic instrument, Joyce’s epiphany is a moral one encouraging the reader to introspection and spiritual detachment from the immediate material world in order to reveal the profound meaning of life.

Keywords: epiphany, artist, spiritual experience, introspection 1. Introduction James Joyce is perhaps the quintessential twentieth-century writer. His literary revolution had such an impact that few later 83

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novelists, writing in any language of the world have escaped its aftershock, even when they attempted to avoid Joycean paradigms and procedures. James Joyce is the archetype of the rebellious artist of the modern age. He introduced the trivial details of ordinary life into the realm of art, opening up a rich new territory for writers. Joyce’s innovative writing made him a centre of controversy and the first response to his work was bewilderment. It is interesting to notice how one’s biography influences one’s work. Considering this idea, the focus is laid upon one detail of James Joyce’s life - his spiritual experience and theological education - and present it as it developed into a fact of literary work. 2. James Joyce and the Double Aspect of Epiphany One can establish a relationship between Joyce’s severe Jesuit education both in school and in the theological terminology he uses: he speaks of revelation in a profane context introducing the term into the field of literature where it is no longer a tool in God’s hands but in the hands of the artist – a god himself as a creator. At first, he had the perspective of epiphany as being the revelation of Jesus to humanity, especially the visit of the Magi as this is the Christian connotation of the term. But as a real artist always in search of the best artistic means of expression, Joyce managed to partially redefine the term by giving it a rather theoretical and instrumental meaning. This is how epiphany became more than a religious term, a moment of artistic apprehension, a moment of sudden and great revelation for literary instances as characters, readers and even writers. It is the first version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man entitled Stephen Hero where Joyce gives the definition of epiphany as a literary concept: ‘a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself’ [3]. Thus, the focus is laid upon the evolution from the religious meaning to the literary meaning, the elevation, enriching of meaning because Joyce does not replace but develops. The two meanings are 84

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related, the differences stand in the area of manifestation (sacred area – religious term, profane area – literary term) and in their referent (God, the artist). 3. Function and Construction of Epiphanies The writer’s mission in creating epiphanies is to involve the reader to make him feel it as a moment of spiritual bliss, as a source of the enchantment of the heart. Furthermore, the artist must reveal the essence, the profound meaning of the object. The epiphany conceived by Joyce as a literary theoretician has an epistemological function: it mediates human understanding about the world. Before writing Dubliners, James Joyce put in his 1903-1904 notebooks a series of epiphanies – short prose sketches concerning the most insignificant details of common life, each of them developed around a moment of revelation and profound understanding. Those delicate moments seemed to turn the common place into something special under the form of tiny transfigurations that took place without divine intervention [4]. According to Joyce, these revelations are to be found among human beings in the saddest yet most common experiences of their existence. In Joyce’s epiphanies, a neutral and linear narration replaces a certain subjective commentary. Both the author and the reader are alone in front of the facts and characters. The reader will have no support whatsoever from the writer, thus he will be the only responsible for the interpretation given to the story, in the simple, common facts that are presented to him. Joyce’s objectivity is pushed to the limit forcing his writings potential; by refusing to be explicit, he preserves a sort of mystery that not only gives flavour to his work but guarantees a rich and varied interpretation [4]. Epiphanies involve three different stages: wholeness, formally called integritas, harmony also known as consonantia and radiance also called claritas. In the first stage, the reader perceives the object in its wholeness and uniqueness integrating it in time and space. During 85

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the second stage, the object is analyzed in its constituent parts together with the rhythmic relations of symmetry that construct the harmony. The third stage of the process is observing the very essence of the object, its hidden sense. 4. Joyce’s ‘Literary Manifesto’ A few words can be said about Joyce’s declared intentions when publishing his collection of short stories. As the main character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus, Joyce considers the ‘European exile’ as the only solution for his full development as an Irish citizen. Following his works, one can notice they were conceived and published abroad: Dubliners in Trieste, Italy; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in Dublin, Trieste; Ulysses in Trieste, Zurich, Paris: Finnegan’s Wake in Paris. Joyce considers that Ireland offers him only limits and frustrations and being away from Dublin will only increase, amplify his loyalty towards the city he was born in. In September 1905, Joyce sends a letter from Paris to his brother Stanislas asking him to answer a few questions concerning Dubliners’ life and customs. It is in the same letter where he confesses that the short story collected under the title of Dubliners will encompass: three short stories concerning childhood, three concerning adolescence, three about maturity and three regarding social life. Joyce’s intentions are made known also to the editors. He explains that his intention to present Dublin and its people is as relevant as can be as no other writer had presented Dublin to the world although this was for many years the European capital, the second important city in the British Empire after London. Another argument was that he would expose an episode from the moral history of his country. 5. Joyce’s Practice of Epiphany One can establish a direct relationship between Joyce’s theory and practice of the epiphany by taking a closer look upon his literary work. A striking message can be found in the frequently quoted short story The Dead. By presenting a specific situation, socially well 86

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determined in time around a certain Christmas and in space – Dublin, Ireland, James Joyce succeeds in illustrating a general reality. To start with the title, when reading it – The Dead, the first thing that comes into one’s mind is a person who is no longer alive; although the truth is not far from this, one must consider that one can be dead not only from a physical point of view, but also from a moral and social one and this is, one may think, exactly what Joyce tries to emphasize here. Joyce’s characters in this short story appear in great number, but only a few are important to the action itself. Joyce uses a lot of names and even Mrs. Julia, Mary Jane or Freddy Malins and Mr. Browne are almost irrelevant to the story. As they only constitute the background, their function seems to be highlighting the main characters: Gabriel, Gretta, Molly Yvors as she rises the problem of Gabriel’s identity from the point of view of nationality and of course, Michael Furey. It is worth to take a closer look at our protagonists: Gabriel – a rather young, family man, educated, socially skilled, responsible and still in love with his wife; Gretta – a beautiful mother and wife having good manners and a rather imposing presence surrounded by mystery; Michael Furey is introduced in the text towards the end of the story, although he does not participate actively in the action, he influences the events in a major manner. A song entitled The Girl of Aughrim transforms Gretta by transporting her into the past – a time of lost, unfulfilled love. This deep nostalgic memory gives her a mysterious radiant look: ‘He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter [7]. Gabriel notices the change and realizes once more the wonderful woman Gretta is. The image of Gretta on the stairs induces Gabriel a flux of conscience, he starts imagining remembering all the wonderful 87

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moments they had together. Once more, he becomes conscientious of his love and he is willing to share with her his intense feelings. He sees the sadness in Gretta’s eyes and notices her calm, almost tired gestures; he imagines that maybe, at a certain level, she feels the same thing he is feeling. When Gretta reveals to him her thoughts, the passion of deep love is replaced by fury and irony. It is not Gabriel’s love that touches her, but the memory of Michael Furey and his love and sacrifice. Concerning Gretta’s two lovers, one could notice that Michael is saved by his death from becoming ‘a dead’; by dying at a such young age - he was only 17 years old - his potential is saved: he died young, handsome, with a conscience full of dreams and a heart full of love, he can suffer no degradation. On the other hand, Gabriel rests beneath this young innocent man and he realizes it, he feels humiliated by Furey’s moral superiority and by his wife’s memories. Joyce tells us what Gabiel feels and we can take it as more than a real objective description of the character, we can perceive it as the definition itself of what to be dead without dying means: ‘Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead’ [7]. If one were to follow the epiphany’s stages of construction, one may distinguish in the text integritas when the reader meets the character, Gabriel, discovering his temporal and spatial integration and at a superficial level gets the first impression. As the action develops, one sees Gabriel as a social individual, as a father, nephew, husband, but most of all as a human being in contrast with another human being. Seeing him in relationship with different instances of 88

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existence can be perceived as the second stage of the epiphany, namely consonantia. It is only in the last stage, in the claritas, that one assists at the apprehension of the essential nature of the object. It is only in the end of the short story that one observes Gabriel’s real value, having Michael Furey as a referent, Gretta’s husband becomes somehow nothing but a selfish self-centered man, only a puppet of society incapable of any sacrifice. The first short story of the collection entitled The Sisters is a very encrypted one. Everything is very well hidden, the only thing that seems to be wrong is the friendship between the old priest and the young boy. The reader can only guess what went wrong if he perceives the world ‘paralysis’ as an ambiguous one. A reference concerning the term may be of great help: ‘In an important article on James Joyce’s Dubliners story “The Sisters”, Burton A. Waisbren and Florence L. Walzl argue convincingly that Father Flynn suffered from paresis, otherwise known as syphilis of the central nervous system, and that Joyce took some care to describe numerous symptoms of this disease while calling it simply, though ambiguously, paralysis. This explains much – why the priest is surrounded by an air of mystery that his young friend cannot comprehend, why he seems to have been “defrocked”, why adults in the story are so uneasy about their friendship. By hinting at syphilis without using a more specific term, Joyce could shock readers, especially those attuned to the implications, while escaping censorship. Surely the “truth” about Father Flynn has been discovered’ [1]. By knowing this, the reader’s perspective upon the text is changed, now Joyce’s intention is that of highlighting prejudice: the boy and the priest were good friends and reverend James Flynn’s influence upon the boy was not a bad one although he had a bad reputation; or highlighting the fact that priests are human, too and they also make mistakes. 6. Conclusion Joyce’s stated intention to give the world a piece of Ireland’s moral history developed by his use of epiphany into general truth 89

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statements. In his works, he presents not subjective facts but instances of objective existence. Joyce’s epiphanies are an invitation to introspection and selfdiscovery. Thus, although perceived as a source of enchantment for the reader, they can also be an argument for detachment from the immediate material world seen as a return to spiritual meditation. References [1] Bloom, H., James Joyce’s Dubliners, Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 1988, p. 39. [2] Conn, P., O istorie a literaturii americane, Bucureşti, Univers, 1996. [3] Conolly, T.E., Joyce’s Portrait: Criticism and Critiques, NewYork, Appleton Century – Crafts, 1962, p. 204. [4] Grigorescu, D., Realitate, mit, simbol – Un portret al lui James Joyce, Bucureşti, Univers, 1984, p. 525. [5] Joyce, J., Portret al artistului in tinereţe, Bucuresti, Univers, 1987. [6] Joyce, J., Oameni din Dublin, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 2002. [7] Joyce, J., Dubliners, New York, Viking Press, 1958, p. 205, p. 220. [8] Sanders, A., Scurtă istorie Oxford a literaturii engleze, Bucureşti, Univers, 1997. [9] *** Webster’s Universal College Dictionary, New York, Gramercy Books, 2001.

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SHAKESPEARE’S INFLUENCE ON EMINESCU’S PROSE TA Geana Corina

University of Craiova [email protected]

Abstract For Eminescu, Shakespeare belongs to the natural geniuses’ category. From the simple suggestion or reference, until the original literary production started from a suggestion of a character, a name or a line, Eminescu has referred to Shakespeare in his entire creation, either lyrical, epical or dramatic.Several themes, motifs and symbols used by Shakespeare in his tragedies can also be found in Eminescu’s prose. A complete understanding of Eminescu’s prose leads us to a better understanding of the poet’s and the dramatist’s different typologies. Narratives, like Geniu pustiu or Sărmanul Dionis, are representative for creating Eminescu’s entire philosophical system, starting with the novelist’s oscillations in his conception about the world and his heroes and ending with some philosophical elucidative assertions. Furthermore, Eminescu’s entire narrative production is impregnated with some wonderful aesthetic values.

Keywords: genius, leit-motif, symbol, narrative. Eminescu was not only a geniuslike poet but also a brilliant novelist. He has lived a series of different moods which he couldn’t use in his lyrical works. That is why the prose reveals some additional and explanatory hypostases, which are relevant to his personality and his entire literary production. By making an analysis of Eminescu’s narrative works, we are trying to come to a complete understanding of the poet’s creative thinking and imagistic thesaurus. Thus, Eminescu’s 91

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prose is filled with a multitude of ideas and images which can also be found in his poetry. The relationship between Eminescu and Shakespeare may be explained as a relationship between two complementary souls, two geniuses who intersect one another. Between 1866 and 1880 Eminescu has referred to Shakespeare, either we speak about his lyrics, his dramatic projects or his prose. In the narrative called Archaeus, written between 1875 and 1876 and published for the first time in the volume Mihai Eminescu, Political and literary works, in 1905, Eminescu makes a comparison between the social existence, characteristic of the pragmatic individuals, like the civil servants from the town hall or the police under commissaries, who are specialized in “pilfering” and “false discretion” and the artistic existence, typical of the artists and the philosophers. Eminescu declares himself to be fascinated by the world of the ideas, which is a thoughtful reflexive world. Just like Eminescu, Shakespeare, in Troilus and Cressida, presents the Trojans, who symbolize the human beauty and morality, in contrast with the Greeks, who embody the mischievous stupid human nature. These two opposed camps are powerfully contrasting, owing to the entire atmosphere which the dramatist has created. Shakespeare makes use of some metaphors which often have a meaningful philosophical interpretation. The main characters are distinguished by their keen wit, while the other characters are mainly represented by the louts, who are bantered for their narrowmindedness and lack of ideals. One of the main ideas used in this narrative is the life as a dream motif, which represents a leit-motif in Eminescu’s entire literary production. Thus, Eminescu deals with the confusion between dream and reality, which is a prevalent theme in the fantastical literature. In the dialogue between the main character, who is also the narrator of this story, and a mysterious old man, who is initiated with the secrets of philosophy, the latter asks him the following question: “Which is the criterion of reality?”1 For Eminescu, the dream world is as “real” as the objective world. Furthermore, there is a permanent 1

Proză. Mihai Eminescu, Piteşti, Paralela 45 Publishing House, 2006, p. 275. 92

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communication between the two worlds, an idea which derives from the old philosopher’s affirmation: “Is there someone who doesn’t know with how much reality and truth some known faces, gardens, streets (…) appear in our dreams?”1 The life as a dream motif appears at Ovid and later at Shakespeare, in Hamlet “A dream itself is but a shadow.” 2 or in Macbeth: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; ................................................................... Life’s but a walking shadow (...)” 3

knowing and living other people’s ideas and destinies: “Let’s listen to the stories, because they make us live other people’s lives, they make us interfere in their dreams and thoughts … That is the place where Archaeus lives … The story is maybe the most beautiful part of the human life.” 4 Shakespeare had also an extraordinary capacity for storytelling; his art consisted precisely in the power of imagining “stories” which take place outside the stage. Maybe this is the very reason for which he is the most cinematized author from all over the world, his plays being multiple audio-visual scenarios. The epic character of the Shakespearean theatre is given by the legendary and mythological thrill of the facts, the characters’ acting being surrounded by mystery. The prose entitled Umbra mea has been written during Eminescu’s studies at Vienna and proves itself to be an emblematical work, anticipating one of the writer’s masterpieces, the short story Sărmanul Dionis. As Eugen Simion used to say, this is the period in which Eminescu comes into contact with Adalbert von Chamisso’s literary production, more precisely with the myth of the man who had 1

Idem. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, A bilingual edition, Târgovişte, Pandora-M Publishing House, 2003, p. 124. 3 Macbeth, V, 5, Oxford World’s Classics, Edited by Nicholas Brooke, Oxford, University Press, p. 203-204. 4 Proză. Mihai Eminescu, Piteşti, Paralela 45 Publishing House, 2006, p. 278. 93 2

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lost his shadow.1 This fragment in prose is also marked by Eminescu’s pleasure for storytelling. Unsatisfied with the world in which he is living, the main character tries to find an ideal world, in which he wishes to take refuge together with his sweetheart. Their life becomes “a splendid and starry dream”. The ideas expressed in this prose were developed in the short story Sărmanul Dionis. One of this narrative’s main ideas is a central motif in the romantic literature – the world as a dream. Dionis thinks that the world is nothing but a “dull catlike dream” and therefore he offers the solution: “Come, sleep – or come, death”. Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, is nothing but a fairy play, in which the real coordinate merges with the imaginative one; the heroes are made of dreams, everything dissolves and the peace, the eternal sleep settle down: “And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.” 2

The hero’s sweetheart seems to be Ophelia’s embodiment – “a white angel”; “The genius of the divine Brit Shakespeare seemed to have expired on the earth a new somnambulistic angel, a new Ophelia”. 3 Just like in Shakespeare’s sonnets, where the terms “angel” and “demon” often appear, the description of the two heroes – Dionis and Maria – as an angel and a demon, also comes out in Sărmanul Dionis: “the face of a young demon next to the face of an angel”.4 Another motif that appears in this short story is the motif the world as a theatre. At some point, Dionis says: “Aren’t they the same 1

Eugen Simion, Proza lui Eminescu, Editura pentru literatură, 1964, p. 82. William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988. The fragment is extracted from The Tempest, Act IV, Scene I, p. 1184. 3 Eugen Simion, Proza lui Eminescu, Editura pentru literatură, 1964, p. 42. 4 Idem, p. 71. 94 2

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actors, although there are different plays?”1 This motif has been discussed by a lot of Romanian and foreign exegetes, but Tudor Vianu in his work Studii de literatură universală şi comparată seems to have achieved the most extended debate. The Romanian critic has had in view the evolution of this motif along the centuries, starting with the representatives of the Socratic School, followed by Epictet – The handbook, Marc Aurelius, Lope de Vega, Quevado, Calderon and Shakespeare. The world as a theatre appears in most of the Shakespearean plays: Hamlet, The merchant of Venice, The tempest, Macbeth, As you like it. In the well-known monologue from the comedy As you like it, Jack explains the Duke, who had lost his throne because of the intrigues from the court, that: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts (…)” 2

For Macbeth life is an actor who plays his role and then disappears: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more, It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.” 3

At the end of this short story, the narrator, trying to make us doubt, asks himself, as Hamlet used to wonder: “Was it a dream or not, that is the question.”4 An entire series of this prose’s motifs are recurrent in another remarkable narrative – Avatarii faraonului Tla, which was published for the first time in 1943, with the title Povestea regelui Tla. 1

Idem, p. 72. William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, the cited edition, p. 638. 3 Macbeth, V, 5, Oxford World’s Classics, Edited by Nicholas Brooke, Oxford, University Press, p. 204. 4 Eugen Simion, the cited edition, p. 72. 95 2

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This story is dominated by the symbol of the mirror, which represents the magic instrument with the help of which the goddess Isis is invoked by the Pharaoh Tla, in the latter’s attempt to solve the mysteries of time. The mirror has divinatory powers, being capable of reflecting the stars, which symbolize the creative intelligence. But this symbol acquires a truly devilish function the moment Tla finds himself in the position of the marquis Alvarez and “struggles against his own image that has come out of the mirror.” After the shadow from the window had killed Tha, it “started to laugh” and then became “the new marquis”. This is an example of how the impression of a theatre is obtained at Eminescu through some unrealistic means. We can say the same things about Shakespeare, since the English dramatist often resorted to the means of the “spirit”, which has a material as well as a spectral function. Shakespeare’s entire literary production is dominated by the symbol of the mirror. In his plays, people act as some living mirrors and the world is a mechanism that mirrors it just like it really is. Getting down the undergrounds of an old castle, the marquis Alvarez de Bilbao discovers a huge treasure, which makes him think of the omnipotence of the coin. The marquis also finds a coffin in which an “empty skull” can be seen. The bookish elements are also present in this short story, the discovery of a skull referring to the ephemerality of the human aspirations, just like in Hamlet. Walking on the footsteps of his predecessor, Eminescu makes use of the theatre within a theatre construction, by showing the magical spectacle which Cezara accomplishes. The disguise is seen as a means of changing identities, Cezara appearing in his-her bookish hypostasis, as a feminine Hamlet. The motif of the diabolical double also appears in Avatarii faraonului Tla. Wanting to kill his double, the marquis falls in. In Shakespeare’s plays we also encounter an entire range of diabolical characters. Traitors, like King John, are ready to form alliances to the enemies, aiming at oppressing the people. Richard III illustrates monstrosity which acquires mammoth dimensions, exceeding in horror all the real and fictitious characters from the Shakespearean plays. 96

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The novel Geniu pustiu was written in a period in which the Romanian literature was dominated by the novelists’ tendency to imitate some foreign models. Eminescu, just like Shakespeare, pleaded for creating an autochthonous background. Shakespeare’s influence on this novel can be noticed in the entire atmosphere created by Eminescu: Toma Nour’s thoughtful nature and his love for Poesis which tragically ends in the lovers’ death; the baroque structure which simultaneously follows two destinies – Toma’s and Ioan’s destinies; alternations of violent nightmares and horror scenes with paradisiacal joys which are suddenly ceased. The funeral ceremony of Sofia, Poesis’ sister and Ioan’s lover, reminds us of Ophelia’s similar ceremony. The characters involved in this ceremony have the same roles and bear the same connections with the dead young lady, just like in Hamlet. The group of the two friends – Ioan and Toma – reiterates Hamlet-Horatio’s couple. Furthermore, the sculptural vision of the funeral ceremony, especially Poesis’ comparison to an allegorical monument made of marble to symbolize pain, might have been suggested to Eminescu by a sentence from the King’s final speech: “This grave shall have a living monument.” The appearance of the first shiver of love is presented in the sketch La aniversară. The two protagonists are Ermil and Elis, two adolescents who imagine themselves in a series of bookish hypostases: “Her name was Cleopatra, and his name was Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavian August”. Ermil bears the name of the Shakespearean hero from the comedy All’s well that ends well, Bertrand. Ermil and Elis, the two angelic characters, represent, by their innocence and purity, a modern replica to the Shakespearean couple Romeo and Juliet. In Aur, mărire şi amor, the bookish element comes in once more, Porfirie Rufă’s life being similar to that of King Lear. Although he is rather modest, Porfirie Rufă doesn’t get along with his son-in-law and complains about the bad days he is living, when the children don’t honor their parents anymore. The writer interferes in the presentation of his characters; therefore, he recognizes that his typological series has been inspired by time’s society, so that reality is reflected in art. The contrasting portraits are used to eulogize the past, in contrast with 97

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his contemporaries’ lack of ideals. Shakespeare’s influence is also preponderant in this text. The art’s status is humorously debated in Contra-pagină. The world is conceived as a huge spectacle, in which each and every actor has a more or less important role. The narrative is conceived as a confrontation between what Mrs. World foresees and what Mr. Destiny decides. The world is seen as a whimsical, smart lady, and the Destiny proves to be saucy. The world as a theatre motif appears in most of the Shakespearean plays, too. As Zoe Dumitrescu-Buşulenga used to say, “this is the last and most expressive example of what meant the encounter between Eminescu and Shakespeare, the English genius’ catalytic influence on a Romanian genius.”1 References [1] Dumitrescu-Buşulenga, Zoe, Eminescu – cultură şi creaţie, Eminescu Publishing House, 1976. [2] Glodeanu, Gheorghe, Avatarurile prozei lui Mihai Eminescu, EMIA Publishing House, 2007. [3] Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, A bilingual edition, Târgovişte, Pandora-M Publishing House, 2003. [4] Macbeth, V, 5, Oxford World’s Classics, Edited by Nicholas Brooke, Oxford, University Press. [5] Petrescu, Em., Ioana, Eminescu. Modele cosmologice şi viziune poetică, Paralela 45 Publishing House, Piteşti, 2005. [6] Proză. Mihai Eminescu, Piteşti, Paralela 45 Publishing House, 2006. [7] Simion, Eugen, Proza lui Eminescu, Editura pentru literatură, 1964. [8] William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988.

1

Zoe Dumitrescu-Buşulenga, Eminescu – cultură şi creaţie, Eminescu Publishing House, 1976, p. 271. 98

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THE COMPLEX QUESTION OF IDENTITY IN SYLVIA PLATH'S POETRY Jr. TA Dârnă Amada

University Centre of Drobeta Turnu Severin Abstract Sylvia Plath's work on an American poetry anthology, the publication of an American edition of her first book and the acceptance of the short poetic drama Three Women for presentation by the British Broadcasting Corporation, all boded well for her professional future. Plath is a unique case in history of poetry, because she left behind two completely different kinds of poetry: 1. the poems before Ariel suggest feeling of insecurity of herself and the inevitability of death and loss 2. the poems written after April 1962 represent the discovery of a new self, of a new vision of reality. Her poems are so complex, that is a mistake to conflate her biography with personae of her poems.

Keywords: Sylvia Plath, poetry, Ariel Throughout Plath's work, the figure of a self subsumed or reduced to its various, separable appurtenances has a counterpart in images of wholeness and intuitions of an essential core of self. The latter trope has been emphasized by those who regard Ariel as a triumphant culmination. Indeed, it may be regarded as the most commonly accepted interpretation of Plath's achievement, although it involves a strong teleological bias, with either Ariel or the poet's suicide as the inevitable end point of the process. According to this interpretation of Plath's life and works, the Ariel poems represent a triumphant, and 99

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permanent, release from years of seemingly fruitless toil, psychological difficulties, and paralyzing writer's block. Plath's husband and executor, Ted Hughes, possibly the most important critic of her work, has argued that Plath's poems represent stages in her healing and rediscovery of self. In a number of influential essays about Plath's writing, Hughes portrays her as a uniquely self-referential writer: “Sylvia Plath's poetry, like a species on its own, exists in little else but the revelation of that birth and purpose. Although her whole considerable ambition was fixed on becoming the normal flowering and fruiting kind of writer, her work was roots only.” [1]

But perhaps to regard Plath as quite such a unique writer is to begin to pathologize her. Hughes, far from demystifying Plath, has added greatly to her posthumous mythology by emphasizing her helpless passivity before a ferocious muse: “It [i.e., her development] gave the impression of being a secret crucible, or rather a womb, an almost biological process, .and just as much beyond her manipulative interference.” [2]

The image of the woman artist which emerges from this portrait is that of a sibyl in the grip of a powerful, biologically determined process which it is beyond her power to actively control. Hughes diagnoses Plath as a unique case in the history of poetry: “The difficulty is the extreme peculiarity in kind of her poetic gift. And the difficulty is not lessened by the fact that she left behind two completely different kinds of poetry.” [3]

The first kind of poetry, in Hughes's analysis, was everything before the true “Ariel voice” emerged in “Elm”, which was written on 19 April 1962. Hughes's assertion that the end point of this process was a new, triumphant self and that “all her poems are in a sense byproducts” [4] indicates that his interpretation of Plath has, ironically, much in common with feminist readings of her work, as the critic Jacqueline Rose has observed: 100

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“Let's ... note how close, aesthetically, that notion of the emergent real self is to the feminist reading of Plath in terms of an isolate selfhood that Hughes has also been seen as suppressing.” [5]

Rose argues convincingly that Plath's work is indicative of a less triumphant vision of self and reality: “I think we should be very cautious about attempting to read Plath's writing in terms of a positive emergence of selfhood, of turning what may be better thought of in terms of the unbearable coexistence of opposites into a narrative progression from suffering into self-discovery or flight.” [6]

A careful chronological reading of the poems indicates that Plath's themes are in fact remarkably consistent. While the Ariel poems may seem to represent a self that has emerged from the inimical reality in which it has been forced to exist, Plath's best poems illustrate, conversely, a troubling philosophical acquiescence to such realities. Thus, in an early poem such as “The Thin People”, Plath establishes the vampire metaphor she would later use to greater dramatic effect in “Daddy.” The “thin people” of the poem are never named, although it is clear that she is thinking of the starved inmates of the Nazi concentration camps as they appeared in 1940s newsreels during the speaker's childhood. Although she argues that the passage of time should logically make them disappear, they seem paradoxically to grow in power by virtue of their tenacity in memory. Vampire like, they return from the scene of their repression in “the contracted country of the head” and begin to drain reality of its richness, as if in revenge: “They persist in the sunlit room: the wallpaper Frieze of cabbage-roses and cornflowers pales Under their thin- lipped smiles, Their withering kingship.”

Similarly, in the 1957 poems “All the Dead Dears” and “The Disquieting Muses”, Plath introduces the theme of maternal blame she would later fine-tune in “Medusa.” Although Plath's early lyrics are rather stilted and self-conscious, demonstrating how heavily, at first, 101

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she relied on the formal poetic resources of rhyme and meter, her development as a poet was rapid. By the time of her return to England in 1959, following the decisive breakthrough of “Poem for a Birthday”, she was writing lyrics full of disturbingly powerful and suggestive imagery. In “Crossing the Water”, for example, she imagines herself and her husband as "two black, cut-paper people" whose fragile identities are threatened by the immensity of the ocean. Such themes, the terrible insecurity of the self, the reality of indifference and lovelessness, and the inevitability of death and loss, preoccupied Plath from the beginning of her writing life to the end. It is in the poems of Ariel that they are most powerfully reiterated, however. Apart from the controversial poems such as “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”, in which Plath dubiously inflates her personal trauma to rival that of the Jewish victims of the, it is in other, better poems that the poignancy of her tragic vision comes through most clearly. Plath's most beautiful poems present images of absolute self-loss. One of these, “The Night Dances”, describes, according to Ted Hughes, “a revolving dance which her baby son performed at night in his crib.” The smile that falls surrealistically into the grass at the beginning of this poem is “irretrievable”, and the speaker compares this to the dancing gestures of her baby, which seem so significant to her that she finds it hard to believe they are merely ephemeral: “Surely they travel The world forever, I shall not entirely Sit emptied of beauties, the gift Of your small breath, the drenched grass Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies. “

The image of the lilies is then considered in 'its uniqueness, it is as if Plath is deconstructing the poem as she writes it, “their flesh bears no relation. Cold folds of the ego, the calla, And the tiger, embellishing itself — Spots, and a spread of hot petals. “

This is the alienation of extreme self-involvement: a lily is not just a lily but is classified according to species; the calla lily (from the 102

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Greek kallos) is wrapped up in its own cold beauty while the tiger lily embellishes itself alone. This introduces the theme of indifference, or, as this poem expresses it, amnesia: “The comets Have such a space to cross, Such coldness, forgetfulness. “

She considers the movement of the comets to be a more appropriate metaphor for her son's gestures: “so your gestures flake off — Warm and human, then their pink light Bleeding and peeling Through the black amnesias of heaven. “

By this time the speaker seems to have given up her belief that the self and its gestures can retain their identity, and the image is a disturbing one, a vision of dismemberment. In “The Night Dances” the self is a disintegrating structure, its gestures inevitably swallowed up in inhospitable and unconscious space. The fatalistic tone of the poem is reflected in Plath's avoidance of the question mark, a technique she uses here twice: “And how will your night dances lose themselves.” And again at the end, when she compares her son's dances to falling snow: "Why am I given these lamps, these planets Falling like blessings, like flake Six-sided, white On my eyes, my lips, my hair Touching and melting. Nowhere."

The speaker of “The Night Dances” entertains no hope of an answer to her questions. This poem provides an image of self not as emergent but as fragmented, dissipated, obsolescent. The consciousness of Ariel has many different masks and positions; part of the excitement of the volume comes from the restless dynamism of a 103

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voice that repeatedly insists on escaping from deadening enclosures. Such a movement always entails loss, however. The speaker of “Ariel” imagines sloughing off “dead hands, dead stringencies”; the ascending consciousness of “Fever 103” experiences orgiastic self-loss, “my selves dissolving, old whore petticoats”; and the symbolically liberated queen bee of “Stings” is horribly injured, a metonymic “red scar” already murdered by the “wax house” that has engulfed her. In others, remarkable poems such as “Totem”, Plath restates her disabused and fatalistic recognition that “there is no terminus, only suitcases Out of which the same self unfolds like a suit Bald and shiny, with pockets of wishes, Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors. “

“Words”, written the week before her death, posits an absolute division between ifee autonomy of “words dry and riderless” and the “fixed stars” that “govern a life.” This poem stands as a salutary reminder to those who would simplistically conflate Plath's biography with the personae of her writings. At its most extreme, this critical approach has tended to view Plath's entire oeuvre as an extended suicide note, or (in Hughes's analysis) as the “by-product[s]” of her quest for self-realization. But the connections between a writer's life and her work are numerous, indirect, and mysterious. Plath's poems stand as a poignant testament to the tragic loss of a remarkable talent, but they are also undeniably powerful and achieved works of art in their own right. References [1] Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Her Journals Bloom 5-15, Bloom, Harold, ed. Sylvia Plath. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. [2] Ibid, p. 14. [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. [5] Jacqueline Rose, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. [6] Ibid. 104

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MARY SHELLEY’S ‘THE LAST MAN’ AND THE DISCOURSE OF SPECIES Jr. TA Ghidel Liliana

University Centre of Drobeta Turnu Severin [email protected]

Abstract ‘The Last Man’ bears a close resemblance to ‘Frankenstein’ in terms of how both texts critique the destructive, solipsistic aspects of masculine Romantic ideology by offering as an alternative the trope of the domestic, egalitarian family. Yet, while these novels share similar critiques of canonical Romanticism, I would like to argue that ‘The Last Man’ actually represents a more complex and idealized attempt by Mary Shelley to integrate, rather than separate, domesticity with idealism, an attempt whose ultimate collapse offers an even more severe indictment of masculine ideology than ‘Frankenstein’.

Keywords: Mary Shelley, Last Man, Frankenstein To start with, The Last Man, is more than a critique of imperialism or Romanticism; rather, it is a profound inquiry into the insufficiency of categories, the ephemeral nature of form, and the sacrificial been established within the canon of British Romanticism as a critique of masculine Romantic idealism economy that subtends our culture. During the past decade, Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein has and imagination. However, a recent collection of essays edited by Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor and Esther H. Schor entitled The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein, signals a new movement within feminist Romantic studies that stresses the importance of Mary Shelley's other works as further critiques of masculine Romanticism [1]. Using this 105

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text as a basis for my argument, I would like to focus on a novel that until recently has dwelled in the critical shadow of Frankenstein, The Last Man, a futuristic fantasy about the extinction of the human race by a great plague [2]. The Last Man bears a close resemblance to Frankenstein in terms of how both texts critique the destructive, solipsistic aspects of masculine Romantic ideology by offering as an alternative the trope of the domestic, egalitarian family. Yet, while these novels share similar critiques of canonical Romanticism, I would like to argue that The Last Man actually represents a more complex and idealized attempt by Mary Shelley to integrate, rather than separate, domesticity with idealism, an attempt whose ultimate collapse offers an even more severe indictment of masculine ideology than Frankenstein. Other recent criticism on The Last Man has focused on the nihilistic aspects of this novel [3]. Morton Paley sees this novel as a critique of masculine imagination's failure to bring about social reform, for he finds Adrian's idealism to be “solipsistic, offering only an escape from a grim reality” (113). Barbara Johnson's and Audrey Fisch's essays take up deconstructive arguments which see the text as an attempt to undermine patriarchal institutions such as government or any masculine, hegemonic construction which subordinates women and foreigners. Due to the novel's ending, these nihilistic interpretations are valid in their pessimistic reading of the novel, but they are shortsighted insofar as they tend to regard this novel only as another attempt by Mary Shelley to reiterate her critique of the destructive aspects of masculine Romantic idealism. They have not focused on the novel's positive aspect, which is an attempt to unite community with Romantic ideology. In order to support this reading, I would like to draw on pertinent biographical details of Mary Shelley's life. Mary Shelley wrote The Last Man in 1826, almost ten years after she had finished Frankenstein. During this ten-year period, several tragic events had occurred which motivated her to reconsider the possible values of both community and Romantic idealism. Between 1815 and 1819, while living in Italy, Shelley had given birth to four children, three of whom died before they ever reached their second year [4]. 106

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In 1822, Percy's death by drowning forced her to leave Italy with their only remaining child and return to England. Shelley's journal entries from 1822 to 1826 reflect her deepening sense of isolation. On May 14, 1824 she writes, “The last man! Yes, I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions, extinct before me” and on May 15, the day that she learned of Byron's death in Greece, she laments, “Why am I doomed to live on seeing all expire before me ... at age twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person – all my old friends are gone” (Mary Shelley, The Journals of Mary Shelley, vol. 2 476-78). In the wake of the isolation she felt at the deaths of her husband and children, as well as their community of friends, it can be suggested that Shelley came to value even more the benefits of domesticity and community [5]. Mary Shelley's grief over the loss of her husband manifests itself in the idealized portrait of Shelley which emerges in her journal entries. The January 18, 1824 entry reads: “My Shelley (dear dear name … oh my Shelley – Shelley – was unequaled – will he not be unrivalled?” (Journals, vol. 2 473). This idealization of Shelley is also evident in her annotations to the 1824 edition of Percy Shelley's poems, which she edited and published. Of his poem Prometheus Unbound, she remarks, “Shelley loved to idealize the real – to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind” (The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Byssche Shelley 161-62). With the death of her husband, and through her annotations to his poetical works, it appears as though Mary Shelley was attempting to recuperate the masculine idealism of her husband in order to reconcile it with domestic, communal comfort. I want to argue that this attempt resulted in the novel, The Last Man. The Last Man has been commonly believed to be a roman a clef, and it seems as though through the literary creation of the characters Mary Shelley is attempting to bring back the friends and loved ones that she had lost in life. Specifically, Mary's idealization of Percy Shelley in the poems and journal entries is reflected in the figure of 107

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Adrian, Earl of Windsor. Adrian is the son of the dethroned monarch of England who instead of attempting to restore his throne ardently supports the egalitarian ideals instituted by the new republican form of government. The republican state of England in this text reflects Percy's ideals for utopian political reform, and this egalitarian system as well seems to represent the family-politic that Anne Mellor describes as being a feminized form of government. Adrian's “craving for knowledge” and “impetuous courage” as well as his “love of freedom” (32), are all characteristics that Mary Shelley had bestowed on her husband in her journal entries and her editorial work. Adrian even resembles Shelley physically, as Lionel Verney, the novel's narrator and often considered to be a self-representation of Mary Shelley within the text, describes him as “a tall, slim, fair boy, with a physiognomy of the excess of sensibility and refinement” (25-26) [6]. Through the figure of Adrian, Shelley's attempts to reconcile the political idealism of her husband with domestic community. On a local level, it is Adrian who transforms Verney from a child of the wilderness into a learned, social being. (Mary Shelley, The Last Man 76) Shelley's attempt to balance political idealism with domestic affection in the novel is also evident in the personal relationships that define the community at Windsor. Raymond, a power-hungry lord that resembles the real-life Lord Byron, actually rejects a politically advantageous marriage and marries his true love, Perdita, who is Verney's sister. This allows for the eventual marriage between Idris, the sister of Adrian, and Verney. The two couples live in domestic harmony at Windsor among friends and relatives in the early years of their marriage, as Verney remarks, “Our lives were a living comment on that beautiful sentiment of Plutarch, that `our souls have a natural inclination to love, being born as much to love, as to feel, to reason, to understand, and remember'” (92). When Raymond decides to campaign for the position of the Protector of England, Shelley brings the close-knit community of the two families from the isolated, idyllic sphere of Windsor to the larger political community of London. This 108

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move suggests that community, and domestic affection, do not have to remain separate from masculine idealism and political quests. In this respect, Shelley attempts to revise the domestic harmony of the De Lacey family in Frankenstein. While the De Lacey family was by itself a stable domestic community, it could not withstand outside social forces, such as the creature, intruding into its inherently isolated structure. In The Last Man, the split between the domestic and the public arenas is not so sharply defined. Raymond's wife, Perdita, actively participates in his political activities. Once he is elected Lord Protector, Raymond goes about his political reforms and social improvements of England. Perdita, as the Lady Protectress of England, supports his political career while sharing his hope and fears, “Her love gave birth to sympathy; her intelligence made her understand him at a word; her powers of intellect enabled her to assist and guide him” (120). Their union seems harmonious and egalitarian, as Perdita counsels Raymond with her intelligence, intellect, and above all, love. Both the marriage of Raymond and Perdita and their ascension to the roles of Lord Protector and Lady Protectress of England appear to be the ultimate union of masculine, political idealism with domestic affection. However, Shelley's representation of Perdita and Raymond as a harmonious union between idealism and domesticity is soon qualified. When Raymond begins an affair with Evadne, the exotic Greek, he becomes estranged from Perdita, and eventually flees to Greece to fight in their war against Turkey. Although Perdita follows him to Greece and they briefly reunite and reconcile, Raymond is killed in the invasion of a city that has been struck by the plague. Perdita then kills herself rather than live without her husband. This episode marks the first instance of Shelley's qualification of the union of idealism with domesticity. Shelley intensifies the irreconcilability of masculine idealism with domestic affection by introducing to the community an even greater threat than male egotism: the plague. The plague has been interpreted in various ways, but almost all critics of the novel view it as the final, devastating critique of masculine Romantic ideology [7]. 109

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According to Audrey A. Fisch, the plague deconstructs hierarchical social orders, but at the expense of human life. She states, “[T]he Plague ruthlessly insists on the equal humanity of all and on the spuriousness of categories used to make distinctions. But, of course, all this is done at a tremendous cost” (Fisch 272). Fisch makes the important observation that while the plague initially brings about an egalitarian community in which everyone is rendered equal in the face of death, this equality is ultimately qualified by the almost complete extinction of humanity. Lee Sterrenberg offers an illuminating critique of the plague in his essay, “The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions.” Sterrenberg believes that the plague represents Mary Shelley's critique of Percy's Promethean politics which advocated an extreme, revolutionary reorganization of the social order. Despite the fact that Percy Shelley had witnessed the damaging effects of the French Revolution, the militarism of Napoleon, and the reactionary politics advocated by the Congress of Vienna, he still remained idealistic about the possibilities for social reform [8]. Mary Shelley, by creating a plague that ultimately destroys the ideals for social reform advocated by the male Romantics, qualifies her husband's idealism, even though it was this very idealism that she glorified in her annotations to Percy's poems. Because of the unmediated annihilation that the plague enacts on mankind, the plague thus becomes a metaphor for the destructive effects of the excessive political idealism advocated by men such as her husband. The initial resistance to the plague in the novel seems to support both Mary's ideals for community as well as Percy's ideals of an egalitarian social order. Before the plague actually comes to England, the English government grants asylum to refugees from the Continent who are trying to escape the disease. Once the plague arrives in England, the novel places an even stronger emphasis on communal resistance to the plague, a communal resistance which advocates egalitarianism. Verney describes how the plague rips apart the social fabric of the nation, reducing all classes and races to an equal level: As the rules of order and pressure of laws were lost, some began with hesitation and wonder to transgress the accustomed uses of 110

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society. ... We were all equal now; magnificent dwellings, luxurious carpets, and beds of down were afforded to all ... We were all equal now; but near at hand was an equality still more leveling, a state where beauty and strength, and wisdom, would be as vain as riches and birth. (317) However, even though the outbreak of plague furthers the emergence of an egalitarian framework for the English nation, this egalitarian system is undermined by the fact that it is only in the face of death that it is possible. While Shelley prioritizes the fact that an egalitarian system of domestic community emerges from the fight against the plague, this system ultimately is qualified by death. Shelley eventually qualifies the idealism, namely the idealism of Adrian, with which the characters in the novel regard their efforts to defy death as well. Once the plague arrives in England, Adrian becomes the Lord Protector. Adrian sees this role as the means through which his idealistic belief in the power of the human may be implemented. He tells Verney, “This is my post; I was born for this – to rule England in anarchy, to save her in danger – to devote myself for her” (255). Shelley furthers her critique of Adrian's idealism by demonstrating how this idealism fosters a patriarchal, solipsistic attitude towards the other surviving members of the community. Adrian's desire to save England from disaster is always prefaced by the fact that it is he, and he alone, who can save her. Towards the novel's end, Adrian convinces the two remaining survivors, Verney and Clara, to sail to Greece despite their apprehension about sailing in stormy weather. Adrian tells Verney, “though it's not exactly what you wish, yet consent, to please me” (440). Like Raymond, or even Victor Frankenstein, Adrian eventually forsakes the good of the community in order to pursue his own quests and desires. Fittingly, Adrian and Clara are drowned in a shipwreck. Audrey Fisch has noted, “the cost of [Adrian's] quest for perfection in leadership is illness and death for the people” (Fisch 275), and this escapade of Adrian's is no exception, for the shipwreck leaves Verney as the last man on earth. With Adrian's death, Shelley not only critiques masculine desire for adventure and power, but she also 111

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thoroughly destroys any chance for human regeneration. The possible union of Adrian and Clara is the only non-incestuous hope for human regeneration on earth. According to Mellor, “even as Mary Shelley paints Adrian as a paragon of benevolence, idealism, courage, and self-sacrifice, her resentment cracks this perfect facade. Adrian never marries, never accepts the responsibility for a family” (Mary Shelley 149). Mary Shelley's own resentment at Percy for his neglect of both her and their children's needs during their marriage may be manifested in this facet of Adrian's character [9]. Even as she sets out to idealize Adrian in the novel, or Percy in her annotations to his poems, Mary Shelley ultimately cannot condone the masculine idealism that her husband championed, for its consequences eventually destroy the domestic community. Percy's desire to “idealize the real” produces negative consequences for the domestic sphere, for it leads him to pursue egotistical, idealized quests rather than face the material needs of his wife and children. The Last Man ends with the failure of masculine Romantic imagination and idealism to integrate itself within a feminine model of domestic affection. Despite her attempt to reconcile her husband's idealism with domesticity, Mary Shelley seems to render integration impossible, for the masculine desire for abstract idealism eventually destroys community, both on the local and global level. And of course, the plague's devastating effects bring about the ultimate qualification of idealism by extinguishing the human race. Thus, even as Shelly attempts to recuperate the Romantic idealism of her husband within a material, communal space, she ultimately presents a stronger, more complex condemnation of masculine Romanticism than she could ever have imagined in Frankenstein. In terms of its ultimate qualification of Romantic idealism, The Last Man becomes Shelley's most hideous progeny. References [1] Alexander, Meena, Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft,Dorothy Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley. Savage, MD: Barnes & Noble Books, 1989. [2] Fisch, Audrey, Mellor, Anne K., and Schor, Esther H., The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 112

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[3] Fisch, Audrey A., "Plaguing Politics: AIDS, Deconstruction, and The Last Man." The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Eds. Fisch, Mellor, and Schor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993: 267-286. [4] Johnson, Barbara, "The Last Man." The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Fisch, Mellor, and Schor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993: 258-266. [5] Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Methuen, 1988. [6] "Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein." Romanticism and Feminism. Anne K. Mellor. Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 1988: 220-232. [7] Romanticism and Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993. [8] Paley, Morton D., "The Last Man: Apocalypse without Milennium." The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Fisch, Mellor, and Schor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993: 107-123. [9] Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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KITSCH AS AN ANTIDOTE TO FIN-DE-SIÈCLE ANGST – SENTIMENTALITY, MELODRAMA AND ‘VICTORIANA’: JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE AND DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI – A CASE STUDY Ciocoi-Pop Ana-Blanca

“Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu Abstract The present study aims at revealing in how far kitsch, especially in the field of art (painting), was a gateway towards illusive escapism by the end of the 19th century in England. In trying to point to the sometimes misunderstood and ignored role kitsch played in making sense of an increasingly anarchic world, characterized by a high degree of seeming stability and consistence, we will analyze some of the works of two prominent and esteemed Victorians, J.W. Waterhouse and D.G. Rossetti. Our main aim is to prove that far from being just an instance of melodrama and sentimentality, Victorian kitsch was the direct outcome of the dominant social and gender biases of the era, some of which have extended well into the 20th century.

Keywords: Victorianism, Waterhouse, Rossetti, kitsch “The absence of kitsch makes life unbearable” Friedensreich Hundertwasser

The period of British history falling under the reign of Queen Victoria epitomized a time-span of unprecedented and unparalleled change, transformation, metamorphosis and paradigm shift. In the context of these fluid and fuzzy cultural borderlines, stability and certainty gradually became inconceivable. In a century of pragmatism, technical and scientific innovation and growth in affluence, fine arts 114

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(especially the fin-de-siecle ones) attempted to counter-balance this rationalism and offer Victorians an alternative realm of sensitivity and romance1 . The works of John William Waterhouse and Dante Gabriel Rossetti are perfect examples of this Victorian escapology. Aiming to achieve a high degree of emotional response in the onlooker, these works might quite often be labeled “kitsch”, or at least “sentimental”. This paper will essentially try to analyze why kitsch was a necessary art form in fin-de-siecle England and how it managed to provide solace for those confused and dissatisfied with Victorian pragmatism. Before attempting any discussion of Waterhouse’s and Rossetti’s productions, a brief discussion of the term “kitsch” might be appropriate. According to George Pruteanu, the term can be traced back to the Southern part of Germany (Bavaria), where the word “kitschen” was used in order to refer to something done carelessly, superficially. Similarly, the verb “verkitschen” meant to substitute for something of less worth. According to Abraham Moles, the term “kitsch” in the sense we know and use today appeared around 1860 in Munich, denoting an object meant to be artistic, but which evinces poor taste. Coming back to Pruteanu, he argues that kitsch is “cheap” pseudo-art, meant to cater to the vulgar needs of the uneducated. An even superficial look at the works of both Waterhouse and Rossetti, however, proves that one can clearly not label them pseudo-art. What is then the exact nature of these works? Can they be labeled kitsch, or are they merely an exhibit of sentimentalism in an over-rationalized age? The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his work The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), wrote that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to cope with, offering instead an idealized view of the world in which “all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.” Waterhouse’s and Rossetti’s works, however, do not shun, but rather draw attention to aspects of 1

The Victorian Age was characterized by rapid change and developments in nearly every sphere – from advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge to changes in population growth and location. Over time, this rapid transformation deeply affected the country's mood: an age that began with a confidence and optimism leading to economic boom and prosperity eventually gave way to uncertainty and doubt regarding Britain's place in the world, Anne Shepherd opines. 115

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reality which had grown neglected in Victorian England, i.e. spirituality and emotion. Both Waterhouse and Rossetti chose overpowering femme fatales as their favorite subject, Waterhouse taking up literary and mythological figures as a subtle pretext for depicting female beauty. If we were to focus on paintings like Ophelia, Miranda, or even Rossetti’s Proserpine, we will undoubtedly notice that in the absence of intertextuality no single hint points at these women’s identity. They become Ophelia, Miranda or Proserpine solely by means of the process of naming undertaken by the artist. The question which comes up in this context is whether much of the painting of the day was employed solely for “voyeuristic” purposes1 . If this is so, kitsch might not so easily be dismissed from our discussion of fin de siècle English painting. A Times obituary published on the 12th of February 1917 seems to underline this intriguing aspect of Waterhouse’s work. It argues that his style remained largely eclectic and his characters somewhat artificial, as if their only scope was that of posing gracefully: Mr Waterhouse was an eclectic painter. He painted Pre-Raphaelite pictures in a more modern manner. He was in fact a kind of academic Burne-Jones [1833-1898], like him in his types and moods, but with less insistence on design and more on atmosphere. His art was always agreeable, for he had taste and learning as well as considerable accomplishments; he was one of those painters whose pictures always seem to suggest that he must have done better in some other work. This means that he never quite “came off,” that he raised expectations in his art that it did not completely satisfy; and a reason for this is to be found in his eclecticism. He never quite found himself or the method which would completely express him. One feels that his figures are there to make a picture rather than they are occupied with any business of their own. They do make it very skilfully, but neither they or the pictures seem quite alive. He was at his best, perhaps, in the Martyrdom of St Eulalia, now in the Tate Gallery which escapes more than usual from the 1

Christopher Newall argues that Waterhouse’s subjects range from the mythological, through the historical reconstructions beloved of the Victorians, to romantic subjects based in literature or legend. Almost all include beautiful young girls, painted with an adoring enthusiasm and usually introducing a mood of sexual invitation. 116

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Burne-Jones lethargy, which though very natural and expressive in Burne-Jones himself, seems to be a mere artistic device in Waterhouse. But he was at any rate, quite free from that theatricality which is the common vice of academic and subject painters. He painted always like a scholar and a gentleman, though not like a great artist. [2, art renewal center, http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=79 ]

We tend to uphold, however, that the main purpose of art during this period was to revitalize spirituality. Seeking inspiration in the realm of mythology or literature was a desperate attempt to identify stability in a dramatically changing world. If the outside reality was hard to cope with, art was meant to at least offer a beautiful illusion, capable of transposing the confused individual into a realm where everything was still balanced and comprehensible. In this respect, Rossetti’s obsession with medievalism and romantic subject-matter can be linked directly to the desire of achieving a higher level of spirituality. In The Pre-Raphaelites and their World, Rachel Barne refers to Rossetti as “an individual painter, inspired by an inner poetic vision” [2]. Furthermore, according to Barne, Rossetti’s passion for literary subject matter, in particular medieval sources, distinguished the artist’s work from the modern subjects employed by his colleagues. Still romantic and literary, Rossetti’s works replaced imprecision with heightened awareness of the composition’s overall aesthetic value. Rossetti’s Dante Drawing an Angel reflects the artist’s blend of Pre-Raphaelite romanticism with the popularly received qualities of the Aesthetic Movement. Much in the style of Waterhouse, some of Rossetti’s paintings also seek inspiration in literary sources, for instance his Dante Drawing an Angel derives from a literary source, a scene from Dante’s Vita Nuova [11]. The Blessed Damozel served as a visual accompaniment to his similarly named poem. According to Wood, this painting reveals Rossetti’s full integration of the decorative aesthetic into the whole of the pictorial space. In contrast to his earlier experimentations, Rossetti’s Blessed Damozel allows ornamental design to dictate its compositional structure. In this composition, Rossetti reinvents the femme fatale; her intentions are that of love rather than cruelty. 117

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To conclude, both Waterhouse and Rossetti aimed at enriching Victorian society with a highly emotional, subtle and spiritual artistic code in order to counterbalance the dominant pragmatic, materialistic social and cultural paradigm. Bibliography Baldry, A. Lys. Burne-Jones, London, T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1910. Barne, Rachel, The Pre-Raphaelites and their World, London: Tate Gallery Publishing Ltd., 1998. Bell, Malcom, Sir Edward Burne-Jones A Record and Review, London: George Bell & Sons, 1899. De Lisle, Fortunee, Burne-Jones. London: Methuen & Co., 1904. Fitzgerald, Penelope, Edward Burne – Jones A Biography, London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1975. Mander, Rosalie, Rossetti and the Oxford Murals, 1857, Ed. Leslie Parris PreRaphaelite Papers. Ed. Leslie Parris. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1984. Treuherz, Julian, Pre-Raphaelite Paintings from the Manchester City Art Gallery, London: Lund Humphries, 1980. Watkinson, Raymond, Pre-Raphaelite Art and Design, London, Studio Vista Ltd, 1970. Wood, Christopher, The Pre-Raphaelites, London: Seven Dials, 1981.

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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENT IN BYRON’S CHILDE HAROLD PILGRIMAGE Marin Cristina Gabriela

Faculty of Letters, Craiova [email protected]

Abstract Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a kind of moody travelogue: scenes of Europe described by a melancholy narrator. It was a great and immediate success. This epic poetical work, in which Byron claims there are some “very trivial particulars” (Preface to the first and Second Cantos) that relate to his own personage and experiences to that of the fictitious Childe Harold, is written after his own travels and encounters and it is thought by some, despite Byron’s repudiation, that this work elucidates Byron’s personality more explicitly than any other work of his.

Keywords: travels, reflection, agony, affliction, bitterness Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem published between 1812-1818.The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry looks for distraction in foreign lands; in a wiser sense it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the postRevolutionary and Napoleonic areas. The title comes from the term CHILDE, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood. The poem is quite autobiographical and the earlier portion of the work is based upon his travels through the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea between 1809-1811. 119

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Despite the fact that Byron did not think the poem was all that good, feeling it revealed too much of himself it was an instant sensation when published by John Murray 1 and made Byron famous in England practically overnight. Women, especially, swooned over the poem fascinated by the character of Childe Harold, his foreboding and his nameless vices. The first cantos of the poem can be read as Byron’s poetic journal of his Mediterranean and Western tour in 1809-1811.Colour and energy animate descriptions of the familiar (Spain and Portugal), the exotic (Albanian and Greece) and the violent (a Spanish bullfight and feuding Albanians). But the international popularity of the poem (represented in the nineteenth century by parial and complete translations into no fewer than ten languages) derived less from its appeal as a travelogue than its powerful articulations of the weltschmerz 2 or “worldweariness” born of the chaos of the of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars that disrupted all European society. In Canto I Harold “sore sick at heart” with life of “revel and ungodly glee” leaves his native Albion on pilgrimage to find peace and spiritual rebirth. The poem is subtitled – A Romaunt – recalling the medieval romances whose knighted heroes go in search of holy objects. Byron abandoned the linguistic pretense for a more modern, if highly literary style, but he continued to use the Spenserian stanza effectively throughout the poem’s four cantos of observation, description, sentiment and meditation. In Childe Harold, Byron began to blend narration and digression to produce a type of descriptive-meditative poetry which he would use to greater advantage in “Don Juan”. Harold was introduced “for the sake of giving some connexion to the piece” 3 .

1

John Murray – a British publishing house. German word, meaning world weariness; an apathetic or pessimistic view of life, depression concerning the state of the world. 3 Byron said in the Preface of the poem. 120 2

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By labelling Harold “a fictitious character” Byron sought to dissociate himself from his protagonist, but his readers noting many and striking similarities persisting in equating the artist to his hero. Walter Scott 1 recognized that in Harold Byron had created a new and significant Romantic character type which reappeared in almost all his heroes. According to Thorslev 2 Harold in Cantos I and II evidences characteristics of such heroes as the Gloomy Egoist meditating on the ruins, death, the vanity of life; the Man of feeling concerned with the suffering caused by war and oppression, the Gothic Villainunregenerate and remorseful. Harold reflects Byron’s occasional melancholy and loneliness. In Cantos III and IV the Gothic traits are diminished and those of the Gloomy Egoist combine to form the Hero of Sensibility. In 1816 deserted by his wife, Annabella, separated from his infant daughter, Ada cold-shouldered by the society that had lionized him, Byron left England as an outcast. In Canto III Byron drew Harold largely in his own image, attributing to Harold many of his own sufferings. And Byron continues to speak through Harold until midway in the lyric inspired by Byron’s devotion to his half-sister, Augusta. From now on Byron speaks directly and Harold vanishes from the poem. In Canto III Byron brought his agony and disillusionment to bear in his writing. In the opening scene he bemoans his separation from his infant daughter. Byron had for a time drawn from a “purer fount” which probably is a covert reference to his wife to whom Byron had turned in search of salvation. He refers to the temptations of fame which once again threw him into the vortex within he had no direction or means to escape. Byron was thus driven to shun society and seek out Nature as an escape from Man. In the Rhine valley scene, Byron sings a song of love to “one soft breast”:

1 2

In Quarterly Review ( October 1816). The Byronic Hero: Types and Prototypes. 121

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“Which unto him was bound by stronger ties Than the Church binds withal; and though unwed The love was pure”.

The reference here is certainly to his half sister, Augusta. On the shores of Lake Leman in Switzerland, Byron reflects upon the solace of solitary communion with Nature and the misery of communion with Man. In concluding stanzas Byron states again the reason for writing “to steel the heart against itself” setting himself up once more as the aloof, crowd-hating aristocrat, but closing with a tender address to his infant daughter. He hopes that the child despite all attempts to breed hate for him in her, would come to love him and hear his voice through his poetry. He feels resigned that the closeness of parent and child was not in his destiny. In Canto III we are trated to a variety of attitudes and responses of Byron to his life past and present-despondency, despair, affliction, bitterness, idealism, tenderness, pathos and love. The autobiographical reflections whether veiled or overt makes this canto of prime importance. In his canto, Harold after being a shadowy presence disappears being absorbed by the narrator. The new protagonist, a Hero of Sensibility expresses the melancholy, passion and alienation of the original Harold, as well as Byronic liberalism, sensitivity and meditation. If, occasionally, he irritatingly hints at sins and sorrows or descends to bathos, Byron also, infuses the canto with titanic power and an elevated style. Because of their many references to lightning, flame and Prometheus, Cantos III and IV are called “fire cantos”. Byron said about this canto 1 : “a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation and my favourite”. Continuing the pilgrimage format of the earliest cantos, the framework for the forth canto, the longest of the sections, is a spiritual Italian journey from Venice through Arqua (where Byron had seen the house and the tomb of Petrarch) and Ferrara (city of 1

in a letter to Moore on 28 January 1817. 122

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Tasso and Ariosto) to Florence on to Rome, the setting for the half of the canto. In the prefatory letter to Hobhouse 1 who provided historical annotations and to whom the poem is dedicated Byron addressed directly the matter of the hero-narrator. A hero of sensibility, the pilgrim- narrator of Canto IV focuses sharply on the contrast between the transience of mighty empires exemplified by Venice and Rome, and the transcendence of great art over human limitations, change and death. An elegiac tone evoked by “Fall’n states and buried greatness” suffuses the verses. Throughout nature is valued not for any Wordworthian pantheism, but for its intrinsic beauty. The principal theme is immediately established. The days of Venice’s glory are no more, “but Beauty is still here/…Nature doth not die”. Literature, too is permanent and beneficial: “The beings of the mind are not of clay Essentially immortal they create And multiply in us a brighter ray And more beloved existence.”

The sic transit gloria mundi theme in Childe Harold find ist finest Byronic expression in this canto, which traces through their history and ruins the “dying Glory” of Venice and, especially, the fall of Rome. Inviting the reader to plod with him: “O’er step step of broken throws and temples” the pilgrim-narrator is careful to point out that “a world is our feet as fragile as our clay” leading to the inevitable ending: “tis thus the mighty falls”. His delineation of the dictators of ancient Rome prompts him to consider anew tyranny and liberty in his own time. He brands Napoleon as “the fool of the false dominion – and a kind/Of bastard Caesar” praises George Washington and the “undefiled” origins of the United States and blames “vile Ambition” for the failure of the French Revolution. The fourth canto, begun with a view of prison ends at the edge of a free ocean. The poet is heartened: 1

Byron’s friend. 123

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“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods There is a rapture on the lonely shore By the deep Sea, and music and its roar I love not Man the less, but Nature more ….”

The poem became a vehicle for Byron’s beliefs and ideas. It is an expressive work describing the travels and reflections of a discontented young man who seeks abroad what find at home. Dissilusioned with his life of revelry and hedonism, Byron’s poem is a reaction to the broader contemporary feelings of melancholy and cynicism felt by the post-French Revolution generation. Bibliography MacCarthy Fiona, Byron: Life and Legend, John Murray, 2002. Cambridge History of English and American Literature, volume XII. Călin, Vera, Byron, Bucureşti, Editura Tineretului, 1961. Tacciu, Elena, Aventura lui George Gordon Byron, Cartea Românească, Bucureşti. Moore, Thomas, Notices of life of Lord Byron, 1835.

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SACRED VIOLENCE IN CORMAC McCARTHY'S ‘BLOOD MERIDIAN’ Matiu Ovidiu

“Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract This paper deals with one of the most important theme in Cormac McCarthy’s novels, the theme of violence and with the way in which it becomes a form of religion, a belief in the implacable destiny, a belief in self-destruction and mindless murder. McCarthy’s art makes the reader “watch” the events as if they were part of some horror movie, with serenity and some sort of empathy. Violence exists per se in ‘Blood Meridian’. It is not liberating, it is not meant to produce any effect at all; it is mimetic and potentially cathartic.

Keywords: violence, religion, death, murder, blood 1. Introduction

Cormac McCarthy has managed to stay away from the eyes of the public until he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007, with his novel The Road. As Madison Smartt Bell put it in a Book Review published in The New York Times, “he shunned publicity so effectively that he wasn't even famous for it” [1]. However, he has not managed to avoid celebrity after the publication of, probably his best novel, The Road in 2006. Since then, he has appeared in high-rated television talk shows, made the headlines of prestigious newspapers and acquired the appreciation of most literary critics. The man Charles Joseph McCarthy, Jr. became thus at least as famous as the novelist Cormac McCarthy. 125

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The novelist is the author of ten novels, published in this order: The Orchard Keeper (1965), Outer Dark (1968), Child of God (1974), Suttree (1979), Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), Cities of the Plain (1998), No Country for Old Men (2005), The Road (2006). His novels approach numerous themes, among which recurrent are: violence, evil, the resonance of human deeds, faith and death. Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West was published in 1985. It is the story of a 14-year-old nameless “kid” born exactly 100 years before the McCarthy, during the Leonids meteor shower in 1833, who travels through the Southwest along with an outlaw band of scalp hunter. They sell Apache scalps for $100 apiece to a Mexican governor. All characters have a strange addiction to murder and blood, being engaged in an apparently senseless war with the world and themselves. 2. Sacred and “Mindless” Violence Several parallels have been made between McCarthy's Blood Meridian and the novels of authors such as Herman Melville or William Faulkner, in terms of theme (violence), character construction and even language. If McCarthy's language has some sort of a Faulknerian and Old Testament flavor, his characters and the theme of the novel seem to be the production of some lunatic genius. Even though violence could be discussed from several points of view, I will try to focus mostly on its religious and transcendental meaning, rather than on its mundane implications. A rational approach to violence would be useless, for, at least in McCarthy’s novel, it seems to have no purpose whatsoever. Its meaning is strictly dependent on the way in which characters understand it or whether they understand it at all. No definition would ever change the way we perceive violence: “Is violence an emotion or the result of that emotion? Is it a crime or a disease? And if a disease, what kind: mental or physical? Is it an individual behavioral aberration or a culturally determined reflex? The bewildering array of sociological, psychiatric, juridical, physiological, religious, political, and 126

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anthropological answers to questions like these do not, perhaps, affect our practical usage of the word or our ordinary conception of violence” [2].

Cormac McCarthy's characters manage to detach themselves from violence, as we know it, but also from its causes and effects. Violence exists per se in Blood Meridian. It is not liberating, it is not meant to produce any effect at all; it is aggression, blood, death, and darkness; it is the characters' destiny, it is mimetic and, if we were to explain its presence, potentially cathartic. At this point it resembles a religion, a mirrored religion or a non-religion; a religion with its own dogmas (i.e. death, blood and darkness), but a very “comfortable” one, one that does not require emotional or rational commitment. It is perennial, for one becomes a murderer after his first killing. The Christian God is absent in this world, His absence being similar to His being replaced by a non-personal, almighty, allembracing, demonic god: mindless and heartless violence. Worship involves a eucharist of wilderness, an act of communion which replaces the symbolic blood of Christ, with real blood and flesh. The congregation is a group of misfits united under a single slogan: “Kill kill” [3]. The characters are themselves renegades from Christianity and even humanity: the demonic Judge Holden (the principal antagonist), the Kid (the protagonist), John Joel Glanton (leader of the scalping gang), Tobin (an ex-priest in the Glanton gang, friend of the Kid), Toadvine (an earless criminal in the Glanton gang, friend of the Kid), Black Jackson (the only black member of the Glanton gang, hates white Jackson), White Jackson (a white Glanton gang member), David Brown (one of Glanton's lieutenants) and Long Webster. All these characters are representatives of their own category, and come from various cultural, racial and religious backgrounds: Holden is somewhat non-human, even demonic, resembling Bulgakov's magician to a certain extent, Tobin is an ex-priest, Jackson is the only black member of the gang, and the nameless kid who probably symbolizes the young American nation. Violence keeps them together and probably the unconscious hope in some sort of eventual redemption. 127

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Violence has been in their nature since the beginning. The kid is shot not long after he leaves home and then he takes part in all imaginable forms of violence. It is like a ritual of initiation into the nature of evil through violence. The material for this initiation is the world, with all its elements (the darkness, the mud, the guns, knives). Eventually, as Holden argues, there is nothing else left to humanity and its existence. The end of all this series of violent acts is the “endless” dance of violence, announced by Judge's dance when he meets the kid. Violence never ends. What is most disturbing about the orgies of violence that punctuate Blood Meridian is that they fail to constitute a pattern, to unveil a mystery or to serve any comprehensible purpose. Instead, the book suggests that “a taste for mindless violence” is as ubiquitous and as banal as any other form of “common sense.” Scalping has been a common human practice for at least 300,000 years, as one of the epigraphs to the novel suggests [4]. Thus, there is no mystery to be unveiled, no purpose, and definitely no belief to obey. Paradoxically, it is death which keeps the murderers together. Death recurs just like some sort of black magic ritual, embracing different forms, different types of victims. Violence, as in any other kind of “religion”, is employed to impose beliefs upon the others. The gang acts as a group of pagan crusaders who try to impose their system of (non-)values upon Indian villages and Mexican towns. They are guided by some unconsciously adopted antinomian philosophy. In their case, it is not grace, which delivers them from all obligation of observing the moral law, but violence. Their salvation comes through murder and blood beyond any other system of values. 3. “The Truest Form of Divination” and Its Symbols McCarthy’s villains believe, if they believe in anything, as their prophet argues, in the almightiness of violence. According to the judge, “Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. [A]ll games aspire to the condition of war” [5]. War is thus just 128

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some sort of a game in which life plays the role of the most valuable stake. War is then not just a game, but also the only “noble” game of all. The artistic value of the passages, which depict probably some of the most terrifying scenes in contemporary American fiction, is due not only to McCarthy’s language but also to the power of the symbols he uses. Blood, darkness, dead bodies, nature, wounds are more than elements of the natural world, for they reveal the dark side of helpless humanity and human society. Blood is the element that keeps the gang (or humanity) united: “Is not blood the tempering agent in the mortar which bonds?”. This sacred union that bears the seal of blood and bloodshed is part of a magic ritual, one that “includes the letting of blood. Rituals which fail in this requirement are but mock rituals” [6]. McCarthy unveils, through Holden’s words, the meaning of blood beyond its natural function: blood does maintain life, but the “letting of blood” is the one which maintains the spirit. Blood, the symbol of the unity of human kind, the symbol of death and spiritual rebirth is introduced in the title of the book. Holden’s warning, which explains to a certain extent the title of the book, sounds like a threat to the entire humankind: “in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day” [7]. Thus, life is death, and morning heralds the darkness to come. Since his birth the kid has been surrounded by darkness: “Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens” [8]. This is the reason why his taste for blood is so enslaving: “He watches, pale and unwashed. He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man” [9]. His entire life is present in his eyes, he is an already an image of what he is to become. Mindlessness is not an attribute of adolescence, but the defining characteristic of his entire life. Blood thirst is the only thing that keeps humanity on the move. The characters’ purpose is bloodshed and murder and they are not afraid to 129

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declare it openly: “He kicked the man in the jaw. The man went down and got up again. He said: I'm goin to kill you” [10]. The word “kill” sounds like a “crazed chant.” It is part of the ritual. When this purpose is achieved only halfway, the characters feel disappointed: “I never meant to break your neck [...] I meant to kill ye” [11]. Death requires some sort of contemplation, simple murder is never enough: “Toadvine pulled the bloody head around and looked at it and let it flop to the floor and he rose and kicked the man himself” [12]. However, the members of the gang despise both the living and the dead body. They are never satisfied with the result, for death is not enough. Cruelty has no limits. A hermit keeps a man’s heart just to remember his days of glory: “Some man's heart, dried and blackened. [...] They is four things that can destroy the earth, he said. Women, whiskey, money, and niggers”. His philosophy of life is to a certain extent similar to Holden’s; the world is doomed and nothing can be done to save it: “when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it” [13]. McCarthy’s taste for details brings the reader in the middle of the events; sometimes a violent scene seems natural and perfectly acceptable: “The kid crouched lightly with the bottles and feinted and then broke the right one over the man's head. Blood and liquor sprayed and the man's knees buckled and his eyes rolled. The kid had already let go the bottleneck and he pitched the second bottle into his right hand in a roadagent's pass before it even reached the floor and he backhanded the second bottle across the barman's skull and crammed the jagged remnant into his eye as he went down” [14]. It is like watching a wrestling show on television. Everything feels so real and acts of violence are acclaimed by the champion’s supporters. Nevertheless, there are several scenes which a sound human mind cannot cope with: the tree of dead babies, the crucified mummy, the circle of severed heads, the eviscerated bodies of bearded men with “strange menstrual wounds between their legs and no man's parts for these had been cut away and hung dark and strange from out their grinning mouths” [15]. 130

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Not at all surprisingly, nature is not the scenery in McCarthy’s novel; for it is described as a grotesque, terrifying painting: “naked and unrectified night”, by the open wound of the horizon, “holocaust” and “distant pandemonium” of the declining sun. The framework for this story of violence as a way of life and religion in the same time, is war. War is the “truest form of divination”, and Judge Holden is its truest prophet. His system of belief, his religion may be summarized in two sentences: “Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.” [16] References [1] Bell, Madison Smartt. “The New York Times: Book Review Search Article.” The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 16 Oct. 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthyhorses.html. [2] Kowalewski, Michael. Deadly Musings. Violence and Verbal Form in American Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 7. [3] McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West, New York: Vintage, 1992, p. 9. [4] Shaviro, Steven. “The Very Life of the Darkness”: A Reading of Blood Meridian, in Arnold, Edwin T., and Dianne C. Luce. Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy (Southern Quarterly Series). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999, pp. 145-158. [5] McCarthy249 McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West, New York: Vintage, 1992, p. 249. [6] Ibidem, p. 329. [7] Ibidem, pp. 146-147. [8] Ibidem, p. 3. [9] Ibidem, p. 3. [10] Ibidem, p. 9. [11] Ibidem, p. 10. [12] Ibidem, p. 13. [13] Ibidem, pp. 18-19. [14] Ibidem, p. 25. [15] Ibidem, p. 153. [16] Ibidem, p. 252

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TWO POETS FOR ALL SEASONS Turcu Corina

Secondary School No. 12, Sibiu Abstract The Irish writer, William Butler Yeats, was the more traditional. In his romantic poetry, written before the profound and rich poetic idiom at its maturity. Yeats shew in his writing, a man of both exceptionally wide information and exceptional intellectual curiosity, but, for all the variety of his interest and the versatility of his intelligence, he has in rejecting the methods of modern science, cut himself off in a curious way from the general enlightened thought of his time. The other younger poet, T. S. Eliot, born in the United States achieved more immediate acclaim with The Waste Land, the most famous poem of the early part of the century. Through a mass of symbolic associations with legendary and historical events, Eliot expresses his despair over the sterility of modern life. His movement toward religious faith displayed itself. His surprising combination of colloquial and literary diction, his fusing of antithetical moods, and has startling complex metaphorical juxtaposition relate him, among English poets, to John Donne. Eliot’s style was intimately influenced by his study of such French poets. Eliot’s essays, promulgating a style of poetry in which sound and sense are associated were probably the most influential work in literary criticism in the first of the century. Both of them, Yeats and Eliot, exercised enormous influence on modern poets, modern literature.

Keywords: T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Victorian Two world wars, an interesting economic depression of great severity, and the austerity of life in Britain following the second of these wars help to explain the quality and direction of English 132

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literature in the 20th century. The traditional values of western civilization, which the Victorians had only begun to question, came to be question seriously by a number of new writers, who saw society breaking down around them, traditional literary forms were often discarded, and new ones succeeded one another with bewildering rapidity, as writers sought fresher ways of expressing what they took new kinds of experiences, or experience seen in new ways. Two of the most remarkable poets of the modern period combined tradition and experiment in their work. The Irish writer, William Butler Yeats, was the more traditional. In his romantic poetry, written before the profound and rich poetic idiom at its maturity in The Tower and The Winding stair Yeats has shown in his writing, a man of both exceptionally wide information and exceptional intellectual curiosity, but, for all the variety of his interest and the versatility of his intelligence, he has in rejecting the methods of modern science, cut himself off in a curious way from the general enlightened thought of his time. Yet his mind is so comprehensive and so active that he has felt the need of constructing a system and finding, it is impossible to admit the assumptions upon which most modern system are based, he has had recourse to the only science which his position has allowed him to accept, the obsolete science of astrology. What Yeats was really approaching here was some such systematic study of the symbolism of myths trances, dreams and other human visions as psychoanalysis and anthropology were attempting from a different direction, and despite the obvious charlatanism of most of his instructors and fellow investigators. Yeats‘s account of his researches is interesting. For it is not merely that Yeats loves the marvelous, he is also intent upon discovering symbols which may stand for the elements of his own nature or which shall seem to possess some universal significance. The results of his research are very curious, when we read Yeats’ account of his adventures among the mediums, it becomes plain that in spite of his repudiation of science, he has always managed to leave himself a margin of scientific doubt, he betrays an instinct to scrutinize and check up on the supernatural, which is disastrous to genuine mysticism. We always 133

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feel that the wistful student of Satanism has too much solid Dutch common sense really to deceive himself about his devils, so in Yeatshe himself has confessed it- the romantic amateur of magic is always accompanied and restrained by the rationalistic modern man. What is most curious is that Yeats should at last have constructed out of these symbols an elaborate mystical-metaphysical system, and attributes Anima Mundi precisely such universal symbols as are studied by such psychologists as Jung. This system was set forth in A vision presented an elaborate theory of the variation of human personality of the vicissitudes of human history and of the transformations of the soul in this world and the next. This theory was worked out with geometrical diagrams and forth in terms of such unfamiliar conceptions as tinctures, cones, gyres and passionate bodies. Surveying no matter how superficially a decently wide range of the universal literary works, one will easily realize that, despite the attempts of many so called feigned – modernist currents to define a sphere of interest not yet, large discussed, there are no new themes in the literature spanning the expanse of time from the Vedas to Marquez. The same old fears of mankind can be read between the lines of every text ever written, and there is always the same search for equilibrium that balances these anguishes. The harmony between the parts of the macrocosm as well as between those of the microcosm man has been sought in every dramatic circumstances, when dark spots obliterated human reason. The needed order the sole an understandable system of references for us humans has therefore been the main if not the only reason guiding mankind through its existence. The apparent shift from the mythical way of thinking, believed to have been gradually replaced in the western civilization by the scientific one, does not affect the problem we are discussing: a variation in form does not alter the still extant, substance of our being new ways of investigation have only shown how complex we are and that, despite bold conjectures, we will never know more essential things about ourselves than the alchemist of the 15th century. The idea of writing this paper – which I am afraid will not bring to light unknown facts came to me after reading Jung’s Psychology 134

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and Alchemy. These ideas I fostered about Yeats a theory of the gyres were yet very feeble, until the great amount of erudition contained in Jung’s work piled up to support my intuitions. After I had read carefully Yeats’ The Second Coming I realized that the image of the gyres is not isolated in Yeats’ poetry. I would in due time highlight other more or less explicit occurrences of it. Yeats’ asserts that human personality follows the pattern of a Great wheel. That is, the types of personality possible constitute a kind of closed circle – they are regular stages in a circular journey to and between complete objectivity at one pole and complete subjectivity at the other and this journey may be represented by the orbit of the moon, to which it corresponds let the moon represent subjectivity and the sun objectivity; then the dark of the moon, when it is closed to the sun, is the phase of complete objectivity and the full moon which is farthest from the sun is the phase of complete subjectivity. At these two opposite poles of the circle, human life is impossible; there exist only antipodal types of supernatural beings. But along the circumference of the circle between these two ultra human poles, there occur twenty-six phases which cover all possible types of human personality. It would not by devoid of interest to see which the significance of the wheel can bee as previously mentioned, I will refer to the alchemical connotations Jung associated to circular shapes which can assume more roles and functions. To begin with, there is the essential orders of the universe, the macrocosm, which induces its structural patterns to human mind also we are bound to think in circular structures – even the syllogism is a round form of thinking and more over, have a subconscious which produce such structures. Man has always regarded himself as a true – to type copy of the universe – be it God as his inferior forms of organization. The circular structure of the universe was proved right by modern science, but it was there with the thinkers of the Antiquity, although they placed the Earth in its midst. The “music of the spheres “sublimation of the reigning harmony, was a guarantee of eternity and order, and the pitches of its sounds were consequently associated to the cords of the lyre, this correspondence between container and contents is always present in the ancient philosophy. 135

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The spheres which spin around Earth are as we have seen, the supreme instance of order and harmony. Such round shapes will later be associated to destiny, in astrology spheres govern the life of man also the zodiacs “Fortuna roar” or the “the wheel of salvations” are just some example of the possible types of wheels. Fortuna has a circular structure, too but its most important feature in medieval philosophy is repetability – import note for Yeats’ conception. These are exterior images though, but we may pass over to subtler psychic ones, which have their projection in literature as well as in alchemy. About this idea, Rilke wrote in one of his poems. This metaphor of Rilke should be considered in its depth. I think a there are two highly interesting images in it: firstly, there are the widening circles the poetic ego runs around God, secondly, there are the forms of existence the poetic conscience – identifies itself with. By analyzing them in the light of Jungian psychology, I would incline to think there is a strong hint at the process of individuation. Turning around God – associated to the male symbol of the tower, whose implication is reason consciousness the ego defines itself, undergoing this process under the influence of the transcendental function. God as reason is the light which makes the lapis surge out of the aqua vitae – psychologically associated to the anima and the ego’s circle around him stand for the increment of the consciousness, which is crystallizing. In his Les structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire, Durand associates mandalas to the regime nocturne de l’image and to the sacred space, underlining the importance of their repetitive character. The same importance is highlighted by Eliade, who believes that each sacred space implies the idea of the repetition of the primordial hierophany. The correspondence between mandalas and the structure of the macrocosm as well as the rites of initiation psychologically, we have seen how this same process can be rendered in the individuation will also be discussed by Eliade, whose opinions from another point of view, will coincide with those of Jung. Circular mandalas and their alloforms are not a negative principle, therefore circles were associated to the rosa mystica, to the round garden containing the 136

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fountain of aqua nostra in its centre, to the round table, al cat which are symbols of order. Even the periodicity of the wheel’s spins, being predictable is equitable. The purpose of alchemy itself was to unite the four elements in a single body were meant to occur so as to obtain the stone, supreme principle by unity and equity. Mandalas are symbols of equilibrium and this couldn’t be attained unless by equity. I have briefly surveyed the various spatial representation of the principle of unity which chiefly concerns me. They would not be possible unless reflecting a more general state of things I have also, alluded to these psychic structure correspond to the universal and divine ones, and this has not been Jung’s intuition on – more cautiously – theory for we can meet it in medieval psychology as well. Briefly, medieval psychology considered the human mind to have an active and a passive intellect. All things to be known were thought to pre- exist as rationes seminales inherited from God’s knowledge, in the phantasmata. These phantasmata, which cannot be grasped unless by the solar illuminating action of the intellectus agens, do overlap with the modern unconscious. The most interesting circular structures are from my point of view, the temporal ones which do indeed resemble the spatial ones, which do indeed resemble the spatial ones, being this dynamic projections and offering them the fourth dimensions. Yeats’ vision revolves around this type of gyres, although we cannot consider the two kinds as different, as long as they both to the same unconscious layer and to the same psychic complex. The other younger poet, T.S. Eliot, born in the United States achieved more immediate acclaim with The Waste Land, the most famous poem of the early part of the century. Through a mass of symbolic associations with legendary and historical events, Eliot expresses his despair over the sterility of modern life. His movement toward religious faith displayed itself in Four Quartets. His surprising combination of colloquial and literary diction, his fusing of antithetical moods, and has startling complex metaphorical juxtaposition relate him, among English poets, to John Donne. Eliot’s style was intimately influenced by his study of such French poets as Jules Laforque and Saint- John Perse. Eliot’s essays, promulgating a 137

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style of poetry in which sound and sense are associated were probably the most influential work in literary criticism in the first of the century. It may prove interesting to notice that all Eliot’s poems which have no narrative pattern are obscure, very hard to understand or describing its consequences. Usually, the story itself is only half present. It must be consequence from a character’s of enigmatical words. Narrative devices and behind them a consistent lyrical mood unifies the lines. The best illustration of this technique is The Waste Land. It ca be considered Eliot’s novel, because it is made up of numberless incidents which reveal a crowd of characters and because these incidents and characters flow one another, pointing to a common conclusion. The first part of the poem The Burial of the dead consists of four episodes which concentrated mingled image of life and death. In the volume of 1917 and 1920, the characters kept trying to run away from something that menaced their lives, from the hideous of life into death and insolently about death. Prufrock was dream mind of leaving the room and t town, in order to take refuge in an ideal world at the bottom of the see. The young man in Portrait of a Lady believed he was drawing the lady’s unattractive portrait, while in fact he was sketching the very image of death. When he realized what he was doing, he suddenly withdrew in fear, and left the portrait unfinished. All the other poems are races towards protective shelter. Races prompted by a deep fear. There is in all of them a fear of death which goes hand in hand with the secret hope that it can be postpone. In The Waste Land, he need for refuge is forgotten because no hope follows it. For a while, life dejectedly shares the same house with death. The first episode mixes memory and desire dull roots with spring rain. Living lilacs grow out of the death land in April, the cruelest of months, because it stirs a little life out of the dead land to which it shall sometime return. Summer is not far away. With a shower of rain it surprises two people who are walking in the Hofgarten, talking. Only the words of one of them, the woman, are heard. Her name is Maria. The garden they are roaming through, the same as this name of Maria are recurrent motifs. They are used by Eliot to the subtle end of unifying the poem by making us remember its scattered reiterated 138

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images and piece them together. This Maria, for instance, is German. She is the first of a long line of feminine images that appear in the poem, and together with which she must be interpreted. There is, therefore, a maze of associations between all the words of this poem. It gives the poem a musical sense of both suspense and continuity. The name Maria turns up again in the name of church. Such imperfect recurrences of words and images are a newly found device of coherence used by Eliot. The Waste Land can therefore be read as the story of a coherent life told fragmentarily, which is generalized into the image of everybody’s fate. This silent witness of the poem, who wears numberless masks, who hardly ever speaks and most often just listens to another people’s experiences is called to come under the shadow of this red rock. He is urged to leave the heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and where there is no sound of water. His travel across the Waste Land must soon begin. Since we know that the last point of this travel is the chapel in the mountains, we may infer that the red rock foretells it. The whole poem, this entire description of a waste land, may be seen as a heap of broken images. A collection of fragments, of episodes which the hero leaves behind step by step. So both Yeats and Eliot exercised enormous influence on modern poets, modern literature. Bibliography Durand, Gilbert, Structurile antropologice ale imaginarului, Univers, 1977. Eliade, Mircea, Tratat de istoria religiilor, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 1993. Jung, C.G., Psychology and Alchemy, translated by R.F. Gull, Routledge, 1968. Samuel, Andrew, Mic dictionar de arhetipuri, Echinox, Nr. 1, 1996, p. 10. Wilson, Edmund, Axel’s Castle, a study in the imaginative literature of 18701930, The Fontana Library, 1.

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ACADEMIC STUDIES IN ENGLISH IN A NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRY Prof. Dr.Violeta Tacheva1, Evdokia Skocheva2, Violeta Karastateva3, Sevda Hristova4, Albena Dobreva5 1,2,4,5 3

Medical University, Varna, Bulgaria Technical University, Varna, Bulgaria

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract The present paper makes an analysis of the new trends in the academic studies in modern Europe and the new academic practices in Bulgaria. The research is focused on the aims and objectives, results, problems, advantages and disadvantages of the academic instruction in English in a non-English speaking country. Special attention is devoted to the curricula and syllabi on the particular subjects with respect to their adaptation for the needs of the academic instruction in English. Examples from the hands-on experience of the Medical and Technical Universities in Varna are given. The prospects for the different specialities and higher education institutions in Bulgaria are outlined.

Keywords: trend, academic studies, curricula, result 1. Modern academic trend Contemporary Europe necessitated a new dynamic stereotype not only in the political, social and economic spheres, but also in the comparatively conservative culture and education. The new academic practice of acquiring knowledge and skills at University level in a popular, “convertible” foreign language medium has become an exceedingly interesting phenomenon. Since the middle of 20th century 140

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the English language has become the most taught and used language all around the world and has often been called “lingua franca”. 2. Review of some Universities in a Non-English Speaking Country with Academic Instruction in English Over the past years university education in English has become more attractive since there is a need of highly motivated, theoretically prepared and skillful professionals able to meet the international requirements and take the challenges of science, technology and social development. The pioneers in Eastern Europe were Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic. They were the first to introduce and implement this kind of parallel education both in their national languages as well as in English in such attractive specialties as Medicine, Finances, Information Technologies [1]. 2.1. Semmelweis University of Medicine - Budapest, Hungary The first two years of the programme are entirely in English, with the exception of the Hungarian Language course. Clinical subjects require appropriate knowledge of the Hungarian language in order to be able to communicate with patients. Therefore, if students do not fullfil the obligation to pass a final examination in the Hungarian language at the end of the 5th semester, they are not allowed to register for the 6th semester. 2.2. University of Medicine - Warsaw, Poland The duration of the course in Polish language is 4 semesters and it covers 80 hours. Second-year students are expected to master basic medical terminology and be able to communicate with the patient at the bedside (ask simple questions and give instructions). 2.3. Medical Faculty of Charles University – Prague, Czech republic The program in English includes Czech for foreign students in the first three years as an obligatory subject: ♦ General Czech - 1st year, 140 hours; 141

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♦ Common Language - 2nd year, examination - 150 hours ♦ Medical Czech + communication with the patient - 3rd year examination – 120 hours 3. Aspects of the academic education in the medium of English in a non-English speaking country. 3.1. Aims: Ê increasing the income and the profit of the given university; Ê globalization of the scientific knowledge and understanding; Ê unification of the scientific and academic standards; Ê enhancing the prestige of the Universities; Ê improving the quality of the teaching/learning process; Ê real-life opportunities for better intercultural scientific and professional contacts both in the English-speaking world as well as in the rest of the world. 3.2. Problems: Ê language level and preparation of the lecturers; Ê unequal academic start at the entrance of the University; Ê inability to achieve educational goals due to differences in the level of proficiency in English (students / lecturers); Ê double standards in relation to the students (the education in the English language medium in some universities has a special status). A number of academic and social privileges have been guaranteed for the students from this program in comparison to the rest of the students; Ê ungrounded discrimination of the students who study according to the regular curriculum; Ê additional staff with good level of proficiency in English is necessary to help foreign students with some social and administrative issues; Ê lowering the criteria for selection of both students and university lecturers can be observed. 142

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3.3. Advantages: Ê attracting ambitious and solvent students whose mother tongue is English; Ê expanding the academic scope of the university; Ê effective PR on an international level; Ê stimulus for improving the qualification of the University lecturers; Ê better convertibility of diplomas. 3.4. Drawbacks: Ê for the Institution: economic (increasing the expenses for the highly specialized education in the medium of English, ), legal (education in an English language medium is semilegal; it has been practiced for 10 years now but has not been legally approved by the Bulgarian constitution); Ê for the lecturers: psychological problems (work overload, stress, lack of self-confidence, dissatisfaction, inferiority complexes because of language problems); Ê for the students: epistemological problems due to both teachers and learners’ language deficiency, additional workload because of learning the corresponding national language; Ê lack of genuine competition between the university candidates – absolutely everybody who can pay tuition fee is admitted irrespective of problems with documents and English language competence. 4. Academic Instruction in English at Varna Universities 4.1. The application of English in Varna English – the global language of modern times, finds its application in Varna too. The second largest city in Bulgaria by its population, profits from a favourable geographic location and is a point of intersection between the East and the West. 143

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Varna is a host of a great number of international congresses, conferences, scientific and business forums, cultural events, where English is the working language of various international festivals, the oldest being “Varna Summer”. There is a trend to strengthen the positions of Higher Educational Institutions teaching foreign students in English – the Medical University, the Technical University, the University of Economics. In 2008 there is a total of 2,500 academics and over 30,000 students. The growing number of students and the tendency for more specialities to provide opportunities for education in English have called for an institutional policy in this direction. As a result the universities subsidize the organization of extensive and intensive language courses for academic skills and specialized English. The courses are run at the Departments of Foreign Languages which are directly responsible for the language instruction in the preparatory classes and the Master’s and Bachelor’s degree.Tthus matching students’ needs and lecturers’ skills is best achieved. 4.1. Studies in English at the Medical University – Varna The six-year medical studies in English are designed for foreign students who have a language certificate (CAE, CPE, TOEFL). After the successful completion of the academic course, students obtain a Medical Doctor’s degree M.D. along with the professional qualification “Physician”. The latter degree enables the holder to practice medicine in EU countries and all over the world. Except for the fact that instruction is conducted in English, the curriculum and the mode of the medical studies in English is completely identical with the traditional parallel course in Bulgarian. Learning Bulgarian language is compulsory during the first three years of the program since the foreign students are required to communicate with the patients and medical staff. The Bulgarian course is not a fundamental subject for students’ education in English since Bulgarian is not the verbal code for their academic communication. It goes simultaneously with the basic science and clinical courses during the first three academic years. The 144

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total number of hours for the three years is 1000 and meets the needs of the medical education. The course is structured into three levels. Each level continues for 1 academic year, at the end of which students have an oral and a written exam. During the course of each semester, teachers check students’ progress by different tests. The first level is designed for learning General Bulgarian. The lexical topics are in forms of dialogues from everyday life, while the grammatical material is presented by patterns, which students reproduce and repeat in exercises. At the end students should be able to: Ê survive in a non-English country; Ê meet their verbal needs in an academic environment; Ê cope with communication in public places; Ê understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment; Ê communicate with native speakers in simple and routine conversations, requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters; Ê describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need. The second level is a mediator between general Bulgarian and medical terminology. The aim of the level is to develop and improve the use of Bulgarian language structures and to direct learning to medical practice. The focus here progressively narrows down, channeling the education towards medical lexis most relevant for a practicing physician. The basic tasks at this level are to introduce students to: common phrases about health, parts of the body and the most common diseases; the structure of different anatomical systems; ethics in doctors and patients roles. The third level is completely focused on learning medical Bulgarian in the aspect of the routine doctor-patient communication. The clinical years are what all medical students anticipate, a time 145

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when lectures and laboratories are translated into patient care. The teaching from the third year onwards takes place exclusively in clinical settings and involves work with patients admitted for treatment at the University hospital. The clinical experience involves close communication with patients in: Ê physical examination and history taking; Ê patients’ diagnosis, treatment and management. In the last year students receive training in: Ê naming the symptoms of some common diseases; Ê taking history from the patient; Ê instructing the patient on what to do during physical examination. The programme corresponds to the basic academic curriculum of the standard preparatory course but emphasizes the communicative approach in education. It satisfies mostly practical purposes which are achieved in a flexible and conscious way, taking into account students’ real experience. 4.2. Studies in English at the Technical University – Varna Instruction is carried out in Bulgarian language for 8 specialities and in English respectively for 5 majors. The choice of language is motivated by a variety of reasons, the major one in favour of Bulgarian language being the double citizenship factor which allows students to pay lower fees or family and job opportunity reasons. Instruction in English is preferred in the cases when the students either have some learning experience in an English-speaking environment or the nature of the speciality chosen determines the language as is the case with the Information Technology students. In terms of curricula and syllabi both preparatory classes provide extensive studies of the respective language – 650 academic hours. The Bulgarian class does not study a third language while the English class starts with 120 academic hours of survival Bulgarian. Both preparatory classes finish with a final examination (written and oral) and students are given marks (2-6) corresponding to the grades in the 100-point scale. It should be noted that initially the criteria for students’ evaluation and assessment and the exam formats were 146

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similar to those traditionally required by the Language Medium Schools (respectively English Language Schools) having proved their high standard and good practice in extensive studies of foreign languages in Bulgaria. Unfortunately, the needs analysis carried out in the course of work and over the years showed that the mixed ability groups of students with different background could not cover the level required and the criteria had to be redefined and the level of difficulty respectively lowered. The relative load of the comprehensive skills is higher than that of the productive skills with this type of students although the idea of academic instruction in a foreign language prescribes a proficiency level. The foreign students studying in English continue their language instruction for 3, 4, 6 or 8 semesters (2 hours per week) depending on the speciality chosen and are given semester marks. The focus is on general technical and specialized English as well as Business English as per the major. As the education in English in the same speciality is still in the 3rd year there is no practice and experience with regard to the final exam procedure and requirements and definitely this is one of the issues which is to be considered in the future. Following the famous quote/slogan that one should act locally but think globally both Varna universities have met the market demand by initiating, developing and increasing the scope of instruction in English thus proving that a modern European university should be ready, adaptable and flexible enough for challenges and innovative endeavours. References [1] http://www.valuemd.com/

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A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC APPROACH TO COMMUNICATION IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING Prof. Nădrag Lavinia, PhD

“Spiru Haret” University, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract This paper is based on the psycholinguistic research on communication and discusses the role played by communication in the process of English language learning and teaching. For the last ten years, we have been studying the role of communication particularly in learning/teaching maritime, legal and business English, from a psycholinguistic perspective. Using questionnaires and experiments accompanied by observations and discussions (for a correct interpretation of the data) we have been able to draw some general conclusions which can be applied to learning/teaching English as a foreign language, even in situations different from the ones in which we carried out our study.

Keywords: psycholinguistic approach, communication, English language teaching 1. Introduction Communication has been analyzed for centuries. The process of communication has been a constant subject of study and many sciences and disciplines have been attempting to improve it. Different definitions have been provided by specialists from very different areas of study. Each definition, being more or less theoretical, focuses on certain aspects, elements and factors and it is accompanied by models 148

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(Shannon and Weaver, 1949; Lasswell, 1948; Newcomb, 1953; Gerbner, 1956; Jakobson, 1960). Therefore, communication is the ‘social interaction through messages’, conversations, negotiations (Fiske 1990: 2), or ‘the martial art of communication: graceful, enjoyable and very effective’ (O’Connor, Seymour 1990: 41), etc. However, when talking about communication, we should keep in mind the process of sending and receiving information through the form of messages, considering both the verbal and nonverbal components of communication. 2. Romanian Psycholinguistics and Communication One of the most important psycholinguistic works in the world on the role of communication during working processes and the influence of work on communication was written by Tatiana Slama-Cazacu (1964). It was for the first time in the Romanian linguistics and psycholinguistics that communication was defined as a psychic process involving the following elements: the language or code used, the process of sending and receiving messages in normal physiological and psychological conditions, the role of context, the role of language (to train, plan and coordinate work, to stimulate and synchronize movements), the influence of work on the selection of a way of communication and a channel of message distribution, the articulated and nonarticulated speech, the acoustical and visual signs used to convey useful, and sometimes vital information, etc. Romanian psycholinguistics, especially through its founder, professor Tatiana Slama-Cazacu, has been, from the very beginning, an interdisciplinary study, very careful about the complex phenomenon of human communication: the two-sided relationship between partners, the linguistic and nonlinguistic code, the social circumstances, the organization of the sign system, of the message and the context in which messages are conveyed, the human beings as partners, etc. According to T. Slama-Cazacu, language must be analyzed especially in dialogues taking place in social-historic contexts, which definitely influence communication throughout. By studying communication as a real process, with changes in messages as a result of the communication situation, psycholinguistics implies a 149

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complex study of messages not only as results of a linguistic code but also as a result of mimics, gestures, other nonverbal elements of communication, and different situations which accompany speech and dialogue. The dynamic-contextual methodology proposed by T. Slama-Cazacu and used by some other Romanian linguists and psycholinguists relies on the collection of data in their dynamics, process, development, i.e. during communication in the context in which they occur. Romanian psycholinguistics has also studied and defined the notions of context, “contextual levels”, the influence of the social context, the “limits” of this influence (see T. Slama-Cazacu, 1978, 1987). The research on communication must always take into consideration the “contextual levels”, the “explicit context” (linguistic or verbal and extralinguistic) and the “implicit context” (i.e. the linguistic system of the emitter, known by the receiver and the situational context, the socio-historic context. The social context implies the relationship between emitter and receiver, the idyosincratic linguistic system, the influence of the message on the psycho-social components of the partners, the social community, the socio-historic moment and the society in general. Romanian psycholinguists have also focused their attention on the visual, acoustic and kinesthetic means of communication that are commonly used along with the verbal message. Their role is to complete or substitute the verbal elements of communication. In 1976, T. Slama-Cazacu introduced the term “mixed syntax”, i.e. the inclusion of nonverbal elements among verbal elements in the same syntactic unit. Verbal elements interweave with kinesthetic, articulatory and facial expressions which are purposefully used with gestures and which form the complex, integral act of communication. Gestures, mimics, gaze, and even the objects used as communication markers, the actions with objects, posture, distance are very useful during working activities. When there is noise, gestures may become the only means of communication. Noise, darkness, reduced visibility influence the choice of signal systems and communication network. Under certain circumstances, especially vital ones, “necessary” redundant elements are being used. Some elements are repeated, 150

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communication is complete or completed, gestures and intonation become extremely useful. In short, psycholinguistics studies “the changes in message during the concrete act of communication due to the relationships established between emitter and receiver, along with their psychological mobility, mutual influences, the impact of the general context in which they are placed, etc. (T. Slama-Cazacu, 1968, pp. 42-43). A dialogue is a form of communication signaled by the real and active presence of at least two partners who have the role of the emitter and the receiver, and who, through their speech, make the amount of information to progress. A dialogue also involves certain rules: adaptation to the partner and the known common context, the intention to communicate, listening to the receiver’s reply, inhibition of the own reply, controlling emotions, promptness of reply, short-term memory, etc. (1982, p. 218). 3. Romanian Psycholinguistics and English Language Teaching Romanian psycholinguistics has taken a particular interest in studying the process of learning and teaching foreign languages, especially nowadays, when the role of the teacher (in the communicative method) is different from the traditional role of the teacher in many ways. The studies that we have been carrying out show the “never ending role” of the teacher. He/She must take into account a lot of factors which may have an impact on teaching/learning English. From the whole range of sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic variables which influence the process of teaching/learning a foreign language, maybe age is an extremely important factor. It is closely related to motivation, abilities and the methods of teaching/learning a foreign language. The teacher provides stimulus and opportunities for the student to experience the language, but the learning occurs inside of the student. The teacher does not have direct control over this. Consequently, the more the student feels that the material presented is of relevance to him/her, the more he/she will internalize and the faster he/she will do so. The teacher plans and organizes the activities and groups them into 151

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lessons (see C.M. Stănişoară, 2003). The teacher must coordinate classroom activities so that they form a smooth progression leading towards greater (communicative) abilities. In many activities, the teacher will perform the regular role of language instructor. He/She will present new language, exercise direct control over the learner’s performance, evaluate and correct it, etc. While an activity is in progress, the teacher may be a consultant or an advisor. He/She may move around the class to check for the strengths and weaknesses of the students. The teacher can also be a participant in an activity, introducing challenges. As a rule, the teacher sets up the activity and explains the procedure. The students are then free to take the activity in almost any direction they wish providing they stay within the given conditions. It may be necessary to move into one method or another slowly because the students are probably not used to all types of activities. The teacher must make sure that the students know what they are supposed to do in an activity. It would probably be wise to begin with activities that make relatively light demands on the students linguistically and from there move step by step to more complicated/demanding work. This will help build the students’ self confidence. With a lot of encouragement and support from the teacher, creativity usually increases dramatically in the classroom. The teacher can hinder the development of creativity by intervening too much or at the wrong time. The mother tongue should not be used in the classroom unless absolutely necessary. The teacher should be a psychological support for shy or slow students. Extra assistance and easier roles can be given to these students in the initial stages so that they have more time to build their self confidence. The teacher must be understanding, patient, tolerant, gently critical, very encouraging and helpful. Teachers must create a classroom atmosphere where the students feel comfortable experimenting with the language. Students should not feel intimidated or afraid to make a mistake. The classroom atmosphere must give the students a feeling of security and value as individuals and must break down their inhibitions, tensions and negative concept regarding their abilities. 152

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In the beginning stages of language learning, students must be given a chance to play with the language. As a result of ‘fun’ activities, they gain confidence in their abilities and enjoy talking to each other. Teachers should strive to make input comprehensible through the use of visuals and educational technology. The use of contextual visuals, for example, improves listening comprehension. Visuals serve as advance organizers, enhance students’ ability to formulate correct hypotheses and increase students’ interest. In the early stages of language learning, teachers should not ask students to produce language before they have absorbed enough language to make production possible. Teachers’ expectations, as expressed in the materials they choose for their students, should be consistent with the students’ capabilities at any particular point in the course. Language teachers should give their students practice samples that they can preview, view, review, and discuss. They should teach students to read/listen for ideas rather than language and to use context to make rational inferences. In other words, teachers should encourage students to guess. Students should have the opportunity to activate relevant schema and make predictions. Teachers should seek continually to reduce the principal fears that students have: not being able to understand every word and not being able to correctly answer in class. They should make clear to the students that these fears are based on false premises, that with practice these fears will dissipate. Teachers seem to have certain characteristics which are connected to the social milieu in which learning is carrying on. a) They are committed to the principle that all normal people can learn. He/She modifies curriculum content as he/she ascertains the strengths and weaknesses of learners, their needs and aspirations. b) The teacher knows that for maximum learning, the student must feel respected, valuable (member of the group) and secure. c) The teacher keeps the motivation of the students at a high level by using their interests, their lives and their communities as a starting point for the introduction of all material; by adapting his procedures; by using a variety of instructional materials. 153

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d) The teacher provides for individual differences in class and in out-of-class tasks. He/She knows that individuals learn at different rates and in different ways. e) The teacher organizes each learning experience carefully. He/She selects, grades, presents and practices language items for emphasis in a systematic, logical manner which will facilitate the students’ restructuring and subsequent acquisition of them. f) The teacher provides, in each lesson, the practice necessary to lead to habit formation and to real-world use of the language. g) The teacher recognizes that the correction of student errors is a matter requiring sensitivity and common sense. h) The teacher prepares activities which allow the students to practice in pairs and groups. i) The teacher supplements the basic text with dialogues, exercises, reading selections for variety or to reinforce items presented. He/She plans reading lessons which will foster discussion and thought, teaches the students to use contextual clues and cognates where possible and to use the dictionaries effectively. j) The teacher uses guided writing activities which will lead gradually to more creative, free compositions. He/She stimulates students to think of ideas, to put them in a logical sequence and to find the most appropriate language to express them. k) The teacher learns to select and use those audio-visual aids which will enable the student to learn a language or cultural point more efficiently. The teacher provides the students with cross-cultural insights and makes sure that the students retain their sense of individual dignity and ethnic pride while learning to appreciate aspects of English language and culture. l) The teacher uses the native language of the students as little as possible. m) The teacher prepares frequent tests which will help gauge the achievement and proficiency of the students, diagnose individual learning problems, and judge the effectiveness of his/her own teaching techniques (see Widdowson, 1990).

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4. Conclusions In conclusion, it is the teacher who utilizes the strengths of the students while giving them the feeling that they are responsible human beings by having them help in classroom tasks, in preparation of materials and in conducting of certain activities in class. On the other hand, it is obvious that the acquisition of communicative ability by the learners is a gradual process. It depends not only on educational organization and the nature of the foreign language learning materials, the teacher’s professional training and mastership, but on various other factors as well, including the learner’s age, nationality, motivation, etc. Communicative competence includes not only the mastery of grammar and vocabulary, but also the rules of speaking, for example what topics are appropriate to particular speech events, which forms of address are to be used to whom and in which situations. Learning to speak fluently does not always imply an uninterrupted flow of speech. The good speaker knows how to hesitate, how to interrupt, how to complete expressions or leave them unfinished, what to say in a particular context. References [1] Fiske J., Introduction to Communication Studies, TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall, 2006. [2] Stănişoară C.M., Interactive English Language Training Course for Students and Not Only, Bucureşti, Editura Aramis, 2003. [3] Slama-Cazacu T., Introducere în psiholingvistică, Bucureşti, Editura Ştiinţifică, 1968. [4] Slama-Cazacu T., Nonverbal components in message sequence: “Mixed sintax”, In W. McCormack, S.A. Wurm eds. Language and man. Anthropological issues. The Hague-Paris, Mouton Publishers, 1976, pp. 217-227. [5] Slama-Cazacu T., Psycholinguistique, In Grand Larousse de la Langue Francaise, vol. 7, Paris, Larousse, 4749-4755, 1978. [6] Slama-Cazacu T., Structura dialogului: Despre “sintaxa dialogată”, I şi II. Studii şi cercetări lingvistice. 33, nr. 3 şi 4, 1982, 211-224, 301-320. [7] Slama-Cazacu T., Nonverbal components of communication and the field of applied psycholinguistics, In Abstracts Kassel, 99. [8] Widdowson H., Aspects of Language Teaching, Oxford University Press, 1990. 155

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DESIGNING EFFECTIVE ENGLISH COURSES Assoc.Prof. Chisega-Negrilă Ana-Maria, PhD

“Carol I” National Defense University, Bucharest [email protected]

Abstract Course design is an on-going process that is based on needs assessment but which requires a lot of preparation, and the wish to get involved in something which may last for ever. A difficult problem when designing an ESP course is that on the one hand, the content of the course tends to be rather rigid, and on the other hand, people attending it have different proficiency levels. Therefore, any good design requires all the information about the content of the course, the students, the location and the equipment involved.

Keywords: foreign languages, course design, assessment 1. Introduction Course design is a tortuous path as it is an ever-changing process which involves a lot of work and thinking. Those teachers who worship rigorous design will end up never being able to complete their work. Course design means having a large number of loose ends that just would not get tied up. A difficult problem when designing an ESP course is that on the one hand, the content of the course tends to be rather rigid, and on the other hand, the people attending it have different proficiency levels. Any course is designed taking into account an ideal student who is supposed to act in a certain way. However, this does seldom happen in practice as students will represent a great variety of human types and proficiency levels. Therefore, some changes should be made in order 156

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to suit the new students. J.D. Brown1 talks about the changes made to the curriculum of a program in China. After teaching it for several times he noticed that the proficiency level changed in time and as the result, the objectives had to be modified to reflect the changes. Any good design requires all the information about the content of the course, the students, the location and the equipment. It is true that some of these can be encountered but others tend to be rather elusive. Students are sometimes different to quantify but at least the location of the course and the equipment will act as a certainty in the deep waters of course design. That’s why, the framework of Course Development Process as given by Kathleen Graves is more a flow chart where there is no hierarchy and the teacher is allowed to begin anywhere as long as it makes sense to him according to the information he/she has about the context and his/her students. 2 2. Steps to Course Design The first and most important step in course design is evaluating students’ needs. In order to have a well-designed course the teacher needs to know the students’ needs and expectations. The English courses designed for primary and secondary school children are made without questioning them about their needs and expectations but this should be a must when having courses for adult learners. The assessment should be done in such a way that it will provide the latter with relevant information that will allow teachers to meet students’ needs. There are 3 ways to do needs assessment: pre course (before the course starts), initial (in the first week or weeks) and on-going (throughout the course) in order to adjust the content, the materials and the objectives if necessary. Needs assessment can be done by simply interviewing the students or by giving them a class survey. As part of the needs assessment, the survey will contain questions about student’s age, sex, social background, occupation etc. There should be some additional questions in order to make clear how motivated the students are and if 1 2

The Elements of Language Curriculum , 1995 Kathleen Graves, 2000, Designing Language Couses, Heinle and Heinle Publishers, 3-4. 157

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they have a positive attitude towards learning English. Since students learn better and are more motivated if they are interested in what is being taught, they should be asked about the information they would like to be provided with. An example of this could be the following question: Are you interested in learning how to do the following in English? Participate in meetings? Write professional letters and memos? Understand military vocabulary? Become familiar with the STANAG 6001? As part of the needs analysis students will be questioned about their previous language experience, job details, especially about English language needs, future needs, perceived areas of strength, perceived areas of weaknesses etc. The next step is formulating goals and objectives based on needs assessment. We need this step in order to put into words the purposes and the outcomes of the course and to establish some landmarks that will help us go through the course and see both the amount of information that has been presented up to that moment and the one that will have to be presented from that moment on. The goals have to be general, not vague, while the objectives are more concrete as they will show how the former will be achieved. There are more objectives for a goal and the relation between them has to be of cause and effect. However, in practice, students may end up achieving other goals than the intended ones as it has already been stated that it is almost impossible to predict students’ behaviour and to meet all the goals and objectives you have listed prior to starting the course. Objectives are relatively short term, while goals are relatively long term so there should be more objectives than goals, and one objective may be related to more than one goal. If the goals and objectives are clearly formulated, they will provide the basis for the evaluation of the course (goals) and the assessment of the students learning (objectives). 158

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The way the course is organized depends on the course content, the goals and objectives, teacher’s experience, students’ needs, the method, the text and the context. Even when there is a negotiated syllabus, the teacher will have to make his decision about its content. An existing syllabus may prove to be useful by providing the organizational structure for a course. The syllabus can be modified according to student’s needs and goals, and the objectives of the course. Kathleen Graves identifies five steps in organizing a course: determining the organizing principles (themes, genres, tasks), identifying the course units based on the organizing principles, sequencing the units, determining unit content and developing materials, and organizing unit content. The content of ESL should focus on the techniques that facilitate communication through a variety of communicative activities that encourage students to use their knowledge and help them get rid of their fear of being heard and assessed by the teacher even when there is no testing in progress. Designing the materials for a course is a process that should be based on the previous steps, on the objectives and goals of the course, on the way, the teacher conceptualizes the content of the course, on the way he organizes the course and on student’s needs. The teacher can create his own materials, but he is also free to choose and adapt them so that students can achieve the objectives that will help them reach the goals of the course. Materials should provide a purpose for using the language, which goes beyond mere drill. Students should feel that they are learning new information or sharing something they know. They should want to express their opinions and respond to the opinions of others. Language should be used as a tool for carrying out meaningful tasks. Follow-up exercises should lead students to relate the content to their own experience. Adapting materials means: “creating, choosing, adapting and organizing materials and activities so that the students achieve the objectives that will help them reach the goals of the course.”1 When 1

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developing materials, the teacher makes decisions about what the textbooks, texts, handouts, audio and video will use during the course together with the activities done with the students and the way in which the two above mentioned will be organized in lessons. Moreover, when teaching adults, the teacher may come across their lack of interest towards the classroom activities and their impossibility to memorize the new information provided during classes. These things may become a problem because during course design, the materials will be developed prior to going into class. Adults tend to be either more difficult or easier to teach than children. On the one hand, they are usually employed and learn English after working hours a fact that makes them tired, easily annoyed and reluctant. On the other hand, adults are more diligent than children because they learn a foreign language having a goal in mind. The difference between them and children is that they know very well how and when they will use the language meaning that their motivation will be higher. The other problem that has to be taken into account when teaching a foreign language and designing a course for adults is that they will memorize the new grammar easier than the new vocabulary. Adults tend to be more inclined to learning when things are presented in a more rigorous and logical way. The materials developed for them have to be different from those designed for children. They may react better when working in groups, but they can get bored as easily and clamour because of it. Designing the material of a course will have to take into account these aspects and many more. After having assessed the needs, formulated the goals and the objectives, developed the materials, the teacher has to decide on designing an assessment plan which will assess students’ learning and will evaluate the course itself in order to improve it in the light of the new finds. The assessment can be formative as it takes place during the course and gives information about the students’ learning, about what they have achieved, what they still need to work on and about how well the course meets their needs. But it can also be summative when done at the end of the course and provides information about what the 160

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students have achieved and how effective the course has been. Assessing the needs can be done before the course, during it, at the end of it or at the end of each unit. It assesses students’ proficiency, students’ needs, their purposes and what they have learned for assigning a grade. In the end, it is time to organize the course in order to see whether what you have designed so far will work together within the course. The content of the course can be negotiated with the students; however, it should be done when there is a predetermined structure to work on. When organizing the course, the teacher has to bear in mind the fact that he brings to the drawing board not only the students′ needs, the goals and objectives, but also his past experience, beliefs and understandings, the method or text and the context. 3. Conclusion A course can be organized for the first time in a way and then reorganized in the light of what the teacher has learned from teaching the course for several times. It is up to the teacher to decide weather the changes he has made are useful and need to be preserved or whether it would be better to go back to the original design. Continual changes are not always beneficial to the course even if the students will never know what has been modified. As it has already been pointed out, trying to get too much from a course, means sometimes getting too little for the amount of work involved in the process. Therefore, the changes made have to be absolutely necessary and the results should pay off during the course. Furthermore, conceptualizing the content is about the knowledge you want your students to have at the end of the course, taking into account who they are, their needs and the purpose of the course. It also involves deciding on what to include and to drop and organizing the content in a way that will help you see the connections between the various parts of the course design (objectives, materials, sequence and evaluation). To conclude, the design of a course involves a lot of work and a lot of research both at the level of the course content and at the students who come to class from different backgrounds and with different proficiency levels. 161

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References [1] Cubillos, J.H. Technology: A step forward in the teaching of foreign languages. In J. Harper, M. Lively, & M. Wiliams (Eds.), The coming of age of the profession: Issues and emerging ideas for the teaching of foreign languages, pp. 37-52. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1998. [2] Graves K, Designing Language Couses, Heinle and Heinle Publishers, pp. 3-11, p. 150, 2000. [3] Holme R, ESP Ideas, pp. 9-11, Longman, 1996. [4] Zeichner K. and Liston K. Reflective Teching: An introduction, Mahwah, Nj: Lawrence Erlbaum, p. 6, 1996.

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RHETORICAL STYLE IN THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY Assoc.Prof. Cosma Sorinel, PhD, Cosma Simona

“Ovidius” University, Constanţa “Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract So influential was British economist John Maynard Keynes in the twentieth century that an entire school of modern thought bears his name. The magnitude and influence of his ideas have shaped the entire economic literature to follow. His General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money changed the way the world looked at the economy and the role of government in society. This revolutionary treatise is a rhetorically complex text. Linguistic detail supports and sustains macro-aspects of textual organization and patterning. Keynes manipulates classical rhetorical strategies, devices and structures to win over, instruct and stir the mind of the reader. The text as a whole is constructed to persuade.

Keywords: rhetorical style, structure, modernism, form, content John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) is one of the most prominent figures in the history of economic thought. One of the fathers of modern theoretical microeconomics, he had a major impact on modern economic and political theory as well as on many government policies. His most influential work is a treatise – The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money – published in 1936, which came to be considered by many the last great economic book of all times. 163

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Ever since its publication in 1936, style has been an issue with respect to the status and meaning of this great work. Though written for professionals, The General Theory is accessible to the educated public as well. The author himself began his Preface by stating: ‘This book is chiefly addressed to my fellow economists. I hope that it will be intelligible to others’. Joan Robinson, a well-known post Keynesian economist, described it as “the most readable book for its weight ever”. In terms of content, there are some difficulties when reading The General Theory. The book as a whole is not easy to read and master. First of all, a modern reader will come across the limitation of the concepts available and used in those times. Secondly, we must take into account the fact that the ideas of The General Theory evolved from those presented in The Treatise on Money in 1930. A third difficulty consists of the misleading way of presenting a general equilibrium model including income, consumption and investment. The three important ingredients of the book remain the clear organizational structure, Keynes’s ability to find and pommel his opponents’ weak points, and his unusual gift for persuasive explanation. In terms of form, Keynes’s magnum opus displays obvious central hallmarks of literary and artistic modernism. His modernism is both stylistic and sociological. It is interesting to know that John Maynard Keynes is the only major economist who spent a substantial part of his life embedded in a community of artists and creative writers – the members of the so-called ‘Bloomsbury Group’. Considering his arresting phrases and brilliant passages, Professor Elizabeth Johnson stated that she doubted “that there are many other economists whose work can be read as literature in their own right”. Consciously employing an innovative economic writing style, Keynes resists systematic introduction and discussion of his theory. In his work he managed to successfully blend literary tradition and scientific tradition, something that no other economist ever attempted to do. 164

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His use of language in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money becomes a powerful tool of emancipation from the terminology of the Marshallian orthodoxy. The treatise, considered to be a cornerstone of Keynesian thought and foundation stone for the new macroeconomics, established a vocabulary and a set of definitions and terms that became standard for discussing macroeconomic issues. At the literary and expository level, there is the evident strain of the ‘long struggle to escape … from habitual modes of thought and expression’ mentioned by the author in his Preface. The rhetoric of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money as a whole can be found in a miniature version in the very first chapter of the book. Chapter 1 is made up of one paragraph and one footnote. The paragraph and the sentence are significant features common to most of the work. Chapter 1 – The General Theory I HAVE called this book the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, placing the emphasis on the prefix general. The object of such a title is to contrast the character of my arguments and conclusions with those of the classical [1] theory of the subject, upon which I was brought up and which dominates the economic thought, both practical and theoretical, of the governing and academic classes of this generation, as it has for a hundred years past. I shall argue that the postulates of the classical theory are applicable to a special case only and not to the general case, the situation which it assumes being a limiting point of the possible positions of equilibrium. Moreover, the characteristics of the special case assumed by the classical theory happen not to be those of the economic society which we actually live, with the result that its teaching is misleading and disastrous if we attempt to apply it to the facts of experience. Author’s Footnotes 1. “The classical economists” was a name invented by Marx to cover Ricardo and James Mill and their predecessors, that is to say for the founders of the theory which culminated in the Ricardian economics. 165

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I have become accustomed, perhaps perpetrating a solecism, to include in “the classical school” the followers of Ricardo, those, that is to say, who adopted and perfected the theory of the Ricardian economics, including (for example) J.S. Mill, Marshall, Edgeworth and Prof. Pigou. The use of pronouns, of the definite article, of different verb forms is important throughout the whole text and this fact is announced and hinted at from the start. So, the author is present in the text from the very beginning ‘I have called this book’, and then shifts from ‘I’ to ‘we’, thus incorporating the reader into the text. Keynes’s writing shows a high level of reader’s awareness. By the authorial ‘I’ that he chooses to use he appeals directly to the reader and sets the point of view of the narrative to follow. Keynes proves to be very anxious to develop a direct relationship with his readers. Therefore he adopts a natural conversational tone. Later on, by means of colloquial phrases and witticisms, he succeeds in establishing a sort of intimacy. He also uses the second person pronoun ‘you’ as a direct appeal to the reader in order to add to the awareness of the reading process. In his treatise, Keynes conveys an important and significant scientific message and he appears to be concerned with engaging readers in working out solutions to the problems being posed. The use of the third person pronoun is also interesting to notice. From the beginning, in Chapter 1, Keynes points out a contrast with ‘them’ – the followers of the ‘classical school’. And from here the challenge to orthodoxy become quite obvious. The British economist is distancing himself from classical views. He is trying to look at the social world directly rather than through the lens of classical theory. But the third person pronoun is also used in The General Theory to make reference to individual economic agents – producers and consumers – who are referred to as ‘he’ or ‘they’. The use of the definite article in certain instances is not at all accidental. It is generally accepted that the definite article makes an easy distinction between a specific and a technical use. John Maynard Keynes speaks of ‘the classical theory’, ‘the classical economists’, ‘the Ricardian economics’ thus simplifying his task of building up a set of strong contrasts in the texts. Because that is 166

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essentially what Keynes does – he organizes the text as oppositions and contrasts and does so by different means. He defines a ‘special case’ by contrast with the ‘general case’ and by reference to ‘the economic society in which we actually live’. Attention is drawn to the contrast of the situation also by the use of the phrase ‘happen not to be’ (instead of ‘do not happen to be’). By contrast between ‘happen’ and ‘actually’ Keynes incorporates social reality beyond the text into the discourse. The selection of verb forms assists the development of the contrasts that Keynes brought up. He used Past Perfect to speak of the author of the Essay on the Principle of Population – Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834): “with which Malthus had wrestled”. Present Perfect is used to imply an undetermined but recent past: “Marshall, Edgeworth and Professor Pigou from whose hands the classical theory has received its most mature embodiment”. But it is also used when hinting at present consequences: “the classical economists have thought”. At the level of the phrase structure, we may say that the coordinated phrase identified in Chapter 1 is used throughout the work in selfconsciously oratorical passages. Given the recommendations of classical oratory it should come as no surprise. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money remains a work that broke sharply with the orthodox neo-classical tradition and shaped the reorientation of approaches to economic policy in the past three decades. The book constituted a vast assault on the classical economics tradition in which he had been raised. Keynes concluded that classical economics rested on a fundamental error. And he did that in a unique style! References [1] Keynes, J.M., Teoria generală a folosirii mâinii de lucru, a dobânzii şi a banilor, Editura Ştiinţifică, 1970. [2] http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/

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THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN TEACHER TRAINING IN THE ROMANIAN ARMED FORCES – THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE FOR LANGUAGES IN ELT IN THE ROMANIAN MILITARY. Assoc.Prof. Lungu Delia, PhD, Boeru Mariana

”Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract ELT in the Romanian Armed forces has been in constant development and evolution ever since Romania began preparations in view to joining NATO, which finally happened in 2004.The present paper will present the latest teacher training seminar which is particularly illustrative of a fundamental evolution in the vision of the ELT process in the military. It focuses on familiarizing teachers with the newly implemented descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The ELT in the military has now reached a point at which it is capable of addressing the military specific linguistic needs of the personnel while offering them the opening towards the European approach to foreign language teaching and encouraging a greater awareness of the intercultural interaction dimension and of the self-directed, self-assessed language learning process.

Keywords: ELT, teacher training, Framework of Reference for Languages

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1. Introduction. The evolution of teacher training in the Romanian Armed Forces ELT in the Romanian Armed forces has been in constant development and evolution ever since Romania began preparations in view to joining NATO, which finally happened in 2004. The joining process involved a large amount of effort on the Romanian part in order to bring its troops and the rest of its capabilities in line with NATO’s requirements and standards. Foreign language training for all military personnel, especially the readily deployable ones, was one of the efforts Romania needed to commit to so that one of NATO’s key principles, the interoperability of multinational forces, be successfully met. Therefore, numerous foreign language centers were opened in view to offering Romanian military personnel intensive language training with the focus on English both general and ESP (military). The focal point of the ELT in the Romanian military was the NATO set of language descriptors commonly known as the Standard Agreement 6001 (STANAG 6001), a five-level, four-skill description of what NATO personnel is able to do in English. STANAG 6001, was thus, envisaged at all levels of language training from course objectives and content to forms of evaluation and certification. The firm conviction that excellence and efficiency of any training lies in the quality of the educators involved in the process led the Romanian military to set up a coherent scheme of teacher training that would involve all the English teachers in the system. Consequently, in the light of the needs analysis performed across the system, ever since 2004, annual teacher training seminars (3-4 per year) began taking place in the two teacher training centers selected to serve this purpose (The National Defense University in Bucharest and The Naval Academy in Constanta). The ultimate aim of these seminars has been to provide English teachers with the vision and direction of the ELT process as decided upon by the higher echelons, while striving to facilitate expertise exchange, to maintain teacher networking and communication lines open, to offer teachers professional development opportunities which would lead to the constant improvement of their overall teaching performance. 169

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The first series of such seminars focused on familiarizing teachers with the STANAG 6001 descriptors and on methods and approaches to efficiently implementing the descriptors by understanding course objectives and developing and adapting teaching materials that would lead to the achievement of these objectives. The second series moved on to another level and concentrated on military English in an effort to provide teachers with both the operational language content and the teaching methods and approaches that would facilitate the successful teaching and subsequent student acquisition of military English. The present paper will present the latest teacher training seminar which is particularly illustrative of a fundamental evolution in the vision of the ELT process in the military. It focuses on familiarizing teachers with the newly implemented descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. 2. Teacher training and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages 2.1. Context, dates and venue The practice of ELT in the Romanian Armed Forces has recently witnessed an enlarging of its vision which now extends its scope from the sphere of the operational, military English of NATO countries into the more trans-cultural, mobility, flexibility and communication-prone space of the European Union. Thus, the ELT in the military has now reached a point at which it is capable of addressing the military specific linguistic needs of the personnel while offering them the opening towards the European approach to foreign language teaching and encouraging a greater awareness of the intercultural interaction dimension and of the self-directed, self-assessed language learning process. Once the descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages have been implemented into the teaching of English in the Romanian Armed Forces, thus becoming the document which substantiates the organization, objectives, content and certification of all intensive English courses for the military personnel, the issue of helping teachers to better deal with the novelty and the 170

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challenges of the program has also arisen. The teacher training seminar on CEFRL has been the answer. The CEFRL Teacher Training Seminar consisted in two one-week training events which took place between 10-14.12.2007 and 2125.01.2008 at “Mircea cel Batran” Naval Academy in Constanta, amounting to 40 hours of training per series. 2.2. Seminar aims and objectives The seminar was aimed at familiarizing the teachers working in the Romanian military system with the CEFRL basic concepts to be used within any educational context in an attempt to assist learners and educators to co-ordinate their efforts. As such, the CEFRL document was used as a common basis for explicit description of objectives, content and method and was mainly used as a flexible and practical tool for demonstrating its applicability through sessions which could later be used by the participants in their teaching context. The seminar objectives envisaged developing the participants’ ability to: • distinguish and differentiate between the levels of proficiency as illustrated by the CEFRL descriptors; • correlate course objectives with relevant classroom activities; • correctly interpret and assess student oral and written performance against the background of the CEFRL descriptors; • raise the students’ awareness of the self-assessment tools available within the program (i.e. the European Language Portfolio, etc.); • facilitate the students’ self-directed learning; • create opportunities for students to learn by interaction and cooperation by implicating them in group project activities; • plan and design teaching materials that are adequate and conducive to the achievement of the course objectives; • share knowledge and expertise with peer teachers by providing informed and constructive feedback.

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2.3. Seminar Content. Methods and approaches Several modes of training and presentation techniques were employed during the seminar, ranging from frontal training, Socratic dialogue, interactive, co-operative group work, individual work and project work. The experiential and reflective modes allowed the participants to experience the content directly and, at the same time, absorb and filter the information in accordance with their own particular needs and professional background. Thus, the seminar opened with a presentation of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, its principles, the descriptive scales, the learner’s self-assessment tools and finally an overview of various proficiency tests based on the CEFRL. The plenary presentation was meant to contextualize the seminar content and allow all participants to bring their background knowledge on the topic up to date. To continue with, topical workshops were organized, in which participants had the opportunity to focus on each of the CEFRL five language skills by actively tackling their distinguishing features, proficiency levels and classroom implications. The approach was two-fold. First, the trainers facilitated the participants’ familiarization with and comprehension of the CEFRL skills by implicating them in group activities which were meant to enhance the participants’ ability to differentiate between proficiency levels per skill, properly interpret skill objectives and adequately relate them to classroom activities. The materials used in the presentation sessions were trainer designed and were meant to assist the participants in their discovery and comprehension journey. Second, the participants were invited to directly apply and experiment with the recently presented information by working on their own mini group-projects and developing materials focused on a specific skill and proficiency level. The practical sessions also offered the participants the opportunity to directly confront the implications and impact of the CEFRL descriptors on the classroom practice. More specifically, the participants were involved in a “simulation” activity in which real students from Constanta Foreign Languages Main Centre were brought into the training room and put at the participants’ disposal so 172

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that the latter could pilot their newly developed speaking and writing activities “live” thus honing their skills of properly profiling and assessing student performance at a given CEFRL proficiency level. The “live” piloting was followed by plenary discussions in which the participants could give and receive feedback on the efficiency and appropriateness of their activities thus reaching a higher level of comprehension of the CEFRL descriptors. The seminar was completed by a final participant group project. The novelty of the project resided in the fact that participants had to resort to the Internet in order to create an activity which was meant to address several important issues within the CEFRL context, namely, the ongoing student assessment, the facilitation of student self-directed learning and finally the tapping the Internet pool for teaching and learning resources. The imposed format of the group projects was consequently, that of the webquest. In brief, after, a trainer delivered introductory session on webquests, the participants were offered the opportunity to have a thorough understanding of the concept of the webquest and to be honestly attracted into exploiting it on their own. Thus, the participants were divided into small groups and were given the main task to work together and design their own webquest using the templates provided. They were instructed to decide upon the following: • the topic of their webquest, • the level of the students, • the class composition and characteristics, • the objectives of the activity, • the desired output, • the roles each of them would assume during their production work. In the end, the participants were asked to post the webquest on the Internet, on a commonly agreed upon site. This activity lent itself to intensive cooperation, communication and sharing of knowledge among group members thus making them even more aware of the qualities of self-directed and experiential learning of such an activity for their students. The critical thinking skills they as teachers were asked to exercise during the webquest production stage would perfectly mirror the critical thinking skills the webquest produced 173

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would ask of their students. To continue with, the groups took turns at presenting their webquests and at the end, they enjoyed receiving feedback from their peers. 2.4. Seminar feedback At the end of the seminar, the participants were asked to respond to a feedback questionnaire which aimed at identifying the strong and weak points of the training event and the possible follow-ups. One of the most appreciated sessions was certainly the webquest one. Participants justified their choice by stressing the novelty element of the webquest, its flexibility and applicability to their context, the fun and involving element of it and last but not least they saw the webquest as a new and efficient tool for ongoing classroom assessment. Moreover, they pointed out the importance of such training events in helping teachers come together to share knowledge, learn from each other and from the training experience itself, open new communication lines and strengthen the existing ones, all for the single purpose of delivering quality education at the highest level possible. 3. Conclusions The CEFRL teacher training seminars demonstrated once more the imperious necessity of maintaining a well informed and educated teacher pool so that ELT in the Romanian Armed Forces continues to evolve and improve thus preserving its ability to respond not only to NATO’s linguistic interoperability requirements but also to the realities of today’s European professional community. References [1] Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment, http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp [2] Boeru, Mariana and Eftimescu, Gabriela, Webquests: A practical example of a teacher training session, The Fifth International ELT Research Conference. Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice in ELT, Canakkale, Turkey, May 2008. [3] Brown, Douglas, H., Language Assessment. Principles and Classroom Practices, New York, Longman, 2004. 174

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[4] Richards, Jack, C. and Nunan, David, Second Language Teacher Education, Cambridge, CUP, 1990. [5] Townsend, John, The Trainer’s Pocketbook, Alresford, Management Pocketbooks Ltd., 2003.

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EARLY ENGLISH LOANS AND CULTURAL CONJUNCTIONS – IN THE WORKS OF THREE ROMANIAN WRITERS OF THE LATE 19TH CENTURY Assoc.Prof. Manea Constantin, PhD, Assoc.Prof. Manea Maria-Camelia, PhD, TA Pruneanu Dănuţa-Magdalena

University of Piteşti [email protected]

Abstract The present paper’s aim is to substantiate the claim that the lexical influence of the English language is not very recent in Romanian, and also the fact that its first manifestations were rather erratic, vague and comparatively inconclusive. The source texts the terms under study have been excerpted from are representative of the works of three personalities of mid- and late 19th century Romanian prose writing – where the cultural dimension of the borrowing is (obviously) prevalent.

Keywords: English loans, assimilation, adaptation, adoption 1. Introduction In spite of the great geographical distance between Britain and Romania, as well as the considerable divergence of the two countries’ cultural traditions and standards, there has been a common interest in getting acquanted with the most representative realtities of the two nations – which evolved from mere informative glimpses prompted by cultural curiosity to closer and more enduring contacts of civilisation, mainly achieved in written form. Some of these had an influence not only upon the literary and cultural productions in later years, but also upon the growing Romanian language itself (more particularly, on its 176

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vocabulary). By the turn of the 20th century, these contacts and influences had already become a well-established fact. It is the aim of the present contribution to illustrate the scope of this type of early linguistic and cultural penetration, by pointing out and analysing – from a qualitative, as well as typological point of view – some aspects of the lexical borrowings from English, added to a number of relevant cultural mentions turning on the Englishspeaking world, which can be detected in the works of three cultural personalities of the period: Ion Codru Drăguşanu, Ion Ghica and I.L. Caragiale. The corpus of words and phrases that have been analysed, as selected from the text of I. Codru Drăguşanu’s Peregrinul transilvan (The Transylvanian Peregrine), Ion Ghica’s Letters to V. Alecsandri and I.L. Caragiale’s sketches and miscellaneous prose – the total sum of which amounts to some 100 words – can be subdivided in two broad groups: one including broadly denominative terms (of the common-noun type), and the other illustrative of the mentions of the cultural type (actually, it mainly includes quotations or proper names with reference to British – more rarely American – realities / realia). This difference in point of reference did not prevent us from treating the terms in the second group in conjunction with the others, as they are highly representative of one of the sources / beginnings of the appetite for the realities of the English-speaking (cultural) area. 2. English Loans and Cultural Conjunctions in the Text of Ion Codru Drăguşanu, Ion Ghica and I.L. Caragiale The main goals of the analysis we have attempted have been the following: • to assess the relative degree of penetration of the terms in question (mainly those in the first category) in Romanian; • to tell the extent to which they were assimilated, adjusted and adapted, semantically and/or grammatically; • to assess the semantic changes they underwent; • to assess the changes in point of pronunciation and/or spelling, the variation of form; • to analyse the channels of their penetration, their stylistic as well as functional load (i.e. purely stylistic, literary, documentary, cultural, ‘exotic’, etc.); • to make, for a number of cases, some remarks on their present status in Romanian. 177

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I. In point of assimilation, adaptation, and adoption, the following comparative statuses could be distinguished: 1) ‘Aliens’, i.e. terms and phrases or idiomatic turns / idioms that were not assimilated, viewed as ‘external’ elements or ‘barbarisms’ (or, in French terms, xénismes et pérégrinismes). Some of these were items translated by the respective authors, e.g. (ICD) tory / whig “denominaţiuni foarte antice, […] cea dintâi înseamnă coajă vârtoasă, […] a doua zeamă”, (IG) “woolsale – storul lânarilor”, “fellow (“tovarăş”) al universităţii din Cambridge”, “cooperative store (magazin şi depozit cooperativ)”, (ICD) “patatoes (= picioci)”, (ILC) “Five o’clock tea, adică pe româneşte ceaiul de la cinci ceasuri”; (ICD) “farmer (arendaş)”, “second (al doilea) locotenent”, etc. Some others were translated and explained for the reader – through short definitions / attempts at defining the respective concepts or realia, through paraphrases (and even through redundant explanatory notes or phrases, as in “palatul Mansionhouse”), e.g. (ICD) “miezul Londrei, numit City”, “constabili, o specie de ipistaţi poliţieneşti”, “square, pieţi patrunghiulare”, “cab, speţă de caretă cu un cal”, “bere porter”, (IG) “self-government… (“nu a se guverna fiecare pe sine … adevăratul înţeles e […] fiecare să fie guvernat de toţi ceilalţi cetăţeni”), “asemenea şcoli cu numele de half-time”, “habeas corpus […] libertate individuală”, etc. A third category includes ‘alien’ terms that are just mentioned as they are (with no formal change or explanation whatever), e.g. waterproof, Old England, store, etc. 2) Various degrees and procedures or mechanisms of penetration and assimilation could be detected, as in: ● Those words and phrases which have since become familiar items, in point of both form and meaning, thanks to their frequent use (though some of them still have – or are felt to have – an air of affectation or bookishness about them, e.g. high-life, Sior – either as a title or as an occasional frm of direct address, pudding, etc.). The bestknown such lexical items, most of which have turned into international terms, are: boicot, a boicota, club, interviu, tramvai, lord, jockey, sportman, gentleman, sterlin(ă/e), reporter, toast, vagon, 178

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five o’clock (which also had – or at least used to have, in rather suburban Romanian speech – the corrupted, substandard variant faifucluc); it is quite remarkable that the word beefsteak – so typical of the British world of realia, and consequently turned into a nickname by their neighbours across the Channel – had not yet been adapted in the simplified form biftec. ● Instances of loan translation / calque, such as: liră / livră (sterlină), or funt (sterling), for which the various equivalents of pound were used; “pe Continent”, i.e. “in mainland Europe”, a semantic calque with a strong ‘ideological’ (i.e. cultural) load, reflecting the British people’s point of view. ● Many words – mainly those in the group of the frequent terms – show a remarkable degree of adaptation in point of grammatical (i.e. morphological-syntactic) structure and functioning, e.g. lord (also used to name the aristocratic title, e.g. Lordul Ponsomby), (ICD) Lordmajorul (cf. Rom. prim-ministrul), spleenul (ILC, ICD), “dansează bostonul” (ILC), “o building society” (IG), waterproof (ILC – occurring in adjectival / attributive position), fiferii, punzi sterlini, farmerilor, constabili, “din mahagon”, boicot, boicotat (ICD), “Shylockul încoronat” (where the proper name is recategorized by means of the definite / notoriety article, through the mechanism of antonomasia), sport(s)mánul, sportmenii, un cottage englezesc” (ILC), “Llloydul austriac”, “în cestiunea Vixenului, capturat de ruşi” (IG), etc. ● The lowest degree of grammatical / morphological adaptation (i.e. preserving the proper name in its original, genuine function); the proper name character was thoroughly retained, alongside a complete lack of gramamtical adaptation, e.g. (IG) “cântând pe God Save the Queen” (NB. the accusative mark of the so-called Romanian personal gender), (ILC) “jucase la “Jockey” (v. also the use of the inverted commas); and all the more so in the case of the titles and forms of address, e.g. Sir Charles Staveley, Miss Jenny, Mister William espuire, Master N., etc. Here are some odd remarks concerning the grammatical usage / regimen of some fo the terms excerpted: Ion Codru Drăguşanu (ICD) uses “honourably” as an adjective, while Ion Luca Caragiale (ILC) 179

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writes “profesia de cronicar high-life” and “doctorul high-life” (where the invariable form of the adjective can be actually traced back to the French channel of penetration or influence). II. Several semantic changes could be noted in the corpus analysed: ● Restriction of meaning, e.g. toast (< French toast, so the word is used in the sense it has in Fr porter un toast), farmer “arendaş”, City (the word is capitalized, and is used only in the historical and cultural sense – cf. the City “the area in central London in which the United Kingdom’s major financial business is transacted; the various financial institutions located in this area” COLL), square, fellow, highlife, vagon. ● Obsolete terms, e.g. bristol (< Bristol board “a heavy smooth cardboard of fine quality, used for printing and drawing”), cab, tramcar, Colt(er), cottage (a fashionable word at the time, through the French intermediary), dandist, dandism, etc. III. Here are some special remarks on spelling and pronunciation: a) Words that have been completely adapted (morphophonetically, and also in point of spelling), e.g. tramvai, sportsmeni (although one should emphasise the special care in preserving the s and e of the English original form, sportsmen), spleen, vagon (here, as elsewhere, the stressing pattern is that of Romanian – very much as in the case of those masc. and neuter nouns ending in a consonant, e.g. ţăran, copil, etc.); in “tradiţionalul salut de jockey” one has to notice, though, that Caragiale still used the correct, etymological form, closely resembling the original word – quite unlike today’s most common singular form (corrupted and, originally, suburban), i.e. jockeu (cf. also Rom. cheu, an abusive backformation for chei / probably cf. lacheu etc.). b) Frenchified pronunciations (which can be at least supposed to have been so), e.g. boston, bristol, sport(s)man, cottage, toast, beefsteak, “(carnetul lui) Claymoor”; maybe also: interview, reporter, gentleman. A good example can be culled from I. L. Caragiale: “dra Mari” (cf Eng Mary, although it is very probable that the stressing was final, as in the French-sounding diminutives Mimi, Didi, etc.); it 180

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may be said to have resulted from a sort of combination or overlapping of the two patterns, i.e. English and French. c) Various abusive ‘adaptations’ and mistakes (some of them are in actual fact jocular forms), e.g. checocuri (ILC), whoolesale (IG), patatoes (maybe cf. Fr patates), ploom-pudding, Golfstrim (“cum spun americanii”). Caragiale’s humorous coinages, resulting from English words pronounced in a deformed or loose manner, are in plenty, e.g. mariner, boierii (< the Boers), Neftone (in a dialectal – i.e. Transylvanian – pronunciation, and in keeping with such Latinate patterns as Catone, Cicerone, Nerone, etc.); Edinbúrg (cf. Luxembourg, Strasbourg); Intervievescu (“reporter”), this last term standing as a proof that Caragiale perceived the letter w as being pronounced v. d) Various types of inconsistencies and fluctuations in point of spelling, e.g. sportsman and sportman, sportsmeni, sportmeni, (ICD) Hyde Park, but St. James Parc, “un pahar de mader”; Edinburg (instead of Edinburgh), Royal Politechnic Institution (where the adjective is spelt, at some other times, with a y). Likewise, hyphenation, solid-spelling and words spelt in isolation are used inconsistently, e.g. cake(-)walk, work(-)house, Lord-Mayor (but also Lord Mayor); at other times, the use can be noted of the hyphen to add the morphological indices, e.g. farmer-ilor, which alternates with the solid-spelt form, e.g. Vixenul, Lloydul. The same inconsistencies can be noticed with regard to word capitalization, e.g. mader – yet “vin de Porto”; also: “Sir Charles”, “pe Continent” (symbolically and graphically indicating the semantic value of the original term or phrase). When italicization is used in the texts analysed, this is a mark of the ‘alien’ status of the respective words, e.g. office, store, jockey, Deck, Pier, match (“Se plimbă pe Deck sau pe Pier şi fac match, înotând în mare ca peştii”), fellow, Golfstrim, City, John Bull, habeas corpus, cake walk, Whigs (ICD); “prezidentul U.S.A.”, spleen. When italicization is missing (which is rather seldom the case), this can function as a mark of a certain ‘familiarity’ / close acquaintanceship with the term in question, e.g. “acest interview…” (I.L. Caragiale, Poetul şi Moftul). 181

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Various structural adaptations can be noted, e.g. (I.L.C.) dandist (from dandy, with the addition of the suffix -ist, in a parallel to dandism), bristol (an apocopated form from Bristol (card)board, through a French intermediate). IV. Notes on the functional load of the terms derived from English: ● Stylistical, literary nuances (occurring as cultural allusions, mainly ironic and jocular), e.g. (ILC) “Lake Lovelake (mare crai)” (v. Richardson’s hero in Clarissa), “Intervievescu (ziarist)”, Bob Schmecherson, Neftone, Hamlet (“pseudonimul unui tânăr care nu doreşte să fie cunoscut”), Edgar Bostandaki and Edmond Buzdrogovici (v. the rival brothers in Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’), etc. ● Cultural and documentary elements (some of which can be considered ‘exotic’), e.g. (ICD) Straits of Dover, Guild Hall, Box Hall, Grosvenor Square, Windsor Castle, London Docks, Hyde Park, etc. ● Various quotations bearing social, historical, ‘ideological’ reference (always marked by italicization), e.g. (IG) poor law, workhouse, starvation, (ICD) urquhardism (from the name of David Urhquhard), “Old England, ţara unde stabilitatea e încarnată”, John Bull, (ILC) “boierii (din Africa)”, “boxerii (în China)”, (IG) Massa (English creole for mister – although the term is attributed to a black from South America). ● Terms of economic and financial relevance, e.g. City, Lloydul (cf. Lloyd’s insurance and shipping information company, now subscribing a variety of insurance policies and publishing a daily list of shipping data and news, called Lloyd’s List). ● Terms designating mores, everyday activities, and fashionable ways, e.g. gentleman, (ILC) spleen (“plictiseala ceţei britanice” (ILC), the noble amusement (i.e. fox hunting), “jucase la “Jockey”“ (i.e. a fashionable club in Bucharest), “Pink, hapuri americane”, Five o’clock tea, porter, ale, sherry, etc. V. Here are some notes relating to the channels of lexical borrowing, which can be: ● French (for the overwhelming majority of the words excerpted, e.g. reporter, spleen, interview, budget, (hârtie) bristol, boicot. (For the sole sake of illustration, we provide some of 182

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the most striking examples of English loans that French has had long before Romanian: bloc-notes (or bloc) was recorded as early as 1888, boston: in 1800, cake-walk: in 1895, clubman: in 1862, dandy, dandysme around 1820, fair(-)play: in 1895, flanelle: in 1872, football: in 1870, handicap(1): in 1827, meeting: in 1738, raglan: in 1855, raid: in 1883, spleen: in 1745, sprint: in 1895, sprinter: in 1899, sportsman: in 1823, stop: in 1792, challenge: in 1865, shampooing: in 1877, tennisman (cf. sportsman): in 1900, toast: in 1750, trade-union: in 1876, turf: in 1828, turfiste: in 1854, warrant: in the 17th century, water-closet: in 1816, week-end: in 1906, yeoman: in 1765). ● Multiple etymology, e.g. a possible German channel of penetration for the word reporter (v. DEX). 3. Conclusions Concluding, one can estimate that those words which entered the main lexicon (e.g. tramvai, vagon, lord, etc.) as perfectly adapted lexical items were the ones possessing a considerable denominative function – and also ‘technical’ reference – as highly representative of modern life and civilisation. A major part of the terms analysed have gone out of common use since – as was but natural, when considering the historical evolution of language and society. Another point to be made is that the bulk of these early loans and influences – although fairly well represented from a purely quantitative point of view in the fields that came into the spotlight of the writings considered – failed to have a decisive impact in a predominantly cultural period, which is the very opposite of the technology-ridden postwar period, when Romanian (alongside the rest of the European languages) was literally overrun by English loanwords, mainly owing to some specialized fields / domains and disciplines, such as technology, trade, sporting activities, modern economics, finance and banking, and even politics. The above analysis can demonstrate that, ever since the beginning of the process of lexical borrowing from English, Romanians felt it as rather distant (both phonetically and morphologically), so that these early attempts were not very successful (both numerically and qualitatively), hence the significant number of ‘barbarisms’, ‘exotic’ terms or mere quotations, or corrupted adaptations. 183

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Out of the three authors, Ion Codru Drăguşanu has the most marginal position as to the loans proper, as the words and phrases he mentioned (and sometimes explained) were mostly ‘aliens’. Ion Ghica, who was rather conversant with English and, moreover, illustrates a later period, uses these terms as such (giving hardly any explanations), thus relying on the reader’s newly acquired (comparative) familiarity with a number of historical, social, political, cultural, geographical, etc. realities/realia of the English-speaking world. It was I.L. Caragiale who succeeded in really feeling the ‘pulse’ of the penetration of genuine English loans into Romanian: virtually, every single such term he uses has a factual reference appertaining to rather well-known realities belonging more often than not to the fashionable life of the time, and also proving the French channel. It is Caragiale again who, for the first time in Romanian literature, uses fully adapted forms – already recorded by the geenral use; he is the first Romanian writer to have used English loan roots to create original names – viz. jocular proper names like Intervievescu, Lovelake, Bob S(c)hmecherson. In addition to using such terms as boicot, tramvai, record, reporter, Caragiale also uses the words detectiv, blocul (i.e. ‘blocnotesul’), and spici; the time was not very distant when writers like Garabet Ibrăileanu (in the volume titled Scriitori români şi străini, vol. 2) would use the adjective shocking… References and selected bibliography Băncilă, Florica, Chiţoran, Dumitru, Remarks on the Morphological Adaptation of English Loan-Words in Romanian, in Analele Universităţii Bucureşti, Filologie, XXV, 1976, pp. 35-44. Băncilă, Florica, Chiţoran, Dumitru The English Element in Contemporary Romanian, in The English Element in European Languages, vol. 2, edited by Rudolf Filipovic, Zagreb, 1982, pp. 378-417. Bantaş, Andrei, A Bird’s Eye-View of English Influences upon the Romanian Lexis, Bucureşti, 1980. Bantaş, Andrei, English and Contrastive Studies, Bucureşti, T.U.B., 1978. Bantaş, Andrei, English and Contrastive Studies, Bucureşti, T.U.B., 1978. Bogdan, Mihail, English Loan-Words in Romanian, in Actes du Xe Congrès International des Linguistes, Bucureşti, 1970, vol. IV, p. 745. Bota, Maria, Observaţii asupra morfologiei neologismelor de origine engleză în limba română literară, in Limbă şi literatură, no. 1/1978, pp. 34-38. 184

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Caragiale, I.L., Nuvele, povestiri, amintiri, varia, Bucureşti, Editura Minerva, 1981 (ILC). Ciobanu, Georgeta, Anglicismele în limba română, Timişoara, 1996. Constantinescu, Ilinca, Asimilarea numelor proprii englezeşti în limba română, in Studii şi cercetări lingvistice, XL, 3 (mai-iun.)/1989, pp. 219-223. Dauzat, Albert, Dubois, Jean, Miterrand, Henri, Nouveau dictionnaire étymologique et historique, Librairie Larousse, Paris, 1964. Drăguşanu, Ion Codru, Peregrinul transilvan, Bucureşti, Editura Sport-Turism, 1980 (ICD). Ghica, Ion, Scrisori către Vasile Alecsandri, Bucureşti, Editura Minerva, 1976 (IG). Gruiţă, Mariana, Adaptarea cuvintelor de origine engleză la sistemul fonetic şi ortografic al limbii române actuale, in Limbă şi literatură, (no.) 1/1974, pp. 51-57. Hristea, Theodor, Sinteze de limba română (ediţia a III-a), Editura Albatros, Bucureşti, 1984. Hristea, Theodor, Pseudoanglicisme de provenienţă franceză în limba română, in Limba română, no. 1/1974, pp. 61-71. Le Grand Robert de la langue française, (Deuxième édition, entièrement revue et enrichie par Alain Rey), Paris, 1991. Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman House, Harlow, 1995. Olos, Ana, Numele proprii englezeşti în limba română, in Limba română, 3 / 1974, anul XXIII, pp. 201-204. Pergnier, Maurice, Les Anglicismes, Éditions PUF, Paris, 1989. Skeat, Walter W., The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology, Wordsworth, 1993. *** Dicţionarul explicativ al limbii române (Ion Coteanu, Luiza Seche, Mircea Seche), Bucureşti, Editura Univers enciclopedic, 1998 (DEX). *** The Collins COBUILD English Dictionary, 1997 (COLL). *** The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Clarendon Press, 1990.

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TERMS BELONGING TO THE MILITARY VOCABULARY THAT ARE METAPHORICALLY USED BY TODAY’S ROMANIAN PRESS Assoc.Prof. Manea Constantin, PhD, Assoc.Prof. Săvoiu Gheorghe, PhD

University of Piteşti [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract The present paper intends to give a glimpse of the great variety of stylistical and ideological means of expression underlying what has more recently been termed ‘the new langue de bois’, by providing instances of excessive and pretentious journalese operating – among the many ‘technical’ terms taken over by the lingo of modern media – with terms circumscribed by the field of military life and activities.

Keywords: newspeak, langue de bois, military vocabulary, deviant meaning 1. Introduction Beyond its undeniable qualities having to do with the high amount of creativity, innovativeness, and comparative flexibility and mobility, the idiom specific to today’s Romanian media (especially to the press) often faces the reader/the public with samples of that kind of manipulative, deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and control the public (almost unanimously considered the choice province of totalitarian political regimes), which was circulated and made famous by the name of Newspeak (from Newspeak, a language name coined by the British writer George Orwell in his novel 1984), or langue de bois (in the French linguistic 186

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and cultural area). These are in fact prototypical models of what has been termed, for more than a score of years, the “langue de bois” (with a word first used by Françoise Thom in the book of the same title). 2. The Military Vocabulary used by Today’s Romanian Press As a rule, the “langue de bois” is uniquely perceived as being that public lingo used by unipolar indoctrination, without any reference to the propaganda system of the political and social regimes of the (more) democratic type, based on a kind of discourse basically variegated, diversified through both its tone and message. The kind of idiom employed by the political discourse in modern democracies is naturally endowed with seductive nuances and encompassing potential of persuasion, and it fails to come into the scope of the research of, and observations made by, those who have studied the manifestations of Newspeak/the “langue de bois”, an activity which already boasts quite a long continuance, as well as a famous set of authors. What these (undeniably valuable) contributions seem to overlook is the very fact that – to use a truism – each individual age or period, with their appended type of public discourse, had its own “langue de bois”; this is true, certainly, only to the extent to which the content of an ideological (or ideologized) type of discourse is perceived as null and void by those it is addressed to. (This is, in fact, the very conception that the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse adopted when defining the concept of langue de bois, with special reference to the rigid manner of expression assuming fixed, clichéd formulas and stereotypies). The concept of “langue de bois” has attracted a number of pertinent descriptions, whose authors emphasise its preeminently manipulative character, essentially lying in deviation from the normal aims of human communication, i.e. information and persuasion. A fundamentally clichéd way of speaking, the “langue de bois” sins against the principles of informativeness, clearness, precision, comprehensibility, verbal explicitness, simplicity and transparency, through its primary repetitiveness and redundancy, obvious lexical paucity and primitive stereotypy in wording, as well as poor-quality 187

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abstraction, especially as materialized in the daunting noun accumulations; the samples of enunciation that can be found under the umbrella of this genuine anti-style give an overall impression of “prefabricated” speech [1]. Essentially dogmatic, today’s “langue de bois” can be said to amount to the actual abandon of reasoning by the manner of expression, which completely gives up the humanly understandable creativity of the message, especially through the unconditional imitation, and robot-like repeating of, the indoctrination (non-)message. The fact if beyond a shadow of a doubt that the public space is the predilection arena where the “langue de bois” can manifest itself. In a quite natural, yet paradoxical way, the public message requires a great deal of persuasive power on one’s own behalf – which is to say originality, personal character, etc. Lacking it, those inured to sterile public action look for the signs of originality precisely where they stand every chance of missing – i.e. the prefabricated kind of discourse, and the (supposedly tried-and-tested, yet in fact commonplace) cliché. It might also be true that some of least of these cardboard rhetoricians cherish the (rather naïve, yet genuine) belief that, by taking over part of the arsenal of hackneyed and clichéd tropes generously provided by the authority they feel they are uncontested members, they accede to real inclusion, they can share actual fellowship with that fascinating ideological structure, seen as a sui-generis institution of public power. In the new – more often than not sophisticated – “langue de bois” metaphors are frequently used (alongside various other tropes, e.g. similes, epithets, antonomasias), principally, in order to circumvent the proper, or most appropriate term (so, through the mechanism of circumlocution); likewise, new-fangled phrases design to embellish the reality of the discourse, to gild things through euphemism (or simply euphony), or, on the contrary, to overemphasize the various elements belonging to the real life thus presented so as to make them look more threatening, or more detrimental/dangerous. Sometimes, the desired effect is novelty at all costs, even if the previous standard is in fact falsely assumed as superannuated, or dull, mundane/ordinary. 188

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2. Out of all the referential domains that serve as prime sources for the process of taking over those terms prone to being used with “deviant” meanings, the most extensively cultivated (by the press and media in this country, but also by the press written in some other European languages, such as English, French or Italian) are the following: (I) Medicine (conveying the vision of the ‘social organism’ and its ‘diseases’), e.g. acut; a (se) acutiza; acutizare; agonie; alergie; infecţios; a amputa; amputare; anchilozat; anchiloză; anemiat; anemic; anemie; anestezia; anestezic; anestezie; anesteziere; anticorp, organism; apatie; apatic; apendice; articulaţie; aseptic; atrofiat; autopsie; balon de oxigen; bandaja; benign; calmare; chirurg; chirurgical; coagulare; coagulant; colaps; comă; terapie intensivă; contaminant; contaminat; convulsie; convulsiv; criză; cronic; a se croniciza; cronicizare; cronicizat; decongestionare; dejecţie; dependenţă; diagnostic; diagnosticare; diagnoză; diseca; dozat; endemic; predispoziţie; doză; echilibrat; embrion; epidemie; a extirpa; extirpare; febră; flagel; focar; forceps; a (se) fractura; fractură; frison; galopant; cangrenă; a se grefa; a se gripa; gripat; hemoragie; hipnoză; igienă; implant; imun; imunitate; imunizare; imuno(-)dependent; incizie; infarct; infecţios, infestat, a inflama, inflamare, inflamator, infuzie, a inhiba, inhibiţie, a injecta; injecţie, a inocula; a intoxica, intoxicare, isterie, a jugula, maladiv; metabolism; microb; nevralgic, ombilical, operaţie; operaţie estetică, organism, a palpa, a paraliza; paralizat, paranoia, paranoizat; patologic; patologie, penicilină, perfuzie, postoperatoriu, predispoziţie, preinfarct, proliferare, puls, pulsaţie; puseu, a radiografia, radiografie, reacţie de respingere, reflex, a resuscita, resuscitare, retină, sechelă, secreţie, sedativ, ser, simptom, simptomatic, sincopă, sindrom, soporific, stadiu incipient, steril, sterilizare, stres, a stresa, a sufoca, supradoză, suprasolicitat, tonic, tonus, transfuzie, a transplanta, a trata, tratament, traumatic; a traumatiza, ţesut, vaccin, vaccina, vaccinat, viabil, viabilitate, virus, visceral. (II) The sporting events, e.g. adversar, antrenament, antrenat, antrenor, arbitru, arenă, avantaj (serviciu), bancă tehnică, box, campion (mondial), cartonaş roşu, categorie, competitor, competiţie, 189

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concurs, a cravaşa, a cronometra, culoar, culturist, cursă, (contracronometru / de obstacole), a se demarca, a depuncta, a dribla, driblare, echipaj, echipă, eşichier, exerciţiu, a fenta, fileu, finiş, (a face) flotări, galop, garnitură, individual compus, jalonat, linie dreaptă, lot naţional, a-şi lua revanşa, maraton, a marca un punct, mat, meci, mijlocaş, a obstrucţiona, ofsaid, palmares, a pasa, pion, pistă, a plonja, pluton (fruntaş), prelungiri, pugilist, a puncta, record, respiro, rocadă, rundă, sală de forţă, scor (final), slalom, sprint, a sprinta, start, suflu, şah, şah-mat ştachetă, ştafetă, tablă de şah, a temporiza, temporizare, teren, timp record, trofeu, turnantă, tuşă, a ţine în şah, ultima sută de metri, vârf atacant. (III) Mathematics and physics, e.g. adiacent, algoritm, arc, asimetric, bisectoare, calcul, centrat, centru, cifră, a circumscrie, coeficient, a creşte aritmetic / geometric, curbă, diametral opus, direct proporţional, echidistant, echidistanţă, echilibru, echivalent, ecuaţie, exponent, exponenţial, formulă, inegal, intersectat, matematică, metru pătrat, milimetric, minus, nul, numitor comun, ordin, paralel, paralelă, parametru, patrulater, pentagonală, perimetru, plan, plus, proporţie, proporţional, putere, segment, semn de egalitate, sferă, soluţie, spiralat, spirală, tangenţial, tetragonală, a trage linie, transversală, trilaterală, triunghi, unghi, variabilă; a accelera, accelerat, atomic, atomizare, atomizat, centrifug, a condensa, a cristaliza, cristalizare, defazat, difuz, dinamic, a dizolva, a ecrana, efect, elasticitate, a electriza, electrizant, fisionare, flexibilitate, forţă (motrice / de atracţie), fuziune, inerţie, lentilă, lupă, magnetism, nucleu, opacizare, optică, oscilaţie, a polariza, polarizat, potenţial, presiune, a pulveriza, reacţie în lanţ, reverberaţie, rezonanţă, solid, spectru, stare de agregare, sursă de energie, tensionat, tensiune, transparenţă, unipolar, vid, volatil, a se volatiliza. (IV) Transportation, e.g. cap compas, a decola, a demara, demaraj, a deraia, deraiere, a derapa, derapaj, derivă, a frâna, frână, gabarit, garnitură, impact, lest, lumina verde, motor (în patru timpi), a naviga, pedală (de acceleraţie), a pilota, piston, punte de comandă, rampă, remorcă, rodaj, semnal (de alarmă), a semnala, stand (de probă), a survola, tandem, tangaj, a teleghida, a teleporta, timonă, traseu, a tura, turaţie, undă verde, a vira, viraj, viteză. 190

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(V) Constructions, e.g. armat, balast, beton, betonat, a cimenta, a consolida, consolidare, a demola, demolare, eşafodaj, fisură, fundament, mansardă, pilon, reparaţii, robinet, subsol. (VI) Economics, finance, commerce, e.g. a aconta, ambalaj, a bifa, bilanţ, bursă, comanditar, a contabiliza, curs, deficit, dividend, firmă, gestionare, gestiune, import, inflaţie, liber-convertibil, management, mercurial, monopol, a procesa, rentabil, scadenţă, a sconta, a valorifica. (VII) The theatrical and film activities, e.g. corifeu, cortină, comedie, culise, decor, dramă, epilog, epilog, ieşire la rampă, manevră de culise, neregizat, personaj (central / de plan doi / secundar), piesă (de teatru), prolog, rampă, reflectoare, repertoriu, scenă, scenografic, teatru, tragedie; film; stop cadru. Speaking of technical terms, we have to make a clear distinction between the essentially void, banal, clichéd metaphors specific to the Newspeak of the press, and the use specific to the body of technical terms that modern society furnishes us with. One cannot however deny that the specialized vocabularies, seen as a choice “building material”, as building blocks for the metaphor-ridden discourse, exhibit peculiar attraction to a significant degree – mainly due to their novelty and generally intriguing appearance, but also – quite paradoxically – to the aspects of a conceptual and scientific nature, as well as the discourse-related implications springing from the very basic functions of the scientific type of discourse: its predominantly referential-designative function, and its metalinguistic function. What we have, on the one hand is, consequently, the technical and scientific type of discourse, definable in the form of doing, which constantly generates its own object, in almost immediate response to the progress of human understanding, and not as a mere assertion. This constructive aspect is by no means limited to this type of generation, but clearly acquires a rich proliferation to the metadiscourse level, typical of the self-reflexive type of writing, which primarily takes advantage of the procedure of explication. The varieties of speech within the sphere of science and technology, in their capacity as descriptive, reflexive and constructive lingos, illustrate the so-called logos architekton that represents the 191

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intersemiotic transfer within an integrating discourse framework. The proliferative complexity of the type of language called on to express it is on a par with the unprecedented dynamics of today’s advances in the field of material production, and scientific and technical research; new concepts and terms are appearing, and the ensuing lexical explosion serves both the world of science and technology, and the abundance of the lexical stock of natural languages. All European languages, not only Romanian, have derived benefits from that universal process, but our language is especially favoured, because its lexical store is being actively replenished with words and phrases which are new and have an international character, but also to a considerable extent relevant of the Latin (and Romance) root-stock shared by the modern world. 3. In a world of rife conflict, but also of competition, the obsession of confrontation is fully felt as part of the “metaphoric arsenal” of today’s newspaper people. The propensity to give prominence to opposition, competition, conflict, rivalry, strife, etc. is one of the main hallmarks of this kind of writing. This is an essentially antagonistic vision (the disarming simplicity and naïve Manichaeism of which clearly belong to the province of the “langue de bois”), but it is superadded a whole-heartedly assumed dynamic, energetical, aggressive quality, which actuallz stands a fair chance of looking modern, fresh, and up-to-date (v. also the concept of aggressiveness in US-inspired psychology and also the second, positive dictionary definition of the adjective aggressive “vigorous: an aggressive businessman” COLL). In this connection, the lexical items belonging to the denominative field related to military life and the above-mentioned polemical/polemological vision can be compared, at least from a strictly numerical point of view, to the other classes of technical and scientific/specialized terms (or simply technical terms) illustrative of the domains already cited. Typologically, one can distinguish, within the strictly referential make-up of the military/polemological field, the following categories: (1) strictly military terms, connected with either the specific outfit, equipment, material and logistics, or of an organizational nature; (2) 192

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terms lying at the border with civilian or everyday life (e.g. “o bombă cu ceas”). Below is a list of those military terms that we considered representative of the above classes, and so we have excerpted from today’s Romanian press [2]: ● artileria grea: Artileria grea a istoricilor pro-evrei, subtitle in Ziua, 24 June, 2005; ● atac concentrat: “Atacul concentrat al organelor abilitate şi psihoza pe care acestea au făcut-o pentru coada peştelui (...) nu păcăleşte pe nimeni şi nici nu ajută nimănui.” Naţional, no. 277/14 May, 1998, pp. 1; ● baricadat: “Partidele de buzunar lupta cu Legea 27, cutremurele şi retrocedarile - Baricadate în sedii din zona zero a Capitalei”, Adevărul, no. 3523, 13 October, 2001; ● baricadă: “Deteriorarea brutală a conjuncturii economice (...) tentează tot mai multe guverne să se replieze în spatele propriilor baricade protecţioniste.” Un semnal de speranţă pentru economia mondială, Adevărul, no. 3554, 19 November 2001; ● bombarda: “Site-ul este bombardat de persoane care sunt atente doar la pronunţia cuvintelor.”Magazin internaţional, 12-18 January 2005, no. 588, pp. 17, col. 2; ● bombă: “Respectiva stare de fapt a transformat Tulcea în ultimii ani într-o adevarată bombă socială, care ticăie tot mai ameninţător.”Evenimentul zilei, 19 September 2005); ● campanie: “O fixare clară a alternativei de centru-dreapta (...) ar permite trecerea la o campanie efectiv pozitivă de combatere a PDSR-ului.” Formula As, anul X, no. 422, 17-24 July 2000, pp. 2, col. 1; ● captiv: “(...) preşedinţii Miloşevici, Tudjman şi Izetbegovici au acceptat să fie captivii negocierilor asumându-şi obligaţia de a nu părăsi “cantonamentul negocierilor”. Ziua, anul III, no. 510, 20 February 1996, pp. 4, col. 1; ● a captura: “Era necesară “ademenirea” noastră, printr-un procedeu bine pus la punct, pentru a captura rezervele de valută ale populaţiei”, România liberă, no. 1450, 4 January 1995; ● câmp de bătălie: “Departe de a fi un teren paşnic, în care acţionează doar legile cererii şi ofertei, piaţa mondială este un câmp de bătălie în care agenţii economici folosesc masiv sprijinul guvernelor.” Adevărul, no. 1453, 4 January 1995, Dedesubturile comerţului internaţional liber, pp. 2, col. 3; ● a chema la apel: “F.R. de baschet a chemat la apel toate figurile marcante ale baschetului românesc.” Ziua, anul III, no. 477, 12 January 1996, pp. 10, col. 1; ● a degrada: “(...)urmaşul [imperiului sovietic – n.n.], Federaţia Rusă, a 193

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fost “degradat” din rangul de superputere în cel de mare putere (...)” Lumea magazin, Anul VIII, no. 8 (88) 2000; ● invazie: “Oare nu avem şi noi de furcă cu invazia masivă de pui din Brazilia, pulpe din S.U.A. şi curcani din Canada, care ameninţă să anihileze fermele noastre avicole?”. Adevărul, no. 1453, 4 January 1995, pp. 2, col. 3; ● pluton: Pluton de debutanţi, subtitle in Evenimentul zilei, 19 august 2005; ● poligon de încercări: “Întrebările puse au intrat în poligonul de încercări al redacţiei şi ne spargem capetele cu ele.” Academia Caţavencu, anul IV, no. 31 (143), 9-15 august 1994, pp. 2, col. 2; ● a recalibra: “Partea a doua a textului ar trebui recalibrată.” Academia Caţavencu, anul IV, no. 36 (148), 13-19 September 1994, pp. 2, col. 2; recalibraj: Recalibraj inevitabil în fosta Iugoslavie? subtitle in Azi, no. 1133 (1721), 15 March 1996, pp. 6; ● recrut: “Câteva zeci de recrute ale sexului (fie!) frumos s-au întrecut într-o “probă de îndemnânare” (...)” “Festivalul gospodinelor”, acest “Festival Mamaia” al sportului cu cratiţa din Naţional, no. 217, 2 March 1998, pp. 2, col. 1; ● a regla tirul: Puterea îşi reglează tirul pe ziarişti, Azi, no. 920 (1540), 3 July 1995, pp. 1; ● unitate de elită: “Peste 300 de procurori şi poliţişti aleşi pe sprânceană, împreună cu 20 de specialişti în domeniul financiar, informatic, bancar şi vamal vor face parte din această unitate de elită.” Adevărul, no. 4389, 12 August 2004. Going into the particulars of the terms we could excerpt from the recent Romanian press, we should mention the existence of such designative categories as: 1. The terms that designate pieces of military material and equipment: afet, armă (secretă), arme (din dotare), artilerie (grea), a blinda, a fi blindat, a calibra, calibrare, a recalibra, recalibraj, necalibrat, bombă, cocktail Molotov, colimator, a detona, detonator, a dinamita, dinamitare, muniţie, perdea de fum, petardă, radar, trasor; 2. The terms that designate realia belonging to the military organization and methods: ambuscat, armată, a bombarda, bombardament, breşă, campanie, comando, contingent, contraatac, contraofensivă, debarcare, a degrada, desant, detaşament, a dezamorsa, dezamorsare, dezarmare, dispozitiv, diversiune, explozie, flotă, foc (încrucişat), gherilă, grupă de şoc, a mina, minat, ofensivă, pluton, poligon (de încercări), port-drapel, prima linie, rafală de 194

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mitralieră, recrut, a regla tirul, soldă, spaţiu de manevră, stratagemă, şarjă, tactic, tactică, tir, a trage din toate poziţiile, tranşee, unitate de elită; 3. The terms that designate the very idea of combat, opposition / antagonism, hence warfare: armistiţiu, atac (concentrat), avanpost, a (se) baricada, baricadă, a capitula, capitulare, captiv, a captura, câmp de bătălie, a chema la apel, a dezerta, invazie, a se înrola, mişcări de trupe, talibani, victime colaterale. The first and foremost observation one can make in connection with such terms is that they are based on rhetorical tropes/figures of speech (especially metaphors). If we try to elaborate on the above idea, we find that there are: (I) Fully and naturally relevant metaphors – of a prevalently intuitive and informative character; (II) Inflated metaphorics, represented by more or less personal coinages whose degree of relevance is rather scarce, or even non-existent – which in turn can be used: (A) as would-be literary (or rather journalistic) paraphernalia; (B) pieces of unwitting humour (mainly arising from semantic, stylistic and/or syntactic inconsistencies); (III) Metaphors that have already gone down into the common use of the language, or “institutionalized” senses/uses (which most dictionaries of the Romanian language record), e.g. ● armată: “(...) colegii contrarevoluţionari (...) au mobilizat o adevărată armată de “haidamaci” la sediul central al PPRM (...)” Adevărul, 1 June 2005; ● armă: “Atât în cazul României, cât şi în cazul altor ţări, arma represaliilor a avut un efect contrar celui scontat.” Evenimentul zilei, anul II, no. 160, 5 January 1993, pp. 1, col. 2); Televiziunea - armă împotriva infractorilor Adevărul, no. 1456, 7 January 1995, pp. 7, col. 1; armă secretă: Arma secretă a PDSR: politica faptului împlinit Azi, no. 920 (1540), 3 July 1995, pp. 3; ● armistiţiu: “Ea a propus membrilor coaliţiei guvernamentale un armistiţiu pe termen limitat, în perspectiva celor două şocuri pe care le va primi, concomitent, societatea românească (...)” Formula As, anul VII, no. 258, 14-21 April 1997, pp. 2, col. 1); După ce s-au bălăcărit prin presă, Dan Ruşanu şi Nini Săpunaru au făcut armistiţiu în biroul lui Mircea Ionescu Quintus. Naţional, no. 278 /15 May 1998, pp. 4); ● avanpost: “(...) aflându-se astfel în avanpostul societăţii româneşti (...) presa 195

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românească este pe cale de a-şi asuma toate standardele occidentale.” Ziua, 27 June 2005; “(...) societate austriacă OMV şi-a consolidat serios poziţia de lider (...), poate chiar cu rolul de avanpost al Uniunii Europene spre est (...)” România Mare, no. 749, 30 September 2005, pp. 3, col. 1; ● capitulare: “(...) treabă nu la îndemâna oricui dacă punem pe masă capitularea lui Sterea în faţa agresiunii lui Ionuţ Dragomir” ProSport, 2 September 2002; ● contingent: “Selecţia pentru un prim contingent de 3.612 locuri de muncă (...): în paralel, de luni, va începe selecţia pentru un al doilea contingent de 3.500 de locuri (...)” Adevărul, no. 4169, 22 November 2003; ● contraatac: “O (...) maşinărie de vot şi de urâte contraatacuri s-a pus în mişcare atunci, în Senat şi în Cameră.” Azi, no. 1125 (1713), 6 March 1996, pp. 1, col. 1; ● contraofensivă: “În contextul în care triumviratul Geoană-Năstase-Mitrea a reuşit să pună mâna pe partid, “marele învins” Ion Iliescu s-a lansat într-o contraofensivă fără precedent la adresa noilor lideri.” Cronica Română, 9 June 2005; ● a dezamorsa: “Situaţia a fost dezamorsată prin acordarea unor prime pentru excelenţă (...)”Adevărul, no. 4716, 1 September 2005; “AVAS (...) trebuie să ia măsuri de urgenţă pentru a dezamorsa criza socială de pe platforma combinatului chimic.” Adevărul, no. 4721, 7 September 2005; ● dezamorsare: “Cât priveşte vreun demers concret din partea coaliţiei de guvernământ pentru dezamorsarea acestei situaţii, liderul PDSR a afirmat că, până ieri, acesta nu a fost făcut.” Evenimentul zilei, 20 November 1998; Pentru dezamorsarea mişcărilor sindicale programate după Paşte, Premierul anunţă creionarea unei reforme fiscale în acest week-end. Adevărul, no. 3686, 27 April 2002; “Am vorbit apoi (...) cu preşedintele PNCŢD (...), oferindu-mi serviciile pentru dezamorsarea situaţiei.” România Mare, anul XVI, no. 795, 7 October 2005, pp. 12; ● a dezerta: “Celebrele atlete chineze (...) care au uimit o lume întreagă prin performanţele lor supraomeneşti au dezertat din cantonamentul antrenorului Ma Junren”. Adevărul, no. 1455, 6 January 1995, “Armata lui Ma” s-a dezmembrat, Lumea sporturilor, pp. 8, jos; “Sunt bucuros că, în afară de State, restul elevilor mei nu au dezertat pe la alte echipe.” Azi, no. 934 (1554), 19 July 1995, pp. 7, col. 2; ● echilibrul forţelor: (...) faza din minutul 23 (...) a schimbat echilibrul forţelor în teren. Averea, 26 July 2005; ● 196

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foc: “Dintr-un foc, tras de căpitanul Băsescu, toată agoniseala noastră, muncită atâţia ani, în materie de imagine a civilizaţiei politice din România, s-a dus dracului.” Adevărul, no. 4484, 1 December 2004; ● a se înrola: “A luptat să devină secretar PCR pe Institut pentru ca, mai apoi, să se înroleze în rândurile universitarilor la Facultatea de Arte Plastice din Iaşi (...)”Academia Caţavencu, anul IV, no. 17 (129), 3-9 May 1994, pp. 2, col. 1; ● a mina, minat: “Anumite ţări, minate multă vreme de recesiune, nu se află decât la început (...)”Azi, no. 1138 (1726), 21 March 1996, pp. 5; ● muniţie: “(...) Într-o asemenea situaţie, trebuie să arunci în luptă toată muniţia (...)”Azi, no. 1123 (1711), 4 March 1996, pp. 5; ● ofensivă: Ofensiva diplomatică din Balcani a fost determinată de planul preşedintelui Clinton pentru Bosnia-Herţegovina.Evenimentul zilei, anul II, no. 195, 14 February 1993, pp. 9; “De aceea, în anii '60, când noile state ale lumii a treia se aflau în ofensivă, au creat organizaţia UNCTAD” Adevărul, no. 1453, 4 January 1995, pp. 2, col. 2; Tuberculoza în ofensivă (titlu de articol din Supliment Sport Magazin Azi, 5 July 1995, pp. 3; ● prima linie: “Armata, în prima linie a luptei cu viscolul” subtitle in Adevărul, no. 1455, 6 January 1995, pp. 3; ● soldă: “Iată presa d-lui Petre Roman învinuindu-ne, la rându-i, că ne aflăm în solda d-lui Ion Iliescu.” Evenimentul zilei, anul II, no. 192, 11 February 1993, pp. 1, col. 1; ● stratagemă: “(...) numai în urma unei mici stratageme care ne-a asigurat sinceritatea interlocutorului, am putut afla tirajul, Adevărul, no. 3907, 18 January 2003; ● tactic: “Deocamdată, el [Ion Iliescu, n.n.] face prima mişcare tactică, demisionând din singura funcţie carei mai rămăsese, aceea de lider al grupului parlamentar din Senat.” Gândul, 7 June 2005; ● tactică: “Prin această tactică, Traian Băsescu a repoziţionat instituţia Preşedintelui (...) în raport cu Parlamentul (...)”Cotidianul; “De aici, li s-ar deschide (...) [drumul] spre băncile opoziţie: de unde tactica de hărţuire perfecţionată chiar de Băsescu lear aduce beneficii la un viitor scrutin (...)”Gândul, 5 mai 2005; ● tir: “Spre deosebire de zgomotele din mediul ambiant, de exemplu, care ne supun unui tir viguros (...), semnalele cromatice au o intensitate redusă.” Formula As, anul XV, no. 671 (23), 13-20 June 2005, pp. 7, col. 1; ● tranşee: “Acum, Alianţa este orfană şi (...) revine în tranşee 197

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cu liberalii de-o parte şi democraţii de cealaltă.” Adevărul, 5 December 2005. Special mention must be made of the fact that a number of terms/meanings have actually been taken over, through the mechanism of loan translation/calque/decalcomania, from English (namely, from the Anglo-American press culture) – but that aspect certainly deserves special treatment. Furthermore, there are a number of fresh-sounding terms, some of them even slangy, eg ● a blinda, a fi blindat: “Suntem, zic eu, blindaţi cu probe!” Naţional, no. 278 din 15 May 1998, pp. 14, col. 2; ● comando: “O variaţie a acestei fantasme ar avea-o drept protagonistă pe aceeaşi Mona Muscă, transformată în membră de elită a unui comando ministerial.” Gândul, 5 may 2005; ● detonator: “(...) ştim astăzi că detonatorul stării conflictuale din regiune (...) l-a constituit o suită de comemorări străine de istoria poporului nostru (...)”Libertatea, anul 2, no. 242, 5 October 1990, pp. 1; ● dezarmare: “O nouă “dezarmare” comercială ar putea, după Banca Mondială, să scoată din sărăcie peste 300 milioane de persoane până în 2015.” Adevărul, no. 3554, 19 November 2001; ● a dinamita: “Un maldăr de complicaţii imprevizibile şi de obstacole surprinzătoare dinamitează pacea americană.” Ziua, anul III, no. 510, 20 February, 1996, pp. 4, col. 1; ● dispozitiv: Preoţii “intră în dispozitiv” Azi, no. 1131 (1719), 13 March 1996, pp. 8; ● diversiune: “Acest comentariu este inspirat de ultima diversiune de presă, montată de câţiva neprofesionişti de la “Evenimentul Zilei” (...)” Ziua, 27 June 2005; “C.V. Tudor consideră că e o diversiune tipică pentru Băsescu” România Mare, no. 749, 30 September 2005, pp. 3, col. 2; ● foc încrucişat: Directorul SRI în foc încrucişat Azi, no. 1080 (1698), 13 January 1996, pp. 1); ● gherilă: “Până atunci, însă, între cele două tabere adverse [din PRM] se poartă un adevărat război de gherilă.” Adevărul, 1 June 2005; “Se ştie ce spectacol penibil au reprezentat luptele de gherilă din jurul acestor liste [de partid]” Lumea magazin, anul VIII, no. 12(92) 2000; ● grupă de şoc, detaşament: “(...) Grupele de şoc [= grupuri de manifestanţi, n.n.] trec la acţiune. Un “detaşament” [= de manifestanţi, n.n.] de circa 200 de inşi (...) presează Ministerul de Interne.” Libertatea, no. 50, 20 February 1990, pp. 1, col. 2-3; ● mişcări de trupe: (Fotbalul 198

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românesc, în derivă - “Mişcări de trupe” pentru Europa!, Cronica Română, 6 July 2005); ● necalibrat: “Textul e cam prea încărcat, contorsionat şi necalibrat.” Academia Caţavencu, anul IV, no. 24 (136), 21-27 April 1994, pp. 2, col. 1); ● perdea de fum: “(...) români, care (...) văd dincolo de perdelele de fum ale unei propagande mincinoase.” România Mare, anul XVI, no. 795, 7 October 2005, pp. 1; “În momentul de faţă, Băsescu vrea să aşeze o perdea de fum peste insuccesele scandaloase ale primului său an de guvernare.”România Mare, no. 805, anul XVI, 16 December 2005, pp. 11, col. 2; ● petardă: “Petarde” în baschet Azi, no. 1121 (1709), 1 March 1996, pp. 7, col. 6. On the other hand, the metaphoric expressions having a clearly parodical relevance offer a welcome counterpart to the kind of press gibberish illustrated in the above excerpts. We firmly believe that such a demythologizing attitude (albeit implicite) levelled at pretence discharges a positive, remedial, salutary (social and cultural) function. Such examples as the following would suffice, we think, to demonstrate that taking things “à la légère”, and scoffing at some people’s sham can sometimes be of great help: ● afet: “Abătut în urma afetului de tun al relansării economice (...) actualul primministru Nicolae Văcăroiu nu înţelege de ce doar unii “aflaţi în exerciţiul funcţiunii” îl mai salută.” România liberă, no. 1450, 4 January, 1995, pp. 3; ● ambuscat: “PP.S. Supăraţi fiind pe limba română, angajaţii redacţiei sport a PROTV o violează zilnic. La ştirile de duminică seara, un ambuscat care blasfemiază condiţia bipedă spunea că jucătorii echipei naţionale “au servit la cină tortellini cu parmezan”. Naţional, no. 280 din 18 May 1998, pp. 12, col. 2; ● armele din dotare: “(...) distinsa s-a năpustit să toace PDS-ul cu toate armele din dotare.” România Mare, anul XVI, no. 795, 7 October 2005, pp. 2; ● artilerie: “Paul Everac, Bustul de la Podu' Dâmbovicioarei, iritat la culme de reacţiile presei, declanşează săptămânal artileria sa de neologisme (...).”Academia Caţavencu, no. 16 (76), 27 April-3 May 1993, pp. 4, col. 1; ● breşă: “Mijlocaşul Puiu Iordănescu creând o breşă în zidul advers” Academia Caţavencu, anul IV, no. 11 (123), 22-28 March 1994, pp. 8; ● cocktail Molotov: “Înscriindu-ne în tonul de incitare ce este propriu publicaţiei, azi citim 199

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cu regret un nou “cocktail Molotov” aruncat în ograda guvernului.” Libertatea, anul 2, no. 239, 2-3 October 1990, pp. 3, col. 3; ● contingent: “Nicolae Manolescu, preşedintele PAC-ului, trădat de contingentul civic-liberal, se concentrează la Marina, prietena sa.” Academia Caţavencu, no. 25 (85), 29 June-5 July 1993, pp. 1; ● debarcare: “Debarcarea din December” subtitle in Academia Caţavencu, anul IV, no. 36 (148), 13-19 September 1994, pp. 8, col. 2; ● periscop: Cu periscopu' printre site-uri Magazin internaţional, 1218 January 2005, no. 588, pp. 18; ● petardă: “Adrian Năstase a ajuns în situaţia personajului din povestirea “Petrică şi lupul”: de prea multe ori a zăpăcit lumea (...) cu petarde politicoide de uz personal (...)”Adevărul, no. 3911, 23 January 2003; ● port-drapel, trasor: “Cel din mijloc este celebrul Ion Iliescu (...) port-drapel al democraţiei, trasorul principal al revoluţiei române.” Academia Caţavencu, anul IV, no. 47 (159), 29 November – 6 December 1994, pp. 2; ● radar: “Limbricii de presă nu apar pe radar.” Ziua, 27 June 2005; ● rafală de mitralieră: “(...) la pagina 7 urmează o rafală scurtă de mitralieră împotriva totalitarismului.” Academia Caţavencu, no. 1 (62), 12-18 January 1993, pp. 3, col. 4; ● recrut, pavilion, flotă: “Pentru a mobiliza spectatorii, organizatorii festivalului au imaginat un spectacol de tipul “Astă-seară, altceva”. Fiecare recrut sub pavilionul flotei divertismentului a fost invitat să facă altceva decât face de obicei.” Formula As, anul X, no. 422, 17-24 July 2000, pp. 2, col. 3; ● şarjă: “După toate aceste şarje eroice (...) îşi pune semnătura pe proiectul canalului (...)”Academia Caţavencu, no. 1 (62), 12-18 January 1993, pp. 3, col. 5; ● a trage din toate poziţiile: “Sub privirea uşor ermetică a colonelului Pricină, M. Ungureanu îşi reglează conturile cu istoria literaturii române (...) şi trage din toate poziţiile.” Academia Caţavencu, no.1 (62), 12-18 January 1993, pp. 3. 3. A Final Remark The main conclusion that can be drawn from the above sketchy presentation of a random corpus of lexical items ideologically and stylistically loaded is that such neologistic terms and phrases could be (and, actually, are) a welcome contribution to the general store of exprression means in a natural language (Romanian, in our case), but 200

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only insofar as they observe the rules of linguistic commonsense and verbal decency. References and selected bibliography [1] Bidu-Vrănceanu, Angela, Dinamica vocabularului românesc actual - sensuri “deviate” ale termenilor tehnico-ştiinţifici, in LL, 1/1995, pp. 38-45. [2] Recent Romanian press materials. Dimitrescu, Florica, Dicţionar de cuvinte recente (ediţia a II-a), Bucureşti, Editura Logos, 1997. Dimitrescu, Florica, Dinamica lexicului românesc – ieri şi azi, ClujBucureşti,Editura Clusium-Logos, 1995. Hristea, Theodor, Probleme de cultivare şi de studiere a limbii române contemporane, Academia Universitară Athenaeum, 1994. Irimia, Dumitru Structura stilistică a limbii române contemporane, Bucureşti, E.Ş.E., 1986. Mic Dicţionar Enciclopedic, Bucureşti, Editura Enciclopedică Română, 1972. Ploae-Hanganu, Mariana, Terminologia şi limba comună (pentru o bază de date terminologice), în LR, no. 9/1992. Preda, Irina, Îmbogăţirea lexico-semantică a limbii române actuale (cu privire specială la perioada postdecembristă), II, in LR, no. 10/1992, pp. 541-548. Slama-Cazacu, Tatiana, Psiholingvistica. O ştiinţă a comunicării, Bucureşti, Editura ALL, 1999 Slama-Cazacu, Tatiana, Strateme comunicaţionale şi manipularea, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2000 Stoichiţoiu-Ichim, Adriana, Vocabularul limbii române actuale – dinamică, influenţe, creativitate, Bucureşti, Editura All, 2001. Thom, Françoise, Limba de lemn, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 2005. Zafiu, Rodica, Diversitate stilistică în româna actuală, Bucureşti, EUB, 2001.

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PASSIVE MOTIVATION Assoc.prof. Pateşan Marioara, Ph.D.

“Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract In explaining the meaning of grammatical structures, not only are we interested in the kinds of entities and concepts as such but also in the roles of the entities as participants in the actions performed within certain situations. The interpretation of voice is a matter of considerable controversy. We can speak of at least two levels where voice can be dealt with: that of the sentence, involving both the verb and the subject/object with the attention focused on the relationships between them; and another one at the level of verb, where attention is focused on the internal features that determine certain types of relationship. We shall take a closer look at the uses of the passive, the contexts in which it occurs, the real–world situations in which it is needed and the criteria we use to judge permissible agent deletion. We will also try to motivate the necessity of the use of the passive in a military linguistic environment.

Keywords: passive, meaning, function, context, objectivity, agent, active subject Historically, the passive voice has been one of the most problematic and controversial constructions in English structures, and modern linguistic theory has added little to our understanding of the meaning and function of the passive, beyond reformulations in the terminology of the movement. Not a long time ago the treatment of the passive was a relatively simple matter of stating the formal relationship between the active and the passive voices, but recent linguistic investigations have indicated that usage of the passive voice 202

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is determined, not only by syntactic requisites but also by contextual considerations, such as forms and theme. If we begin with an analysis of the uses of the passive, the context in which it occurs, the real-world situations in which we need it, and the criteria we use for judging ‘permissible’ agent-deletion, we may come to a better understanding of the construction and perhaps provide the basis for intuitively satisfying grammatical description. The assumption that passives are synonymous with their ’underlying’ active versions, provided one of the early demonstrations in transformational theory of the explanatory power of abstractly formulated syntactic rules: because one could show logical equivalence between activities and passives, experts in transformational grammar, constructed symbolic rules that described the movement and insertions typical of passives. More recently, generative semanticists have expressed dissatisfaction with such descriptions of the passive but no one has proposed a better or more systematic description of the structure. If the nature of active/passive relationship figures so prominently in current theoretical discussions, we may wonder why we still know so little about this issue. Apparently, our unquestioning acceptance of the syntactic nature of the passive and the importance of this assumption for modern grammars have effectively hindered us from describing passivization, its uses, or its consequences. [1] Robin Lakoff makes the same point when she suggests that the important question to which linguists must address themselves is why passives exists at all. In a more ironic tone she wants us to ask “… why it (the passive) is so widespread when it apparently is so useless.”[2] F. R. Palmer speaking of the function of the passive in English, remarks: “The most difficult question to be asked about the passive is why it is used rather than the active.”[3] If we can establish the contextual conditions under which we choose to use the passive, the same criteria that we rely on in interpreting such usages, then we might arrive at an explanation of the relationship between the active and passive voices in English. Scattered throughout grammars of English and discussions of grammatical problems we find isolated statements about the stylistic 203

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purpose of the passive that are valuable, regardless of the theoretical framework within which grammarians make such statements. Most of them usually treat the passive as a variant of the ‘normal’ active and account for its use by appealing to stylistic purposes that are not explicitly defined. The prevalence of the passive voice in many kinds of written English, such as bureaucratic prose, memoranda, government documents, text-books -particularly those in education and the social science- and newspapers, provides the impetus for grammarians to offer reasons for selection of the passive. The continuing concern of grammarians with the passive and their statements attempting to assign values to its usage derive from the syntactic form of the passive – be, the topical shift from the logical subject to one of the logical objects, and the optional deletion of the logical subject (or agent). Evans and Evans (1957) are more explicit on this point and state that the passive is “… used mainly when one does not want to name the agent of an action, either because this should be concealed … or because it is irrelevant.” Jespersen, who provides one of the most adequate descriptions of the passive voice, also includes a lengthy discussion of what he believed to be the five most common reasons for choice of the passive: 1) The active subject is unknown or cannot easily be stated … In this category he also includes cases in which the promoted subject is of more interest than the logical subject. E.g. “the murdered was caught yesterday; the store was robbed and the passives that implicitly claim a “generic person” as the logical subject, e.g. it is known. 2) The logical subject is evident from the context. 3) There may be a special reason -tact or delicacy of sentimentfor not mentioning the active subject … 4) Even if the passive subject is indicated the passive turn is preferred if one takes a greater interest in the passive than in the active subject. 204

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5) The passive turn may facilitate the connection of one sentence with another “he rose to speak and was listened to, with enthusiasm, by the great crowd present” He also claims that “over 70 percent of passive sentences found in English literature contain no mention of the active subject.” [4] Putting aside uses of the passive where the logical subject is obvious from the context and those that occur because of syntactic constructions where the active voice would make the sentence awkward or unclear, the situation in which a speaker selects the passive, come down to just two: either we do not know the logical subject and we do not want to provide the reader with the information. Here we come to the problem of the situational factors that a speaker uses in determining how much the readers should know. These evaluations of the psychological impact of information explain what passive motivation is all about. There are many instances in spoken and written English in which the author chooses the passive as an act of self-protection. That is, we can use the passive not only to shield others from the consequences of their actions, but we can also remove ourselves from immediate responsibility. The passive voice provides us with a syntactic construction for deceiving our readers into believing that we are going to give them information when we are not. It is a construction that allows us to lie without overtly lying and only the careful analytical reader will notice that information is missing. The passive voice shifts the focus of a sentence away from the doer like in these examples: * The attacks were authorized and executed by target systems for the first time in 1967, although the attacks were limited to specific targets within each system. *Hanoi was bombed. The emphasis in the passive voice is always on what is happening, not on who is doing it. Sometimes the passive sentence mentions the agent, sometimes not, but there is always an implicit or explicit by whom. 205

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Deletion of the agent when it is not obvious either misinforms or deceives the reader. There are two types of laziness involved here: There is either an appeal to some generic agent and the reader is expected to understand that the deleted agent is either everyone or something or the writer does not want to bother to cite his sources. Further, the use of the passive as an appeal to some unspecified authority seems to be linked to the use of stative verbs and expletives, in such expressions as it is known, it is understood, it is thought and students and scholars alike use what is called the generic person in order to convey the idea that underlying their statement is a great body of universal agreement. If we look closely at such sentences, however what we actually find is a “suppressed” agent. It has been printed out numerous times … It has been observed that man … It is believed that … Every occurrence of a verb is in the passive voice and the agent is not overt. In such particular cases, we can be fairly certain that the agent refers to public officials and/or politicians. It would seem then that the popularity of the passive is directly related to the obsession with what we like to call objectivity which apparently requires the deletion of a human agent. Thus, while we can say that such use of the passive may have been originally and clearly conscious, it happens that current use of the passive is probably unconscious in most cases and signals a particular habit of mind, a way of viewing the world as though one were somehow not really wholly involved with the world or responsible for one’s observations of the world. In The Seven Sins of Technical Writing, Freedman’s position is that sin 6 is “the Deadly Passive, or better, deadening passive; it takes the life out of writing making everything impersonal, eternal, remote and dead” but he adds that “frequently, of course, the passive is not a sin and not deadly, for there is no active agent and the material must be put impersonally.” [5] 206

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The immediate result of the passive is to draw our attention away from the agent carrying out the action of the verb especially when the agent has been deleted and to focus our attention elsewhere. Voice is but the quality in verbs that shows whether a subject is the actor or is acted upon. Since the development of transformational-generative approach to language, linguists have been working at the relation between active and passive voices in terms of transformational rules but almost no attempt has been made within the transformational framework to see whether all passive sentences occurring in a natural language are interchangeable with their active counterparts in the context in which they have been used. Books on rhetoric ask writers to avoid the use of the passive voice. Gibson (1966) remarks that a text with more than passive every twenty verbs is stuffy one with less than one passive every twenty verbs is tough and one with no passives at all is sweet. [6] Even a writer of George Orwell’s eminence and understanding recommends: Never use the passive where you can use the active-[7] a sound elementary rule, though we find him using a series of passives in his famous novel 1984. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out in the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the hut set on fire with incendiary bullets: This is called ‘pacification.’ Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than can carry: this is called ‘transfer of population’ or ‘rectification of frontier’. If we try to put these sentences into the active, we not only face the problem of finding out who did Orwell accuse of bombing villages, but also of evaluating the impact of the presence of these agents in surface sentences. In cases like these: The focus of attention shifts away from the concretization of the vague concept of ‘pacification’ to the devil who is indulging in such crimes. [8]

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When the active subject is self-evident from the context we should use a passive construction. But there are so many cases in which the active subject is unknown or cannot be easily stated. • The Arabs sentries were silently knifed and the camps attacked before the raiders were discovered. – it is obvious that the Arab sentries who discovered the raiders were not the same who “were silently knifed.” Passives have properties of syntactically marked constructions. The frequency of syntactic structure is more often computed than predicted. There are several studies of text where the types and percentages of passives have been observed and computed. It is notable that, despite the independent nature of many of these studies, the range of the frequencies of passives is surprisingly small. Studies show that passives are used least in conversation and most in scientific writing. This suggests that the passive has a function. That cannot be duplicated by other grammatical forms. The conditions for passive use must be necessarily included in a theory which can arrive at a predicted value for passive frequency. Krauthamer states that: The passive presents an intriguing situation since it is a grammatical alternative to the active in expressing a transitive proposition. I mean a situation involving two entities an agent which performs an action upon a patient.” [9] In order to describe such a situation a person may use one of two basic grammatical constructions to convey the same information – the active or the full passive. By placing the agent at the end of the sentence in a by phrase, the full passive expresses the same content as the active, but in reverse order. The truncated passive, a more common form deletes the agent entirely and so its content is not equivalent to the active and therefore not a grammatical alternative. Givon states that in a passive clause the agent is demoted from its pragmatic role of main topic as well as from its more normal role of grammatical subject. [10]. Huddleson introduces the term agentless passives as “the agent is a freely omissible element of clause structure: there are no cases where the rules of syntax require an agent to be present” and he goes on adding that: “textual studies show that some passives are agentless.” [11] 208

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In the military texts the focus is on the event rather than on the agent of the event; therefore the agent is demoted. Passive constructions are used very easily in explaining different military actions as we are interested in the action itself and not in the doer or, in some cases, the actor is unknown, or simply we want to give credit to someone who created something. That is why, the understanding of how the passive is formed and works is necessary for any military student. References [1] Stanley, Julia: Passive Motivation. Foundations of Language, Cambridge, Newbury, 1979, pp. 68-69. [2] Lakoff , Robin: 1971, Passive Resistance. Papers from the Seventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, (Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, pp. 141-61). [3] Palmer, F.R.: A Linguistic Study of the English Verb, London, Longman, 1976, p 87. [4]Jesperson, Otto: Essentials of English Grammar, London, Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1933, pp 121-134. [5]Freedman, Morris: The Seven Sins of Technical Writing, CCC 9, 1958, p 14. [6] Gibson, Walker: Tough, Sweet and Stuffy: An Essay on Modern American Prose Styles, Bloomington, Indiana U.P., 1966. [7] Orwell, George: Politics and the English Language,London, Horizon, April, 1948. [8] Kumar, Anjani: How Passives are Passives?, Chicago, University of Chicago, 1987, pp. 631-642. [9] Krauthamer, Helen, The Prediction of Passive Occurrence, Chicago, University of Chicago, 1987, pp. 307-323. [10] Givon, T.: English Grammar. A Functional Based Introduction, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 1993, p. 48. [11] Huddleston, R.: Introduction to the Grammar of English, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 440.

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THE LANGUAGE OF BRANDS AS A SYMBOL OF GLOBALIZATION Assoc.Prof. Vinţean Adriana, PhD

“Lucian Blaga”University, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract The brand, and "branding" and brand equity have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as cultural accessories and personal philosophies. The growth of multinationals and the globalization of their impact is wrapped up with the rise of the brand.

Keywords: global ,market, consumer, business ,world. Brands are collections of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, they refer to the descriptive verbal attributes and concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme that convey the essence of a company, product or service. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences with the specific product or service, both directly relating to its use, and through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product or service. A brand serves to create associations and expectations among products made by a producer. A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols and sound which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality. The key objective is to create a relationship of trust. 210

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Any company must take time to brand its product carefully. A brand is not just a name, it is a distinctive identity that differentiates a relevant, enduring and credible promise of value associated with a product, service, organization. Brands are the express checkout for people living their lives at ever increasing speed. They establish a reputation for the product as a foundation. And once this is laid, the company must keep in mind that every purchase is an emotional one. Successful global brands recognize the value in understanding the diversity of cultures and tastes in global markets and address the complexities of adapting the customer experience. Therefore, easier access to international markets creates greater challenges in brands and product management. A successful brand is much more than a logo or a colour scheme. It includes everything we say about ourselves, the images we use. Brand language allows them to express freely their ideology, it serves as a means of decentralizing decisions. Thanks to the use of a common glossary of terms, different subsidiaries worldwide can adapt the theme of their messages to the local market and product requirements. Every country has its own national characteristics and preferences. But the same few brands are well known and popular throughout the world. Consumers round the world value roughly the same values and attributes in their favourite brands, having global reach, aspiring qualities and prominent leadership. The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multi-national corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid-1980s: successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products. Brand builders are the new primary producers in our so-called knowledge economy. One of the key elements that keeps companies as multinationals rather than transnational is the extent to which they look to 'outsource' products, components and services. Corporations should not expend their finite resources on factories that will demand physical upkeep, on machines that will corrode or on employees who will certainly age and die. Instead, they should concentrate those 211

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resources in the virtual brick and mortar used to build their brands. Coca Cola and other major companies spend huge sums of money in promoting and sustaining their brands. One strategy is to try and establish particular brands as an integral part of the way people understand, or would like to see, themselves. With respect the operation of multinationals this has had a particular impact on children and young people (and education). There is an attempt 'to get them young'. Significantly, the focus on brand rather than the inherent qualities of the product as well as advantaging multinationals in terms of market development also has an Achilles heel. Damage to the brand can do disproportionate harm to sales and profitability. If a brand becomes associated with failure or disgrace (for example where a sports star they use to advertise their brand is exposed as a drug-taker; or where the brand becomes associated in the public's mind with the exploitation of children – as for example has happened with some of the main trainer makers) then it can face major problems in the marketplace. Let us consider three brands everybody is aware of and find out whether they are competitive or not. The domination of brands like Mc Donald’s, Coca Cola, Jacobs, over the world economy is growing steadily. Their sales had increased as the world competition heated up and they maintained their position and status all over the world. Each of these brands has a history and they became successful on all markets all around the globe. Mc Donald’s is the leading global foodservice retailer with more than 30,000 local restaurants serving 52 million people in more than 100 countries each day. More than 70% of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local men and women. It is one of the world's most well-known and valuable brands and holds a leading share in the globally branded quick service restaurant segment of the informal eating-out market in virtually every country in which we do business. McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of fastfood restaurants, primarily selling hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken, French fries, breakfasts and soft drinks. More recently, it also offers salads, fruit, snack wraps, and carrot sticks. The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by siblings Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California. Their introduction of the 212

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"Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955, the ninth McDonald's restaurant overall. McDonald's restaurants are found in 120 countries and territories around the world and serve nearly 54 million customers each day. The company also operates other restaurant brands, such as Piles Café and Boston Market, and has a minority stake in Pret a Manger. With the successful expansion of McDonald's into many international markets, the company has become a symbol of globalization and the spread of the American way of life. Its prominence has also made it a frequent topic of public debates about obesity, corporate ethics and consumer responsibility. Most standalone McDonald's restaurants offer both counter service and drive-through service, with indoor and sometimes outdoor seating. Drive-Thru, Auto-Mac, Pay and Drive, or McDrive as it is known in many countries, often has separate stations for placing, paying for, and picking up orders, though the latter two steps are frequently combined; it was first introduced in Arizona in 1975, following the lead of other fast-food chains. In some countries “McDrive” locations near highways offer no counter service or seating. In contrast, locations in high-density city neighborhoods often omit drive-through service. There are also a few locations, located mostly in downtown districts, that offer Walk-Thru service in place of Drive-Thru. The Coca-Cola Company is the world's biggest drinks company, controlling more than half the global market in carbonated soft drinks as well as a substantial chunk of the non-carbonated segment. Its principal brand is of course Coca-Cola itself, the single most valuable brand in the world. But the company also sells almost 400 other beverages ranging from spin-offs such as Cherry Coke and sister brands Fanta and Sprite to a vast range of carbonated and noncarbonated juice-based drinks, bottled waters, iced teas and coffees. Coca-Cola is the world's most famous, most valuable brand. But the company has seen sales growth stall since the close of the 1990s, as worldwide consumers develop a taste for other beverages. Coke initiated a painful restructuring, and then launched its biggest-ever 213

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marketing campaign in 2001, with a new emphasis on local markets instead of global conformity. Think Local, Act Local was the new strategy; but that too was slow to deliver results. Since then the group has struggled to find new ways of lifting sales of its core product. If 'Coca-Cola' were the name of a person, how would we describe that person? How does that person make us feel? Consumers often prefer products that have a strong, positive image. An important ingredient of this image will be the associations that are evoked in the mind of the consumer. The 'brand personality' is what people think and feel, consciously and subconsciously, about a company identity or product and is described the same way as you would a person. It is necessary to create the right image i.e. one that closely matches consumers' feelings and expectations of what the product should be like. Marketing managers try to build on associations between products and other aspects of life. Sponsorship is one way of building these brandassociations. Sponsorship involves providing financial support, creative input, media support, and experience to an important event or activity organized by another party. In return, the company receives a public opportunity to be seen to support and be associated with an event, activity or person. Sponsorship is a crucial part of a public relations strategy because it is possible to reach a target audience with a specific message. Since the establishment of Special Olympics in 1968, The Coca-Cola Company has been an active global sponsor, providing monetary and in-kind contributions, hands-on volunteer assistance, equipment, uniforms and other materials and services for Special Olympics competitions and community activities. October 2006, Coca-Cola extended its top-level, worldwide partnership, including the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games, this year's largest global sports event. These are the first Special Olympics World Summer Games in Asia and only the second edition of the World Summer Games held outside the UnitedStates. The Coca-Cola Company is the only sponsor supporting the Olympic Games, Paralympic Games and Special Olympics World Games. Today, Coca-Cola spends more money on global sports sponsorships than Pepsi or any other company, with total worldwide expenditures in excess of US$ 1 billion a year. 'Coca-Cola's' brand 214

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personality reflects the positioning of its brand. The process of positioning a brand or product is a complex managerial task and must be done over time using all the elements of the marketing mix. Positioning is in the mind of the consumer and can be described as how the product is considered by that consumer. When researching the positioning of a product, consumers are often asked how they would describe that product if it were a person. The purpose of this is to develop a character statement. This can ensure that consumers have a clear view of the brand values that make up the brand personality, just like the values and beliefs that make up a person. Many people see 'Coca-Cola' as a part of their daily life. This affinity between the brand and the consumer leads to a high degree of loyalty and makes the purchasing decision easier. Brand positioning guides 'what' will be communicated in the company's advertising, while the character statement guides 'how' a message should be delivered or put across. Jacobs is one of Kraft’s billion-dollar brands The Jacobs coffee company, based in Bremen, Germany, can be traced to Johann Jacobs, born in 1869. This third industrious entrepreneur in Jacobs Suchard's story opened a shop offering chocolates, tea, biscuits, and coffee in 1895. Jacobs opened a roasting plant of his own in 1906, and seven years later registered the Jacobs brand of coffee. In 1929 Johann Jacobs handed over the leadership of the company to his son Walther. Jacobs coffee, is today marketed in Europe by Kraft Foods it is sold throughout Europe and the Middle East and it represents a market leader in Austria, the Baltic countries, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey, Iran, and Ukraine. Available in roast and ground, whole beans, soluble crystals, coffee pods and flavored mixes, Jacobs continues to set the industry standard for delicious coffee. Jacobs coffee (German: Jacobs Kaffee) is the most popular German coffee brand for many good reasons. There's a Jacobs coffee variety for every taste and mood. The famous Krönung family of coffees provides everything from the deepest rich roast to the mildest blends. Whole bean, ground or instant; caffeinated or decaffeinated; enriched with European chocolate, cream and sugar, our Jacobs coffee varieties are a coffee-drinker's delight. Processed to extract full flavor from the bean 215

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with less chance of creating stomach acid, these coffees also provide antioxidant health benefits. Now available in three varieties for discerning coffee drinkers: • Pearl beans from Kenya – these rare beans are from the cool highlands in Kenya. Intense, aromatic coffee. • Supremo beans from Colombia – these large beans mature in the highlands of Colombia. Smooth, mild coffee. • Volcanic beans from Indonesia – these beans grow in mineral-rich, fertile volcanic soil in Indonesia. Strong, spicy coffee. The brand Jacobs informs the consumers about the content of antioxidants with a sign applied on the package. The antioxidants contained by the coffee help the organism to stay immune and to defend him against free radicals in order to slow the aging process and prevent disease. Jacobs’s coffee is also recognized for its stimulating properties and its ability to increase short term recall and increase IQ. On the domestic coffee market, there is a trend to go for packaged products, which are of higher quality because they retain the coffee flavor for a longer period of time. Much interest is on the global market part of which is global advertising. This is changing all over the world and becomes more global in its practice. The language in advertisements has powerful effect on people who are persuaded to buy and enjoy the products. Here are some examples: “Continuous quality is quality you trust” “Make it every time a good time” “Make it every day a Mc Donald’s day” “Gather all family around it as the taste is unique” “A dream that comes true, a divine experience…” “A drink like a legend with a soul only for you” “When you wish everything to be perfect the taste of Coca Cola is happiness” “This is the coffee that inspires you” In general such brands are associated with happiness, joy, luck, fun, high spirits, merry moods, delight, desire and make you feel good. 216

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As such, today businesses are expending beyond their immediate borders into the global market place to manage extreme growth by opening new markets. Globalization is asking for new challenges on branding as far as countries compete with one another for the attention, respect and trust of investors, tourists and consumers. A strong and memorable name for a product or service will lead purchases asking for the product or service by name and this of course good. And a powerful and positive nation brand provides a crucial competitive advantage.

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COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION AND COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE AMONG MARITIME STUDENTS Asst.Prof. Alibec Camelia, PhD

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract This paper reports on communicative apprehension or speech anxiety in relation to oral communication activities conducted in a maritime ESP class and the type of communication situation that maritime practitioners experience. Using English in a multilingual crew and the type and quality of English spoken on board a ship are a concern for maritime students because these highlight job-related interaction and communication in a specialized industry. The maritime-related context of communication, while the maritime students are still in their training and education, is very important in order to gain more understanding of English within ESP and to address future needs of these maritime students especially in relation to their oral proficiency. Teaching oral communication may involve a focus on its interpersonal or intercultural aspects, but is often associated with public speaking. One of the issues raised in public speaking is communicative apprehension or CA which is defined as “an anxiety syndrome associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons” [1].

Keywords: communication apprehension, maritime English, maritime students, communication skills Communication apprehension (CA) has attracted a lot of research in the fields of psychology and education, especially in the area of student behavior in the classroom. Earlier studies have focused on 218

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correlations between CA and academic achievement. More studies have concluded that students’ performances are directly related to their levels of CA (low, moderate or high CA). These studies show that there is a clear connection between CA levels and academic achievement among college students. Some studies attempt to provide evidence for associations between CA and different aspects of communication; there may be factors related to some psychological or other internally driven considerations. One study focuses on apprehension and self-perceived communication competence among students who shutter and students who do not (Blood, Tellis &Gabel, 2001). This study has found that students who shuttered had higher levels of CA and poorer scores on their self-perceived communication competence, compared to those who do not shutter. Other studies (OPT & Loffredo, 2000) have established a possible link between CA and personality traits. It was found that those who were more likely to be introverts experienced higher levels of CA than extroverts. Levels of communication apprehension could also be triggered by external factors, such as the type of classroom assignment or speech tasks. Witt & Behnke (2006) have tested anticipatory anxiety across speech assignments and found that trait anxiety was highest for impromptu speaking, lower for extemporaneous speaking and lowest for manuscript reading: “not only do students associate general, traitlike expectations of anxiety by speech type, but they also experience actual state anxiety indicators of differing intensity when faced with differing speech delivery types” [2]. Another potential external source of communication apprehension is the field of study intended major. Simons, Higgins & Lowe (1995) have noted observations by practitioners and academics who claim that oral and written communication skills among accounting majors need much attention. Their study has found that accounting majors have higher apprehension toward speaking and writing compared to other business majors. Another significant body of research on communication apprehension is concerned with how it is influenced by the nature of 219

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language learning classroom itself. That is, it explores CA levels in contexts where the medium of instruction is not the learners’ first language or mother tongue, or classrooms where learners learn English as their second or foreign language. McCroskey, Fayer & Richmond (1983) have noted a significant correlation between self-perceived competence in a second language and their Ca levels in the same language. Young’s (1989) study among high school students learning Spanish also supports the claim that language anxiety is much pronounced when we communicate in a language that is not our first language. Another related and interesting study is that of Keaten, Kelly & Pribly (1997) which has found that communication apprehension levels of Japanese elementary and secondary students learning English as a second language have increased from primary to secondary school. Most recently studies on communication apprehension have tried to paint a much more complex picture of social and cognitive influences affecting CA levels among different kinds of learners and students. Zhang (2005) has found that communication apprehension is affected by both individual and cultural factors, indicating that student-teacher relations correlate with CA levels in various ways. In the same time, delivery formats may also have an impact on the cognitive and affective learning outcomes of students. In this respect, class size does affect the quality of learning; lecture formats have tended to improve the students’ cognitive development, while mixedsized formats have resulted in students’ significantly improved affective learning mechanisms. The above mentioned points on the relevant literature on communication apprehension show that this is a serious issue, a phenomenon that is worth investigating. Therefore we are justified to investigate CA in the context of English as a second language (ESL) and, more specifically, in an ESL English for specific purposes context, because it is in situations like this where various cognitive and cultural elements work together (or against each other) to generate communication apprehension that is both complex and real. Besides, zeroing in now on English for maritime purposes, there has been little 220

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research done on experiences of students enrolling in maritime studies, especially those concerning communication apprehension. It is thus of much interest to study maritime communication because, as Sampson & Zhao note, the “introduction of multilingual crews and the loss of universal forms of communication have made English as the lingua franca of the sea more desirable and, perhaps, inevitable” [3]. The maritime field is heavily reliant on constant and exact communication as well as understanding of mathematical formulas and their application on the field. Students are also expected to be proficient in English since the technical jargon is mainly English, and because of the high probability of working in a multicultural environment. More than that to ensure safety of their passengers and colleagues, maritime students must also learn effective communication skills. There has been observed that in most countries, maritime professionals generally lack English communication skills. This generalization is attributed to the status of English in the countries where these professionals come from, as either ESL (English as a Second Language) or EFL (English as a Foreign Language). Although the number of the native English speaking mariners is relatively small compared to the world total of mariners, there is no doubt whatever that English is the language of the sea; without it, it is impossible to pursue a seafaring career. There are many reasons for this simple truth, and here are some of them: • English is the accepted language of international trade • More people learn to speak English than any other foreign language • English is the first choice second language in most nonnative English speaking countries • English is the language of the sea and has been for a very long time • English has been adopted by the IMO (International Maritime Organization) as the language of the sea; STCW 1995 (Standards of Training, Certification and Watch 221

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keeping Convention) requires that every mariner must have an adequate knowledge of it • English is the language most used in VHF, ship to ship, ship to shore, shore to ship and SAR (Search and Rescue) • English is requires as a condition of employment on many internationally manned ships • Maritime students everywhere want to learn English, because they know that it is the key to the best jobs, in their own countries or overseas The STCW Convention stresses that seafarers should be able to communicate with each other in relation to shipboard duties. But one of the biggest problems with multicultural crews is the lack of a common language and all that it entails. Another one is cultural differences, except to be aware of the existence of them. More often, miscommunication due to cultural differences and the perceived lack of proficiency in the English language of the maritime students are identified as sources of concern in the language classroom. With the involvement of technical terms/jargon and the high use of written and spoken communication, it is therefore even more imperative for maritime professionals to undergo extensive English communication skills training. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”, an English proverb, tells us that one should act or speak according to the different situations. As for the language, one should not only speak the language spoken in the country, but also do whatever is proper in the country, in other words, know the culture well. Social conventions are the product of communities of language users. Common attitudes, beliefs and values are reflected in the way members of the group use language, what they choose to say or not to say and how they say it. Not only the grammatical, lexical, and phonological features of their language differentiate them from others, but also the topics they choose to talk about, the way they present information, the style with which they interact, in other words, their discourse accent. Cross-cultural and/or communication skills training must be contextualized to achieve maximum effectiveness; therefore maritime 222

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instructors should use materials that suit the specific needs of their maritime students. Lack of any long term commitment to language education has meant that trainers in maritime English have been required to produce a succession of quick solutions to a problem that is essentially long-term in character. No one involved in general education would, for example, expect a student to learn and apply the theory and practice of bridge building in a few weeks of study, yet that is what is asked of some maritime trainers when attempting to teach maritime English. In the same way, many administrations place a very low value indeed on the precise standards of maritime English necessary successfully to carry out any particular maritime task. Evidence of this is contained in STCW 95 when the phrase “sufficient English” is used in connection with a number of functions requiring knowledge of the language. Thus the maritime English lecturer is left with a peculiar feeling of isolation and responsibility. Isolation because he has little precise international guidance on the standards his students should achieve, and responsibility because he knows that, in situations of life and death, it will be the language skills and the way kevel of his communication apprehension that he has taught that will succeed or not. IMO is well aware of the situation and has provided the seafarers with at least a minimum device of communication, a kind of restricted safety language called SMNV (Standard Marine Navigational Vocabulary), as well as the creation of the SMPC (Standard Marine Communication Phrases) by the help of which IMO undertakes a new attempt to erode language barriers at sea. The safety of life at sea, the marine environment and over 80% of the world’s trade depends on the professionalism and competence of seafarers, as well as on their communication apprehension abilities. References [1] McCroskey, J. C. Classroom consequences of comprehension apprehension, Prentice Hall, London, 1977, pp. 27-28. [2] Witt, A., Behnke, R. Anticipating speech anxiety as a function of public speaking, Journal of communication education, no.5, 2006, pp. 167-177. 223

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[3] Sampson, H., Zhao, M. Multilingual crews; communication and the operation of ships, Journal of World English, London, no. 22, 2003, p. 31. Blood, G., Tellis, G., Gabel, R. Communication apprehension and selfperceived communication with adolescents, Journal of Fluency Disorders, London, no. 26, 2001, pp. 161-178. Keaten, J., Kelly, L., Pribyl, C. Communication apprehension in Japan, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, no. 21, 1997, pp. 319-343. McCroskey, J., Fayer, J., Richmond, V. Don’t speak to me in English, Communication Research Reports, London, 1983, pp. 185-192. Opt, C., Loffredo, A. Rethinking communication apprehension, The Journal of Psychology, no. 134, 200, pp. 556-570. Zhang, Q. Immediacy, humor, power distance and classroom, Communication Research Reports, no.53, 2005, pp. 109-124.

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COMMON ERRORS IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATING LEGAL TEXTS Asst.Prof. Badea Simina, PhD

University of Craiova [email protected]

Abstract As a teacher of English to students in law and administrative sciences, I have often been in the position of overcoming many difficulties when using translation as a tool of improving knowledge of legal and administrative English. In the process of translating legal texts, students make a lot of mistakes commonly due to the fact that legal translation implies not only conveying a meaning from the source language to the target language, but also transferring a message from one legal system to another. This kind of errors can be roughly divided into two categories: lexical and grammatical errors. One important step towards eradicating them is to identify them.

Keywords: translation, legal texts, errors 1. Introduction This paper has less been conceived from the perspective of a translator or an interpreter specializing in legal language and terminology, but from that of a teacher whose interesting, challenging, sometimes surprising job is to teach English to students in law and administrative sciences. Class management implies, among others, the use of a series of techniques and methods which help students acquire this type of specialized language and render it more accessible. In this framework, translation represents an important tool that can improve knowledge of legal English. 225

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Even for professional translators and interpreters, the translation of legal texts is a difficult task, requiring good training, talent, patience and constant research. So it is understandable that Romanian law students who have one English course a week find translation exercises rather complicated and uncomfortable. One reason is definitely the “cultural asymmetry” [1] between various legal systems. Romanian legal terms reflect concepts and practices of the civil law system, rooted in Roman Law, later known as Civil Law or Continental Law; consequently, they are not always exact equivalents of English terms, which are articulated in the common law system, adopted by American countries and those of Anglo-Saxon background. My experience as a teacher has revealed the fact that there are some errors which seem to be recurrent in the process of translating legal texts either from Romanian into English or from English into Romanian. Since a first step towards eradicating such errors is to identify them, for methodological and didactic reasons, a simple classification involves lexical and grammatical errors. 2. Lexical errors The word law itself causes troubles to students from the very beginning, starting with its pronunciation. When I write it and ask students “How do you pronounce this word, what does it mean, what notions do you associate it with?”, the answer is almost the same every time: E. law (invariably pronounced [ləu] or [lau] instead of [lo:]) means R. lege, and they connect it to terms such as E. justice, judge, rule, crime, lawyer (pronounced [laiə] as in liar) etc. If their legal culture enables them to understand the primary sense of E. law, that is R. lege (when making reference to a norm or rule), it is not so easy when it comes about other senses. In case the word E. law is preceded by an indefinite article or bears the mark of the plural, namely –s, the translation is undoubtedly R. lege. Yet, the term also means R. drept, denoting a system of principles or a branch of law as in: civil law, criminal law, constitutional law, administrative law, family law etc. 226

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Another series of mistakes arise when the target language is English this time and students are required to translate the Romanian drept in different contexts. In the sentence “Dreptul reprezintă totalitatea regulilor, normelor de conduită stabilite sau sancţionate de stat şi care sunt puse în aplicare prin forţa de constrângere a statului”, the word “dreptul” is translated in most cases by “the right”, whereas the correct term is “law”, preceded by the zero article. E. Right is the word that should be used in a syntagm like R. drepturile omului or drept subiectiv civil, providing the English equivalents human rights (often translated “man’s rights”) and E. civil subjective right, in which E. right refers to “a privilege recognized and protected by law or the freedom to exercise any power conferred by law” [2]. Along the same line, the English jurisdiction has two Romanian equivalents, jurisdicţie şi competenţă, as in E. appellate jurisdiction, meaning “competenţa instanţei de apel” [3]. One situation in which the “cultural asymmetry“ mentioned in the introduction of this paper produces confusion involves the translation of the syntagm E. common law. When studying a short history of the common law system during the English language and legal terminology class, students legitimately wonder how to render the meaning of this expression. Before reading the text in the coursebook and understanding the contrast and discrepancies between the two major systems of law – the civil law system and the common law system – they are tempted to translate E. common law as “lege comună”, which is partially true if we take into account the historical evolution of the term, but it is not accurate. This concept is complex and it can be characterized from three perspectives [4]: 1. “as a description of a legal system typically contrasted with a civil law system; 2. as a description of the historical development of a legal system that evolved from the 12th century and was ‘common’ to all England as opposed to local laws and customs (…); 3. as opposed to the notions of ‘equity’ and ‘statute law’”. So the term refers to the legal systems prevailing in Britain and in those countries, such as Canada and the United States, that were originally colonized by English settlers. 227

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Another option of the students is R. “drept comun”, but this translation is puzzling too, because during their first academic year, students find out that in our legal system, one of the functions of civil law for example, is that of R. “drept comun”, which has nothing to do with the common law system and might be misleading about the denotation of the original term. In the Romanian doctrine, the position of R. “drept comun” (literally “common law”) of civil law, “is expressed in the idea that when another law branch does not have its own norms to regulate a certain aspect of a juridical relation, one has to make use of the corresponding norm under civil law, briefly, other law branches ‘borrow’ norms from civil law” (“poziţia de drept comun se exprimă în ideea că atunci când o altă ramură de drept nu conţine norme proprii care să reglementeze un anumit aspect al unui raport juridic, se apelează la norma corespunzătoare din dreptul civil, pe scurt, alte ramuri de drept “împrumută” norme de la dreptul civil”) [5]. The Romanian civil law as “drept comun” (literally “common law”) is not ordinary law at all, but the law that everybody uses, everybody needs. Recent dictionaries [6] offer the following possibilities: R. ”drept cutumiar, common law”. The idea of R. “drept cutumiar” (meaning “ custom or customary law”) stems from the fact that this common law system is based to a great extent on judicial decisions rather than on the efforts of legislators, as happens in our legal system, which is a civil one. The best solution seems to leave it as it is, since a literal translation appears inaccurate and misleading. Another good choice is to explore the latter of the two approaches to translation which have been described so far [7], i.e. that to a communicative translation, more pragmatic, reader-oriented and closer to the original notion. The Romanian equivalent may sound then as “sistemul de drept anglosaxon”, an adaptation relying on a paraphrase that most legal practitioners use in order to avoid confusion. Common law stands besides other terms that cannot be translated, for instance E. Law Lords, Lord Chief Justice or equity. I will also deal with this problematic term named equity. You need some imagination to understand it as R. “echilateralitate”. 228

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Dictionaries advance the following equivalents: “echitate, dreptate, drept natural (spre deosebire de dreptul scris); lege nescrisă” [8]. In ordinary language, equity means natural justice. In the law of England, the concept was indeed inspired by the ideal of natural justice, denoting the application of the dictates of conscience to the settlement of disputes. But it is more than that, i.e. a system of law complementary to the common law and originally administered by the Lord Chancellor and later by the Court of Chancery, as distinct from that administered by the courts of common law. It was developed in England, then followed in the United Stated, aiming “to supplement and remedy the inflexibility of the common law” [9]. Other errors appear in the translation of E. House of Lords and House of Commons, the two chambers of the British parliament, which students view as R.“Casa Lorzilor” and “Casa Comună”, instead of R. Camera Lorzilor and Camera Comunelor, established by practice and tradition. The E. merits of a case become R. “meritele unui caz”, whereas the correct equivalent is R. temei juridic. Let us consider the following sentences with concern to the three types of settling disputes outside of court, namely negotiation, mediation and arbitration: R. “Ambele părţi aflate în conflict sunt de acord ca o a treia parte să ia o decizie în locul lor. Un arbitru este ca un judecător.” Besides the common mistake E. part or side for R. parte, instead of E. party, there is another word causing constant confusion, R. arbitru. These are the synonyms falling within the entry arbitru in a dictionary of legal terms: “adjudicator, arbiter, arbitrator, assessor, judge, mediator, referee, settler, umpire” [10]. In this case the right selection seems coordinated by good luck. Another dictionary is more precise, stating that E. arbitrator is the legal term, whereas E. umpire or referee belong to sports, E. judge or arbiter are used figuratively [11]. Indeed, an arbitrator is a neutral, middle person who considers the merits of a dispute and renders a final and binding decision called an award.

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3. Grammatical errors The most significant and obvious grammatical mistake that students make when translating a piece of legislation with authoritative character is the use of the auxiliary will (to form the future) instead of the modal shall (expressing obligation). They also fail to use the Present Tense Simple, which is mistakenly replaced by the Present Tense Continuous. Compare the following English versions of R. “Curtea reţine că există o încălcare a Convenţiei”: “The Court is retaining that there is a break of the Convention” “The Court holds that there has been a violation of the Convention” The latter translation is adequate, emphasizing the correct use of another tense, the Present Perfect, and of the verb hold. Modality is another source of errors which only consistent study and observance of the morphological and syntactic rules of legislation and other pieces of legal writing can uproot. R. “Consiliul poate adopta prevederi pentru a facilita exercitarea unor drepturi” E. “The Council may adopt provisions with a view to facilitating the exercise of certain rights” In an example like the one above, students would rather operate with can instead of may, which does not represent a grammatical mistake in fact, it is just a matter of specificity of a style characterizing legislation. If they read the Treaty of Maastricht for instance, a monument of European law, they will realize that it is permeated with the use of E. may. They will also notice that E. save is not used as a verb, but as a preposition with the meaning of E. except. 4. Conclusions There are many questions arising in the process of translating the language of the law, which practically means decoding a message from one legal system and encoding it into another. Bilingual dictionaries are not a substitute for constant study and exploration of original legal texts. Nor can such study cover the lexical lacunae, the 230

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incompatibility, incongruity of legal concepts in the source language and target language. Hard work, deep knowledge of both systems of law, as well as excellent training in linguistics are an essential prerequisite for successful translation and translation teaching. References [1] Gémar, Jean-Claude, Traduire ou l'art d'ìnterpréter, Québec: Presses de l'Université de Québec, 1995. [2] Oxford Dictionary of Law, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 408. [3] Grecu, Onorina, Dicţionar juridic român-englez, englez-român, Bucureşti, C.H. Beck, 2008, p. 270. [4] Badea, Simina, English for law students – Curs practic de terminologie juridică şi limba engleză, Craiova, Universitaria, 2004, p. 27. [5] Dogaru, I.; Cercel, S., Drept civil. Partea generală, Bucureşti, C.H. Beck, 2007, p. 15. [6] Grecu, Onorina, Dicţionar juridic român-englez, englez-român, Bucureşti, C. H. Beck, 2008, p. 276. [7] Newmark, Peter, About Translation, Clevedon, Philadelphia, Adelaide, Multilingual Matters LTD, 1993. [8] Grecu, Onorina, Dicţionar juridic român-englez, englez-român, Bucureşti, C.H. Beck, 2008, p. 238. [9] Badea, Simina, English for law students – Curs practic de terminologie juridică şi limba engleză, Craiova, Universitaria, 2004, p. 29. [10] Grecu, Onorina, Dicţionar juridic român-englez, englez-român, Bucureşti, C.H. Beck, 2008, p. 17. [11] Nedelcu, C., Murar, I., Bratu, A., Bantaş, A., Dicţionar român-englez, Bucureşti, Teora, 2000, p. 91.

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ESP EVALUATION. COMPUTER VERSUS TEACHER TESTING Asst.Prof. Balagiu Alina, PhD

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract According to the specialists, nowadays there are many types of tests classified on different criteria. We would like to take into consideration the strong and weak points of both the traditional and the modern ways of evaluating the students’ progress. From our point of view, the type of evaluation should be connected to the student’s profile, and the evaluation should be related to the type of work the student is going to perform when leaving the University or the Academy.

Keywords: test, purpose, computer, achievement, method 1. Introduction Language assessment is an important part of the teaching process and it is usually performed in the form of tests. On the other hand tests play a powerful role in the individual life of people at different stages, starting from primary school and continuing through all educational process up to university, going on to finding a job in their county or abroad, or moving from one county to another. 2. Tests classification Tests have been classified from different points of view. There are many types of English tests according to the purpose or method. We are not going to exhaustively present here all types of tests according to the linguists’ classification, but concentrate on the two 232

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types mentioned above. According to Tim McNamara there are two important types of tests if we take into consideration their purpose: “achievement and proficiency tests” [1]. Achievement tests are associated with the process of instruction and include progress tests, end of course tests, portfolio assessments and their purpose is to prove the progress of the students in terms of the goal of learning. “Achievement tests should support the teaching to which they relate” [2]. These tests should assess the knowledge of grammar or vocabulary so there can be used grammar tests from course books or grammar books or even better, if we can afford, use computer tests. The same instruments can be used for vocabulary tests, but usually we cannot find tests for the specific part of the ESP we would like to assess, so that the tests should be developed by the teachers. For whole chapters we can use computer tests existing on software or from the internet (if the source is reliable). “Whereas achievement tests relate to the past in that they measure what language the students have learned as the result of teaching, proficiency tests look to the future situations of language use” [3]. Proficiency tests are used for students or people who want to go abroad in order to apply for a job or to a university. There is another situation, that of the merchant marine students and students from the Military Academies that need such tests for performing their jobs. In terms of method, the same author distinguishes two types of tests “paper-and-pencil language tests and performance tests” [4], criterion that perfectly serves the purpose of this paper, although we would not call them paper-and-pencil tests as long as they can be performed using the computer. Due to the fact that most of the tests can be taken nowadays on computer, they can also be called computer tests or in the abbreviated form in use CBT (computer based testing). These tests are used for assessment of either separate components of language, like grammar or vocabulary, or the unproductive skills: listening and reading. The tests of this type have different formats and are the best example of computer tests because they can provide the score at the end of the test according to the choices made by the student. 233

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The other types of tests are the performance tests where language skills are assessed in the act of communication and they can be spoken or written. Even if they are tests written on computer we cannot consider them as computer tests because the rater should be a person reading and scoring. Spoken performance tests are undoubtedly taken with a rater or more raters in order to analyze the sample of language used in a certain situation. 3. Advantages and disadvantages of computer based tests Taking into consideration this type of classification of tests we are going to develop a bit the subject of computer based tests and try to elicit the advantages and disadvantages of using them. Computer tests have been developed and used lately especially in the USA, but not only, for tests like TOEFL or if we speak about the military system ELT or ELCPT tests. There is not a great difference between the paper-and-pencil test and the test on computer as long as the content is the same. The only difference is that the student should know how to use the computer and this is not an impediment for teenagers or young adults. The disadvantaged ones seem to be people over 50 who are not used to work on a PC, so even if they have solid knowledge the presence of an instrument they do not master might be stressful or even frightening. Among the advantages of computer based tests is the fact that the score is given immediately and the person should not wait long minutes wandering about the result. Another advantage, and we could all see that while tested on computer, is the fact that the programme is tailored to the person’s knowledge, so that you do not have to answer all the questions or items fact that can improve the score as long as you are not bored with very easy items and lose interest for the last part of the test which is usually more difficult, besides that you can finish the test more quickly and gain time. A certain advantage for the teacher is the large number of items available and the fact that the computer may choose the items so that the tests are different for each person and the frequent problem of cheating is solved. Other advantages of such tests consist in the possibility of modification of the dimension of the text, for people with eye 234

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problems and the option of increasing or decreasing the volume for the listening tests according to the needs of the listener. Another benefit is the fact that many of the language tests can now be taken from home avoiding the discomfort caused by traveling to a certain location, sitting for quite long time in an uncomfortable position etc. in other words reducing the stress and increasing the efficiency. One of the greatest disadvantages of computer based tests is the fact that there are still not enough computers in order to give all students the chance to perform the achievement tests on computers. 4. Paper-and-pencil tests Teachers from universities and academies use mainly achievement tests to check the knowledge of their students from the syllabus point of view, and these are usually paper-and-pencil tests. We discussed in other articles the importance and the difficulty of developing good achievement tests, and still consider that for ESP, where there are not available tests for each domain and specialty, the teacher should create meaningful and reliable tests. These tests imply a lot of work and effort to be fairly short and have a wide range of exercises, and take long hours to be scored. They are time consuming for teachers but in many cases necessary. Multiple choice tests are the timesaving alternative from the scoring point of view but they should not be given too often. 5. Training students for purpose tests For military students the tests are developed by groups of test builders and these are usually placement tests like ELCPT and proficiency tests like STANAG. It is difficult to perform well when you take such tests if you have not done the type of questions beforehand. To overcome this situation, students should be familiar with these types of structures by doing certain exercises and tests. For the writing skill, they should be given tasks of certain length and on different topics and for the speaking skill the oral evaluation should include tasks similar to those of an OPI. An alternative is that some structures of the proficiency or performance skills to be included in the syllabus so that we can help our students to fulfill their goals. 235

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For the civilian students it is very important to structure the syllabus according to their needs. For merchant marine speaking is one of the most important skills for their future job although this is not even tested at the important examinations when graduating and afterwards but required by the companies when the cadets apply for a job. Special speaking seminars should be introduced in the last two years of study when they have already have knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to help them in communicating aboard ships in a multinational environment. Also related to communication on board for both military and merchant students is the special vocabulary they are suppose to master as part of their job. It is not enough to be a good specialist in the field if you cannot share information with the other members of the crew. Vocabulary and standard phrases, that are part of the syllabus, should be tested using achievement and proficiency tests if possible. There are many soft products that can be bought and used in order to give the students the possibility to get in touch with the types of items they are going to see in a real test given by the maritime authorities or the companies they want to apply. Other soft products help the students to see and simulate the work done in real conditions on board, using not only the specialty vocabulary but also the general and specialty knowledge they gathered throughout the process of education. Many such computer products include achievement tests that are automatically scored showing the students and teachers the weak points and the strong points of the process of learning and teaching. Our point of view is that the students find these tests more attractive and more objective than the traditional ones, where the teacher is in charge with scoring. 6. Summary The paper intends to present our point of view regarding the use of purpose and method tests in universities and academies at the moment. The paper-and-pencil tests should be replaced by computer tests, and to sustain this opinion we tried to depict some of the advantages and disadvantages of computer based tests. Taking into consideration the fact that our students are going to be tested in a 236

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particular way when graduating, we suggest several ways of improving their results. Computer tests or traditional vocabulary tests developed by teachers, computer based tests for certain specialties and special seminars or part of the end of course examinations for communicative testing, mainly speaking and writing. References [1] McNamara Tim, Language Testing, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 6. [2] Idem. [3] Idem, p. 7. [4] Idem, p. 5. [5] Weir Cyril J., Communicative Language Testing, Prentice Hall Europe, 1998, Chapter four Test Methods

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A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING BUSINESS COMMUNICATION Asst.Prof. Horea Ioana, PhD

University of Oradea [email protected]

Abstract While teaching Business English generally boils down to introducing, reinforcing and practising specific vocabulary, when it comes to teaching communication for business purposes things get more complicated as business communication cannot be separated from the general context it springs from. Communication has to approached starting from the standard level, with all the specificities it implies and the lexical and idiomatic elements that English language developed in this area and then even brushing through the more complex and sophisticated field of intercultural communication – making allowance for the specificities of national traits and cultural habits. Only then, having acquired and mastering these skills, too, the assimilated business vocabulary and the particular situational lexis could become effective and lead to genuine communication in English, in the business fields.

Keywords: communication’s spheres, Business English, specific skills 1. Communication’s Challenge Communication represents, first of all, the fundaments of human relations, from the basic interchange to the sophisticated socialization formulae, providing fellow humans and, respectively, the collocutors with messages that constitute information necessary for their common interactions and, ultimately, survival of the species. By and large, communication can be defined as the process of meaningful 238

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interaction among human beings. It is the act of passing information and the process by which meanings are exchanged so as to produce understanding. It can only be considered complete if the intended receiver perceives the message, attributes meaning to it (decodes it) and is somehow affected by it. 2. Usefulness of Business Communication In business relations, communication gets particular forms, in accordance with the specificities of the domain, here the concept developing self-sustainable branches. Management and marketing are incomplete without a clear understanding of the principles of communication. It goes without saying that domains like tourism or international affairs imply not only general communication but mastering of communication skills in a language of international circulation and knowledge of intercultural variations, as well. People choosing such careers have to familiarise with the aspects of business communication in order to accurately accomplish their duties in company, especially if working in a multinational company or in a compartment relating with the foreign partners. Specialisation in business communication becomes obvious, companies see the need for it and educational institutions in the field have begun to meet these needs or, at least, to try to overcome the formational deficit by providing training on the matter. As other researchers also note, “… the issue of communication is typically dealt with as a discrete component of organizations that can be effectively managed and controlled. Within business school syllabuses, the topic ekes out an existence, and with little acknowledgment of the important ontological and epistemological debates that have informed research in this area. This unproblematic treatment of language and communication is twofold: first, on a theoretical level, the area seems to have remained curiously untouched by inroads made by the linguistic turn in this and other contexts; and second, more practically, there is an apparent need for competent communicators in all sectors of our economy” [1].

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3. Teaching Communication for Business Purposes Communication in English can be studied following three major aspects that the language itself, on one hand, and the particularities of the field of business, on the other hand, suppose. In a didactic approach of assessing the spheres of communication of interest for the business fields, we can identify the occurrence of three large areas that are related and strongly interact: standard, business and intercultural communication, as represented in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Business approach of the classification of communication

The interdependence that provides the reason of their inseparability is understandable if we think that, obviously, one cannot approach the domain of business communication, let alone that of intercultural communication, without having first assimilated the general structures of the language, as well as the conversational elements of lexis, the basis of Standard English communication. Much in the same way, the general knowledge might prove almost useless in the business field without a proper awareness of the specific vocabulary of Business English or of the peculiarities that might occur in the communicational behaviour of their collocutors as traces of their environment, of their cultural background. 4. Business Communication: Integration and Scope On one hand, the specific language of standard communication implied by the general English will include grammatical structures, 240

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elements of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions useful for: greeting, introducing oneself or somebody else, inviting, suggesting or advising, accepting or refusing, expressing opinions and preferences, giving directions or orders, specifying facts, locations, attitudes. On the other hand, when the cross-culture communication is implied, the concern is at the same time placed on the background particularities – national or geographic culture, social environment, ethnic, racial or group behaviour. The approach will comprise categories regarding: first, perception – particular beliefs, values and views upon world; then, patterns of thoughts reflected in the verbal processes and lastly, specific nonverbal processes comprising general behaviour and the concept of time and space. In Business English the specificity consists in the fact that, besides mastering the skills of general communication, the collocutors are supposed to deal with and make use of specific lexical elements, managing vocabulary regarding activities or concerns such as: – telephoning – e-mailing, writing business letters – making presentations – negotiating – debating in/conducting meetings – winning cooperation/trust – dealing with subordinates/peers/the higher-ranked Moreover, nowadays spread of multinationals and international companies makes it clear that business vocabulary and skills of standard communication have to be completed by a great deal of intercultural communication skills. However, the sophisticated formulae once so necessary in business, formal relations, especially in written Business English, are now felt as rather obsolete and tend to be replaced by the standard language. As some researchers note: “Advertising one's humility is in poor taste to-day. It is called boot-licking. The general diction of business letters is showing marked improvement. The whole tendency is way from a specialized vocabulary of trade and toward the use of words in their commonly accepted correct senses [...] In other words, business letters are on their way from legalistic jargon, sounding 241

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lingo, and cumbersome verbiage, toward clear, simple, and straightforward use of correct English” [3]. 5. Summary Communication is a process of meaningful interaction among human beings. In what the business field is concerned, communication has to be integrated and seen as part of a framework, as three large spheres of communication can be identified and discussed: standard, business and intercultural communication, each comprising specific elements. References [1] Cohen, Laurie; Musson, Gill; Tietze, Susanne; Teaching Communication To Business And Management Students, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2, November 2005, 279-287, Doi: 10.1177/0893318905278536 © 2005 Sage Publicatio. [2] Lau, Ken, Teaching Business Communication to LEP Students, internet source: http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Lau-BusinessCommunication.html, visited in May 2008. [3] Weseen, Mauriceh, Business English-Going and Coming, American Speech, Vol. 1, No. 8. (May, 1926), pp. 447-449.

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PUNS – A CHALLENGE FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION Asst.Prof. Horea Ioana, PhD

University of Oradea [email protected]

Abstract Likely to lead to communication blockage, the lexical challenges comprised in puns like malapropism, mondegreen, spoonerism, anagrams are worth to be at least briefly observed and didactically pointed at when looking into potential threats to effective communication. This study tries an assessment of the aforementioned puns, providing explanations of the notions and relevant exemplification. It demonstrates the likeliness for these funny structures to constitute into language problems impeding proper communication. Though rather neglected by the syllabi, as compared to other categories that belong to the communicational verbal filters – homophones, homographs, false friends, polysemantic words etc., puns may be tricky and become troublesome even with experienced speakers of English, let alone the novices. Thus, they deserve some attention from researchers into English language and into its teaching.

Keywords: fun with words, communication, lexical challenge 1. Introduction There are a series of linguistic tricks that might be encountered, more or less, in a conversation with a native speaker, as well as in one with any other speaker of English that had once come across puns, learned some and now tends to use them for various reasons, from mere personal pleasure to the urge they might feel to show off and be superior. Obviously, such peculiar words or expressions might be causes of misunderstanding, misperception and consequently a gap in 243

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the communicational process. We should nevertheless bear in mind that meaning comes, anyhow, very much from the circumstance, the background of the conversation, not solely from the uttered word itself. “Context (including the place where a sentence is uttered, who utters it, the preceding discourse) will contribute significantly to what a speaker means, and to how he is to be interpreted” [1], seemingly just to make things less straight-forward. 2. Puns in a nut-shell A short presentation of some of these tricky structures shall prove both useful and appealing, due to, on one hand, their troublesome usage – the problems they may cause when met in a dialogue – and, respectively, to the oddity and fun that they, on the other hand, comprise. We can talk here about anagrams, palindromes, spoonerisms, oxymorons, tongue twisters, pangrams, malapropisms, mondegreens, mnemonics, Tom Swifties and so on. Anagrams are words or phrases made by mixing up the letters of other words or phrases, e.g. ‘the eyes’ is an anagram of ‘they see’. Here are some more good ones: Debit card = Bad credit Halley's Comet = Shall yet come Punishment = Nine Thumps Dormitory = Dirty room Astronomer = Moon starer The Hurricanes = These churn air Schoolmaster = The classroom Palindromes are words or phrases that read the same in both directions, e.g. ‘eye’,or ‘racecar’, or ‘Madam, I'm Adam’. Here are a few good ones: Do geese see God? Was it Eliot's toilet I saw? Murder for a jar of red rum. Some men interpret nine memos. Never odd or even. 244

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Spoonerisms are words or phrases in which letters or syllables get swapped. This often happens accidentally in slips of the tongue (or tips of the slung as Spoonerisms are often affectionately called!): Tease my ears (Ease my tears) A lack of pies (A pack of lies) It's roaring with pain (It's pouring with rain) Wave the sails (Save the whales) Oxymorons Notice the paragraph below that makes some sort of sense, yet it's full of contradictions. These are oxymorons: “It's simply impossible to find seriously funny oxymorons. The only choice is to ask one of those paid volunteers at the library – the ones in the long-sleeved Tshirts – for an original copy of some obviously obscure documents that were found missing amongst some paperwork almost exactly one hundred years ago.” [2] Here are some more: Jumbo Shrimp Same Difference Pretty Ugly Definite Maybe Tongue Twisters are great fun. This is one of the few types of wordplay that exist in every language. There are lots of well-known ones in English. Trying to say them fast more times will prove really difficult: The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. She sells seashells by the sea shore. Freshly-fried flying fish. Pangrams are sentences that use every letter of the alphabet: The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. How quickly daft jumping zebras vex. 245

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Malapropisms, verbal slips and gaffes, occur when a word, usually long or more sophisticated, is mistakenly replaced by another, of he same characteristics, with which it presents some similarities. When an incorrect word is used like this, a malapropism is born. Here are a few examples in which there is a word incorrectly used, instead of another: He had to use a fire distinguisher. Dad says the monster is just a pigment of my imagination. Isn't that an expensive pendulum round that man's neck? Good punctuation means not to be late. He's a wolf in cheap clothing. Michelangelo painted the Sixteenth Chapel. My sister has extra-century perception. “Don't” is a contraption. Mondegreens result from something being misheard, being in a way an opposite of the malapropism, which is a word missaid. A mondegreen is “a word that is construed as it is actually heard, not as the speaker intends it to be heard.” [3] From the most famous mondegreens we can note: medical: ‘Varicose veins’ heard as ‘Very close veins’; mass-media: ‘Paper View TV’ understood instead of ‘Pay-perview TV’; in lyrics (and it is here that they are most likely to occur): ‘Excuse me while I kiss this guy’, instead of ‘Excuse me while I kiss the sky’ (Jimi Hendrix in Purple Haze), ‘The girl with colitis goes by’, misheard for ‘The girl with kaleidoscope eyes’ (The Beatles in Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds) or ‘There's a bathroom on the right’, for ‘There's a bad moon on the rise’ (Creedence Clearwater’s Bad Moon Rising).[4] An Eggcorn (somewhere between a malapropism and a mondegreen) is an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker's dialect. 246

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Characteristic of the eggcorn is that the new phrase makes sense on some level. E.g.: old-timer's disease for Alzheimer's disease; for all intensive purposes instead of for all intents and purposes. Mnemonics are devices to help us remember (aide memoire or memory aide). They come in many varieties and flavours, and can aid memorisation of many types of information. You can use an aide memoire to prevent confusions, for instance: – ‘deserts’ (like the Sahara) and ‘desserts’ (like Tiramisu), by remembering that the sweet one has two sugars. – the order of colours in the rainbow, or visual spectrum: (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. – the order of planets in average distance from the Sun: (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) My Very Easy Method: Just Set Up Nine Planets. Tom Swifties are a special kind of pun, using a witty correlation between direct words, the uttered assertion, and the way of producing it, be that way the real one or implied just for the sake of the pun: “I need a pencil sharpener,” said Tom bluntly. “Oops! There goes my hat!” said Tom off the top of his head. “I can no longer hear anything,” said Tom deftly. “I have a split personality,” said Tom, being frank. “This must be an aerobics class,” Tom worked out. 3. A challenged discourse If all the aforementioned puns, and others, as well, are able to become troublesome when encountered, some of them are likely to bare a bigger blame than the others for the effect they may have on communication efficiency, for the mere fact of more commonly occurring in conversations or more probable to be misinterpreted. Thus, while tongue twisters, mnemonics or pangrams have their definite role, presenting the peculiarities of the language in vocabulary, syntax or pronunciation, being not very likely to occur in usual conversation and to create problems, there are the 247

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malapropisms, the mondegreens, the anagrams or the spoonerisms, which, regardless of their unintentional or, on the contrary, intentional use, may alike be sources of communicational disruption. An expression common to a native speaker, like a spoonerism or an anagram, may well twist the mind of a novice collocutor who will most probably not make out what he/ she had been told by that. It won’t be very helpful either for someone to be replied by a witty collocutor using some Tom Swifties or some palindromes, as we can easily suppose that along a normal conversation, there could occur a situation that would call for one of the specified puns – it may be something that a person says that triggers such an answer. e.g.: One might remember ‘I saw Honda’s latest model of a racecar in a catalogue.’ and the collocutor, hit, for whatever psychological or humorous reason, by the linguistic characteristic of the word ‘racecar’, may, like out of the blue, come out with something like ‘Never odd or even.’ – i.e. answer by a similar palindrome – and totally confuse the person who is talking to if that one is not familiar with the idea of this pun. Much in the same way, an anagram or a spoonerism used by a connoisseur, though coming quite naturally to him / her, instead of the conventional, blunt ‘discourse’, would prove problematic for the less experienced collocutor, maybe even for a native, let alone a foreigner. e.g.: ‘I was served a lack of pies when I asked them about the stolen money’ or ‘Our college was renovated and the dirty room is really elegant and comfortable’ can be either felt as illogical or misunderstood – understood not as intended but as directly heard, regardless of the poor sense that they make that way. Malapropisms, mondegreens and oxymorons, in their proper sense unintentional – as being the only utter mistakes –, are the ones most likely to be produced rather by the novices, the latter being normally the ones that would potentially make mistakes in the use of the less familiar language, as foreign. Still, there might be situations when a ‘knower’ would deliberately use them for reasons such as denoting an ironic or just a purposely loose attitude, or outlining or employing their very feature of funny structures etc. Then, they again might cause confusion if not said to the right person, one with 248

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sufficient linguistic and informational baggage to correctly decode the communication they are addressed. 4. Conclusion Even if they are rather neglected by the curricula, as compared to, for instance, homophones, homographs, false friends, polysemantic words or other categories that belong to the communicational verbal filters, puns may be tricky and become troublesome even with experienced speakers of English, let alone the novices. There is enough likeliness for the funny structures mentioned in this study to constitute language problems impeding communication. Hence, they deserve some attention from those dealing with the English language, be that for research, teaching or merely learning. References [1] Laurence Goldstein, Philosophical integrations, on internet page, as of November 17, 2004: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ [2] free internet source, as visited in August-September 2008: http://www.funwith-words.com [3] William Safire, On Language; Return of the Mondegreens, New York Times, January 23, 1994. [4] free internet source, as of the March 24, 2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen

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SCIENTIFIC VULGARIZATION SPEECH Asst.Prof. Predescu Elena, PhD

“Andrei Şaguna” University, Constanţa Abstract Vulgarization is a type of speech meant to render the intellectual practice of the scientists and specialists. The term “vulgarization” signifies the dissemination of a variety of scientific knowledge by any means of mass communication. At the same time, sciences vulgarization presumes an adjustment of the scientific and technical knowledge in such a way the same should become accessible to the non-specialist reader. It is about the “democratization” of the scientific knowledge and about its dissipation toward those who want to receive and acquire it. The vulgarization has as an essential characteristic a deep reconfiguration of the knowledge through simplification and explanation with no renounce to the scientific truth. We may say that between the specialized scientific speech and the vulgarized one there is a difference analogue to the one between a ”botanist” and a “gardener”. The evolution of the educational and training system is left behind the quick progress of sciences, which points out the necessity of finding complementary modalities for knowledge updating, and one of the procedures could be the very appeal to the vulgarized science. The vulgarization serves to all those who wish to deepen their knowledge in the professional domain or aside their profession. The vulgarization does not mean scientific knowledge diffusion through an adequate technique, but it presumes to create a scientific and technical envision, as well as creating an efficient representation system. Vulgarization aims to become a quasi-specialized “institution” for the initial and continuous training.

Keywords: vulgarization speech, science,

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1. What Is the Vulgarization Speech? One may talk about the sciences vulgarization ever since a quiz about mankind and life has been launched in terms to be accessible for masses, because, as such, the interest for the scientific knowledge on research basis is communicated to the others. Some considers the term “vulgarization” as unfit trying to impose the English term “popularization”. As a matter of fact, “vulgarization” is springing from the French term “vulgarisation” and it strictly refers to the scientific information and to their dissemination via any forms of mass communication, whereas “popularization” has a larger and more comprising semantic content. The term originates from the Latin term vulgaris, bound to vulgus, which means “something customary to the people”. With regard to the sciences vulgarization, the term has the meaning of “adapting the scientific and technical acquaintances as to become accessible to a non-specialist reader”1 . It is about the “democratization” of the knowledge and about the knowledge dispersal towards those who wish to receive and acquire them. The Vulgarization is an effort of translating a scientific topic for the coded language of the experts and scientists into a language accessible to a non-specialized public, on the purpose that the latter should acquire the scientific information. The vulgarization takes into consideration the cultural level of the audience to whom it addresses and, in this respect, the information are formulated according to the receiver’s representation systems. Within the vulgarization content, a clear cut of what is, in fact understood, as “large audience” is needed. Such a specification presumes a quantitative aspect, referring to the success attained by one or other publication, and a qualitative aspect, referring to the instruction and education level (ex. high-school graduates) of those envisaged. This specification is very important for a vulgarization works author because he/she has to have an image of the public he/she writes for as clear as possible. The wording of a vulgarization text 1

Predescu, E., Discursul ştiinţific economic. Argument şi perspectiva de abordare, Constanţa, “Ovidius” University Press, 2005, p. 239. 251

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presumes, at the same time, to consider the fact that the audience to whom it addresses is, on a large scale, a “province” audience, who has, anyway the merit of keeping themselves updated with the scientific novelties. 2. The Reasons for Sciences Vulgarization The researcher, the man of science or the expert is a citizen (inhabitant of the citadel) as any other and it is normal that his/her discoveries should be dispersed to The Others because “l’érudition ne sert à rien si elle ne sert pas au plus grand nombre”1 . The necessity of avoiding the researches seclusion into the scientific “ivory tower” has been noticed since 1926 by Julian Huxley, a militant from the pioneertime of vulgarization, who said that “the scientists risk to become an isolated cast in a hostile environment”2 . Another proved reason, for which the science dispersion is needed, is to attract the youngsters, even the children towards the scientific knowledge, an undertaking without which the human species evolution may not be thought. The normal activity of a researcher is placed under the sign of a rigorously specified domain, while the diffusion of the attained results has to be done beyond these boundaries, by engaging an information transfer from the constrictions area toward the ordinary interest zone. But this transfer may not be done at random; it is not sufficient for the researcher to offer, by writing, a guided visit around his laboratory, something like a “day of the open gates”, while those interested or curious are shown what is to be found in his/her crucibles and test-tubes. The vulgarization is needed for the audience to acquire, that is, to know and use the results obtained by the researchers and experts. The scientific vulgarization presumes to know in an accessible and/or pleasant way, an attractive presentation of the novelty, made not for the purpose of a society cultural “recycling”, but for rendering the feeling of belonging to an elite, so that the individuals should not consider themselves as rejected by that which they consider to be part of the culture. One must not 1

Miguel; A., L’Orient d’une vie, Paris, Payot, 1990, p. 72. Predescu, E., Discursul ştiinţific economic. Argument şi perspectivă de abordare, Constanţa, “Ovidius” University Press, 2005, p. 240. 252 2

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forget that everybody’s access to science was one of the main requests of the revolutionists: “second the food, the education is the first need of the people”, said Danton in 1789 1 . Preoccupations for a so-called “popular” education appeared in England even from the Victorian era, when great names such as James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) and Lord Thomas Kelvin (1824-1907). Signed remarkable physics explanations in some periodical magazines, such as “Macmillan’s Magazine” and “Encyclopedia Britannica”. At about the same time, in France, the members of the French Institute were signing manuals for the primary schools and were publishing, in an accessible manner, the new scientific discoveries in the form of easy readings, attractively illustrated. The scientific knowledge circulation took a great expansion with the inventions in the printing techniques, a fact which, lead to the decrease of the cost prices, producing, this way, in 1830s an actual explosion of the science vulgarization. Although at present we probably find ourselves on the verge of a great mutation brought by the optic discs, which can store an enormous quantity of text information, the book, the magazine, the journal remain as irreplaceable because of the obvious qualities: cheaper, portable, easy to be stocked in the libraries, containing punctual information, to which one may get immediate/index access, contents), the printed pages can be easily turned over offering an almost involuntary assimilation of some knowledge and being, continuously, an important support for individual study. 3. Characteristic Features of the Science vulgarization Analyzing the vulgarization, one observes that this phenomenon may not be understood independently aside from the dynamic of the sciences and of the scientific institutions. The modern scientific research and the vulgarization are resulting into a knowledge unitary movement, in the way of opening the intellectual field towards the exterior as, at the same time, it closes and deepens itself. The forms the scientific research may take in the society are evidently 1

Predescu, E., Discursul ştiinţific economic. Argument şi perspectivă de abordare, Constanţa, “Ovidius” University Press, 2005, p. 241. 253

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independent from the way of thinking of that respective social culture at a certain moment. For example, in the 12th century, the astronomy was explained differently than nowadays when physics is strongly backed by mathematics. The public exposure of the present researches become harder every day because the research methods and instruments development drive away the science from the “evidences” on which the culture we inherited from Aristotle in respect of mankind representation is based. The sciences are these days in the stage of daring generalizations and abstracting, too far away from the usual obvious appearances. Even since 1934 they have talked already about “the dilemmatic value of the new doctrines such as non-Euclidean geometry, non-Archimedean measure, non-Newtonian mechanics” and a “non-Cartesian epistemology” has been evoked. The university education withholds the strongest interaction with the aria of the scientific vulgarization through the fact that pedagogic concern establishes the tightest connections between vulgarization and scientific research. 4. The Characteristics of the Science Vulgarization Text Any science vulgarization work complies with certain desires for getting knowledge and often confronts with the reader’s fear of not understanding. The seduction strategies used by the authors are some of the most diverse ones and they have the aim to stimulate the interest, to facilitate the understanding and to generate effects, i.e. the reader should be tempted to implement those acquired. From this point of view, it is absolutely needed that the author should be concerned, as a sine qua non strategy, to convey a feeling, which, with regard to scientific vulgarization, could be of a lyric, historic, philosophic or any other rank. The specialists discover various “tricks” by which the scientific messages could reach the audience. The maxim “to learn in a pleasant way” is applicable to the scientific vulgarization too, because the audience is, practically, dismayed by everything within didactic limits. The vulgarized scientific message, generally, separates itself only from the presentation of the specific facts and examples and it communicates the scientific activity own approach, supplying only the applicable instruments of thinking, 254

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eventually, for other cases and situations. The same way as in the industrial production, the economic vulgarization has a value only if “exports” processed products. The science is perceived by the audience as being colorless and dull, that is why the scientific vulgarization needs “a little tender warmth” so that the reader should feel the specialist is close to him in his effort for documentation. To present the scientific knowledge in a personal manner, inducing short stories from the time of researches carrying out, make the dullness perceived before to disappear and smoothes the understanding path. Depicting certain situations personally crossed by the scientist or other specialists preoccupied by the same scientific matter rouse a human approach, a benefic determination in the attempt of transmitting scientific knowledge. The “lesson” flavor dislikes to the audience, which is why the authors find various subtle forms and modalities to present the scientific knowledge, in such a way that this (inevitable!) feature should be shrouded. The beginning of a vulgarization text is, from this point of view, extremely important: it can be anecdotic, enigmatic, lyrical, anyhow but not didactic. The reader refuses what he/she can’t understand, that is why the vulgarization text has to be entirely special, is has to compose the reader, to indulge him in trust of his own forces and in his capacity of understanding the science. For this reason, the erudite terminology, arduous and complicated phrasing are to be avoided and eventually the quotations from foreign languages are to be translated into the language of the recipient. This is the reason the concepts must be carefully introduced, accompanied by explanations and definitions in a simple wording. The science is perceived by the audience as being colorless and dull, that is why the scientific vulgarization needs “a little tender warmth” so that the reader should feel the specialist is close to him in his effort for documentation. To present the scientific knowledge in a personal manner, inducing short stories from the time of researches carrying out, make the dullness perceived before to disappear and smoothes the understanding path. Depicting certain situations personally crossed by the scientist or other specialists preoccupied by 255

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the same scientific matter rouse a human approach, a benefic determination in the attempt of transmitting scientific knowledge. The “lesson” flavor dislikes to the audience, which is why the authors find various subtle forms and modalities to present the scientific knowledge, in such a way that this (inevitable!) feature should be shrouded. The beginning of a vulgarization text is, from this point of view, extremely important: it can be anecdotic, enigmatic, lyrical, anyhow but not didactic. The reader refuses what he/she can’t understand, that is why the vulgarization text has to be entirely special, is has to compose the reader, to indulge him in trust of his own forces and in his capacity of understanding the science. For this reason, the erudite terminology, arduous and complicated phrasing are to be avoided and eventually the quotations from foreign languages are to be translated into the language of the recipient. This is the reason the concepts must be carefully introduced, accompanied by explanations and definitions in a simple wording. Nuances are to be preferred for the vulgarization texts because people are really attracted by the narrative. During the narrations descriptions may be introduced, concepts may be presented, explanations and definitions for technical terms may be incorporated as well. The advantage is brought by the implicit simplicity, by satisfying the tendency of reading the text as one reads a story. The easier chronological presentation of the information is read the shorter the phrases, comprising juxtaposed coordinated sentences, are. The literature theory allows us to find a necessary obvious nearness between vulgarization and folk productions. This proximity tolerates the presentation of the scientific approach as a story, which allows the scientific results not to be described as sheer novelties, with a teleological character. Another presentation appreciated by the audience is that resembling to a detective novel: the “enigma” is asserted at the very beginning, as it initially appeared for the researcher himself, afterward the explorations of various “tracks” are alleged until the looked for results are found.

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5. The Vocabulary for the Vulgarization Speech The matter of the vocabulary in the vulgarization works has some peculiarities determined, first and foremost, by the non-specialist audience whom they address to as well as by the necessity of transmitting scientific knowledge in unambiguous terms, which may avoid the imprecision and/or vagueness. Thus, we need a less rigid and obstinate vocabulary than the specialized one, but which may not be as yielding as the general vocabulary. From the very beginning, in the context of knowledge vulgarization an intermediary vocabulary took shape, a sort between the specialized one and the general one, able to transmit scientific information for the understanding of the grand public. Thus, at present, there is operating a general vocabulary of scientific orientation – GVSO –, an interference point between the general vocabulary and the specialized one, aiming to facilitate the understanding of the scientific approaches and concepts 1 : The information carried by GVSO is scientific information communicated in an accessible way to the general public, who, with some endeavor, wants and can accede to science. One of GVSO characteristics is that, at the fundamental level, it is shared by all the sciences (biology, chemistry, geography, physics, economics, etc.). The meaning of the words in GVSO is determined by the influence of the scientific context where they are used and by the interference with the specialized vocabulary, which, as we said before, is not made large use of in vulgarization. Consequently, in vulgarization, GVSO is a scanty vocabulary form the point of view of scientific specificity, but it has a large area of use because it proves to be indispensable for the scientific communication. The words, which make up the GVSO vocabulary level, amass a kind of vocabulary for scientific initiation and they are to be found into the general vocabularies, while the specialized terms appear into the specialized dictionaries (for technical terms, navy terms, economic terms, administration terms, etc.). Words such as: 1

Miclău, P et al.,Introduction à l’étude des langues de spécialité; Bucureşti; T:U:B.; 1982. 257

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– action (political, promotion, of the acid upon the litmus paper, etc.); – motor (electric, eolian, diesel, of the action, etc.); – operation (bank, surgery, mathematics, etc.); – pressure (blood, economic, atmospheric, etc.); – relation (mathematics, political, social, economic, etc.) are part of GVSO and their meaning is defined according to the scientific context where they are used. By the above-mentioned examples we stress the high degree of polysemy of the words composing GVSO and the fact that only the user make a term to become the appanage of one or the other specialized vocabularies. 6. Instead of Conclusion The man in the street or the peasant in a village lost somewhere on the planet has neither the reasons nor the means to identify himself with the novelties, with the scientific discoveries, which are made in an amazing rhythm. For the life of such people to change, one needs patience, interest and devotion so that the seeds of a new culture should crop. Vulgarization is meant to spread the seeds of the culture in a versatile, masked way, even with some cunning and shrewdness. The vulgarization papers author should seem somehow naïve, to call to the mind little by little the adventure of the discovery, stage by stage, as if the scientific truth was not anticipated by intellectual reasoning. Selective Bibliography Jacobi, D., Diffusion et vulgarisation. Itinéraire du texte scientifique; in Annales littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté-324; ed: Les Belles Lettres; Paris; 1986. Jacobi, D., Schielle, B., La vulgarisation scientifique et l’éducation non formelle, in Revue française de pédagogie, nr. 91, 1990, pp. 81-111. Miclău, P et al., Introduction à l’étude des langues de spécialité; Bucureşti, T.U.B., 1982. Miguel, A., L’Orient d’une vie, Payot, Paris, 1990. Predescu, E., Discursul ştiinţific economic. Argument şi perspectivă de abordare, Ovidius University Press, Constanţa, 2005. 258

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KEY SKILLS FOR TRANSLATORS Asst. Prof. Teodorescu Adriana, PhD

“Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest [email protected]

Abstract The translator is a mediator between different linguistic and cultural worlds. His task is to render a given text from the source language into the target language as flawless as possible. The accuracy of the translation depends completely on the translator’s skills. Therefore, a professional translator must have excellent linguistic and cultural skills, good ICT skills, as well as the ability to write well in the target language.

Keywords: translator, linguistic, cultural, ICT skills 1. Introduction Translation is generally defined as the rendering of a text from a source language into the target language. Translation’s primary goal has been to facilitate the communication process, to ease communication to the benefit of speakers from different linguistic systems. However, translation is not strictly limited to language alone, this process being a communicational and cross-cultural one. The act of translation involves more than language, it involves non-verbal signs, and is culture-bound. The two entities are the source language and the target language between which a certain correspondence or equality has to be achieved in the translation process through the transfer of meaning and signs in the target language. A good translation has to capture the sense of the original and can become a successful piece of communication if it makes sense to the receptor, conveys the spirit 259

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and manner of the original, has a natural and easy form of expression and produces a similar response. 2. The translator’s role The translator’s role in the translation process is to bridge the gap between cultures and languages, between people all over the world. He is a mediator between different linguistic and cultural worlds. E. Federici describes the translator “as a traveler in a new and unknown literary world; a curious traveler who follows many hints and finds new routes in an unexplored map which he/she necessarily reads through his/her own cultural lens. This reading, if carried on as a dialogue, as a bridge-building, inevitably enriches the translator's perspective on his/her own culture. Following the author's steps, the translator unveils the many linguistic, social, historical and cultural traces of his/her cultural world to be revealed to new readers embedded in different linguistic and cultural webs.” (Federici, 2007) 3. The translator’s skills 3.1. Linguistic skills A good translator needs proficiency in at least two languages. The translator’s task is an important one, as the translated text has to transmit the same intentions, reproduce the same meaning as the source text. It has to be as flawless as possible, to follow the source and to reflect the ideas accurately. In this respect, the translator’s task is a challenging one, as different languages do not express the same idea with the same semantic components and a simple conversion of the text from one language into another is not enough. The differences between language constructions and language use may influence the message. So, the text to be translated has to be considered as a complex and multidimensional structure. Therefore, the translation process has to be preceded by a detailed analysis of the text (from the macro to the micro level, from the text to the linguistic sign, from the whole to the parts), the context and the communication circumstances as well. There is no “correct” or “perfect” translation of a certain text, and it depends on the purpose of the translation, the 260

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translator himself/herself (the human factor involved in the process) and the audience. An “ideal” translation should be accurate, by reproducing the meaning of the source text as exactly as possible, natural, by using appropriate forms of the target language, and communicative, by conveying the meaning in a way that is easily understandable to the intended audience. When translating specialized texts, the translator needs a solid grasp of the source and target languages, a thorough understanding of technical concepts and vocabulary, and a deep knowledge about the intended target audience. 3.2. Cultural skills The translator needs not only proficiency in two languages but he should possess a deep knowledge of the culture and its nuances, and also of the changes taking place in the culture of the source and target languages. Therefore, understanding the culture of the target receivers is essential for the translator, who has to identify cultural markers in the source language and transfer them to the target language. The translator has to take into account the cultural context of the source message, the communication situation that may determine the choice of type of translation, the educational level of the audience, as well as their knowledge of the subject. The educational level of the audience is also important in the translation process because the receivers differ in their capacity to decode the message, in other words a medium educated audience can find it difficult to understand a translation intended for a highly educated readership. 3.3. ICT skills With the advent of the new technologies, many changes have occurred in the translator’s work. Nowadays, computer literacy and the use of information and communication technologies have become essential for translators as well. “The changed, technology-driven workflow has affected several aspects of the translation process: communication with clients and colleagues, the speed and amount of information that can be retrieved, and the way texts are created and handled.” (Fišer, 2008) 261

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The use of new technologies improves the professional standard of the translator, through the acquisition of skills involving the use of translation memories, databases, word processors and the internet. Good knowledge and an extensive use of ICTs considerably improve the translator’s final product while saving him/her a great deal of time. Today all translation work is done on a computer, using word processors to edit and format texts, and state-of-the-art translation tools, such as translation memories, terminological databases etc. The latest software offers features such as research, translate, thesaurus, spelling and grammar which can be used while translating a text. With a simple right click on a word one can find synonyms, antonyms, look up for definitions and more elaborate explanations or even translate the word in different languages. The advantage is that the software itself incorporates extensive databases, multi-lingual dictionaries, online translation sites, so the translator may access a wide range of information instantly. The internet offers advanced research opportunities and valuable language resources, such as specialized dictionaries, encyclopedias, glossaries, terminological databases etc. The Internet has many advantages: information can be accessed in seconds, it is available worldwide, the information is usually up-to-date, and it is easy to use. A lot of research can be done with the help of constantly updated websites and encyclopedias in different languages. There are also forums and specialized pages for translators to look for information or to interact with a wide array of experts. The internet is a dynamic environment, it is constantly growing, changing, improving, and updating. A professional translator has to develop his ICT skills and take advantage of all the benefits of the new technologies in order to improve his work. Nowadays, the mere use of a word processor has become unsatisfactory, as new features of this software become available and are designed to ease the user’s work.

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4. Conclusions The key skills of the professional translator lie in his/her ability to understand the source language and the cultural background, and to convey the same meaning in the target language. Good writing skills are also important in order to obtain a fluent and natural-sounding target text. As for translators of specialized texts, a deep knowledge of the terminology and specialized literature is a must, otherwise misinterpretation may occur. Translators’ skills are the key for a successful translation which has to achieve accuracy, adequacy of register and style, compliance with the socio-cultural norms, accomplishing the complex transfer of cultural aspects between different languages and cultures. The translator has to capture the sense of the source text rather than its mere words, making sense and conveying the spirit and manner of the original, having a fluent and coherent form of expression and arousing a similar response on the part of the receptor. References [1] Federici, E., The Translator's Intertextual Baggage, Oxford University Press, 2007. [2] Sorea, D., Translation: Theory and Practice, Bucureşti, Editura Coresi, 2006. [3] Fišer, D., The Teaching and Learning of ICT Skills for Translators, in Translation Technology in Translation Classes, edited by Dimitriu, R., Freigang, K.H., Iasi, Institutul European, 2008. [4] http://accurapid.com/journal/42technology.htm [5] http://www.lemontranslation.com/en/tools-for-the-translator.php [6] http://www.springerlink.com/content/723j363240h03124/ [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_memory

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KEY SKILLS FOR INTERPRETERS Asst. Prof. Teodorescu Adriana, PhD

“Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest [email protected]

Abstract The interpreter’s task is to convey the meaning of a spoken message from the source language into the target language. A professional interpreter will have excellent linguistic and cultural skills, good listening and speaking abilities, note-taking skills, analytical skills, intellectual dexterity, good and well-trained memory and power of concentration. As a good communicator, the interpreter develops very good communication and interpersonal skills.

Keywords: interpreter, skill, communication, interpreting 1. Introduction Interpretation has been one of the oldest professions in the world, since different languages have always been spoken by people belonging to different linguistic communities. Language interpreting refers to the activity of facilitating the act of communication between two or more participants who belong to different linguistic communities. Interpretation is delivered in two modes: simultaneous and consecutive. Simultaneous interpretation refers to that form of interpretation where a message is simultaneously delivered into the target language at the same time the speech is being held in the source language. Both the speaker and the interpreter are speaking almost at the same time, in different languages. In consecutive interpretation, the messages are delivered one after the 264

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other, in a consecutive manner, the interpreter rendering the message after the source language speaker has paused. 2. The interpreter’s role The performer of this kind of communication is the interpreter who has to render the message from the source language into the target language as adequately and as true-to-fact as possible, using his skills and his cultural and linguistic knowledge. The interpreter’s role is to mediate the communication process, to help participants who belong to different linguistic communities to understand each other and to share information. A professional interpreter needs not only excellent linguistic skills, acquired through a lot of training and experience, but also good cultural skills. He has to understand not only two different languages, but two different cultures with their customs, beliefs, values, worldviews, history, political life etc. Analytical skills, mental dexterity, exceptional memory are also important. 3. Key abilities for interpreters Key skills refer to that set of abilities a professional interpreter possess and permanently develop throughout his/her career. “The professional interpreter is an intermediary whose job is to enable others to communicate. Interpreting builds upon and expands normal communication skills, applying them to the transmission of a message across a language barrier. Interpreters provide a crucial service which uses not only linguistic skills [...] but also the social skills of someone who knows and understands two language communities, two cultures, someone who is sensitive to nuances and gestures and is orientated towards world knowledge.” (Ionescu, 2007) Therefore, linguistic and cultural skills are a must for a professional interpreter. The interpreter renders a message from the source language into the target language on the spot, without using dictionaries or other materials. The interpreter doesn’t have time to look up for word equivalents, to revise terms, information etc. before delivering the message, so his/her knowledge of the two languages and cultures has to be thorough. The lack of comprehension of certain 265

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words or cultural references may hinder or make interpretation difficult. In addition research skills are required, as the interpreter has to prepare before arriving at a jobsite. He has to familiarize with the topic which will be discussed, a task that may involve research activities, especially if the topic involves specialized, technical terminology. This is an important stage in any interpreting job, as good knowledge of the subject matter is vital for the fluency and accuracy of the interpreting act. Next, the interpreter’s listening and speaking abilities are also essential. The listening and comprehension phase depends on various factors: the speaker’s accent and pronunciation, the interpreter’s familiarity with the topic, the coherence of the speaker’s discourse, audibility and visibility conditions. The listening requires great concentration as the interpreter has to understand, decode the message and render it into the target language. In the case of consecutive interpreting, the interpreter has to listen, comprehend the message and keep it in mind until the speaker pauses and then he can deliver his speech into the target language. In the case of simultaneous interpreting, the interpreter renders the message almost at the same time the speaker delivers his message into the source language. A very important skill for consecutive interpreting, the key element, is note-taking, as the interpreter has to remember a whole paragraph for example, without loss of detail, and to render it in the target language. Consequently, note-taking becomes a matter of utmost importance in consecutive interpreting. Many interpreters develop their own note-take systems, based on signs and symbols, not on words. An effective note-taking system has to be flexible, formulaic, semiotic, structurally stable, and imaginative. It has to use abbreviations, symbols, acronyms, arrows (to indicate relations between ideas), and grammatical endings in order to mark grammatical information. While listening, the interpreter identifies the overall meaning, the tone and style, the nuances or emphatic structures, hidden meanings or references, logical connectors, and the reasoning flow of the entire 266

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speech. This is the comprehension and analytical stage which precedes the rendition of the target speech. The rendition phase depends on the previous stage (listening and comprehension) and on the interpreter’s speaking abilities. The interpreter has to possess excellent public speaking skills, to be fluent in the target language, and to deliver the message as clearly and loyally as possible. The interpreter’s art of oral and non-verbal communication, the ability to communicate well, pleasantly, clearly and to the point, neither speaking too much nor too little, is important in the rendition stage. Perfect understanding of the speaker’s message, preservation of the meaning and spirit of the source language message when rendered in the target language represent the goal of any professional interpreter. A good rendition relies also on “the power of anticipation, the foreseeing skill that makes the interpreter predict most of the structure but especially the content of the speech, if the interpreter is warned or informed beforehand about the topic to be discussed and the nature of the speech […]. Interpretation relies heavily on the interpreter’s anticipation skills.” (Ionescu, 2007) It depends on his/her ability to anticipate what will come next, to predict the structure and the content of the speech. 4. Conclusions A professional interpreter is the result of many years of practice, training and permanent improvement of his/her skills. All along his/her professional development, the interpreter strives to accumulate experience, knowledge, self-control, and a high level of competence and abilities. He/she develops a wide range of skills, from linguistic and cultural skills to listening and public speaking ability, detailed research and analytical skills, mental dexterity, good memory, efficient note-taking techniques, and anticipation skills.

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References [1] Ionescu, D., Popa, L., Insights into Consecutive Interpreting, Iaşi, Polirom, 2007. [2] Jones, R., Conference Interpreting Explained, 2nd Edition, St. Jerome Publishing, 2002. [3] Seleskovitch, D., Interpreting for International Conferences, Washington, Pen and Booth, 1978. [4] http://www.translation-services-usa.com [5] http://www.ricintl.com [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubash

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RESEARCH INTO READING-WRITING CONNECTIONS IN ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES Asst.Prof. Zechia Dana, PhD

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa Abstract The problem of getting through a vast amount of reading materials is relevant to a great majority of students. The issue of learning how to read efficiently is also of paramount importance in the second language basically because many learners usually prefer translating word for word. It is thought that learners’ ability to write in L2 depends on efficiency in reading. Researchers have only recently begun to explore the relationship between reading and writing. Research into reading-writing connections in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) would be timely because it might offer insights into transfer between receptive and productive skills. This article investigates learners’ difficulties in ESP reading and writing in quest of connections between these skills. Collected statistics on selfassessment and testing data is analyzed, and possible implications for teaching reading and writing are discussed. Reading-writing and writing-reading connections in the first language have shown a number of correlations: between reading achievement and writing ability, between writing quality and reading experience, between reading ability and complexity in writing

Keywords: reading, writing, ESP This article looks into the learners’ difficulties in ESP reading and writing in quest of connections between these skills. Collected statistics on self-assessment and testing data is analyzed, and possible implications for teaching reading and writing are discussed. 269

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There seems to be no theoretical research on either readingwriting or writing-reading relationship in ESP. Common sense suggests that this relationship in the second language must be understood through the acquisition of literacy in the second language. In other words, it involves ‘the fundamental psycholinguistic issue of transfer of the abilities that enable L2 learners to utilize knowledge from one language in acquiring literacy in another’. The investigation of reading-writing connections in the second language needs theoretical, experiential and experimental foundation. English language teachers are well aware of the fact that well-read learners are better writers, and better literacy in the mother tongue helps developing literacy skills in the second language. However, a necessity to gather data on literacy acquisition in a foreign language remains a burning issue. Reading is a complex cognitive activity, and its development can be promoted by two approaches – extensive and intensive reading practice. Extensive reading is known to develop word recognition and general language proficiency, while intensive reading deals with detailed comprehension and teaching reading strategies. The teaching & learning of receptive reading skill presents some difficulties. Length of words and sentences in written texts is one of the key difficulties – longer sentences and longer words are more difficult to understand. Authenticity of reading materials presents another difficulty to ESP learners because no concessions are made to foreign learners who encounter non-simplified content. Authentic materials can be extremely de-motivating for students. Negative expectations of reading are often due to previous unsuccessful experiences. There are various ways of addressing the problem of language difficulty. The most common are pre-teaching difficult or unfamiliar vocabulary, encouraging learners to read extensively, to train learners in intensive reading, and to teach reading strategies. For some inexplicable reasons, learners are basically taught (and tested) skimming and scanning strategies. Skimming and scanning are useful first stages, when a reader decides whether to read a text at all or which parts to read carefully. To develop an independent reader, a 270

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number of other strategies are paramount, e.g. inferring, summarizing, checking & monitoring one’s comprehension, connecting information from different parts of the text, evaluating and fault-finding. All these strategies involve ability to deduce the meaning of unfamiliar words and word groups, relations within the sentence, implications – not explicitly stated information, conceptual meaning, understanding relationship in the text structure and parts of a text through lexicalgrammatical cohesion devices and indicators in discourse, distinguishing facts from opinions. In the teaching of ESP reading and writing, grammar is often ignored because of many misconceptions about the role of grammar. According to Dudley Evans, ‘for reading, where the learners’ grammatical weaknesses interfere with comprehension of meaning and form can be taught in context through analysis and explanation. This often includes the verb form, notably tense and voice, modals, particularly in relation to the expression of certainty and uncertainty, connectors, noun compounds and various expressions. If students are expected to present written work, serious weaknesses in grammar require more specific help’. Another aspect of learning reading & writing includes vocabulary that is needed for comprehension and for production. ‘In comprehension, deducing the meaning of vocabulary from the context and from the structure of the actual word is the most important method of learning new vocabulary. For production purposes, storage and retrieval are significant’. Research findings on writing showed the following: a lack of competence in writing in English results more from the lack of composing competence than from the lack of linguistic competence, differences between L1 and L2 writers relate to composing proficiency rather than to L1, and using L1 when writing in L2 frequently concerns vocabulary and enables the L2 writer to sustain the composing process. There are six aspects of written work that learners must pay attention to: textual organization, structure of sentences / clauses, different word networks, paragraphing, spelling, punctuation, and non-standard English. 271

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The survey of available literature allows us to conclude that reading-writing relationship in the ESP has not received proper attention. Researchers display a distinct tendency to investigate the development of either receptive (reading) or productive (writing) skills. The adopted attitude prevails due to complexity of untangling intertwined components of both skills. Theoretically, ‘the fundamental process involved in the second language reading-writing relationship and the relationship between L1 and L2 literacy skills is transfer. Transfer of skills is not automatic, either across languages or across modalities. What this means for the L2 reading-writing relationship is that teaching is important to facilitate transfer’. Conclusions Three important facts emerged: learners’ reading rates are low, writing (or reading) involves translating ideas from L1 (or L2) into L2 (or L1), no statistical correlation between reading and writing skills has been ascertained. The respondents’ self-assessment data on reading and writing skills should be treated with caution – the results do not reflect the real state of affairs. This point has been proved by testing learners’ written work and reading comprehension. Learners seem to be unaware of their lacks in good practice strategies in reading (writing). For transfer of language skills to occur learners need to reach a threshold level of language knowledge. Teachers’ objectives are to help learners in the acquisition of language knowledge and train students in developing their reading and writing skills efficiently. Research Implications: Techniques for Training Reading & Writing Skills Learners’ difficulties in reading, translation and writing are caused by either limited vocabulary or its inappropriate usage. There are numerous techniques for teaching vocabulary, reading and writing skills. Hereinafter, a short overview of some beneficial techniques is presented. 272

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Lexical Approach Activities Objectives: exploring authentic text, drawing learners’ attention to lexical items, teaching reading strategies, free and summary writing Lexical Approach activities are based on reading texts that provide classroom materials for exploring language. The ways of exploiting a selected text and drawing learners’ attention to the lexical items are highlighted thereinafter through the usual - pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading –activities. Pre-reading activities are directly related to the text. The most useful is the skill of prediction. Students are expected to work in pairs and predict the story from the title, pictures (if any available), brainstorm related vocabulary, predict key words, predict from the topical sentences (if given). While-reading activities involve the sub-skills of skimming for the gist and scanning for specific information. Post-reading activities involve answering comprehension questions (e.g. multiple choice, True or False, matching words and definitions, matching paragraphs and summarizing sentences, etc.). The most challenging activity is for students to make up a few questions, swap them with peers and answer their peers’ questions. The latter enables teachers to introduce speaking into a reading class. Re-Translation Activity Objectives: finding grammatical patterns and lexical items in sentences, seeking accuracy and authenticity, developing learners’ cooperation Select two short ESP passages which do not contain new vocabulary. Divide the class into two teams of equal number of pairs, and give pairs in each team different passages of similar difficulty to translate into the mother tongue. After finishing translation, students exchange their translated texts with partners. The following task is to retranslate their peers’ work back into English. Make sure students do not have original texts at this stage. Finally, learners sit next to their peers and compare their translations with the original texts. Discussion of grammar patterns, vocabulary usage, accuracy of translation, etc. 273

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and resolving any misunderstandings that may have affected the accuracy of translations and finding appropriate equivalents is of paramount importance. Finding grammatical patterns in sentences Objectives: raising awareness on how language works, reflecting on grammatical patterns, discovering rules. This activity is aimed at practicing the strategy of discovering rules and reflecting on grammar patterns. The examples of sentences may be taken from any ESP text and might include any grammar points – tenses, gerunds, passive voice, conditional sentences, etc. Students work in pairs or small groups. Ask learners to reflect on chosen sentences, discuss involved structures, infer the rules and formulate them in writing. Each group reads their formulated rules. Then students make up their own sentences according to the rule. Groups exchange their written work and check it for accuracy. Reading Aloud Activity Objectives:dictation & self-dictation, writing dictated material, understanding intonation, stress, pronunciation of unfamiliar soundcombinations The teaching-of-English-as-a-foreign-language myth ‘that reading aloud should not be done in the classroom as native speakers do not read aloud and it is an unauthentic task’ has prevailed for thirty years, although it is a false belief. Reading aloud is not necessarily a self-contained activity. It can be successfully used for dictation of reading (or listening) comprehension questions. In turns, each pair of students is given either reading (or listening) comprehension sentences (or questions) to dictate to the whole class. ”Writers” are very demanding with regard to the “dictors’” proper pronunciation, spelling (if necessary) and punctuation. The important advantage of this activity is that reading aloud trains listeners to cope with indistinctly pronounced words, fast speed of reading, unfamiliar sound-combinations, lexis and collocations. 274

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Self-Correction of Written Work Objectives:identifying types of errors in one’s written work, developing language awareness, encouraging learner autonomy. Learners’ self-correction or peer correction of written work are helpful in raising language awareness, learning to spot one’s own errors and taking responsibility for one’s learning. The procedure employed in learner self-correction of written work has been described in detail in. References Carson, J.E., Reading-Writing Connections: Toward a Description for Second Language Learners, In ‘Second Language Writing’, edited by Barbara Kroll. CUP, 1994, pp. 88-107. Harmer, J,. The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman, 2001. Dudley Evans, T. and Jo St. John, M., Developments in English for Specific Purposes, CUP, 1998. Krapels, A.R., On Overview of L2 Writing Process Research, In ‘Second Language Writing’, edited by Barbara Kroll, CUP, 1994, pp. 37-56. Cook, V., Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2nd edition, 1996.

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CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING LATIN TERMS AND EXPRESSIONS IN LEGAL LANGUAGE Asst.prof. Burtea-Cioroianu Cristina Eugenia

University of Craiova [email protected]

Abstract This paper emphasizes the strong relationship between Latin and law, relationship originating in antiquity and being a normative, pragmatic necessity in the legal language domain. Besides, the authentic structure of legal institutions can only be understood starting from Latin legal terminology. The influence of Roman law and implicitly that of Latin on the legal vocabulary is overwhelming, Romans being the first people in the history of mankind who elaborated a juridical science and technique. Therefore, the tendency of Roman law to extract the essence of the laws also explains, along with the phenomenon of “receiving” and “processing” the law of the following periods, the update of Latin legal maxims which on countless occasions give the final expression of juridical demonstrations, the new codes of laws remaining tributary, in both content and form, to Roman law.

Keywords: legal language, Latin, law principles 1. Introduction Latin is definitely a language of practical use within the framework of both philological and juridical didactic studies, thanks to its formative and intellectual content, to its logical, synthetic and precise character, to its grammatical and lexical structure. Simplicity, density of constructions represent only part of the advantages Latin has, therefore its practical use has caused it to “live” 276

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in the scientific domains, especially within the space of the legal discourse and terminology. The languages typical of certain fields of professional activity are nothing but variants of the literary language, the result of constraints, “a linguistic system which is more or less specialized in conveying the content of ideas, specific for a professional activity, for one or several domains of social and cultural life […] any professional language is no more than the language with a special purpose”. [1] The specialized language or terminology is relatively independent, typical, specific, implying a special approach. The study of this kind of language leads to the identification of its specific features. As a consequence, all the lexical elements more or less connected to a specific activity or professional, scientific domains fall within the specialized lexis. These lexical items are used by a group of people, either orally or in written form. They are limited in use and they are understood by a strictly determined social group. The link between legal language and Latin is established at the level of words which share one or several meanings and a specialized sense. It is generally about polysemous words created either by developing a juridical meaning, together with the meaning(s) of the common language, or by the semantic extension of certain consecrated legal terms. There is a category of terms which have, besides the juridical meaning, one or several meanings belonging to other specialized languages. There are also terms typical of legal language. [2] 2. Latin legal terms Latin legal maxims give the final expression of juridical demonstrations, the new codes of laws remaining tributary to Roman law, in both content and form. Roman law is the fundamental basis for any professional starting point, due to its creative power. The authentic structure of juridical institutions can be understood provided that we start from Latin. [3] 277

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There are two elements which mark the existence of the specific language of law; on the one hand, the legal language exists because law gives a precise meaning to certain terms which form the legal vocabulary; on the other hand, the legal language exists because law asserts its concepts in a specific manner and this is how the legal discourse comes into being. [4] The juridical style seems homogeneous, creating a conservative variant, which defines the language of legal texts, and an oratorical one, persuasive in nature. As for the use of Latin terms and expressions, they are still well represented in the field of law, as opposed to everyday language, and in other domains such as: biology, medicine, theology. Thus, Latin becomes an instrument of scientific communication. The influence of Roman law and of the Latin language on the legal vocabulary is overwhelming, the Romans being the first in the history of mankind to elaborate a juridical science and technique. The Latin language constitutes the foundation of the legal terminology belonging to the civil or Romanist tradition, of which Romanian law is part. These terms, expressions and adages are dense with information, replacing laborious periphrases. For instance: • actus reus (a guilty act) The essential element of a crime that must be proved to secure a conviction, as opposed to the mental state of the accused (see mens rea). In most cases the actus reus will simply be an act accompanied by specified circumstances. [5] • caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) A common-law maxim warning a purchaser that he could not claim that his purchases were defective unless he protected himself by obtaining express guarantees from the vendor. [6] • audi alteram partem (hear the other side) It states that a decision cannot stand unless the person directly affected by it was given a fair opportunity both to state his case and to know and answer the other side’s case. [7] 278

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• opinio iuris from opinio iuris sive necessitates (whether the opinion of law is compulsory) An essential element of custom, one of the four sources of international law as outlined in the Statute of the International Court of Justice. Opinio iuris requires that customs should be regarded as state practice amounting to a legal obligation, which distinguishes it from mere usage. [8] • restitutio in integrum (restoration to the original position) • res iudicata (a matter that has been decided) The principle that when a matter has been finally adjudicated upon by a court of competent jurisdiction it may not be reopened or challenged by the original parties or their successors in interest. It does not preclude an appeal or challenge to the jurisdiction of the court. Its justification is the need for finality in litigation. [9] • lex loci actus (the law of the place where a legal act takes place) In private international law, this law governs such questions as whether or not property in a bill of exchange or promissory note passes to the transferee and the formal validity of an assignment of an intangible movable. [10] • nulla poena sine lege (no punishment without a law) The principle that a person can only be punished for a crime if the punishment is prescribed by law. [11] • nullum crimen sine lege (no crime without a law) The principle that conduct does not constitute crime unless it has previously been declared to be so by the law; it is sometimes known as the principle of legality. [12] 2.1. Latin legal vocabulary The Latin legal vocabulary comprises three categories of elements: – basic linguistic units: simple (erratum) or compound (persona grata, iurisconsultus, respublica) nouns, verbs (confer), adverbs (gratis, idem), adjectives (nullius); 279

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– syntagms, phrases, the most frequent of which being adverbial phrases: in extenso (in detail); manu propria (with his own hand); ad utendum (for the use); testantibus actis (as the acts prove); – adages and sentences which form an independent and invariable unit, used for their rich semantic content: cessante causa, cessat effectus (if the cause ceases, the effect ceases too); dura lex sed lex (law is hard, but it is the law); audiatur et altera pars (let the other party be heard). Among the Latin terms and expressions used in legal language, one can notice a number of syntagms which are part of common language too: ad litteram, ab initio, in fine, stricto sensu, sine qua non, etc. 2.2. The principles of law and their influence on Latin legal terms Latin juridical maxims, aphorisms, adages and axioms represent classical forms of the principle of law branches usually expressed in a language accessible to law experts. Regardless of name, juridical aphorisms are of an imperative, prohibitive or onerous character, intended for the legislator and for interpreters, for those who enforce the law lato sensu. As for juridical axioms, they lie at the basis of the principle of law, since they amount to ideas expressing the certain specific nature of the legal regulation. It is no easy task to delimitate the juridical aphorisms, maxims and axioms, but it can be initiated by generalization. The rigidity of law is identified with the authority of the law lato sensu and the imperative character of legal prescriptions. Dura lex, sed lex – a Latin juridical maxim, is the eloquent proof of the inflexibility of law. 3. Conclusions Juridical constructions coagulate around the principles of law. The accomplishment of law in general, the juridical conscience and culture at the micro- and macro-social level is dependent on these juridical syntheses. We consider maxims and aphorisms as imperative 280

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legal rules which meet, to a great extent, the requirements of contemporary procedural law and render the process of doing justice more effective. Therefore, the tendency of Roman law to extract the essence of laws also explains, along with the phenomenon of “receiving” and “processing” the law of the following periods, the update of Latin legal maxims which on countless occasions give the final expression of legal demonstrations, the new laws remaining tributary to Roman law in both content and form. References [1] Coteanu, I., Stilistica funcţională a limbii române, Bucureşti, E.A., 1973, p. 46. [2] Cornu, G., Linguistique juridique, Paris, Montchrestien, 1990, p. 20. [3] Sâmbrian, Teodor, Dreptul roman, Craiova, Helios, 2001, p. 23. [4] Cornu, G., Linguistique juridique, Paris, Montchrestien, 2005, p. 20. [5] Oxford Dictionary of Law, New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 10. [6] Ibidem, p. 65. [7] Roland, Henri, Lexique juridique. Expressions latines, Paris, Litec, 2002, p. 20. [8] Burtea-Cioroianu, Cristina-Eugenia, Ştefan, Elena-Veronica, Limba latină pentru facultăţile de drept, Craiova, Universitaria, 2007, p. 138. [9] Răduleţu, Sebastian, Săuleanu, Lucian, Dicţionar de expresii juridice latine, Bucureşti, Editura Ştiinţifică, 1999, p. 253. [10] Deleanu, Ion, Deleanu, Sergiu, Mică enciclopedie a dreptului. Adagii şi locuţiuni latine în dreptul românesc, Cluj-Napoca, Dacia, 2000, p. 190. [11] Roland, Henri, Boyer, Laurent, Locutions latines du droit français, Paris, Litec, 1998, p. 321. [12] Oxford Dictionary of Law, New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 313.

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THE PROBLEM OF TERMINOLOGICAL EQUIVALENCE IN LEGAL ENGLISH Asst.Prof. Grecu Onorina

“Spiru Haret” University, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract Among the problems posed by legal translation, that of terminological equivalence is one of keen current interest. It is a well-known fact that legal translation as such poses many problems due to the differences in legal systems from one country to another. Legal translation implies both a comparative study of the different legal systems and an awareness of the problems created by the absence of equivalents.

Keywords: Legal English, terminological equivalence 1. Introduction In contrast to what happens with real sciences, where there is an objective extra-linguistic reference, legal realities are conceived as the result of legal discourse which creates its own reality from different or shared historic traditions, in one or several languages, and which cannot coincide in the concepts of analysis or can only coincide partially when they focus on a common international legal phenomenon. Legal translation implies both a comparative study of the different legal systems and an awareness of the problems created by the absence of equivalents.

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2. Legal systems Each legal system is situated within a complex social and political framework which responds to the history, uses and habits of a particular group. This complex framework is seldom identical from one country to another, even though the origins of the respective legal systems may have points in common. The diversity of legal systems makes research in the field of legal terminology more difficult because a particular concept in a legal system may have no counterpart in other systems. Sometimes, a particular concept may exist in two different systems and refer to different realities, which raise the problem of documentation and legal lexicography. Legal translation implies both a comparative study of the different legal systems and an awareness of the problems created by the absence of equivalents. Translation is much more than the substitution of lexical and grammatical elements between two languages. Often the process of translation requires the art of leaving aside some of the linguistic elements of the source text to find an expressive identity among the elements of the source and the target texts. In legal translation, a problem arises from the very beginning if the translator aims at finding the exact terminological equivalent. The attribution of an equivalence to a legal term, for which no comparable concept exists in another legal system, can be the cause of ambiguities, confusion and all types of miscomprehension due to the effect the term in question produces in the reader of the translated text. Therefore, the difficulty of terminological equivalence in legal translation is reflected, above all, in the expectations of the reader from the translated text. In most cases, legal texts do not lend themselves to precise translation, unlike the case of a scientific article. In this respect, legal concepts, terminology and realities of one society only correspond partially to those of another, that is to say, certain concepts may totally coincide, while others may only partially do so. As a result, in the field of legal translation, the major practical difficulty is that of deciding whether a concept is the same in two languages or whether it is different in terms of the consequences which ensue. Thus, there are certain terms which appear similar in two 283

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different legal systems but which might mislead the reader if he tried to understand them literally, assuming they cover the same concept in both legal systems. This is the case of the term mortgage. The English term mortgage is terminologically associated with the Romanian term ipotecă but there are some differences, as well. Legal translators must look for juridical and linguistic equivalence of the terms, looking for the pragmatic equivalence of concepts. The term hypothec is used in academic works and also in Scottish law, but the distinction between the common-law mortgage and the civil-law hypothec is so subtle, and the similarities between them so great, that for all practical purposes they can be regarded as identical in meaning. It should be noted that in England a mortgagee becomes a conditional owner of the property mortgaged to him, but not its possessor (unless he forecloses, in which case he becomes both absolute owner and possessor), whereas the hypothécaire gains neither ownership nor possession of the mortgaged property unless he enforces the mortgage. 3. False Friends Translation remains the problem, especially when the words in each language appear the same. Today, English is pointed out as the main language on which new words are based (especially in scientific research and Information Technology). This can appear as a great advantage, especially for nonnative English speakers who have to deal with the English language at work. Indeed, this makes it easier for them to understand new words because they can guess the English meaning by finding the equivalent which is similar to their own language. However, it is dangerous to simply “transpose” a word from one language into the other. This could create big misinterpretations because the meaning of some words can be misleading. Such misleading words are called: Faux-amis (false friends). These are opposed to transparent words that have the same meaning in both languages. Transparent words are two words that have a similar spelling and the same meaning. For example, the words “calendar” (Romanian) 284

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and “calendar” (English) are identical and their meaning can be deducted very easily. A lot of transparent words can be found in English. However, they are not always as transparent as they appear. Two apparently transparent words that have a complete different meaning are called false friends. If a Romanian speaker for example comes across the sentence: “The main sources of British law are common law and legislation”, he could consider “common” as a transparent word and understand the sentence meaning that one of the British law sources is civil law, since “drept comun” in Romanian does not mean Anglo-Saxon law but civil law. Here, there is quite a difference in the meaning and this can have a lot of consequence on the text. Other false friend in the sentence is “source” which has a Romanian equivalent in the basic vocabulary of the language, but a different term for a correct translation in legal Romanian - “izvor”. 4. Examples of misleading word-pairs “Court” in Legal English means a body in government to which the administration of justice is delegated, while the Romanian misleading word-pair means “curte”, which in English is translated “yard”. Therefore the correct translation for “law court” or “court of law” is “instanţă de judecată”, though there are cases in which we can say in Romanian, „curte de justiţie”. “Crime” is an act in violation of the penal laws. With all this, the term misleads the Romanian speaker towards the word “crimă” – “murder” in English. The proper translation for “crime” is “încălcarea legii penale” or “infracţiune”. The adjective “criminal” is often translated in Romanian with “criminal”, which is a false friend when speaking about criminal law. The synonymic expression “penal law” is a true cognate or a transparent word for the Romanian “drept penal” – the correct term in legal Romanian for “criminal law”. When translating from legal Romanian into legal English the substantive “criminal”, students make the same mistake. In Romanian it means “persoană care a săvârşit o crimă”, “infractor”, in English “a person guilty or convicted of a crime”. Therefore for Romanian substantive “criminal”, the English equivalent is “murderer” while for English term “criminal”, the Romanian word is “infractor”. 285

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“Parole” means in English “the conditional release of a person from prison prior to the end of the maximum sentence imposed”. Though the etymology of this misleading word-pair: “parole” (English) and “parol” (Romanian) is the same, the French “parole”, in Romanian, the interjection “parol” means “you have my word!”. Thus, the English “parole” is translated in legal Romanian “eliberare condiţionată”. Often cognates and false cognates are overlooked by the foreign language teacher. Cognates are thought to be so similar in the native and target language that can cause problems and need special attention. It is not a simple task to differentiate false friends from transparent words. Unfortunately, there are no set rules that allow distinguishing between the two categories so the best thing to do is to look up the word in a dictionary and rely on the context.

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COMPLEMENTARY TEACHING METHODOLOGY FOR TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS INSPIRED FROM INDUSTRIAL TRAINING PROGRAMS Asst.Prof. Indolean Daciana

Technical University, Cluj Napoca Abstract Science and technology no longer communicate solely through the universal language of mathematics, like they did in the past, because science and technology no longer belong to the intellectual elite, they have become an integrated part of our everyday life. This new context forces engineers to become not only good professionals, but good communicators as well. Technical universities are responsible not only for the professional training of their students, but they must develop communicational competences in future engineers that will enable them to communicate successfully not just with other scientists and engineers, but with the community at large. The teaching method used to teach English to technical university students proves to be very efficient in building and consolidating a communicational basis, because it develops technical and specific vocabulary by developing skills that enable the students to work with a technical text and skills that enable the students to ellaborate similar texts. However, it is seriously challenged when in this educational process we add the acquisition of communicational competences and not just knowledge and skills. For the acquisition of communicational competences we need to complete this traditional method with another one that will enable students to learn in an environment that mimics the professional environment. This paper is about the introduction of an aditional teaching method that will develop communicational competences in technical university students.

Keywords: teaching methodology, TWI, LCCI, assessment 287

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1. Introduction Now more than ever, science and technology do not belong to a single ethnic or national community. One nation’s problems have become the problems of the entire humanity. Scientific discoveries and technological progress are to be found everywhere, saving lives, improving the quality of life all over the planet. Science and technology no longer communicate solely through the universal language of mathematics, like they did in the past, because science and technology no longer belong to the intellectual elite, they have become an integrated part of our everyday life. At the outpost of scientific and technical fortress we find the engineers, that contemporary human community which, now more than ever, has dedicated its activity to making this world cleaner, less poluted, by creating technologies that treat and improve the human body and the environment. Engineers nowadays communicate not only through the universal language of science, but they also use the same language that gave birth to literature. Thus, in this new communicational framework, engineers no longer communicate solely with peers, but they communicate with the beneficiary of their accomplishments: humanity. This new context forces engineers to become not only good professionals, but good communicators as well. Technical universities are responsible not only for the professional training of their students, but they must develop communicational competences in future engineers that will enable them to communicate successfully not just with other scientists and engineers, but with the community at large. Therefore, technical university students should be able to communicate in the universal language of science and in at least one widely spoken language of the community. In this respect, English seems to be the most popular choice of the students and it is the most taught and learned language on the planet. 2. Teaching methodology used – positive aspects and shortcomings Usually the method consists of working with technical tests, adapted or not, reading these texts, reading comprehension exercises, 288

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text analysis, using specific terminology in new contexts, grammar exercises. In addition, the students are asked to translate words or short texts, fill in the blanks with given words, rearrange a scrambled text, write essays on a certain topic or letters, role play, debates on different subject. The teaching materials are the ones available in the language department’s library, the university library and excerpts from different books. Internet is also used for the provision of teaching materials. Basically, the teaching method uses the text as support for specific lexical and grammatical objective. The text is commented, analysed, and the new elements are consolidated with exercises. This method proves to be very efficient in building and consolidating a communicational basis, because it develops technical and specific vocabulary by developing skills that enable the students to work with a technical text and skills that enable the students to ellaborate similar texts. However, it is seriously challenged when in this educational process we add the acquisition of communicational competences and not just knowledge and skills. This acquisition of communicational competences we need to complete this traditional method with another one that will enable students to learn in an environment that mimics the professional environment. 3. Additional teaching method A teaching method to complete the traditional method was located in the industrial training field. This has multiple advantages, since the graduates of technical university will mostly work within industry and trade. In addition, they are training methods used to train adults, which helps anticipate the development of the young people into young adults in charge of their profession. The first training method used for the creation of the new teaching method is one of the training methods used by TWI service. The Training Within Industry (TWI) service was created by the United States Department of War, running from 1940 to 1945 within the War Manpower Commission. The purpose was to provide consulting services to war-related industries whose personnel were being conscripted into the US Army at the same time the War 289

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Department was issuing orders for additional matériel. It was apparent that the shortage of trained and skilled personnel at precisely the time they were needed most would impose a hardship on those industries, and that only improved methods of job training would address the shortfall. By the end of World War II, over 1.6 million workers in over 16,500 plants had received a certification.The four training programs developed by TWI were developed in an emergency situation by experts on loan from private industry. Because of the intensity of the situation, a large number of experimental methods were tried and discarded. This resulted in a distilled, concentrated set of programs. Job Instruction is a course that taught trainers to train inexperienced workers and get them “up to speed” faster. The instructors were taught to break down jobs into closely defined steps, show the procedures while explaining the Key Points and the reasons for the Key Points, then watch the student attempt under close coaching, and finally to gradually wean the student from the coaching. The course emphasized the credo, “If the worker hasn't learned, the instructor hasn't taught” [1]. The second method comes from the professional training programs offered in the United Kingdom by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry for English for very specific purposes. Its promoter is Alan Godsave, regional manager for Central and Eastern Europe, who used it in 2005 to create a training program for teachers of Business English. The core of this method is given by the motto: “Never about something, always for someone” [2]. In essence, this method changes the perspective on communication. Since any message is meant to communicate something to someone, that someone who is the recipient of the communication should be placed at the top of the list of elements to be taken into account when creating the message. In other words, we create a communication about something for someone, and that someone determines the way we deliver the message. Introducing the human element in the teaching method changes the way the technical text is used in the English classroom. The text is no longer just a basis for the development of language skills, but this 290

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is recognized as a means of communication among people and the ellaboration of the text took into account the particularities of those people reading the text. Such an approach leads to the development of competences in the students and not just the acquisition of linguistic knowledge and skills. It encourages the development of attitudes towards the documents presented to them, towards the messages transmitted to them during the English classes, it develops the ability to recognize, differentiate and respect the recipients of the message even if they belong to a different cultural or professional background. 4. Teaching activities The teaching activities will be grouped and centered around authentic texts and their recipients. For instance, they could begin in the first semester with a lexical and grammatical analysis of an authentic text, such as a technical specification of a product or a user manual and continue with the creation of written and spoken messages that aim to promote the product to a company interested in acquiring it. This implies identifying the recipient of the product, determining the professional and cultural background of such a recipient, drafting the technical specification and user manual to meet the needs of the recipient, writing a letter of proposal, role-playing a business meeting for promoting the product to the recipient. All these activities require the students to determine the company that might be interested in the product, the department that has to be contacted and the position of the person in charge of this professional activity. The students will have to determine the best approach, for example wether they should contact them in writing first by means of a letter or make a call to establish an appointment, they will have to decide the appropriate tone to be used and the amount of specific information and specific professional slang used in creating the message. Thus, the first semester could deal with the communication of the future engineer with the outside environment. Therefore the teaching method will be based on the training method used by Alan Godsave with the LCCI training programs. The second semester could deal with the communication within the company for which the students 291

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will work for. The activities during the second semester could include activities that require the students to draft reports for their superiors, in which to present the professional activities accomplished during the first semester, what went well and what went wrong in the promotion of the product, what else needs to be done to keep the collaboration going, etc. In addition, the students could be asked to prepare training programs for the new members of their working crew, offering them step by step instructions on how to perform their work. The activities scheduled for the second semester have to be created to meet two purposes. Their first purpose will be to introduce activities based on the training programs created by TWI. Their second purpose is to provide long term evaluation of the activities performed in the first semester. The report drafted for the superiors requires the students to re-evaluate their performance in the first semester and the products of their activity. It requires them to extract relevant information for the report and formulate conclusions and recommendations based on that performance. The training program requires them to break down a production activity into steps, motivating and explaining each of the steps to a very specific group of people. In addition, it requires the students to organize those steps into a coherent oral presentation that evaluates the oral performance of the students. 5. Testing and assesment The tests will ask the students to write technical specifications, instructions, business letters, reports. The oral evaluation will require the students to provide instructions for the installation of a product or to provide training programs to new workers of their crew. Since these are tests that aim to assess usage of English, evaluation of students’ performances will still include criteria that assess corectness of vocabulary and grammar, but other criteria will be introduced as well. Because we aim to assess competences, the evaluation will include criteria such as appropriate tone usage, general impression of the message, proper usage of the format of the message. In other words, the evaluation approach is holistic, the general impression of the message is of paramount importance. Mistakes are 292

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evaluated in accordance to the amount of „damage” they produce to the message and in accordance to the degree of confusion they create in the mind of the recipient. Only elements that corrupt the message essentially will be penalized, while as small slips that do not influence the delivery will not be taken into consideration. Testing will also introduce elements that do not evaluate linguistic aspects. They are however a vital part of this holistic evaluation and they bring the tests closer to real life situations encountered at work. Assignments will have to meet very strict deadlines. Any assignment that has not been delivered on time will not receive points. The students will still have to do them and hand them in at a later date and will be part of their portfolio. This replicates the real life situation in which failure of meeting a deadline on a task leads to the sanction of the engineer. 6. Conclusions The introduction of a new teaching method involves changing the teaching activities, teaching materials and tests. This requires much effort from the English teacher that teaches technical university students. However, all the activities that derive from the introduction of this new method bring the students closer to the professional environment that will welcome them after graduation and will provide them with communicational competences in the English language. References [1] www.wikipedia.org [2] Godsave, Alan, 2005, Foundation Training for Teachers of Business English, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry Examination Board

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THE USE OF INDIRECT LANGUAGE IN THE DELIVERY OF MEDICAL BAD NEWS Asst.Prof. Moga Liliana, Asst.Prof. Moga Adrian , PhD

“Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu Abstract Communication is the medium by which physicians can learn about the patients’ experience meant to help the former establish a diagnosis. The knowledge about how to communicate a terminal diagnosis with honesty and tact is particularly important because of the critical nature of the issues they frequently address. The importance of finding the best ways to deliver bad news is congruent with the incidence of cancer worldwide and the striking lack of studies examining how physicians break bad news in actual practice. Choosing indirect language seems to solve the physician’s dilemma between honesty and harshness and expresses a caring relationship towards the patient.

Keywords: communication, physician, patient, bad news, indirect language There is substantial agreement that skillful communication is as essential as the physician’s technical knowledge in fulfilling the objectives of the medical interview (diagnosing, assessing pain, prescribing treatment, etc). Communication is the medium by which a physician can learn about the patient’s experience and, conversely, the medium by which a patient is able to understand the physician’s expertise, advice and recommendations. In specialties such as oncology and palliative care good communication is essential because of the life – altering consequences of the issues discussed (e.g. a terminal diagnosis). For example, a physician might need to discuss with the patient the transition from 294

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active treatment to palliative care, which risks implying that “nothing else can be done”, but to ignore this option in order to preserve the patient’s hope could leave the patient without appropriate care (e.g. continuing a futile treatment) or the ability to plan. Consequently, although skillful communication is essential to most medical activities, for physicians working with seriously ill patients, knowing how to communicate with honesty and tact is particularly important because of the critical nature of the issues they frequently address. Communicating a terminal diagnosis such as cancer is particularly challenging for physicians because of the potentially devastating effects of this information on the patient. The following case (a real clinical case) illustrates the dilemma that physicians face when they have to break bad news: Mr. Thomson was first diagnosed with esophageal cancer when he was 45. Recently married to a young wife, he loved life and people. He valued friends, honesty and determination. He was an athlete and his passion was mountaineering. While he was on radiation and chemotherapeutic treatment he continued to have an optimistic attitude in spite of the nausea and fatigue by this therapy. Twelve months after the completion of the treatment Mr. Thomson was fit, energetic and thrilled by his normal CT scan. He had regained muscle and found he could exercise again without being breathless. He is now 47, grateful, expectant, fit and sure that his last CT scan is again normal. He is ready to go on his planned trip into the mountains. He has come to his physician for a check – up and the last week’s CT scan. Last week’s CT report lies in front of the physician who reads: “… mass … and enlarged nodes in the mediastinum … small nodule in the left lung … not present previously … relapsed metastatic cancer ...”

At this point one should imagine that the physician is in the position of informing the patient about the results of the recent CT scan. Consequently, the physician faces two communicative options: 1) He could choose to tell Mr. Thomsom directly what the tests showed, disregarding the potential negative impact of his message on the patient, or 295

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2) He could avoid giving the information – a practice that is still common in some cultures [1]. In choosing to disclose the information he would act in consonance with the patient’s desire for honesty but would also risk crushing his hope. In choosing to conceal the information the doctor would spare the patient from the immediate shock but also prevent the possibility of making informed decisions. The question is whether it is possible to reconcile both sides of this dilemma. That is, how can a physician communicate painful information honestly without crushing the patient’s hope? There is an increasing interest in finding strategies to deliver bad news more effectively by carrying out this task with both tact and honesty [2]. The importance of finding the best ways to deliver bad news is congruent with the growing incidence of cancer worldwide and the striking lack of studies examining how physicians break bad news in actual practice [3]. 1. Indirect Language and a Situational Theory of Communicative Dilemmas The theoretical framework for investigating the delivery of bad news has been provided by the research on equivocal communication made by Bavelas [4] and Bavelas, Black, Chovil and Mullet [5]. These authors supported their theory of situational dilemmas with a series of primarily lab experiments. This theory can apply to both practical situations and, in particular, to the delivery of medical bad news. The theory set up by Bavelas et. al. [5] can be illustrated with an innocuous nonmedical situation: A colleague with whom you collaborate closely has just given a presentation at a prestigious conference that you are both attending. When he has finished presenting your colleague asks you: “How did I do?” (At this point you should think about the actual answer you would give in this situation, that is, not what you think you might say but what you would actually say.)

This example portrays a communicative dilemma that is similar in structure to the one physicians face when having to communicative 296

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bad news. In both situations the dilemma is how to present painful information without hurting the other person. Most people facing such a dilemma would try to find a middle ground between giving the information bluntly and being untruthful [5]. How physicians find this middle ground when they have to communicate bad news is the question to be answered. 2. The Situational Theory A speaker in any given communicative situation chooses from a set of options that represent the possible messages available in that situation [4; 5]. Every time a speaker chooses an option it will have consequences on the participants in the situation. The consequences of a speaker’s message can be either positive or negative. A message with positive effects will be recepted with pleasure, whereas one with negative consequences will induce dissatisfaction. Returning to the example above and supposing the colleague’s presentation was successful, telling him that the presentation was excellent and well done would imply that he was a good public speaker, etc. Therefore, this attitude would be one of positive consequences. In case the presentation were poorly delivered, telling him the truth directly would imply that he was a bad speaker or did not know how to structure a presentation. Thus, this attitude would be one of negative consequences for the colleague. Lying would be another path with negative consequences because, presumably, it would be against most people’s moral principles. Whenever the speaker is to choose between a message with positive consequences or one with negative consequences, the option is simple and obvious: a path with positive consequences is preferable because it leads to an expected and desirable outcome. When the choice is between messages with only negative consequences, such as in the case of the colleague’s poor presentation, the speaker faces a problem because any path leads to an unpleasant outcome. That is, the speaker is caught between being truthful and hurtful or being kind and false. Bevelas [4] and Bavelas et al [5], adapting Lewin’s (1938) classic analyses, referred to this problematic situation as an ‘avoidance – avoidance conflict’, meaning that the speaker will prefer to avoid all 297

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negative communicative options and instead seek a different communicative path. We could reflect Bavelas’ term with ‘situational dilemma’ or simply ‘dilemma’. Returning to the medical context, a physician who has to communicate bad news such as a diagnosis of terminal cancer faces a situational dilemma, that is, considering the standard or maxim of truthfulness, the physician is compelled to communicate the diagnosis directly but by that he would risk damaging the patient’s morale. Avoiding a discussion of the diagnosis in order to maintain the patient’s hope would, among other things, prevent him/her from making informed decisions and would therefore be irresponsible. In this situation, either direct communicative path that the physician decides to take (communicating the diagnosis directly or concealing the truth) would have negative consequences both for the patient and the physician’s relationship with the patient. For that reason, it is most likely that the physician will prefer to avoid both of these direct alternatives. In the case of good diagnostic news the physician will have no problem choosing one of the available communicative paths because the situation offers messages with only positive consequences. In delivering bad news, though, no choice of message seems desirable, and that makes any direction of action inadequate. The question then is how the physician will solve the situational dilemma created by the necessity of communicating bad news. In other words, how can the physician convey harmful information truthfully without being harsh? 3. Indirect Language in Bad News Delivery In order to answer the question stated above it is necessary to introduce another characteristic of the speaker’s messages. Besides having positive or negative consequences, a message can vary in degree of ‘directness’ or ‘indirectness’. A direct message expresses the speaker’s intentions in an explicit, ‘accentuated’ manner. An indirect message conveys the speaker’s intentions/ thoughts implicitly and thus ‘attenuates’ the effect of what is said. For example, a direct criticism such as “You did badly” can be attenuated with an indirect comment such as“ It wasn’t great”; or a 298

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direct order such as “Pass me the test results !” can be attenuated with a question like “Would you mind passing me the test results?”. In both indirect cases mentioned the meaning of the message is left implicit and open for the hearer to infer it from the context, which attenuates the effect. The logic of indirect messages is that the indirect meaning of the message is not present in the speaker’s words (e.g. “Would you mind taking out the dog?” is a request, not a question). The hearer needs to recover this meaning by inference, using information from the context in which the message was produced. In making the inference the hearer collaborates with the speaker in the construction of the message meaning, and thus the speaker is not the only one responsible for this meaning [7]. By exploiting this characteristic of indirect messages the speaker can attenuate the effect of what he/she says. When a speaker’s message has positive consequences, a direct choice will be more desirable than an indirect and subtle one. Going back to the example of the colleague’s presentation and supposing he did very well, a message such as “Your presentation was good” would be a better option than “The presentation was not bad”, because the former is a more obvious and direct compliment. However, if the colleague’s presentation was poor, a direct message such as “I thought your presentation was bad” would be less desirable than an indirect one such as “It wasn’t very good”. Therefore, when the situation provides only messages with negative consequences (i.e., in a situational dilemma), an indirect and attenuated message is a preferable choice because it allows the speaker to mitigate the impact of the message on the hearer while still being truthful. Considering the fact that delivering bad news also creates a situational dilemma, it is predictable that physicians will use indirect language as a means of attenuating the impact of painful information on their patients. The following example is taken from the video provided by the UNC School of Medicine for young doctors who take exams like Step I, II [8]. Because the excerpt is from a video it is helpful to know that the physician’s manner and voice were gentle and concerned. 299

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1. Pt: so…I’m a little bit worried about my condition now. 2. Dr.: So really nobody’s told you … um anything about your condition or the results of tests, is that right? 3. Pt: Yeah. Or at least I-if they told me I don’t think I-I made much sense of what they said. 4. Dr.: Well the, the … do you want me to tell you about what I think or about what the test showed or …? 5. Pt: Sure ! Yeah … [nodding] any information I think would be good to … 6. Dr.: [nodding] Okay. 7. Pt: Yeah. 8. Dr.: Uh … well … is, is. Um. I mean it- From the tests it seems that that you [nods] do have a serious condition [P: nods] um … [nodding] involving your lungs and other parts of your body as well … 9. Pt: [nods] Um /hum. 10. Dr.: [pause] Um... [pause] It, it /um .. it would APPEAR, although we haven’t – [Pt: nodding] um … it isn’t final, that uh … that you have a [nodding] type of cancer. 11. Pt: [nodding] Um - hum. 12. Dr.: um … which, which, [nodding] is involving the lungs and other parts of the body. 13. Pt : [nodding] Uh – hum. 14. Dr.: Um ... and that’s why you’ve – [winces] you’ve not been well and you haven’t been able to do the things that you … [nodding] you normally do, your cycling and so on. 15. Pt: [nodding] Um – hum. 16. Dr.: Um ... I think there are various ... uh ... [Pt: nodding] things and stages that have to be gone through, a little bit further in terms of investigations, in order to determine, you know, what are the possible treatments [Pt: nodding] that, that could be offered to you. 17. Pt: Uh – hum.

Transcription conventions (adapted from Bavelas et al, [5]): – Dr. – physician – Pt – volunteer patient – stressed words are in CAPITALS – ( - ) – a sharp break on the speech – a comma – a slight pause 300

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– a period – the pause and drop of intonation that indicate the end of sentence – three unspaced dots (…) – a longer pause – words in parenthesis (unintelligible) – parts of the speech that were unclear and thus impossible to transcribe – words in brackets [smiling] – paralinguistic aspects of speech – (nodding) – underlined words – an overlap in speech This excerpt shows that by means of the indirect phrasing of the bad news delivery the physician balanced truthfulness and tact when telling the patient about the diagnosis of metastatic lung cancer. On the truth – telling side of the dilemma the physician informed the patient about the seriousness of the condition (line 8), explained to the patient that the diagnosis was lung cancer which had metastasized (line 8; 10; 12). Two other pieces of evidence in the physician’s delivery indicate that the patient’s diagnosis was cancer: according to the physician cancer was the cause of the patient’s symptoms (line 14), and the patient was a candidate for treatment (line 16). As far as tact is concerned, the physician employed a range of indirect forms that attenuated the impact of the information and avoided the blunt truth. Further below we will outline some of these forms and present a comparison between indirect phrasings and what the physician could have said using direct language: What the physician said (Indirect language)

What the physician could have said (Direct language) The physician could have broken the news immediately (e.g. “you have …”), not asking the question and disregarding the patient’s consent.

– In line 4 the physician offered the patient the possibility of not listening to the news, asking “do you want me to tell you about what I think or …?” and only communicated the diagnosis after having the patient’s consent. 301

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– The physician referred to the diagnosis using terms such as “serious condition” (line 8) and “type of cancer ” (line 10)

The physician could have used more direct terms such as “aggressive cancer” or simply “cancer”. Omitting the words “type of” and saying “you have cancer” would have made the same utterance more direct and blunt.

The physician in this example managed to communicate the diagnosis in a way that was neither blunt nor flouting the maxim of truthfulness. He achieved this goal by making use of a variety of indirect phrasings (e.g. modal verbs, euphemisms), by means of his prosody (i.e., pausing, soft intonation, sounding concerned) and by actions such as wincing while telling the patient that the cancer was the cause of his discomfort (line 14). The overall impression is one of a sympathetic, caring physician who does not want to cause extra discomfort by his words and attitude. Although the patient remained rather silent during the news delivery, his minimal responses “uh hum” or his nodding indicated that he was following the physician’s words and understood the diagnosis. Viewing the bad news delivery as a dilemma implies that what makes this task challenging is the situation and not a deficiency in the physician (e.g., lack of training or fear of death) or an internal state of the patient (e.g., resistance or denial). Understanding the dilemma can highlight the practical difficulties involved in delivering bad news and can help physicians become more aware of how their use of indirect language affects patients, attenuating the impact of potentially distressing messages. References [1] Buckman, R., How to break the bad news: A Guide for Health – Care professionals, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1992. [2] Baile, W.E., et al., A six-step protocol for delivering bad news: Application to the patient with cancer, The Oncologist, 5, pp. 302-311, 2000. [3] Beach, W.A., Anderson, J.K., Communication and cancer? Part I: The noticeable absence of interactional research, Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 21(3), pp. 1- 23, 2003. 302

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[4]

Bavelas, B.J., Situations that lead to disqualification, Human Communication Research, 9(2), pp. 130-145, 1983. [5] Bavelas, B.J., Black, A., Chovil, N., Mullet, J., Equivocal Communication, Newburg Park, CA: Sage, 1990. [6] Lewin, K., The conceptual representation and measurement of psychological forces, Contributions to Psychological Theory, 1, (4, Serial No. 4), 1938. [7] Fraser, B., Conversational mitigation, Journal of Pragmatics, 4(4), pp. 341350, 1980. [8] Aleman, M. and Forcier M., Introduction to the Physical Exam, CD – ROM, UNC School of Medicine, 2005.

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THE ROLE OF DICTIONARY IN LEARNING ABSTRACT WORDS. A CONTRASTIVE APPROACH Asst.Prof. Ţuţuianu Diana

„Carol I” National Defence University, Bucharest [email protected]

Abstract The role of dictionaries in learning a foreign language is tremendously important‚ no matter the level. This role becomes even more obvious when dealing with abstract nouns whose counterparts in another language are difficult to recognized, given the lack of unique reference. The paper presents some aspects revealed by the study of various types of dictionaries (bilingual and monolingual), both English and Romanian, emphasizing the differences for the benefit of the English learner. At the same time, it tries to underline how important it is for the non-native speaker to carefully study the words given as synonyms by the bilingual dictionary.

Keywords: abstract words, dictionary definitions, comparisons Teaching practice has shown how often the English teacher has to answer questions from the students related to resemblances and differences between various words given as synonyms for the same word in the Romanian-English Dictionary (RED). The same goes for the English-Romanian Dictionary (ERD). The aim of this paper is to investigate various situations revealed by the analysis of these bilingual dictionaries, with specific examples. We have also taken into consideration monolingual dictionaries: for Romanian, Dictionarul Explicativ al Limbii Române (DEX) and for English, The Oxford English Reference Dictionary (OED) and Longman Lexicon of Contemporay English (LLE). For our study, we have selected 304

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nouns designating feelings in English and Romanian, as examples of abstract nouns in both languages. The number of studies aiming at a detailed analysis of abstract nouns [1] is very small. The reason is that, according to linguists who investigated ways of defining abstract nouns, they are characterized by the lack of an extra-linguistic prototypical reference, resulting in their sense becoming less tangible and accessible, therefore more difficult to define [2]. As part of abstract nouns, nouns designating feelings are extremely problematic because of the fact they are difficult to define, differentiate, interpret and, finally, translate into another language. Generally speaking, analyses made until now have demonstrated that in order to include feelings within the larger framework of abstract nouns, whose properties they share, the most appropriate description is the following: nouns designating feelings make up a poliparadigmatic, heterogeneous lexical field in which we can state for the time being as a criterion of constituting it the polarity towards a certain psychological feature. First of all, we notice that the term considered hypernym for this paradigm in Romanian, afect has this characteristic feature included in its dictionary definition: the possibility to express, generally speaking, any psychological state or emotion. In English, the dictionary definition of feeling does not cover, as expected, the other types of psychological manifestations: emotion, state, attitude, and disposition. We can therefore, conclude that in English there is no superordinate term for this class. Also at the level of dictionary definitions, both in Romanian and in English, we notice an overlap of types of psychological manifestations, some being explained through others, leading to circular definitions. Thus, sentiment „exprima atitudinea omului fata de realitate” (man’s attitude towards reality), stare is „dispozitia în care se afla cineva” (somebody’s disposition), dispozitie is „starea sufleteasca buna sau rea” (somebody’s emotional state, either good or bad), afect is „reactie emotionala” (emotional reaction), and emotie is „reactie afectiva” (psychological affective reaction). One may wonder whether attitude exists as such and it is expressed by the emergence of a certain feeling, or if feeling exists as 305

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such and is manifested through the emergence of a certain attitude. The same way, according to the definition, emotion also reflects a certain attitude of the individual towards reality. Although they are less than in Romanian, in English there are however such cases, as disposition „a natural tendency or inclination; a person’s temperament or attitude, especially as displayed in dealing with others”, and especially feeling „a particular emotional reaction; intense emotion” and emotion „a strong mental or instinctive feeling, such as love or fear”, which could easily prompt us to identify the two psychological manifestations as being similar although, from the point of view of psychological definitions, differences are obvious. In addition, the difference „mental / instinctive” in the definition of emotion may indicate the presence or absence of reason and semantic feature [– duration], which is difficult to state with certainty at this level. Actually, the examples given in the definition, „love” or „fear”, do not necessarily imply the feature [– duration]. This lack of precision in definitions gets to be transferred to the words characterized by these types of psychological manifestations. On the other hand, the parallelism which could be drawn among definitions allows the selection as defining features of the main characteristic features of psychological manifestations: psychological, subjective energy [3], of lower or bigger intensity, of smaller or longer duration, whether motivated or not from the outside, with or without external manifestations. When trying to compare bilingual dictionary entries in RED and ERD, we notice a frequent lack of preciseness of the interlingual synonymy: in most cases, next to the entry in English, the dictionary gives all or almost all cvasisynonymous words belonging to the paradigm, with no clear difference among them. Thus, love is iubire, dragoste, amor, afectiune, tandrete, atasament, enmity is dusmanie, vrajba, ostilitate, ura, animozitate, contentment is satisfactie, multumire, placere; enjoyment is multumire, satisfactie, încântare; despondency is mâhnire, întristare, descurajare, deznadejde; distrust is neîncredere, îndoiala, banuiala, suspiciune, dragoste is love, affection ; scârba is disgust, repulsion, neîncredere is distrust, suspicion, îngâmfare is haughtiness, arrogance, conceit, 306

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haughtiness is aroganta, trufie, orgoliu, dispret, etc. The ones with similar form and meaning, due to the common Latin root or the French origin, first get the Romanian equivalent of the respective words, and then other cvasisynonyms more or less kindred in sense, according to the definitions from DEX. For instance, affection is afectiune but also atasament, sentiment, dragoste, attachment is atasament but also afectiune, iubire; disgust is dezgust but also scârba, greata, repulsie, aversiune; satisfaction is satisfactie but also multumire; depression is deprimare but also, întristare; desire is dorinta but also pofta, rugaminte, cerere; suspicion is suspiciune but also banuiala, presupunere; respect is respect but also stima, consideratie, deferenta; admiration is admiratie but also entuziasm, pretuire; arrogance is aroganta but also obraznicie, îngâmfare, înfumurare, trufie, etc. It is surprising that many times, the equivalence with the similar term from the other language is not done the other way around, from Romanian into English. Thus, simpatie is translated as liking, attraction, aversiune as abhorrence, antipatie as dislike, aversion, animozitate as enmity, hatred, dezgust as abhorrence, compasiune as sympathy, desperare as despondency, etc. Among the words analyzed, there are very few examples in which we notice a perfect equivalence between the two dictionaries as far as the same wotrd is concerned: prietenie – friendship – prietenie or dispret – contempt – dispret. Most times, dictionaries give also the cvasisynonymous words, neglecting the possible differences: deprimare is translated as depression, but depression is translated as deprimare, descurajare; multumire is content, but content is multumire, satisfactie, sentiment de multumire; veselie is joy, but joy is veselie, bucurie, placere; deferenta is respect, but respect is respect, deferenta, stima, consideratie, etc. Two main conclusions could be drawn from here: – although some of the words have a common root or they come from the same semantic loan, the meanings developed in the two languages are not necessarily equivalent; – if the speaker is offered many synonyms for the same word, by a forced neutralization of the differences among them, it is extremely 307

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necessary to look them up in a monolingual dictionary in order to clarify the meanings. Important differences in definition could be found for the words friendship, satisfaction considered states by both English dictionaries and feelings by DEX, animosity, considered feeling by OED and attitude by DEX, hostility, skepticism, snobbery considered states by LLE and attitudes by DEX. We notice that hatred and pleasure are both feelings and states, respect is both state and attitude, vanity and snobbery are both states and qualities. A special situation is that of attraction which in OED is considered neither feeling, not state, but „interest, the act or power of attracting/ a person or thing that attracts by arousing interest”, while in LLE it is not even included in the paradigm of words designating feelings, states, emotions. The same goes for the words SYMPATHY, which is not mentioned in LLE, either, and whose second sense refers to a capacity, „capacity of being simultaneously affected with a feeling similar or corresponding to that of another” and fourth sense refers to an exterior manifestation, an attitude „a favourable attitude, approval”. In many cases, in Romanian, the definition sounds like ,,sentiment de” (feeling of), „stare de” (state of), „atitudine de” (attitude of) followed by an enumeration of several cvasisynonyms, as it happens with: antipatie ,,sentiment de + neplacere, aversiune, sila”, prietenie ,,sentiment de + simpatie, stima, atasament”, iubire „sentiment de” + „dragoste” + „pentru o persoana de sex opus”, etc. In these cases, it is extremely important to find out whether the enumeration is a sum of approximately different qualities, or a sum of approximately similar qualities. On the other hand, each term included in the definition could be relevant for a certain semantic feature, first the common feature and then the specific difference: intensity, duration, motivation. In English, in OED, such definitions are less frequent, for example dislike: „feeling of + repugnance or not liking”; enmity „feeling of + hostility”; pleasure: „feeling of + satisfaction, joy”; desperation: „feeling of + hopelessness”. Instead, understanding certain words from the paradigm of psychological manifestations may 308

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be really difficult as in many cases, much more in comparison with Romanian, these do not have a definition of their own, as nouns, but are defined through the verb or adjective they are derived from, as it happens with: tenderness, happiness, despondency, dissatisfaction, arrogance, snobbery. Another possibility is to have definitions such as satisfaction: “the state of + being satisfied”; uncertainty: “the fact or condition of + being uncertain”; suspicion: “the feeling or thought + of a person + who suspects, distrusts”. Some of the words analyzed are defined exclusively through cvasisynonyms. In this case, enumerating them can lead to confusions, especially because situations differ from case to case. On the one hand, the terms used are quite clearly differentiated, for instance afectiune ,,simpatie, prietenie, dragoste”, which may mean either a sum of each word’s features, or an indication of the ways of manifesting a certain feeling. On the other hand, the enumeration can use terms which are less clearly differentiated, as it happens with simpatie defined as ,,atractie, înclinare, afinitate”, and each of the three terms have circular definitions increasing ambiguity because of their possible combinations. The same goes for fala: "trufie, îngâmfare, orgoliu”, infatuare: „îngâmfare, înfumurare”, vrajba: “dusmanie, ura, vrajmasie, dezbinare, zâzanie, cearta, îndoiala: „neîncredere, ezitare, sovaiala, îndoire, etc. In English, attachment has only circular definition “affection, devotion”; aversion is “dislike”; fidelity is “faithfulness, loyalty”; wish is “desire, request, aspiration”, reliance is “trust, confidence”, etc. The number of clear dictionary definitions in Romanian (including a cvasisynonym followed by clear specific differences) is quite small, for instance, afinitate: „potrivire + între oameni sau între manifestarile lor + datorita unor înclinatii comune”; tandrete: „afectiune + plina de duiosie, de delicatete, de gingasie”; fericire: „stare de + multumire + sufleteasca + intensa + deplina; stima: „sentiment + de pretuire + (plina de respect) + determinata de meritele sau calitatile cuiva sau ceva”, etc. In English, there are more such definitions, relevant especially because the cvasisynonyms are more clearly differentiated and 309

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circularity becomes a less significant source of ambiguity, for instance, love: “intense feeling + of deep affection + fondness + for a person or thing; devotion: “enthusiastic + attachment or loyalty + to a person or a cause; depression: “state of + extreme + dejection + or excessive + melancholy + a mood of + hopelessness + feeling of + inadequacy + often with physical symptoms”; respect: “deferential + esteem + felt or shown + towards a person or quality”; pride: “feeling of + elation or satisfaction + at achievements or qualities or possessions + that do one credit”; contempt: “feeling + that a person or thing is beneath consideration or worthless + deserving scorn or extreme reproach” etc. We consider it interesting to mention that there are cases in which the definitions given by LLE are more relevant and precise than those given by OED, due to a smaller degree of circularity and clearer differences among cvasisynonyms. For instance, attachment (OED): “affection, devotion” and attachment (LLE): “a feeling of liking, fondness, etc. especially over a longer time”; affection (OED): “goodwill; fond or kindly feeling” and affection (LLE): “gentle, lasting love, as of a parent for a child”; aversion (OED): “dislike or unwillingness” and aversion (LLE): “hate or dislike of a person, group of people, thing, etc, often without a clear reason”; disdain (OED) = „scorn, contempt” and disdain (LLE): “lack of respect; the feeling that something or somebody is low and worthless”; etc. Yet, considering that there are cases in which the definitions in OED are more complex, and that many words designating psychological manifestations are not to be found in LLE, we can not state the superiority of one type of dictionary over the other. Another aspect revealed by our contrastive approach was the fact that the thematic roles [4] present in most cases in DEX are not stated as such either in bilingual dictionaries, or in OED or LLE. In Romanian, dictionary definitions include, in most cases, references to the possibility of using that particular psychological manifestation with respect to “a person or thing/something or someone”. Thus, they offer supplementary information on the possibilities and especially on the restrictions of combining them. The question raised in this situation is whether the absence of such information is a drawback of 310

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English dictionaries or these are not considered relevant. In order to avoid an empirical answer, based on the English speaker’s instinct, the next step of our analysis should be the behaviour of these words in different contexts. In conclusion, the dictionary definitions of psychological manifestations in English, though in many cases superior to those in Romanian, still have many problems (especially induced by circularity) which increase the relativity of interpreting the meanings. Also, given the difficulties of making clear-cut differences among synonyms in bilingual dictionaries, a solution for better understanding and using English would be a parallel consultation of both types of dictionaries, including a careful consideration of the contexts in which they can be used. References [1] Bidu-Vranceanu, Angela (coord.), Lexic comun, lexic specializat, Bucureşti, Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2000. [2] Bidu-Vranceanu Angela, Forascu Narcisa, Limba română contemporană. Lexic, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas Educaţional, 2005; Van Peteghem, M., Attributs nominaux à substantif noyau abstrait, în N. Flaux, M. Glatigny, D. Samair, Les Noms Abstraits. Histoire et Théoriés, Actes du Colloque de Dunkerque, 1992, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1992. [3] Venegas Garcia, Maria del Mar, El campo semántico „tristeza” en espanol (siglos XII-XIX), Madrid, Editorial de la Universidad Complutense, 1989. [4] Picoche 1995: Jacqueline Picoche, Définitions actancielles, Cahier de Lexicologie no 66, 1995; Dictionarul Explicativ al Limbii Române, Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan”, Univers Enciclopedic, Bucureşti, 1998; The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996; Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English, Tom McArthur, Longman, Essex, 1991; Dicţionar Englez-Român, Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, Univers Enciclopedic, Bucureşti, 2004; Dicţionar Român – Englez, Andrei Bantaş, Bucureşti, Teora, 1997.

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AN APPROACH TO TRANSLATION THEORY IN TERMS OF NEOLOGISMS TA Sirbu Anca, PhD

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract This paper is aimed at providing a new approach with respect to translation theory and not only in terms of neologisms. Beside the simpler units called words, the lexicon of a language is also made up of complex units. Simple neologisms are usually borrowed words, old proper words, abbreviations or sense neologisms. It is the social norm that decides on the status of a linguistic unit and its comprehension in the lexicon according to the criteria of functional integration, semantic coherence and formal stability. This poses a significant problem for scientific or technical neologisms, as a great number of terminological needs are satisfied by phrases or groups of words. Whereas one may find them under a simple entry in general dictionaries, they are also very likely to be listed as specific entries in technical dictionaries, which deal with terminological rather than with lexical units.

Keywords: translation theory, neologism, foreign language In terms of morphology, neologisms are a means by which a language can regularise its lexicon, whereas borrowings and abbreviations tend to introduce irregularities. The notion of neologism is the feature which permits the distinction between morphology and lexicon, two inseparable, but quite distinct concepts. Innovation in a language can only exist in relation to the linguistic system. Borrowings involve lexical transfers of fully formed elements rather than morphological creativity. This may result from a living 312

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foreign language or from a variation of the same system. Assimilation of forms may disguise the origin of original borrowings. On the other hand, there are forms which look foreign, for instance English forms in French, which are actually quasi/borrowings. It appears that in the 1900s the neologism vatman (tramdriver) was created based on the proper name “Watt” (from the electric unit) and the English element “man”. Another matter with respect to neologisms is the aspect of their acceptability in a community. This is a communication-related issue, as a new element cannot be regarded in the system as being independent of the actual process of language usage. An old lexical sign, i.e. a functional form, limited to one subsystem, such as a dialect or a sociolect, may move to another subsystem and be perceived as a neologism. From the psycholinguistic point of view, the process of learning of lexical items is a sequence of steps by means of which neologisms are integrated. For example, words created and used by children on an audio-phonological basis while ignoring language norms or restrictions. Neologisms carry a semantic feature which is inherent. Semantic novelty may be total (in borrowings, for instance), partial (creations by affixation, composition or syntagmatic formations into word groups) or very weak (acronyms, abbreviations etc.) One should not mistake novelty among a user group with novelty in a communicative situation. Technical usages of words limited to a single terminology or a socio-professional group are particularly interesting when they are later extended to general usage. An old technical term can justifiably be considered a neologism at another level of usage when a larger user group becomes acquainted with it. This type of knowledge is further linked to standardisation of terms and to translation. Denomination and terms are closely linked to the precise nature of the activity involved, and the organisation and transfer of specialised information. This is most clearly visible in the case of translators. Their activity differs significantly according to whether they are translating novels and poetry or scientific, technical or administrative texts. In the first case their competence must be oriented towards languages and usage with emphasis on the historical 313

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period of the source text, the idiolect of the author, target language choices which match the source text, etc. The lexical semantic problems they are faced with are rarely terminological. Specialist translators are faced with other difficulties. The texts they have to handle are of very uneven syntactic and stylistic quality. These translators therefore have to know the conceptual and terminological systems, preferably as well as the authors themselves. Since translators can rarely specialise in any narrow subject field, but most cover a range of technologies or sciences, they are heavily dependent on good terminological tools. Books in the forms of dictionaries and vocabularies are never enough. Translators who have to translate a text from a source language into a target language, must for each subject field obtain terminological equivalents even when the concepts in the field are incompletely named in that language. Technical translators cannot use a neological or slightly varying equivalent in a way that their literary colleagues may be able to do from time to time. To translate a term whose equivalent does not exist or is not accepted in a language poses a problem which a priori has no solution. It should, however, always be possible to offer translators a standardised solution; this is the task of terminology. Each language is capable of naming everything; it is rather a political decision whether people are allowed to develop terminologies in their mother tongue, or whether they have to resign themselves to borrow a vehicular language for a particular subject field. Borrowing is the most obvious and laziest solution but also the internationally most efficient one, because it is easily done and because it partially neutralises interlingual differences and thus respects the original concept. One can say that the borrowed term names the concept and connotes its origin, which, despite its many disadvantages, explains the success of this method of term creation. Certain morphological formations lend themselves to borrowing by several Indo-European languages, i.e. Greek and Latin-based compounds. Nevertheless, the source language is often also a receptor language, having to resort to neology in order to denote new concepts by new linguistic forms. This term indicates the process which produces new lexical forms inside a language. Neology is a linguistic 314

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concept. From the point of view of translation theory and terminology, where it is the novelty of concepts that is important, we should point out that some terminological novelties are at the same time lexical neologisms, whereas others are not. Once a term is associated to a concept in an important area of usage, it can survive as name of this concept, even if the concept evolves or if the conceptual system changes. Many stable terms in the history of science and technology designating concepts have undergone significant changes. While the meaning of words may not change, the scientific or technical concepts denoted may no longer be the same. In this case, definitions carry the burden of up-dating. The procedures of abbreviation, which produce numerous terminological units, are little studied by linguists. As an example, “radar” is an English formation which has since been promoted to the status of an international term. Such formations demonstrate the originality of producing a formally new sign without any new semantic operation. The process of abbreviation consists of borrowing a designation with a terminological function composed of several words and extracting either initial letters, syllables or a combination of the two in order to form them into a new term: BCG = Bacillus Calmette-Guérin radar = radio detecting and ranging maser = microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation In specialized fields, terminological units in several languages (English, French, Spanish, Romanian) take the form of noun phrases. Their structure is constant: one element, a noun or a noun phrase and a determiner in the form of one or several adjectives or prepositional complements. In Romanian they are usually introduced by the preposition “de”. This structure is the same for phrases or compound nouns. According to the morphological freedom of a language, some form compounds, other build phrases. Thus, Romanian with its limited morphological freedom contrasts sharply with German and less so with English: transmission factor = Transmissionsgrad = factor de transmisie contrasting filter = Kontrastfilter = filtru de contrast neutral filter = Neutralfilter = filtru neutru 315

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The semantic and formal structures are similar, with the difference that in English and German the determiner precedes and in Romanian follows the nucleus and, what is of interest here, in German it is directly linked to the determinant to form a complex lexical unit. There is a contrast between these language-internal procedures and borrowings which represent actually the integration of a strange body into the lexical system of a language. Instead of using a new, borrowed form, we can use an already existent form. The attribution of simple or complex lexical forms to a concept is a variation of internal terminological borrowing. In terms of monosemy, this technique is efficient due to the context in each subject field which clears any ambiguities. Many borrowings are criticised while their formal structure is accepted. Sociolinguists have not formulated yet rules of acceptance or rejection. Practitioners in the narrow sense, such as engineers, practising doctors or motor-car mechanics, administrators, businessmen or bankers, either few or many, who actually produce the discourse of their subject field weigh more heavily than a dozen terminologists, especially if they have no effective means of intervention. In conclusion, it is necessary to evaluate the sociolinguistic value of neologisms at the appropriate moment and within the appropriate model of communication. One can only observe the results: frequency, availability of the word, positive or negative reaction of language users and its use outside the original subject field. References [1] Arntz, Reiner, Einführung in die Terminologiearbeit, Hildesheim, Georg Ohms Verlag, 1989. [2] Fluck, Hans R., Fachsprachen, Tübingen, Francke-Verlag, 1985. [3] Sager, Juan C., A Practical Course in Terminology Processing / Juan C. Sager: with a bibliography by Blaise Nkwenti Azeh, Amsterdam. Philadelphia., John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1990.

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SEQUENCE OF TENSES (SOT) AND COMPLEMENT CLAUSES TA Badea Oana

University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Craiova [email protected]

Abstract The present article deals with the problems that the deictic characteristic of the English verb poses to a Romanian learner. Thus, there will be described the transformations that appear during the SOT (Sequence of Tenses) in English and the role and changes that the Complement Clauses undergo, mainly that the semantic and syntactic interpretation of the tenses in the complement clause is dependable on the main clause. The present article will present a more comprehensive account of the interpretation of tenses in that-complement clauses, insisting on the relation between the main clause and the subordinate clause.

Keywords: deictic, SOT, Complement Clauses, tense, relation 1. General viewpoints Tense has been considered a deictic category due to the fact that the truthfulness of a tensed sentence is relative to speech time, i.e. to the context. This is, though, the case in independent clauses, but not in complement clauses as well. The latter ones are not directly linked to Speech Time or Utterance Time – Ut-T, but they are connected to higher tenses connected to Ut-T or to even higher tenses. Thus, the Complement Clauses are linked to Ut-T only indirectly. One of the most important aspects of the dependence of complement clauses is the fact that the semantic interpretation of the tenses in the complement clause is dependable on the main clause. There is, also, a 317

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syntactic characteristic of the dependence of the complement clause on matrix tense, traditionally viewed as the Sequence of Tenses (SOT) of the Indicative Mood. The English language usually manifests the Sequence of Tenses – SOT, meaning that the presence of a particular tense in the main clause may produce some changes in the tenses of the subordinate clauses. The most simple statement of a sequence of tenses rule sustains that a present tense (Present Tense Simple, Present Tense Continuous, Present Perfect Tense Simple, Present Perfect Tense Continuous) in the main clause requires only past tenses in the subordinate clause. As a consequence, there are two main situations in which we may approach Sequence of Tenses – SOT: • The SOT may be viewed as an effect of the indirect speech – when reporting a person’s statement under a declarative past verb, the person who reports must accommodate all the present tenses (Present Tense Simple, Present Tense Continuous, Present Perfect Tense Simple, Present Perfect Tense Continuous) in the reported statement to the corresponding past tenses. Here is what most grammars hold: Direct Speech Present → Present Perfect → Future →

Indirect Speech Past Past Perfect Future in the Past

We may see these changes in examples of the following type: e.g. (1) Mary said: “I have a toothache.” Mary said she had a toothache. (2) Mary said: “Unfortunately, John has gone.” Mary said that, unfortunately, John had gone. (3) Mary said: “John will cook tomorrow.” Mary said that John would cook tomorrow. 318

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• The SOT has got a scope that goes over indirect speech. This fact can be seen in the hundreds of cases where the effect of the SOT is clear, even though there is no indirect speech at work. Ross (1967:206) presents a rule that deals with the SOT situation in the examples above, but which do not have a direct speech source: e.g. (1) *That she is mad was more than obvious. (2) That she was mad was more that obvious. Therefore, the SOT is an effect of subordination, namely of a particular configuration of the structure. Ross (1967) is the first among the modern linguists to try to explain the phenomenon of the Sequence of Tenses as a form of a syntactic rule that may be applied only when we have some structural conditions satisfied, and not in terms of direct vs. indirect speech. Viewed from this point of view, the SOT represents a rule that requires the tense of the complement clause to agree with the past tense of a main clause, so that the past tense should always be followed by one of the past tenses. This is the traditional syntactic requirement, but there is also an interpretative aspect: e.g. If the tense of the main clause is past, then, (1) the Past Tense in a Subordinate Clause (SC) is used to express simultaneity with the Main Clause (MC). (2) the Past Perfect in a SC is used to express anteriority with respect to the MC. (3) the Future in the Past in a SC is used to express posteriority with respect to the MC. Although the interpretative principles in the statements above are correct, they fail to give a complete and principled account of data. The present article will present a more comprehensive account of the interpretation of tenses in that-complement clauses, insisting on the relation between the main clause and the subordinate clause. 319

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2. Formal Account of an SOT Rule As already stated above, the SOT has got an interpretative side, more explicitly, to what extent the range of interpretation of tenses changes in embedded clauses, and also a formal component in the form of how the grammar makes sure that only the “appropriate” tenses appear in the subordinate clause. The tenses in embedded contexts may have readings that they do not have in independent sentences. There are the following examples: e.g. (1) Michael said that Jane was pregnant. (1’) Jane had been pregnant before the time of the saying (Michael said that Jane was pregnant when he married her). (1’’) Jane was pregnant (at the time of saying). (2) Michael said to me (yesterday) that he would tell his father tomorrow at lunch that they were eating their last meal together. (3) Michael said that Jane left. In sentence (1) there is an ambiguity because the Past Tense is open both to an anterior (past) reading and to a simultaneous (present) reading in (1’) and (1’’). In the first case, that of anteriority, the Past Tense in (1) shows anteriority to the time of saying, being interpreted as a past. In the second case, that of simultaneity, the past tense in (1) expresses simultaneity with the moment of speaking, and is, therefore, equivalent to a present. The remarkable fact is that in the second example, (2), the past tense cannot be interpreted as a past at all, because it does not show anteriority to any reference point. In fact, were eating shows simultaneity only with respect to the time of would tell in the main clause. Comparing (1) with (3), it appears that left in (3) has only an anteriority reading, and no simultaneous one. It is easily noticeable that the relevant difference between (1) and (3) is that the predication in (1) is a stative one, while the one in (3) is eventive. Thus, the aspectual class of the predication of the SC may influence the temporal interpretation of the subordinate clause. Another point that should be made is that interpreting tenses depends on the syntactic type of the subordinate clauses, as well. Thus, the 320

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tenses usually found in the relative clauses are distinct from those in the complement clauses: e.g. Mr. Smith gave a bad mark to the girl who answered incorrectly to his questions. Mention should be made that the underlined verb in the Past Tense (in the Relative Clause) may again be interpreted in two ways, with a change of the point of orientation. So, the verb answer refers to an event anterior to Mr. Smith giving the girl the bad mark. But, it may also refer to an answering preceding UT – T, but not necessarily anterior to the main clause event. SOT (Sequence of Tenses) cannot be simply analyzed as a rule that replaces a present tense by a past tense. One might start the analysis with a present and then change it into a past morpheme, under certain structural circumstances. But, this is not always the case, as shown in the following example: e.g. (1) Jane told me that she is pregnant. (2) Jane told me that she was pregnant. Sentence (2) shows an ambiguity between a simultaneous and an anterior meaning. In contrast, the first sentence (1) does not have an anterior reading of (2). Moreover, the simultaneous reading of (2) is different from the interpretation of (2), as sentence (1) is true only in a context where Jane is still pregnant at the time of utterance, while sentence (2) offers no information about Jane’s present condition. 3. Conclusions The tenses that appear in subordinate clauses may be interpreted in various ways, in point of: • the position of the subordinate clause (SC) – the syntactic configuration where the clause is projected (see complement clause vs. relative clause);

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• the predication nature in the SC – the ± stative feature. Mainly, the tenses of the subordinate clauses are oriented to the tense in the main clause, and not to the time of utterance. As a conclusion, one cannot bring into discussion the interpretation of tenses in terms of past tenses replacing present tenses, as proposed by the traditional point of view of the Sequence of Tenses in the first examples above. As an alternative, one should find the range of meanings that the tenses show in embedded clauses and relate them to their interpretations in the main clauses. References Budai, László, Gramatica Engleză, Bucureşti, Teora, 1999. Harris, Randy Allen, The Linguistics Wars, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995. Joseph, John; Swiggers, Pierre (Eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Western Linguistics, 1450-present. London, Routledge, 2000. Murar, Ioana; Trantescu Ana; Pisoschi, Claudia, English Syntax, Craiova, Editura Universitaria Craiova EUC, 2003. Ross, John R., On the Cyclic Nature of English Pronominalization, The Hague, Mouton, 1967. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_seqtense.html 2008/ 05/ 12 http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/sequence.htm 2008/01/13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_of_tenses 2008/ 04/ 15

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THE ROLE OF THE (ENGLISH) TEACHER IN THE PROCESS OF (ENGLISH) LEARNING TA Badea Oana

University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Craiova [email protected]

Abstract Students and teachers have always had their differences and, why not, their difficulties when dealing with communication. Over the past two decades, the international methodology has been gradually embraced by the English language teachers and it has been quite a successful process in Romania as well. Thus, the problems of students-teacher communication are over and over analyzed by scientists and by students as well. The purpose of this article is to present the differences among what the science says and the opinion of the students themselves, based on a case study made on twenty medicine students learning English. The methods used have been anonymous questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. The results have been more or less similar to my expectations, due to the fact that I found new and interesting points of view regarding teacher-students communication.

Keywords: students, teacher, communication, learning 1. Introduction Language stands at the core of communication. If we do not have language we cannot express our feelings or even our knowledge. Although there may be found several types of languages (specialized ones), the most important and crucial one remains the language we use to communicate with each other. We use language for planning our lives and remembering our past; we exchange ideas and experiences through language and we identify ourselves with the people who 323

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speak the same language as we do. In each process of communication we must necessarily have a transmitter and a receiver of the information postulated. Here one may encounter some difficulties in communication, because communicating does not necessarily mean saying something. We must be sure that the information transmitted reaches the receiver unaltered, and also the meaning we want to convey remains the same. Over the past decades researchers have tried to analyze the difficulties of communication between students and teachers. Perhaps one of the most controversial reasons of these conflicts is the differences between the generations or the so-called “mentalities”. The present article tries to present a comparison between what the literature says and the actual opinion of students regarding the most important qualities a teacher must have in order to achieve best results. Communication between humans is an extremely complex and ever-changing phenomenon. Thus, the needs of students nowadays have changed comparatively to what they represented one or even two decades ago. 2. General Remarks on A Teacher’s Most Important Qualities According to Jeremy Harmer (1991), there are some things related to the teacher’s attitude that should be taken into consideration, such as: a) The teacher should not go to class unprepared – students immediately notice if the teacher is not sure what to do in the classroom. Especially for those classes that cause trouble, the teacher has to be very well-prepared and knowledgeable about the subject. b) The teacher should not be inconsistent – the teacher should set some disciplinary rules from the start; if he/ she allows students to come to class late without taking action one week, they cannot be blamed for doing the same thing the week after. A teachers has to be consistent, or, otherwise students will lose their respect for her/ him. c) The teacher should not use threats – if the teacher threatens the students and then does not carry them out, she/ he is doing both the class and themselves a harmful thing. It 324

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should not be said that an action is going to happen if it is not. d) The teacher should not raise the voice – a teacher should not try to establish control by raising her/ his voice and shout. Very often a quiet voice is more effective. e) The teacher should not give boring classes – a teacher should try and bring very interesting materials to class in order to call for the students’ interest. It seems that the greatest cause of indiscipline is boredom, as interested students do not misbehave in the same way. f) The teacher should not be unfair – never a teacher should be unfair, either to the class as a whole or to individuals. Thus, a teacher should try to avoid having favourites or picking on particular students. A teacher should not show her/his preferences or dislikes in the classroom. g) The teacher should like what she/he does – an uninterested teacher will always lose her/ his students’ respect and that will probably lead to disruptive behaviour. h) The teacher should be an example herself/himself – the students cannot be asked not to do something their teacher does; for example, one cannot ask her/ his students not to arrive late when she/he herself/himself does that. What we may conclude is that a teacher should be: • Well-prepared • Consistent • Patient • Serious • Creative • Correct • Involved • An example for the students The importance of these qualities has, in some way, been shown in an order of their importance (1 = most important, 10 = least important) by Gabriela Grigoroiu (2002:49) like this: 325

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1. The teacher makes his course interesting. 2. He teaches good pronunciation. 3. He explains clearly. 4. He speaks good English. 5. He shows the same interests in all his students. 6. He makes all the students participate. 7. He shows great patience. 8. He insists on the spoken language. 9. He makes his pupils work. 10. He uses an audio-lingual method. Thus, according to both Harmer (1997) and Grigoroiu (2002), the most five important qualities in a teacher should be good training, correctness, patience, good communication. In the case study that will follow we will see the similarities and the differences between what it has been stipulated so far and the opinion of students themselves about the most important qualities a teacher should have. 3. Case Study Purpose The study was meant to reveal the students’ true feelings and opinion about what an “ideal” teacher should be. Their answers helped me to make a comparison between what I have read in the methodology books and the real situation, due to the fact that theory and practice do not always go together. The study was also intended to show how a teacher can improve his/ her way of teaching by means of a direct approach to the students. Method The study was conducted on twenty 2nd Year Medicine students learning English. They had to complete a questionnaire about the way they saw the ideal teacher and also to enumerate ten possible qualities in the order of their importance ( 1= the most important quality, 10 = the least important quality). All the questionnaires were anonymous, so that they could feel free to express their opinion and not think that they could be misjudged or punished. 326

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Results and Conclusions The results of the analysis of questionnaires have shown that the qualities most of them thought of as being the most important qualities were: • professional training – 90 %, • communicativity – 80%, • creativity – 70%, • patience – 30%, • indulgence – 5%, • respect imposed – 4% As one can see, the majority of students require a very wellprepared teacher, regardless of their level of English. The teacher’s talent, involvement and also capacity of dealing with the students’ feelings have also been among the favourites of students. The great tendency is to reject over-strict teacher and neither patience can be considered a top quality. In other words, the following classification of the qualities of an “ideal” teacher could be made: 1. professional training 2. communicativity 3. creativity 4. patience 5. indulgence 6. to impose respect Since teaching is a fundamental activity of educational institutions, measures need to be taken to assess the teaching quality of individual academic staff members. Few faculties, however, have objective criteria for assessing this quality. In the present study, for second-year medical students, being well-prepared and also a good communicator were identified as the most important assets a teacher could have. Personal qualities, such as being approachable, helpful and friendly, were more highly regarded than technical issues such as being punctual and having organized lectures. This suggests that students value the teacher-learner relationship. Since the global trend of medical education is towards a more humanistic approach to patient care, medical teachers need to become educators, interacting with 327

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individual students. Educators might also have to become role models for students in terms of attitudes and ethics. Students will therefore be in the best position to judge the impact of individual educators on their development. If we are to make a comparison between the findings of the study and the theories stipulated by Harmer or Grigoroiu, there cannot be noticed great differences, as professional training and communicativity still stand for the most important qualities a teacher should have. The fact that the opinions are similar can be very encouraging for the future of English teaching and education in general. This means that teachers and students start not only to communicate verbally but also to transmit each other what they really need from each other. Thus, a teacher should always make efforts in understanding the needs and interests of the student but at the same time to try and maintain his position as the leader or manager of a class. Although teachers and students, as well, are struggling to overcome difficulties in their relationship of communication, there still remain a lot of problems to be dealt with in the everyday class experiences. It is rather difficult to understand what are the needs of the students if the teacher does not pay too much attention to this essential part in the process of teaching and learning, namely the particularities of age, social class, environment, etc. References Grigoroiu, Gabriela, An English Language Teaching Reader, Tipografia Universităţii din Craiova, 2002. Harmer, Jeremy, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman, London & NY, 1997. Underwood, Michael, Effective Class Management, London, Longman, 1987. Voiculescu, Oana, Teacher-Student Communication – Still A Taboo Subject?, Analele Universităţii din Craiova, Editura Universitaria, Craiova, 2005. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/ 2008/02/25

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A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ADVERTISEMENT HEADLINES TA Bogdan Silvia

“Alma Mater” University, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract In the present paper I will deal with a most important question nowadays: what linguistic features and key-words do modern companies use in order to advertise best for their image on a 2008 market saturated with products and services? Given the fact that headlines play a significant role in advertisements, I will focus my attention on the linguistic aspect of advertisement headlines and how these succeed in playing a crucial role in the consumer's final decision.

Keywords: linguistics, semantic revaluation, rhetorical devices, eye-catching characters, Unique Selling Proposition (USP) 1. Introduction Headlines are the key to driving visitors to your advertisement. As you draft your headline, think about the followings: – a headline has to touch a nerve; – a headline has to make a unique claim or statement; – a headline has to provoke curiosity; – a headline has to be credible; – a headline has to be specific; – a headline must have a news element.

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2. An analysis of advertisement and the position of headline in the advertisement. A general model. Overall impression Image Headline Interplay between headline and image Flowing text Interplay between flowing text and headline/flowing text and image Interplay between image and text Results

Figure 1 The position of headline in an advertisement

2.1. Semantic revaluations Among the special linguistic elements of the headline advertising language belong the semantic revaluations. What are these? Please look below to understand the meaning.

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Superlative, comparative, elative

Increasing composition

Characterization through high-value or superlative expressions

Semantic Revaluations

Nonconcretization

Naming the goods with Highwords

Upgrading Appellative

Figure 2 Semantic revaluations Table 1 Semantic revaluations Semantic revaluation

Explanation

Increasing composition

– it belongs to the field of word formation – it is realized by increasing prefixes, nouns or adjectives

Non-concretization

To start from concrete/specific names to abstract nouns with higher impress ional value The names derive often from socially prestigious name areas

Naming the goods with High-words

Upgrading appellatives

Euphemisms in designations, which have a greater extent, impact or performance on the 331

Examples – active: Active powder – double: Double pack – family: Family package – intensive: Intensive care – luxury: Luxury hotel – micro: Micro-cloth – multi-: Multivitamin pills – special: Special coating – ultra-: ultralight From “toothpaste” to “toothcrème”, “tooth-cosmetics”

– poetry, mythology, nobility, ranks, culture, history – e.g. Lord of Metternich, Prince Bismarck, Diplomat – “snack hall” instead of “sausage pub” – “voucher” instead of “ordering bill”

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Characterization through high-value or superlative expressions

Superlative, comparative, elative

consumer’s decision Unlimited possibilities

Various possibilities

– adventurous: wildly adventurous taste – active: active sunscreen – exciting: exciting sweetness – good: AEG-From experience good – ideal: ideal care – racy: racy elegance (Henckell-Sect) – sensible: sensible maintenance costs – perfect: perfect coffee pleasure – real: the real luster – wonderful: the wonderful Jacobs coffee – certain articles with demonstrative role: The Sherry, that has a name (Dry Sack Cherry). – superlative expressions: German wine-unique among the wines. – comparative: Fachingernothing better you can drink!

2.2. Rhetorical devices In order for your advertisement headline to arise the consumer’s interest while reading it, you should use at least one of the following rhetorical devices: Table 2 Linguistic-rhetorical devices Linguistic devices Alliteration

Anaphora

1 2

Explanation A figure of speech in which consonants especially at the beginning of words, are repeated 1 A rhetorical device involving the repetition of a word or group of words in successive sentences 2

Cuddon 1999, p. 23. Cuddon 1999, p. 37. 332

Examples – Mars makes mobile! – Performance out of Passion (Deutsche Bank) – Special shapes. Special materials. (Radio) – Out of love for football. Out

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Antithesis

Assonance

Chiasmus (Gk. “a placing crosswise”) Three elements figure

Jargons

Neologisms

Irony

of love for photography. (Canon) – You follow your friends. You follow your nose. You follow no rules. (Caravaning) – Be not just her man. Be also her talisman. (Wempe) Contrasting ideas sharpened by the – Hard to explain. Easy to use of opposite or noticeably recognize. (Renault Scenic) different meanings 1 – down-up; yesterday-today; today-tomorrow Sometimes called “vocalic – Ganze Nuss im Überfluss rhyme”, it consists of the repetition (Ritter Sport) = Whole nut in of similar vowel sounds, usually abundance close together, to achieve a particular effect of euphony 2 A reversal of grammatical The time passes. The wrinkles structures in successive phrases or also. (Eubos) clauses 3 The sentence is concentrated in its – Square. Practical. Good. most important three elements (Ritter Sport Chocolate) – Pilots, who are perfectly trained. Mechanics, who double-check every bolt. Flight attendants, who let you dream to the end. (Lufthansa) Are used to describe a private or Airbag, notebook, ABS, ESP technical vocabulary peculiar to a trade or profession. Lawyers, engineers, plumbers, diplomats, sociologists all have extensive jargon vocabularies. 4 A newly coined word 5 – Bon Happetit (MacDonalds) – I kneipp myself tender. (Kneipp Care) The perception or awareness of a – Diving is for men. (IWCdiscrepancy or incongruity Aquatimer) between words and their meaning, – IKEA- the impossible or between actions and their furniture store

1

Cuddon 1999, p. 46. Cuddon 1999, p. 58. 3 Cuddon 1999, p. 128. 4 Cuddon 1999, p. 434. 5 Cuddon 1999, p. 542. 2

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Litotes

Metaphor

Metonymy

Oxymoron

Personification

Hyperbole

results, or between appearance and reality. 1 A figure of speech which contains an understatement for emphasis, and is the opposite of hyperbole 2 A figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another; a comparison is implicit. 3 A figure of speech in which the name of an attribute or a thing is substituted for the thing itself. 4

It combines incongruous and apparently contradictory words and meanings for a special effect.5 The impersonation or embodiment of some quality or abstraction; the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects. 6

– “not just little” instead of “pretty much” – Nothing is impossible. (Toyota) Best care for your second skin (Bosch). – Citroen – Intelligence on wheels (Citroen) – A devil in the desert. An angel on the road. (Mitsubishi) Traditionally innovative. (Auto Becker)

– Because our skin is thirsty of health (Skincode) – Intelligence on wheels (Citroen) – Small touch, great effect. (Samsung) It contains an exaggeration The Citroen C3 Pluriel 7 for emphasis. – the whole year is beautiful.

2.3. Conclusion In headline advertisements are almost always used rhetorical and linguistic-stylistic elements, in order to excite the attention of the potential consumer, and to make it easier for the recipient to remember the product and the authoritative statements about it. That’s why, a whole series of rhetorical means are often combined in a single headline to increase the effect of the specific advertisement.

1

Cuddon 1999, p. 430. Cuddon 1999, p. 473. 3 Cuddon 1999, p. 507. 4 Cuddon 1999, p. 510. 5 Cuddon 1999, p. 627. 6 Cuddon 1999, p. 661. 7 Cuddon 1999, p. 406. 2

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3. Functions, benefits and the division of headlines 3.1. Functions of headlines The headline together with the image it represents has the task to draw the attention of a fleeting reader closer to it and to animate the reader to a reception of the whole advertisement. This effect results from the headline’s special typographic design, its placement, its interplay with the visual text parts of an advertisement ad, and its more or less spectacular addressing of the advertisement object or advertisement expression. The headline incorporates a “special quality of information”1 , often in the form of a novelty value. The opinions of experts differ regarding the best length of a headline. Some think, that five words and others, maximum eight words is the optimal number, whereas others think that only long headlines can sell something.2 But empirical investigations could not prove that the importance of a headline depends on its length. Therefore, there is no universally valid optimal value. On the other hand, it is certainly not wrong to make the headline as short as possible, as allowed by the idea to be communicated. Because the shorter a headline is, the faster it is grasped by a less interested viewer or recipient.3 Basically, a headline should contain as much information as possible, so that a reader, who ignores the further flowing text, should obtain sufficient information. 3.2. Product-specific additional benefits In order to attract attention, the headline often focuses on a product-specific additional benefit (USP=Unique Selling 4 Proposition). The Unique Selling Proposition is mainly used to stress

1

Zielke 1991, p. 67. Schierl 2001, p.152. 3 Schierl 2001, p.151. 4 Gilson, Berkmann 1980, p.150. 2

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its own product from the ones belonging to the competitors. This can be done by: Highlighting a particular product characteristic (e.g. headline of a car advertisement. Jaguar XJ: “Aluminium becomes precious metal.”) Demonstrating the use of a particular situation or s consumption aspect (e.g. headline for Bonaqua Sports Water: “Stay at sport longer in shape!”) Reference to a special benefit for the consumer (e.g. headline for a Bosch washing machine: “The best care for your second skin.”) Embedding the product in general values (e.g. headline for a Breitling clock: “Performance. Prestige. Joy for innovation.”) 3.3. Division of headlines into groups Headlines can be divided into different groups. Urban1 refers to four groups: Headlines

Statement

Exclamation

Appeal

Question

Figure 3 Division of headlines

4. Summary The headline is the most important element of an advertisement, because it awakes a special attention in consumers. It has been determined that headlines are five times likely to be read than the rest of the text. 2

1 2

Urban 1980, p.143 Ogilivy 1984, p. 71, Schierl 2001, p. 150. 336

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Example: PEUGEOT 307 Headline: “Each of us has secret wishes”.

Figure 4 Peugeot Advertisement Headline

How is the Peugeot 307 headline? – most captivated – arouses interest – arouses curiosity – animates – does not offer all the answers – it stands outside the flowing text, above all other parts of the text – the writing characters capture the eye Æ eye-catching characters: letter format and bold type – short and concise – ambivalent statement References [1] Cuddon, J.A., The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 4th edition, England, Penguin Books, 1999, p. 23, 37, 46, 58, 128, 406, 430, 434, 473, 507, 510, 542, 627, 661. [2] Gilson, C. a. H.W. Berkmann, Advertising. Concepts and strategies., New 337

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York-Toronto, 1980, p. 150. [3] Ogilivy, D., Ogilivy über Werbung, Wien-Düsseldorf 1984, p. 150. [4] Schierl, Thomas, Text und Bild in der Werbung. Bedingungen, Wirkungen und Anwendungen bei Anzeigen und Plakaten, Köln, Halem, 2001, pp. 151, 152. [5] Urban, Dieter, Text im Kommunikationsdesign, München 1980, p. 143. [6] Zielke, Achim, Beispiellos ist beispielhaft oder: Überlegungen zur Analyse und zur Kreation des kommunikativen Codes von Werbebotschaften in Zeitungs- und Zeitschriftenanzeigen, Reihe Medienwissenschaft, Pfaffenweiler, 1991, p. 67.

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THE HIERARCHY AND FUNCTIONS OF HOUSES IN 19TH CENTURY ENGLISH NOVELS TA Boghian Ioana

University of Bacău [email protected]

Abstract The paper aims at semiotically identifying the different types of houses, and their functions, as they appear in 19th century English novels. Because the house still stands, even nowadays, as a symbol of power, authority or, simply put, social hierarchy, we consider it necessary to approach the house from such a semiotic, anthropological point of view in order to see the way in which the deciphering of this symbol’s meanings can provide a definition of what Victorianism, in all its aspects, meant.

Keywords: house, (social) hierarchy, function, identity 1. House and social hierarchy The Macmillan English Dictionary1 defines the word ‘house’(ME hous, from OE hūs; akin to Old High German hūs house) as having the following meanings: ‘a building for living in, usually where only one family lives’; ‘a company or organization involved in a particular activity (e.g. publishing house)’; ‘a restaurant, hotel, pub or club’; ‘the part of a theatre, cinema, concert hall that contains the audience’; ‘an old important family, especially a royal one (e.g. the House of Windsor/Hanover)’; ‘House is used in the names of buildings, especially large ones containing many offices or flats (e.g. Claridge 1

Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, 2006, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., Oxford, p. 697. 339

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House)’; ‘one of the groups that students are divided into in some British schools, in order to compete against each other’. It is interesting to take a look at these meanings and draw some brief conclusions (that may also provide starting points for future comments and analyses) as to the functions of the house: a place to live in, a place where a particular activity takes place, a place where people socialize, communicate and interact, a place for people interested in watching a play, movie. It is also interesting to observe that the ‘house’ is used to refer to particularly noble families (obviously a transfer of the importance, largeness and richness of the house to the family living there as a means of identification, of separation from the rest of the families); and the ‘house’ attributed to some groups of students that compete against each other (a meaning implying the sense of cohesion of the family, with all the conversations, the planning and the intimate discussions and activities going on, a sense already implying the clash between the inside space – reserved to relatives, friends – and the outside – where enemies, unwanted persons are kept at a distance). The verbal paradigm that all these definitions of the ‘house’ send to may be the verb ‘to do’, since all the definitions contain the idea of the house as a place where something is done, involving the acts of living, entertaining, working. Moreover, the social hierarchy of an age seems to have always been reflected in a hierarchy of houses. The meanings of the word ‘hierarchy’(ME ierarchie, rank or order of holy beings, from Anglo-French jerarchie, from Medieval Latin hierarchia, from Late Greek, from Gr. hierarchēs), according to the same Macmillan English Dictionary1 , are: ‘a system for organizing people according to their status in a society, organization, or other group’; ‘the group of people who control an organization’; ‘a series of things arranged according to their importance’. It is interesting to note that initially, ‘hierarchy meant ‘a rank or order of holy beings’, therefore the church seems to have borrowed its hierarchy from the divine one; but if God made all humans equals, then why the existence of this social hierarchy? 19th century English 1

Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, 2006, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., Oxford, p. 673. 340

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novels deal with such themes as the relationship between God and man, but also with social inequalities and social and moral injustice. 2. Houses and functions in Victorian literature The main cultural types belonging to the social hierarchy of the 19th century are, according to Frevert and Haupt [13], social actants such as the worker, the engineer, the lawyer; socio-psychic actants such as the governess, the teacher, the artist; and psychic actants such as: the aristocrat/master/owner (in fact social labels acting as controller, victimizer, indirectly conferring wealth and social status onto (particularly close) relatives but also setting the rules of the house, imposing authority and commanding respect and obedience; the townsman, the peasant, the servant (also social labels referring to such psychic roles as: victim, subject to authority/(ies)/masters, objects/‘items of mortality’ in a financial, economic system. We will further refer to different H/houses and their functions and significations as they appear in novels written by Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters. 2.1. The workhouse and the Marshalsea Prison The workhouse (Oliver Twist) and the Marshalsea Prison (Little Dorrit) function as ‘subjects’, acting as de-constructors of identities, homogenizers of human beings turning everybody into objects, numbers, items, articles transacted on the social market and taken into consideration only when estimating the cost of food and services. The workhouse, also the place of Oliver’s birth, is ironically described by Dickens: “Among other public buildings in a certain town […] there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small – to wit, a workhouse […]’(p. 3). A workhouse was actually an institution provided by the parish to house and feed the destitute. In an attempt to minimize the cost to local ratepayers, the “New Poor Law” (The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834) introduced a centralized system across the country, through which the poor were to be ‘relieved’; briefly, men, women and children were to be accommodated separately, and a subsistence diet enforced on all inmates. The arrangements described by Dickens in Oliver Twist retain many realistic features. Besides 341

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starving to death, Oliver and his companions had to undergo cruel human treatment. Thus, the workhouse becomes the house of the poor, the objects of society, the victims, because workhouses were also to be made “less eligible” (less attractive than the conditions of the poorest local laborer). Oliver, an orphan born in workhouse, is no more than an ‘item of mortality’, a ‘new burden’ imposed upon the parish, a parish child, ‘the humble, half-starved drudge – to be cuffed and buffeted through the world – despised by all and pitied by none.’ (p. 5). The Marshalsea Prison is the building under the shadow of which the action of Little Dorrit takes place. Even in Book the Second, Riches, when the Dorrit family gains a new financial status, the Marshalsea Prison is still there, still exerting its influence over some of the characters. And there is no doubt that the Marshalsea Prison may be regarded as one of the characters in the book since it surely plays an important role in it and since we find such chapter titles as The Father of the Marshalsea, The Child of the Marshalsea, or The Pupil of the Marshalsea: ‘It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid houses standing back to back, […] environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more confined gaol for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws […] were supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door, closing up a second prison, consisting of a strong cell or two …’ (p. 58). It seems that there is a hierarchy inside the prison itself: there are cells and incarcerating rooms for each type of law offender, from the most aggressive to the most humble. The prison thus belongs to the outlaws, to social outcasts, but also to the debtors, the weak individuals which have fallen pray to the ‘claws’ of the Victorian jungle: everything (including human beings) was transacted, analyzed, labeled and set a price, and in case one could not do that properly, one would end up in the debtor’s prison. Such a description obviously bears resemblance with Mr. Dombey’s or Miss Havisham’s house: typically there’s a building in a degrading state, with a yard and with iron bars surrounding that yard 342

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and that building. Moreover, in these Dickensian yards, the sun never or almost never shines. 2.2. Satis House and the Firm of Dombey and Son Satis House (Great Expectations) and the Firm of Dombey and Son (Dombey and Son) stand as symbols for high social status, wealth, authority and power, for aristocracy, but also for self-incarceration, apparent stability, respectability and domesticity. The descriptions of the houses have common elements such as iron gates, dark courtyards and cold and obscure rooms. In Dombey and Son, the symbol of the house, representing the firm, the home – or better said what should be a home – is actually a hierarchy of Paul’s. The house is a synonym for Dombey’s Firm, he therefore associates domestic life with business. The house and marriage are a prison for women and a business for men. The coldness and the blackness of the house are reinforced over and over again throughout the novel – ‘black, cold rooms’ – and time seems to have stopped running in this house too: ‘a dusty urn at each high corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preached desolation and decay’ (p. 23). The house clearly stands as a prison. What is most revealing of this fact is the title of Chapter III, In which Mr. Dombey as a Man and a Father, is seen as the Head of the Home Department. The words ‘head’ and ‘department’ are paradoxically associated with ‘the Home’ in a short meaningful business discourse. In fact, the whole chapter is based on administrative terms expressing the measures taken, after the death of Mrs. Dombey, by Mr. Dombey ‘the Man’ – that is the head of the affairs – and Mr. Dombey, the Father – that is, the head of the family and home. The choice of words is significant: ‘the funeral of the deceased lady having been performed’, ‘the various members of Mr. Dombey’s household subsided into their several places in the domestic system’(pp. 23-24). ‘Satis’ means ‘enough’, a word that comes from Greek, or Latin, or ‘Hebrew’, according to what we are told in the novel. But the word ‘suttee’, or ‘sati’ represents the nowadays illegal practice in which a Hindu widow immolates herself on her husband funeral pyre, thus fulfilling her role as a wife. In the plural, ‘suttees’ or ‘satis’, the term denotes the widow who commits such an act, the term ‘sati’ is now 343

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sometimes interpreted as ‘chaste woman’. Synonyms for this word are the following: self-destruction, self-annihilation, psychic or physical suicide, loss of the self within a mystical, psychic self. Therefore, what better name for a house where everything ‘smoulders’, where Miss Havisham’s soul shrinks just like the shrunken body dressed in yellow, old, paper-like attire? Satis House is, by name and description similar to a tomb, it is an altar for the burning of a soul and Miss Havisham condemns herself to this inner burning. Probably, in her subconscious, the alternative of a possible dead husband would have been more desirable – especially within a Victorian society – than being left in front of the altar on the wedding day. Satis House also stands for the stopping of time, at ‘twenty minutes to nine’. What Satis House suggests and represent clusters around the central emblem of the rotting bride cake and its crawling things. The craziness and morbidity of Satis House repose on the desire fixated, because fetishistic and sadistic, on a deviated eroticism that has literally shut out the light, stopped the clocks and made the forward movement of plot impossible. Satis House, as the circular journeys of the wheelchair to the rhythm of the blacksmith’s song “Old Clem” may best suggest, constitutes repetition without variation, pure reproduction, a collapsed metonymy where cause and effect have become identical, the same-as-same. There is no time at Satis because the dead know no time, when Pip first meets Miss Havisham he recalls a ‘ghostly waxwork’ effigy and an excavated skeleton, seeing her as a corpse and her clothes as grave-clothes. 3. Conclusions In conclusion, just like the fortress or the temple, the house stands at the centre of the world, as the image of the universe, be it in the role of subject of object. According to G. Bachelard, the house represents the inner being; its floors, the basement and the attic stand for different states of the mind: the basement corresponds to the subconscious, while the attic to spiritual elevation. For the Victorians, the basement and the attic were reserved to the servants, the ill, the mad and the excluded. The house is also a feminine symbol of shelter and protection. In psychoanalysis the exterior of the house represents 344

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the masque/the exterior/the appearance, the roof is a man’s head and spirit, the lower floors stand for the subconscious and the instincts while the kitchen would symbolize psychic changes or inner progress. We have seen the workhouse and the prison as belonging to the lowest social classes, the poor, the debtors and the outlaws. We would also like to mention the High Court of Justice (Bleak House) standing at the top of the “social chain”, a symbol of the highest ranks in society; Wuthering Heights, Thrushcross Grange (Wuthering Heights) or Wildfell Hall (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) belong to the bourgeoisie, the rural or provincial aristocracy struggling in-between social classes; the factory (Hard Times) is depicted as having narrow windows: the workers were regarded as merely objects and money was not worth spending on building large, luminous windows (since glass was very expensive at the time) therefore factories were also dark, humid places, with unhealthy air. For the Victorians, the house is the symbol of social and material identity, of power, authority and responsibility, stability and domesticity, be they only apparent; a symbol of status and social position, a label of properties; an object equally desired by snobs, orphans, widows, gentlemen, mothers, children, families; a subject able to give the owner respect, a subject able to include and exclude members in/from a family/community; shelter, prison, or home. References [1] Bachelard, G., The Poetics of Space, Boston, Beacon Press, 1969. [2] Brontë, A., The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Hertfortshire, Wordsworth Edition Limited, 2001. [3] Brontë, E., Wuthering Heights, London, Penguin Books, 1985. [4] Cirlot, J.E., Dictionary of Symbols, New York, Philosophical Book Service, 1990. [5] Cuddon, J.A., Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, London, Penguin Books, 1998. [7] Dickens, Ch., Oliver Twist, Chatham, Kent, Wordsworth Editions LTD, 1992. [8] Dickens, Ch., Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Retail, Wholesale and for Exportation, London, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2002. [9] Dickens, Ch., Little Dorrit, Chatham, Kent, Wordsworth Editions LTD, 1996. 345

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[10] Dickens, Ch., Great Expectations, Chatham, Kent, Wordsworth Editions LTD, 2003. [11] Dickens, Ch., Bleak House, London, Penguin Books LTD, 1994. [12] Dickens, Ch., Hard Times, London, Penguin Books LTD, 1994. [13] Frevert, u., Haupt, H.-G. (eds), Omul secolului al XIX-lea, Iaşi, Polirom, 2002. [14] Magnet, M., Dickens and the social order, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. [15] Madanipour, A., Public and Private Spaces of the City, London and New York, Routledge, 2003. [16] Shusterman, Ronald (ed.), Cartes, paysages, territoires, Bordeaux, Université Michel de Montaigne – Bordeaux III, 2000. [17] ***Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Oxford, Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2002.

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THE HIERARCHY AND FUNCTIONS OF ROOMS IN 19TH CENTURY ENGLISH NOVELS TA Boghian Ioana

University of Bacău [email protected]

Abstract Rooms have always served a certain purpose, they have always belonged to one person or another. This paper intends to analyse the types of rooms and their functions, as they are hierachically structured within the Victorian house so as to define such relations of master-servant, husband-wife, parents-children, relations which stand at the basis of the cultural and moral values of an age. Thus, the paper will also offer a representation of Victorian family relationships which could be further compared, by any interested reader, with the current state of facts.

Keywords: hierarchy, room, function, relationship, identity 1. Rooms and social hierarchy The word ‘room’ (ME, from OE rūm; akin to Old High German rūm room, Latin rur-, rus open land) is used to refer to: ‘a part of a building with a floor, walls and a ceiling’; ‘a bedroom in a home or in a place such as a hotel’; ‘all the people in a room’; pl. a set of rooms that you rent, usually in another person’s house or in a college’; ‘the amount of space needed for a particular purpose’ (.e.g. There isn’t much room in here); ‘the possibility for something to exist or happen’ (e.g. There’s no room for doubt as to who did this); obsolete: ‘an appropriate or designated position, post, or station’1. 1

Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, 2006, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., Oxford, pp. 1233-1234 and http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/room. 347

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A proper reflection of the way in which lived the middle-class family during Victorianism can be found in the type of house inhabited by its members. Urbanization and agglomeration meant that ‘respectable’ residences became smaller, the terraced four-storey house made way for the two-storey semi-detached villa in the developing suburbs, and by 1880 blocks of flats began to rise in the centre of London – however, the ideal home still preserved certain essential features, the space reserved for the servants, no matter how small, being one of the most important. A town terraced Victorian middle-class house was organized as follows: the garret/attic was inhabited by servants and the basement/cellar was the place where they carried out their activities; on the ground floor there was a living room and sometimes a study or a library, on the first floor there was a parlour/saloon/drawing room (interconnected by folding doors) while the second floor was separated into bedrooms. Bathrooms were rare until the end of the century. For the servants in such a house, the positioning of the rooms meant quite a lot of work: for example, in order to take hot water or fuel to the bedrooms they had to climb up three flights of stairs; many of the meetings dominated by the Victorian heroines meant carrying heavy silverware trays up to the second floor; for every ring of the bell, a servant was supposed to climb up from the basement. The mistress of the house would probably climb down to the kitchen herself to give orders concerning daily housework, but could also have remained in the parlour and ring the bell. The appearance of the mistress wearing the bundle of the larder keys at her waist; at least once a day she had to unlock the larder in order to take out the necessary things. The more well-to-do houses had a governess who accomplished this task. A wife’s activities depended obviously upon the number of servants. The later were important not only for the tasks they fulfilled but also for reflecting the status and position of their employers, depictions of such a reality being found in the Victorian novel. The servants’ manners, the way they dressed and the way in which they addressed their masters were of great importance. Those who were very rich could afford at least three servants – usually 348

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women – a butler and/or a lackey, a maid – usually a frail figure, of French origin – a carriage and a man properly responsible for it. Although the members of the middle-class owned more living space than the older generation of aristocracy and rich nobility, they lived closer to one another. Servants inevitably found out many private things about their masters: the maid could often destroy or build the reputation of her mistress. 2. The function of rooms in relation to identity The constitutive elements of the house (the hall, the corridor, the parlour, the living room, the drawing room, the library, the bedroom, the room of the sick, the attic, the wash-room/lavatory) as well as their discursive constituents have specific functions such as: a. revealing the material self of the inhabitants as characteristic elements of their (social) identity. The rooms they live in reflect the roles they assume and the positions which they should either protect or change. Thus, the kitchen (the larder, the washing-room) belongs to servants, orphans (or even dogs, as in E. Brontë’s Wuthering Heights), that is to those excluded from the central positions; the garret or the sick person’s room is the space belonging to another category of the rejected: the mad, the weak, the abnormal, the fallen into disgrace; the large, stately, comfortable rooms are occupied by those holding authority in the house. b. goods serving the plans of its inhabitant. The rooms inside a house and the objects in a room can either protect the needy or, on the contrary, can be used as punishment tools (therefore, the purpose of secret corridors, stairs, steps, rooms for the sick, for guests, etc; e.g. the cold, silent and gloomy ‘red room’ serving, in Ch. Brontë’s Jane Eyre for ‘the safest prison’). All spatial oppositions concerning the house as semiotic object illustrate, hide or reveal the crisis/clash between different polarities, inside – outside space, light – dark, up – down, which achieve the shape of a reconstructed space within and by the inhabitant’s mind and which is imbued with identity particularly by the means of stylistic devices. c. rearranging (upwards and downwards, from right to left and vice-versa) and redecorating the interior or the exterior, a fact which 349

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involves a change in mentality. Dwelling descriptions, such as that in A. Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and descriptions of the character’ clashing feelings reveal the desire of a single woman to reorganize, to give another signification and to change hierarchical positions within a recreated space. Wildfell Hall becomes the symbol of Helen Huntingdon’s rebirth. After having analysed and observed her own moral and religious forces, Helen is ready to face the Victorian conventions and to offer a different image of the woman: that of a fighting mother. In order to keep her son and to raise him in a ‘healthy’ environment, she changes the map of her own experience: despite all suspicions, gossips, obstacles and hardships, she flees from her husband’s accursed house and reshapes another house into a blessed space. The act of changing houses and her powerful will to reconstruct a new environment for herself and her son Arthur, reveals the system of relationships establishing themselves between identity and alterity. d. preserving memories which ‘build up’ the history of the place. Such a history turns into a spatio-temporal map of the inhabited space that borrows the values of the inhabitant’s identity. In fact, it is a reciprocal process: the relation between the inhabitant and his/her space is only the history of the act of living/inhabiting that house (Heidegger 1995:195, apud [9]). The house as inhabited space shapes the mentality of its inhabitants and exerts an influence on their social relations, or imposes the observance of rituals and customs. Let us now refer to the following example in order to illustrate some of the meanings mentioned above. The ‘red room’ in Ch. Brontë’s Jane Eyre symbolizes shelter, a place hidden from people’s prying eyes, but also a prison. However, before all these significations, it is meaningfully decorated (not accidentally) with red materials. According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1993: 172) this colour symbolizes the principle of life with its force, strength and brightness, the colour of fire but also of blood, loaded with the ambivalence that these two elements suggest. The ‘light, explosive, centrifugal, masculine, tonic red, associated with the day’ urges to action and spreads its brightness all around, just like a sun, with a powerful, unbeatable power. Dark red – as are the 350

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damask curtains in the ‘red room’ – is, on the contrary, ‘nocturnal, feminine, secretive’; it represents not the expression but the mystery of life. The first empowers, encourages, arouses (e.g. the red on certain flags, on company firms, posters and advertising packages), the other one alerts, retains, calls for vigilance and limitation, anxiety (e.g. the red of traffic lights, the red bulb forbidding the entrance into a cinema studio, into an operation room): “The red room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never … it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it...the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking … like a pale throne. ” (pp. 8-9) This cold but beautiful room which impresses us by its solemnity is a symbol for Jane’s soul: lacking the warmth of love, darkened by a rebel spirit but, just like the windows, ready to open in order to receive the light of human affection. The white colour is significantly contrasted to the red one as the colour of the candidate, meaning the one who is about to change one’s condition, the colour standing for the moment of transition. Thus, Jane Eyre’s soul finds in this room her reflected rebel spirit and the strong desire to change not only her social and material status but particularly her psychic state. This desire for change is also reflected in the mirror in which Jane perceives her own image: a pale little figure with ‘glittering eyes’, a ‘tiny phantom, half fairy, half imp’ (p. 9). The ‘red room’ becomes a space recreated by the mind of the one who uses it. On the one hand, it serves its master’s purpose to isolate and punish an intruder, an excluded being, an orphan, on the other hand Jane’s mind turns it into a mirror of her 351

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own desires and fears. And the secret of the rooms is the secret to Jane’s heart and mind. 3. Conclusions In conclusion, the house, separated into spaces and rooms having well-defined functions and characteristics, is a symbol of social and family practices and hierarchies. While orphans and servants were excluded from the parlours dedicated to receiving visits, spending family evenings, children’s playing, having conversations in front and around the fire in the hearth, the masters assume well furnished large rooms, studies and libraries clothed in rich and expensive materials. References [1] Bachelard, G., The Poetics of Space, Boston, Beacon Press, 2005. [2] Brontë, E., Wuthering Heights, London, Penguin Books, 1985. [3] Brontë, Ch., Jane Eyre, Hertfordshire, Wordswoth Editions Ltd., 1992. [4] Brontë, A., The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Hertfortshire, Wordsworth Edition Limited, 2001. [5] Charadeau, P., Maingueneau, D., Dictionnaire d’analyse du discourse, Paris, Seuil, 2002. [6] Chevalier, J., Gheerbrant, A., Dicţionar de simboluri, mituri, vise, obiceiuri, gesturi, forme, figure, culori, numere, vol. 1-3, Bucureşti, Ed. Artemis, 1993. [7] Cirlot, J.E., Dictionary of Symbols, New York, Philosophical Book Service, 1990. [8] Cuddon, J.A., Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, London, Penguin Books, 1998. [9]Cmeciu, D., The Literary Character. Between Limits and Possibilities, Bacău, Ed. Egal, 2003. [10] Dănilă, I., Cmeciu, D. (ed.), Casa – semn al identităţii culturale, Bacău, Alma Mater, 2006. [11] Greimas, A.J. et alii, Sémiotique de l’espace, Paris, Éditions Denoël/Gonthier, 1979. [12] Holoquist, Michael, Dialogism. Bakhtin and his World, London and New York, Routledge, 2002. [13] Holtedahl, L., Gerrard, S., Njeuma, M.Z., Boutrais, J. (eds.), The Power of Knowledge. From the Arctic to the Tropics, Paris, Éditions Karthala, 1999. [14] Hornby, A.S., Oxford English Dictionary, London, Oxford University 352

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Press, 1975. [15] ***Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Oxford, Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2002. [16] Madanipour, A., Public and Private Spaces of the City, London and New York, Routledge, 2003. [17] Nica, Ioana, Private and Public Spaces in Charles Dickens’s ‘Great Expectations’, in Cultural Perspectives, Journal for Literary and British Cultural Studies in Romania, No. 10/2005, University of Bacău, pp. 218229. [18] Nica, Ioana, An Architectural Semiotics of the House in 19th Century English Novels, in Individual and Specific Signs. Paradigms of Identity in Managing Social Representations, Editura Alma Mater, Bacău, 2007, pp. 689-694. [19] Shusterman, Ronald (ed.), Cartes, paysages, territoires, Bordeaux, Université Michel de Montaigne – Bordeaux III, 2000. [20] http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/audiofaq.htm

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TOWARD A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POLICE VOCABULARY. AN INTRODUCTION TA Chersan Ileana

“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Police Academy, Bucharest [email protected]

Abstract This inter-disciplinary study of English combines perspectives from Lexical Semantics, Socio-linguistics and Historical Semantics. It is organized as answers to key questions in relation to the emergence and development of a Law Enforcement-related vocabulary in the context of an ever-changing social history of Great Britain. A corpus-based study will analyze sets of semanticallyrelated words as they appear in two specific timeframes - the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The development of the groups of words, connected to key concepts - such as ranks, branches, means of transport, equipment, crimes and offences, specific police actions, etc. - are addressed as a whole, defining the institution of law enforcement in its key moments as a structured organism.

Keywords: Lexical Semantics, Police, Social History 1. Introduction This paper aims at introducing the first stage of a comprehensive research into the English law-enforcement vocabulary. The study will employ the help of two categories of resources: both general and specialised dictionaries and encyclopedias, police training manuals, acts and documents, AND theory books on linguistics, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics, semantics, lexical semantics, pragmatics, ESP. The lexical evolution of the words will be approached through “frame semantics” [Barsalou; 1992, pp. 21] or “schema theory” 354

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[Cook; 1994, pp.11] a flexible theory defined as a coherent structure of related concepts. Within schemata, lexical relations can be identified and studied. The diachronic and synchronic perspectives on the terminological frames will ultimately stand as evidence of the development of the English law enforcement vocabulary throughout centuries. 1.1 ‘Law Enforcement’ versus ‘Police’ The terms ‘police’ and ‘law enforcement’ can be used indiscriminately and interchangeably in this research, despite their somehow different scope and reference. “Law enforcement’ includes but is not equal to ‘police’. Either of them will refer to the broader meaning by default. 1.2 The choice of police Crime and policing are relatively new areas for academic studies, but seem now to be among the most popular areas of British social history. Unrest in British cities, violence between police and minorities, the ever so frightening terrorism, the growth of crimes and the emergence of new types of crimes in recent years have been unprecedented; so too has been the recent growth of academic research and publication particularly in the area of crime and law enforcement. In the last twenty-five years historians have increasingly turned their attention to crime and how former societies understood it and sought to deal with it. They have begun searching among court and police records seeking to assess changes over time and to relate such changes to different political, economic and social contexts. This research is another aspect of ‘history from below’, exploring English law enforcement from a linguistic point of view form roughly the middle of the eighteenth until the close of the twentieth century. 1.3 The language of Police Is there a language of the police? The research aims at proving that the law enforcement in the UK has developed a specialised terminology starting with the first attempts to regulate police work and duties in the 14th century. It is stated that the English language is 355

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dynamic and open to changes, which triggers, among others, a higher movement of vocabulary, especially due to extra-linguistic circumstances. The outbreak of new words – borrowed from other languages or developed via internal means, the development of new meanings and the migration of words from the specialised vocabulary to the common ground and viceversa are the grounds and substance of the research. The exact comprehension of such various words and meanings is of interest to specialists in the fields of semantics, lexicography and terminology. 1.4 The timeframe Starting from the premises that a study of the English language is a tremendous task in terms of extent and complexity, we agree to focus our research on two key timeframes. These ages are characterized by a search for stability, order and the value of regulation. These features can be clearly seen in the efforts to standardize, refine and fix the English language. At the same time, the events in the English-speaking countries had great social, political and technological importance and affected the use of the language, seen as a mirror of both progress and institutional stability. 1.5 Similar research The answer to this question is also the starting point of this endeavor. Geoffrey Hughes wrote “Words in Time: A Social History of the English Vocabulary”. His explorations into the history of meaning pay a tribute to his forunners’ work: C.S. Lewis (Studies in Words), Owen Barfield (History in English Words) and Raymond Williams (Keywords) but the scope and depth of his reasearch goes beyond his predecessors’, as it relates individual histories of words to a larger development in English history: in his view, supported by wellfounded arguments, “the relationship between semantic change and social change is that of a flexible symbiosis” [Hughes; 1988, p.9]. The author distinguishes here between changes of meaning, lexical changes and changes of register. The first and broadest category of semantic changes comprises generalization (flower-bed), 356

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specialization (engine), amelioration (noble), deterioration (villain), shift to opposite (fast), weakening of meaning (tremendous), euphemism and dysphemism. Lexical changes deal mostly with borrowing of new words (ombudsman), invention (railway) or removal of obsolete words (crimet) from usage. The changes of register stress the degree of formality in words. These are also the traits our research will follow in detail. One particular approach inspired by Hughes’ diagram of semantic fields will also help us establish the semantic representation of certain ‘key words’, both synchronically and diachronically. Hughes’ valuable contribution to semantics is the landmark of our research; we intend however to narrow the scope of the study to a particular terminology and a representative timeframe in its development. Yet, our study will gain valuable insights into the specificity of English for the law enforcement vocabulary. 2. Method of research To establish hypotheses for investigation we will begin with a qualitative preliminary study. It will reflect an example of what and how vocabulary in a specific area raises interest due to its multidisciplinary facets and how important these are in the thorough study of the meaning. The aim of the main research is however a quantitative study, targeting a comprehensive insight into the business of meaning, reflected both in synchrony (sets of key words of the English law enforcement vocabulary) and diachrony (appearance of new words, disappearance of others and shifts of meaning corresponding to social and historical changes). 2.1 ‘Ground zero’ The making of the corpus started some time ago as part of a professional interest. It comprises a somehow empirical set or sets of lexical items sharing a stem, a linguistic feature, referent or hyponym. They are equipped with their definitions of various meanings from dictionaries and encyclopedias. The future work will involve a thorough classification according to various criteria, a cross-linguistic 357

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reference and comparison and, hopefully, a better understanding of the relations between them and more importantly, of the changes in the relations between them. One example of the type is the set of definitions of the item constable, selected from various sources. All definitions share the entry word; they describe it to different extents: its description as a specialised word crosses fields such as military, law, police, law enforcement, administration and its historical description testifies for a shift of meaning and coexistence of meanings from ‘marshal of the stable’ to ‘police officer of lower rank’. 2.2 The analysis of the corpus The corpus evidence will then be used in the field of lexical semantics, a subfield of linguistic semantics. It is the study of how and what the words denote –things or concepts, depending on the particular approach to lexical semantics. The starting point for lexical semantics is the mapping between word forms and word meanings. Frame semantics is essentially a theory that relates linguistic semantics to encyclopedic knowledge. A word activates, or evokes, a frame of semantic knowledge relating to the specific concept it highlights and also the perspective in which the frame is viewed. Frames make the transition from semantic fields to conceptual fields, as they are also “dynamic relational structures whose form is flexible and context dependent” [Barsalou; 1992, pp.21]. Representations are proved to contain more than feature lists. They include an inter-related set of abstract attributes that adopt different values across exemplars. The reason behind this is that people do not store representational components independently of one another, but in relation to each other. The starting point of this cross-section research is the identification of important lexical areas and semantic fields and their analysis both linguistically from the point of view of their relevance. Areas such as police ranks (Constable, Sergeant, Inspector, (Detective) Chief Inspector, Superintendent, Chief Superintendent, Commissioner, Chief Commissioner ), equipment (uniform, truncheon, rattle, carriage), types of crimes (murder, perk, deceit, perjury, 358

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battery, fiddle, pilferage, fornication), names of police officers (policeman, constable, bobby, peeler) to name just a few, will provide material for a thoroughly-documented linguistic research. The change of their meaning in time will also be addressed, process connected with the inset of new needs, of taboo-words needing euphemisms, or simply with inexplicable reasons. Semantic change is different from lexical change, which concerns changes in the structure of the vocabulary (for instance Anglo-Saxon words being replaced by French equivalents). These two processes will contribute to our research as they are yet related, since the arrival of new words through lexical change necessarily affects existing word-fields, causing semantic changes. The lexical and semantic change in the English language has long been the focus of scholars. One of the most conspicuous and frequent type of language change is the appearance of new words. There are many ways of acquiring new words, such as borrowing. Police terminology has an impressive array of loan words, borrowed from the predecessors of police (the army and the administration) and other languages (mainly Norman French). See sergeant, constable, judge, official, attorney, bailiff. There is clear evidence that certain semantic classes of words are more likely to be borrowed than other words; the low frequency words as well as the words specific to a certain terminology fall into this category. Another very frequent technique of obtaining new words is compounding, which is exceedingly common in English: major general, detective chief inspector, pickpocket, shoplifting, skinhead, hit-and-run are only a few examples. Even more frequent than compounding is derivation (policing, enforcement, gangster, deviation, delinquency, fraudster). Various other devices are used to coin new words in English (and other languages for that matter): conversion (police n. – to police v.), clipping (pro-professional, con – convicted, vic – victim, perp – perpetrator, ammo – ammunition), blending (breathalyser, combination of breath and analyser), back-formation (burglar, loan form Norman French, to burgle), initialisms (DCI – Detective Chief Inspector) and acronyms. 359

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Semantic change, or the change in meaning is just as common as other types of change. Some of the most common of all types of semantic change are melioration and perjoration (such as villan, which once meant farm-worker, or constable, which once meant master of stables), metaphor (Head of Police, branch of police, the long arm of the law), metonymy (the law, Peelers, Bobbies, after the pioneer of English law enforcement, Sir Robert Peel) and synecdoche (The Yard – the Scotland Yard). 2.3 Organisation of research paper It will basically focus on the making, comparing and interpreting frames according to the model. Pairs of key equivalent concepts are selected from the two time frames selected for analysis. The selection of the terms is based on their relevance for the field of law enforcement and semantic richness. Once these words are selected, a map of their hyponyms and their characteristics will be built according to the two frames. Police standard equipment 20th century

Police standard equipment 19th century

club lantern

rattle

whistle

truncheon

helmet

truncheon

uniform

handcuffs pistol

CS spray uniform helmet

radio body armour

The map will show words which have been dubbed as obsolete and have consequently exited the language or the field (rattle, club), words or phrases that have been developed as a reaction to technological progress (handcuffs, CS spray, body armour, radio) and words which have changed their meaning following social and political changes (uniform, lantern). Further on, the types and their aspects will be compared across frames, to identify common grounds and changes, reflecting the development of the English law enforcement. 360

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One other possible extension of the project could include a comparative view, involving the nineteenth century Romanian law enforcement – with rich words such as agă, gardist, miliţian, plaşă, dorobanţ, cantonier, informaţiuni, jandarmerie, organ administrativ, inspectorat, direcţiune, gardă civică, Ministerul Trebilor din Lăuntru, etc. 2.4 Conclusions and implications of this project The outcome will have multi-disciplinary benefits: Linguistics, Socio-linguistics, Lexicography. Terminology, Lexical Semantics, as well as Police Studies and the closely related Military and Legal studies will equally take profit. References [1] Barfield, Owen, Auden, W.H., History in English Words, SteinerBooks, 2002. [2] Barsalou, L.W., Frames, Concepts, and Conceptual Fields, in editors Lehrer, A., E. Kittay, “Frames, Fields, and Contrast: New Essays in Semantics and Lexical Organization”, Hillsdale, 1992, (pp. 21-74). [3] Fillmore, C.J; Atkins, B.T., Toward a Frame-Based Lexicon: The Semantics of RISK and its Neighbors, in editors Lehrer, A., E. Kittay, “Frames, Fields, and Contrast: New Essays in Semantics and Lexical Organization”, Hillsdale, 1992, (p. 75-102). [4] Hughes, Geoffrey, Words in Time; A Social History of the English Vocabulary, Basil Blackwell, London, 1988. [5] Leech, Geoffrey, Semantics. The Study of Meaning, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990. [6] Emsley, Clive, The English Police, A Political and Social History, Longman, 1996. [7] Crystal, David, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, second edition, Cambridge University Press, 2005. [8] Gooch, Graham; Williams, Michael, Oxford Dictionary of Law Enforcement, Oxford University Press, 2007.

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THE LIFE OF WORDS TA Cizer Laura

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract Intriguing or not, words can have a life of their own. They can be live when they are new, degraded or fading when they have lost their freshness, and dead when they are used or worn out. Nevertheless, both their implications on the English language and their contribution to it are enormous.

Keywords: words, dictionary, A lot of attention has recently been grabbed by the MerriamWebster dictionary with the introduction of some new words. The well-known dictionary included webinar for “an online seminar”, pescatarian for “a vegetarian who eats fish”. The same process has been and still is celebrated by the Macmillan dictionary. In it one reads [1]: • abibliophobia for “the fear of running out of things to read” • al desko for “eating while sitting at your desk (multitasking)”, coined most probably after al fresco • chugger for “charity mugger” (a person who wants you to sign up for regular donations to charity) • cyberslacking or cyberloafing as in the expression to be caught cyberslacking, that is “avoid working at the office by surfing the net”. Hidden in cyberspace, it may look as if you were engaged in some important work, in fact you may shop, e-mail your friends or read the news 362

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• earworm for “a song which keeps going round and round in someone head after having heard it on the radio or somewhere else” • freegan for “the person who eats meat or animal products only if they are left over or destined for the trash” • furkid for “a furry companion, a substitute child to be loved and cared for as a parent would” • to be greenwashed for “ the government policies alledged to promote the well-being of the environment, to convince you to buy environmentally-friendly products which contain, in fact, chemical, dangerous substances” • grief tourist for “ a tourist interested in visiting the grave or a place where a person (usually a celebrity) died tragically” • hand-me-ups, coined after hand-me-downs, except this time you are no longer a child receiving things from your elderly brothers or sisters but an adult • infomania(c) for “the constant urge to read and reply to electronic messages, the abuse of always-on technology” • irritainment for “irritating TV programs that somehow entertain us and we cannot resist tuning into” • latte factor for “the amount of money spent each day on quick drinks and snacks”. The inventor of the phrase is David Bach who thought of this metaphor for where we spend on little things that we could cut back on without changing our lifestyles. • me time for “the time to relax and do exactly what you enjoy” • middle youth for “those who combine responsibilities of adulthood with youthful attitudes and interests, they are too old to be called young, but too young to be called middleaged” • miswant for “mistakenly believe that getting a particular thing is the route to future happiness” • movieoke for “acting out scenes from your favorite movies”, coined after karaoke. It has become quite popular pastime. 363

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• senior moment for “the times when we forget the most simple things, regardless the age” • sheeple for “people who are easily persuaded and tend to follow what others do”, a blend of the words sheep and people • shopgrifting for “buying an item of clothing, wear it, then repackaging it and get your money back”, as in “renting something for free” • spim, similar to spam, for “making advertisements and unwanted messages automatically appear when you are connected to the internet • thumb generation for “the generation of young people and adults whose enjoyment of their free time relies on how quickly their thumbs can press a keypad” • trolleyology for “the study of how the contents of a person’s shopping trolley show something about their personality”. It is a term concocted by the American anthropologists. However, in this celebration of the newly coined words, there is no one to trumpet the death of some other words, no one to mourn for the colorful old words, slowly passing from the English language. One word is dreckly as in “I’ll get by there dreckly” that is “directly” or “rat cheer”, meaning “right here”. There is also a decline of mild oaths and exclamations. Utterances like “Heavens to Betsy”, “Land o’Goshen” or “Lorda mercy” are used far and few between, being replaced by the plain old cuss words. And again, no one to grieve for the poetic usage of old words. Instead of the profanities we utter today, why not try to revive: “Great day in the morning!”, “For cryin' out loud!”, “Lawzee me!”, “I'll swan!”, “Dadgummit!”, “My lands!”, “Good night, nurse!” Perhaps, we should try to save words like: “yonder”, “boy hidy”, “bodacious”, “gumption”, “tump” and the courtly “much obliged”. It may be worth the preservation effort. Why not go to “the picture show” instead of going to “the movies”? The nuances brought by “traipse”, “mosey” or “sashay” are infinitely greater than “move about”. [2] 364

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Apparently, not only animals but also words can become extinct or they are in danger of extinction. The final outcome of it will be the creation of a flat, neutral vocabulary to which everybody will resort to. So, will the English language lose its color? After all, it really loses some truly descriptive words … References [1] http://www.macmillandictionary.com [2] http://www.dallasnews.com

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DILEMMAS IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATION TA David Irina, TA Rotariu Raluca-Elena

University of Economics, Bucharest Abstract In the ever-increasing internationalisation and globalisation process communication has become essential, as it offers the tools that ensure the promotion of successful relations among people from different countries and cultures. But if communication can be subject to misunderstandings when used by persons belonging to the same environment, its newly gained global importance obviously increases the risk of people not being able to produce effective communication acts due to misinterpretations and loss of the intended meaning of a discourse. This paper will analyse some of the barriers that block effective international communication, trying to offer possible reasons that lay behind these barriers. The theoretical discourse will be followed by the presentation of several strategies that business English teachers can use to prepare students to become effective communicators, who are able to deal with the dilemmas mentioned in the first section of the article.

Keywords: international communication, communication, communication dilemmas

effective

1. The International Communication Process Communication is a complex process involving the “interaction with a purpose between at least two persons” [1] and in order for it to be considered effective the persons involved in this process must have a common background, which allows them to receive, understand, accept and correctly act upon the messages they exchange. This 366

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process involves six basic elements: the sender – who initiates the communication act and encodes a message, the message – i.e. the information that the sender wants to pass on, the channel or the medium, the receiver – who has the task of decoding the message and of offering positive feedback, the noise and the feedback. Starting from the idea that communication is a two-way process we understand that the intended receiver plays an important role, because if he is not able to access the message then there is a breakdown in communication and the process is not a successful one. This is why when encoding a message the sender has to try to make it easy to decode both from the point of view of the language used and from the perspective of the ideas expressed in the content of his/ her discourse. In order for messages to be understood at their right value they have to be psychologically acceptable. Discourses that ignore cultural backgrounds and the receivers’ values usually fail to obtain a constructive reaction from the part of the persons to whom they are addressed. People do not have to underestimate the role played by noise, an element that can be defined as “a random input which distorts a message or which interferes with its transmission or reception” [2]. This input can be represented by different types of technical elements, or by emotional or psychological reactions to a variety of stimuli. In international communication the frequent lack of a common cultural background between the parties involved in the process makes it more difficult for them to be able to communicate effectively and increases the risks of miscommunication instances. Most people feel the tendency to encode or decode a message by applying the selfreference criterion – an unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values, experiences and knowledge as a basis for decisions. This often makes them ignore the fact that something which seems clear and normal for them can have a totally different significance for people with another cultural background. The barriers that disrupt effective communication appear frequently and the only way in which their negative impact may be diminished is by promoting the need for international understanding, the acceptance of cultural diversity and the tolerant attitude towards “the others”, because even if nowadays 367

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people live in a global village, they are not the same. In order for misunderstandings and misinterpretations to be avoided, messages should be concise, clear, courteous, correct and complete, and when delivering them the speaker should take into account the specificity of his/ her audience and try to adapt the discourse according to this element. 2. Barriers Blocking Effective International Communication When speaking about international communication, people refer to the type of communication that goes on between individual or governmental representatives of different countries and implicitly, of different cultures. It is no wonder then that there are various sources of noise that can interfere and disrupt the communication process. We are not going to offer in this paper a thorough description of all these sources; aspects such as technical communication noises do not make the subject of our concern. We will concentrate instead on language as a possible source of communication breakdown and on the culture driven emotional and psychological reactions that may not allow the participants involved in the communication process to respond properly to a message. The choice of words or of the language in which a sender decides to encode a message influences the quality of communication in general and is vital in the case of international communication, where a large number of the discourses are made in English, which is not the native language of many of the people involved in the process. The way in which language is used as a symbolic representation of various opinions leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and distortion of the meaning, a phenomenon which becomes more obvious when nonmother tongue English speakers try to decode messages transmitted to them in English. People form different countries or even from the same country do not always attribute the same meaning to a specific word and this may lead to confusion and sometimes even to frustration. Let’s imagine what would happen during a business meeting between a British and an American businessperson who would try to discuss about whether or not “to table” an issue without trying to explain the concept to each other first. Professionals in the 368

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field of linguistics may know that the term “to table” is translated as “to put on the agenda” in British English, while in American English it has the opposite meaning of “taking off the agenda”, but businesspeople who were not faced with this problem before may find it difficult to decode the intended meaning. If even mother tongue English speakers might have difficulties in understanding each other, things are much more complicated in the case of people who speak English as a foreign language. Besides aspects such as language proficiency, some of them have to struggle against the fact that not having direct contact with the English language they may not be familiar with the hidden meaning of certain expressions or with the way in which the interpretation of older words evolved. If language operates as an obvious tool of effective communication, cultural differences remain hidden, undermining the communication process if they are not taken into account. In international communication people with different values, moral beliefs and perceptions of aspects such as time, space, human relationships or life aspirations are brought together and asked to share ideas and reach to an agreement, which cannot be done if they filter everything through their own perception of the world, expecting the others to think and feel in the same way. Some people try to deal with cultural differences by using stereotyping, which can be useful in some cases, providing clues to the characteristics of the average person belonging to a specific culture, but which can also lead to distorted perceptions, because most of the time individuals are different from each other and assuming that someone will behave and think according to the way in which his/ her group does without validating it can have negative effects. Values are a result of the cultural background and they illustrate an individual’s principles of behaviour or judgements about important aspects of life. Most of the time people are not aware of their own values or of the way in which those values play an important part in every decision they make or in their reactions to various stimuli from the environment. But whenever their moral principles are attacked they tend to react in an extremely emotional way, which in the case of 369

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the communication process means that they might let their subjectivity influence the way in which they interpret a specific message. There are many other factors that can interfere in the communication process and disrupt it, but we consider that language and cultural differences, with all the aspects that they imply are the most important and probably the most frequent sources of misunderstanding in international communication. 3. Strategies to Help Future and Young Professionals Avoid Dilemmas in International Business Communication Although the best way for young professionals to learn how to communicate effectively in international business is by gaining experience in the field, the role of knowledge and skills acquired during their university studies cannot be ignored either. Without denying the merit of other subjects of study, in this paper we are only going to discuss the importance of taking part in the seminars meant to develop the participants’ language skills. As most teachers of business English consider that their main task is to help students prepare for performing well in their future professional career, during the seminars the focus is on practical activities whose main purpose is to enhance the students’ ability to develop and use their communication skills. These abilities are of the utmost importance for students, as they will represent an important asset not only for the academic activity, but also for the successful career of the future graduates. In nowadays society, “more and more employees find that an important part of their work is communication, especially now that service workers outnumber production workers and research as well as production processes emphasize greater collaboration and teamwork among workers in different functional groups” [3]. During the license cycle, students are mainly trained in terms of language use and less from the perspective of cultural differences that they will encounter later on. However, “because of the close relationship between language and culture, it is virtually impossible not to learn one while studying the other” [4]. Thus, when dealing with linguistic aspects such as degrees of formality, slang, euphemisms, humour, conversational taboos, students will 370

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immediately become aware of the differences between the ways in which some of these elements are perceived in Romanian and in English. In the same time, most texts or discussions about either the Romanian or the British environment, which sometimes are primarily meant to enhance comprehension or vocabulary use will trigger people’s need to comment on the cultural peculiarities they notice. In terms of language as a means of improving communication skills, it is very important for the teachers to expose students to authentic, up to date materials that will help them keep in touch with new words or meanings as they are used in real life contexts. Encouraging students to socialise in English with other people by participating in students’ sessions or in special trainings organised by various universities during the summer holiday is also beneficial for helping them become able to communicate in a wide range of contexts with people from different fields of activity. Another means of achieving this is by supporting those who are interested in attending speeches held in English by Romanian or foreign professionals. Last but not least, students can definitely improve their language skills if they have the opportunity to obtain a scholarship and study for a period in a foreign country or if they work abroad during their holidays. Apart from representing an extremely valuable linguistic experience, all the in class and out of class situations mentioned above also constitute the basis for making students aware of the cultural differences between their own society and that of the people or environments they come in contact with. All this knowledge will later on be an asset for them, as the cultural shock of communicating with someone whose values, beliefs and business practices are different will not be perceived as a completely new and frustrating experience. If during the licence cycle the focus on cultural aspects is somehow secondary, as the understanding of these aspects derives mainly from the discussion of general issues, during master’s programmes students have special subjects which encourage them to become aware of specific cultural concepts and of how these concepts affect communication. Thus, theoretical lectures are held in which students find out relevant information about characteristics of various groups of cultures and about how people from a specific culture 371

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perceive relevant aspects of communicating and doing business. These lectures are followed by discussions in which the students themselves express their opinions on the issues they have been presented and speak about their own experience in the field. Such discussions are relevant for all the participants, as at this stage of their life many of the students already have a job, some of them in a multinational company, which means they have already come in contact with other professionals from the international business environment. Therefore, they are able to exchange opinions from a realistic perspective, which enhances their understanding of the situations discussed in the classroom. 4. Conclusions International communication is an extremely complex and difficult to achieve process because it involves the participation of people who may use different languages and who often come from different cultural environments, having different perceptions of the world and different values and moral standards. If they are ignored these differences interfere in the communication process and lead to misunderstandings or involuntary misinterpretation of a specific message. It is therefore extremely important to make future professionals become aware of the difficulties they will encounter and to encourage them to develop skills that could help them avoid or deal with these difficult situations. References [1] Nicolae, Mariana, Managerial Communication in the Internet Age, Bucharest, ASE, 2002, p. 14. [2] Hartley, Peter and Bruckmann, Clive G., Business Communication, London and New York, Routledge, 2002, p. 18. [3] http://wren-network.net/resources, Baker, Kathryn A., Organizational Communication, 2002, p. 1. [4] Ferraro, Gary P., The Cultural Dimension of International Business, New Jersey, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006, p. 47. 372

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AIR FORCE SLANG TA Mateş Raluca

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa Abstract Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language. Slang is one of the vehicles through which languages change and renew, and its vigor and color enrich daily speech. Although it has gained respectability in the 20th century, in the past it was often loudly condemned as vulgar.

Keywords: Slang, informal, colloquial speech, occupational groups, jargon, subculture. Slang consists in informal, nonstandard words and phrases, generally shorter lived than the expressions of ordinary colloquial speech, and typically formed by creative, often witty juxtapositions of words or images. Slang can be contrasted with jargon (technical language of occupational or other groups) and with argot or cant (secret vocabulary of underworld groups). Slang appears at all times and in all languages. Slang tends to originate in subcultures within a society. Occupational groups (for example, loggers, police, medical professionals, and computer specialists) are prominent originators of both jargon and slang; other groups creating slang include the armed forces, teenagers, racial minorities, ghetto residents, labor unions, citizens-band radio broadcasters, sports groups, drug addicts, criminals, and even religious denominations (Episcopalians, for example, produced spike, a High Church Anglican). Slang expressions 373

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often embody attitudes and values of group members. They may thus contribute to a sense of group identity and may convey to the listener information about the speaker's background. Before an apt expression becomes slang, however, it must be widely adopted by members of the subculture. Admiral’s Doorbell – The yellow button in an F/A-18 cockpit that jettisons all the external stores in an emergency. If you hit it, you’ll be “ringing the admiral's doorbell” to explain why. Aluminum Cloud – The F-14 is so large that it is sometimes referred to by this term. Angels – Altitude, measured in thousands of feet (“angels fifteen” means 15,000 feet above sea level). Also, a term lovingly ascribed to the rescue helicopter by any aviator who has experienced an ejection and subsequent helicopter rescue. Bag – Flight suit or anti-exposure suit (“Put on a bag”); as a verb – to collect or acquire: as in, “bag some traps.” Bag Season – Cold weather or water conditions which require the wearing of anti-exposure gear; which is very restrictive, uncomfortable and unpopular Bandit – Dogfight adversary positively identified as a bad guy. Hostile aircraft. Barn – A hangar. Basement – Hangar deck of the aircraft carrier. Bird – A rocket, guided missile, satellite, or airplane. Boat– Any Navy ship regardless of size. The aircraft carrier is “THE Boat.” Bogey – Unidentified and potentially hostile aircraft. Bohica – Bend over, here it comes again. Bounce, Tap – Unexpected attack on another aircraft. Bravo Zulu – Praise for a good job. Charlie – The planned landing time aboard a carrier. Cones – Students, short for coneheads: also called nurkin heads, or studs. Double Ugly – Fond nickname for the enormously capable but less than beautiful F-4 Phantom. See also Rhino. 374

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Down – Broken, not flying. A sick pilot is “down.” Driver – Pilot. Electric Jet – The F-16 Fighting Falcon, so nicknamed because of its fly-by-wire controls. Fairy – A name for anyone in aviation. Feet Wet/Dry – The former means “over-water,” the latter “over-land.” Gomer – Slang for a dogfight adversary, the usage stemming from the old Gomer Pyle television show Hop – A mission, or flight Hummer – Any ingenious machine — plane, car, or weapon — whose actual name can’t be recalled. Also “puppy”, “bad boy.” The E2 Hawkeye early-warning aircraft is also nicknamed “Hummer,” in reference to the sound of its turboprop engines. Jock, Driver – Pilot, as in “hello driver,” or “fighter jock.” Martin-Baker Fan Club – If you eject, you’re a member (a reference to the Martin-Baker company, manufacturer of ejection seats). An official list of members is maintained. Milkrun – A routine mission. NFO – An aviator who is an officer but not a pilot; pilots say it stands for “No Future Occupation”; also called the “Non-Flying Object” and “walk-n’-talkin’ navbag.” Sometimes referred to as DAP for “Double-Anchor Puke” (a reference to the crossed anchors on the NFO wings). Nugget – A first-tour aviator. Pigeon – A member of the air force. Pit – Rear seat position of the F-14 Tomcat or F-4 Phantom. Also the refueling pit. Playmates – The pilots of other aircraft on the same mission as you. Plumber – An inept pilot. Pond – The Atlantic Ocean. Punch Out – To eject. Rhino – Nickname for the F-4 Phantom and now the F/A-18E or -18F Super Hornet. The Phantom was also known as the Double Ugly. 375

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RIO – Radar Intercept Officer. Back-seat crewman in the F-14 Tomcat or F-4 Phantom II. Rocket One – The skipper. Scooter – Nickname for the A-4 Skyhawk. Scope – A RIO. Shooter – The catapult officer. Tiger – An aggressive pilot. Turkey – Nickname for the F-14 Tomcat (when landing, the movement of its control surfaces makes it look like a turkey). Warthog – Universal nickname for the A-10 Thunderbolt II close air support aircraft. Whiskey Charlie – Phonetics for “Who cares.” Zoombag – Flight suit. Slang is one of the vehicles through which languages change and renew, and its vigor and color enrich daily speech. Although it has gained respectability in the 20th century, in the past it was often loudly condemned as vulgar.

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KEY ISSUES IN ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP) CURRICULUM DESIGN TA Pielmuş Cristina

„Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Police Academy, Bucharest [email protected]

Abstract This paper aims at discussing the origins of ESP, as well as addressing key notions about ESP and examining issues in ESP curriculum design. The content of the paper was determined by a need identified based on my professional experience as an ESL instructor of the Police Academy students in the field of policing and legal issues. Where possible, current and pertinent academic literature has been provided as theoretical support on the topic of ESP. These observations will most probably offer some insight into the challenges facing the ESL instructor acting as ESP curriculum developer.

Keywords: ESP, students, key issues 1. Key Notions About ESP Four key notions will be discussed, which are as follows: a) the distinctions between the absolute and variable characteristics of ESP, b) types of ESP, c) characteristics of ESP courses, and d) the meaning of the word 'special' in ESP. 1.1. Absolute and Variable Characteristics of ESP Strevens (1988) is the first who defined ESP by identifying its absolute and variable characteristics. Strevens' definition makes a distinction between four absolute and two variable characteristics: I. Absolute characteristics: ESP consists of English language teaching which is: 377

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ƒ designed to meet specified needs of the learner; ƒ related in content (i.e. in its themes and topics) to particular disciplines, occupations and activities; ƒ centred on the language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics, etc., and analysis of this discourse; ƒ in contrast with General English. II. Variable characteristics: ESP may be, but is not necessarily: ƒ restricted as to the language skills to be learned (e.g. reading only); ƒ not taught according to any pre-ordained methodology. In 1998 Dudley-Evans offered a modified definition. The revised definition he and St. John postulate is as follows: I. Absolute Characteristics ƒ ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learner; ƒ ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves; ƒ ESP is centred on the language (grammar, lexis, register), skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these activities. ƒ II. Variable Characteristics ƒ ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines; ƒ ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of general English; ƒ ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level institution or in a professional work situation. It could, however, be for learners at secondary school level; ƒ ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students; ƒ Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language system, but it can be used with beginners. Dudley-Evans and St. John have removed the absolute characteristic that 'ESP is in contrast with General English' and added more variable characteristics. They assert that ESP is not necessarily related to a specific discipline. Furthermore, ESP is likely to be used 378

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with adult learners although it could be used with young adults in a secondary school setting. As for a broader definition of ESP, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) theorize, “ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner's reason for learning”. Anthony (1997) notes that, it is not clear where ESP courses end and general English courses begin; numerous nonspecialist ESL instructors use an ESP approach in that their syllabus is based on analysis of learner needs and their own personal specialist knowledge of using English for real communication. 1.2. Types of ESP David Carter (1983) identifies three types of ESP: ƒ English as a restricted language ƒ English for Academic and Occupational Purposes ƒ English with specific topics. The language used by air traffic controllers or by waiters are examples of English as a restricted language. The second type of ESP identified by Carter (1983) is English for Academic and Occupational Purposes. In the 'Tree of ELT' (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987), ESP is broken down into three branches: a) English for Science and Technology (EST), b) English for Business and Economics (EBE), and c) English for Social Studies (ESS). Each of these subject areas is further divided into two branches: English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP). An example of EOP for the EST branch is 'English for Technicians', whereas an example of EAP for the EST branch is 'English for Medical Studies'. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) do note that there is not a clear-cut distinction between EAP and EOP. Perhaps this explains Carter's rationale for categorizing EAP and EOP under the same type of ESP. It appears that Carter is implying that the end purpose of both EAP and EOP are one in the same: employment. However, despite the end purpose being identical, the means taken to achieve the end is very different indeed. The third and final type of ESP identified by Carter (1983) is English with specific topics. Carter notes that it is only here where 379

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emphasis shifts from purpose to topic. This type of ESP is uniquely concerned with anticipated future English needs of, for example, scientists requiring English for postgraduate reading studies, attending conferences or working in foreign institutions. However, this is not a separate type of ESP, but it is rather an integral component of ESP courses or programs which focus on situational language. This situational language has been determined based on the interpretation of results from needs analysis of authentic language used in target workplace settings. 1.3. Characteristics of ESP Courses The characteristics of ESP courses identified by Carter (1983) are: a) authentic material, b) purpose-related orientation, and c) selfdirection. If we revisit Dudley-Evans' (1997) claim that ESP should be offered at an intermediate or advanced level, use of authentic learning materials is entirely feasible. Closer examination of ESP materials will follow; the use of authentic content materials, modified or unmodified in form, are indeed a feature of ESP, particularly in self-directed study and research tasks. Purpose-related orientation refers to the simulation of communicative tasks required of the target setting. Carter (1983) cites student simulation of a conference, involving the preparation of papers, reading, notetaking, and writing. Finally, self-direction is characteristic of ESP courses in that the " ... point of including self-direction ... is that ESP is concerned with turning learners into users" (Carter, 1983). In order for self-direction to occur, the learners must have a certain degree of freedom to decide when, what, and how they will study. Carter (1983) also adds that there must be a systematic attempt by teachers to teach the learners how to learn by teaching them about learning strategies. 1.4. The Meaning of the Word 'Special' in ESP One simple clarification will be made here: special language and specialized aim are two entirely different notions. If we revisit Mackay and Mountford's restricted repertoire, we can better 380

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understand the idea of a special language. Mackay and Mountford (1978) state: “The only practical way in which we can understand the notion of special language is as a restricted repertoire of words and expressions selected from the whole language because that restricted repertoire covers every requirement within a well-defined context, task or vocation”. On the other hand, a specialized aim refers to the purpose for which learners learn a language, not the nature of the language they learn (Mackay & Mountford, 1978). Consequently, the focus of the word 'special' in ESP ought to be on the purpose for which learners learn and not on the specific jargon or registers they learn. 2. Key Issues in ESP Curriculum Design 2.1. Abilities Required for Successful Communication in Occupational Settings Cummins (1979) theorized a dichotomy between basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). The former refers to the language skills used in the everyday informal language used with friends, family and co-workers. The latter refers to a language proficiency required to make sense of and use academic language. Situations in which individuals use BICS are characterized by contexts that provide relatively easy access to meaning. However, CALP use occurs in contexts that offer fewer contextual clues. There are three abilities necessary for successful communication in a professional target setting. The first ability required in order to successfully communicate in an occupational setting is the ability to use the particular jargon characteristic of that specific occupational context. The second is the ability to use a more generalized set of academic skills, such as conducting research and responding to memoranda. The third is the ability to use the language of everyday informal talk to communicate effectively, regardless of occupational context. Examples of this include chatting over coffee with a colleague or responding to an informal email message. 381

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The task for the ESP developer is to ensure that all three of these abilities are integrated in the curriculum. This is a difficult task due to the incredible amount of research required. Close collaboration between content experts and the curriculum developer is very useful, if not essential. Yet, there does exist a wealth of information on academic and general language skills. What has to be done in the interweaving process is to develop a model that best integrates the restricted repertoire with the academic and general for the learners in question. It is my opinion that because ESP requires comprehensive needs analysis and because the learning-centred curriculum is not static, it is impossible to expect that the developer be in a position to identify the perfect balance of the abilities noted above for any particular group of learners. In reality, a large part of this responsibility is that of the instructors; it is the instructors who are in the best position to identify changing learner needs and who are in the best position to ensure that all students receive a balanced amount of language. 2.2. Content Language Acquisition Versus General Language Acquisition One of the central questions that needs to be answered is how much time has to be devoted to vocabulary and content knowledge acquisition, as opposed to the time spent developing general and academic language skills. The first thing that is apparent is that time devoted to developing general language and academic skills far outweighs the time devoted to the acquisition of content knowledge. However, it is recommended that the content instructor be present for a considerable amount of time during the ESP curriculum development, since team work would lead to better outcomes. 2.3. Heterogeneous Learner Group Versus Homogeneous Learner Group There are a number of variables which characterize a heterogeneous learner group. It is almost obvious that variations in language level, prior education and work experience can be 382

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accommodated only to a certain extent. Minimum entrance standards must be established in the areas of language level, motivation, and prior education and experience and, moreover, these standards must be strictly enforced at the time of placement. Yogman and Kaylani (1996) conclude that there appears to be a minimum proficiency level that is required for students to participate in predominately content-related activities. This reinforces the finding that those students who are struggling to catch up with general language proficiency simply find the content activities to be overwhelming. 2.4. Materials Development Do ESP textbooks really exist? This is central question Jones (1990) addresses. One of the core dilemmas he presents is that "ESP teachers find themselves in a situation where they are expected to produce a course that exactly matches the needs of a group of learners, but are expected to do so with no, or very limited, preparation time" (Jones, 1990). In the real world, many ESL instructors/ESP developers are not provided with ample time for needs analysis, materials research and materials development. What can be done is actually familiarizing oneself with useful instructional materials, which is an inherent part of growing as a teacher, regardless of the nature of purpose for learning. Given that ESP is an approach and not a subject to be taught, curricular materials will unavoidably be pieced together, some borrowed and others designed specially. Resources will include authentic materials, ESL materials, ESP materials, and teachergenerated materials. References [1]. Anthony, L., ESP: What does it mean?, 1997, ON CUE. http://interserver.miyazaki-med.ac.jp/~cue/pc/anthony.htm [2]. Carter, D., Some propositions about ESP, The ESP Journal, 2, 1983. [3]. Cummins, J., Cognitive/academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimum age question and some other matters, Working Papers on Bilingualism, 19, 1979 383

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[4]. Dudley-Evans, T., & St John, M., Developments in ESP: A multidisciplinary approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. [5]. Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A., English for Specific Purposes: A learningcentered approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. [6]. Jones, G., ESP textbooks: Do they really exist? English for Specific Purposes, 9, 1990. [7]. Johnson, R. (Ed.)., The second language curriculum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. [8]. Mackay, R., & Mountford, A. (Eds.)., English for Specific Purposes: A case study approach, London: Longman, 1978. [9]. Mackay, R., & Palmer, J. (Eds.)., Languages for Specific Purposes: Program design and evaluation, London: Newbury House, 1981. [10]. McDonough, J., ESP in perspective: A practical guide. London: Collins ELT, 1984. [11]. Strevens, P., ESP after twenty years: A re-appraisal. In M. Tickoo (Ed.), ESP: State of the Art. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Centre, 1988. [12]. Yogman, J., & Kaylani, C., ESP program design for mixed level students. English for Specific Purposes, 15, 1996.

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REVISITING PERSUASIVE DISCOURSE TA Tănase Robescu Delia

Polytechnic University of Timişoara Abstract The present paper offers a refreshed view on persuasive discourse and its distinctive properties by bringing together the Aristotelian ethos-logos-pathos triad and Östman’s viewing of persuasion as implicit anchoring.

Keywords: persuasive discourse, persuasion, communication 1. Introduction It is an undeniable fact that our existence is daily bombarded by persuasive messages and speeches, that our life has come to revolve around and be influenced by different forms of persuasion, be it interpersonal, organizational, political, sectarian, advertising or journalistic persuasion. Defined as the act of influencing people with the purpose of taking on new ideas, attitudes or opinions, and, possibly, new behaviours, through reasoning or emotional appeal, persuasion moves beyond the informational dimension of communication, instantiating its second fundamental dimension, as distinguished by the scholars of the Palo Alto School of Thinking (Watzlawick, Jackson, Bavelas, 1967), the relational one. The present paper focuses on the distinctive properties of persuasive discourse by putting forward the Aristotelian ethos-logospathos triad and Östman’s viewing of persuasion as implicit anchoring. Additionally, it argues in favour of approaching persuasive discourse in terms of a ‘merged’ view that combines ideas from both analysts’ 385

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works. 2. Definitions and delimitations Any piece of discourse rightfully qualified as persuasive discourse triggers the persuadee’s deliberate action of adopting new opinions, attitudes without external influences or constraints. It involves the persuadee’s internal filtering and decision making with respect to the change intended by the persuader. In this respect, some remarks need to be made in order to grasp distinctions between the adjacent notions of argumentation, persuasion, manipulation, disinformation, intoxication and propaganda, or ‘the suasive words’ as they are labeled by Östman (2005:185), otherwise, routinely interchangeable and overlapping in everyday language use. The literature on the topic (Breton, 2006, Stan, 2004, Kapferer, 2002, O’Sullivan & et al., 2001) has primarily distinguished between the concepts of persuasion and manipulation pointing out that, while the core element common to both persuasion and manipulation is the goal of influencing ideas, opinions, beliefs, behaviours, positions, relationships, etc, the boundary between them is established in terms of the (un)conscious act of new opinion adoption. Manipulation is perfidious by nature and leaves individuals the impression that they made their own free choice contrary to the reality which reveals that their choice was born out of a treacherous act initiated by somebody pursuing his/her own interest in the detriment of theirs. In opposition to manipulation, persuasion presupposes a conscious, deliberate action of approval and adoption of new ideas and opinions. Defined as “a form of instrumental communication relying on reasoning and proof in order to influence opinions and behaviours” (my translation, Rybacki,K. & D. Rybacki, 2004: 18 ), argumentation represents the zero level on the scale of deviation from objective informing. It uses language “to justify or refute a standpoint, with the aim of securing agreement in views” (van Eemeren et al., 1997:208) by appealing to the individual’s rational thinking and reasoning strategies. Argumentation corresponds to the logos dimension of persuasion and shapes itself as the rational, logical subdivision or component of 386

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persuasion, which operates simultaneously on an extra reasoning level, the emotional one (pathos dimension). The scale of deviation has as extreme positions manipulation and propaganda whereas transitional positions are represented by persuasion, disinformation and intoxication. Seen as “a genuine war weapon”, which transvestites “false information into ‘true’ information” (Breton, 2006: 55-56), disinformation is a form of censorship involving suppression of objectivity, deliberate alteration of information or deliberate spreading of false information with a view to trigger specific feedback. It is usually customary of totalitarian regimes to resort to disinformation, but it does not exclude democratic regimes, too. However, in democratic societies disinformation is discardable by competing media institutions. Intoxication can be defined in chemistry terms as a form of supersaturating the audience with false, distorted information taking the shape of rumors, gossips, denigrations, libeling in order to cast doubts on or discredit somebody. Originally designating the spreading of religious doctrines, and, later, political doctrines (Breton, 2004: 57), the term propaganda was coined by Pope Gregory XV in 1622 (Congregatio de propaganda fide (1622), apud Breton, 2004:57). It has gradually broadened its scope so that, at present, propaganda indicates that “specific form of mass persuasion (involving production and transmission of specifically structured messages and texts) aimed at producing and encouraging certain reactions in the public opinion” (my translation, O’Sullivan et al, 2001:265). It is an all-encompassing, systematic form of persuasion whose main goal is to enforce or make public opinion’s attitudes comply with the ideologies of the dominant, powerful groups or social institutions. 3. Aristotle’s Ethos-Logos-Pathos triad Since classical rhetoric, Aristotle’s Ethos-Logos-Pathos triad (2004) has developed into a canon-like criterion in the analysis of persuasion underlying the interplay of the ethical, emotional and logical dimensions which spawn persuasion. Their corresponding language 387

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structures appeal to the persuadee’s moral values and principles, emotional behaviour (emotions and needs), reason and logic. 3.1. The ethical dimension The ethos dimension describes the persuader’s credibility, expertise and integrity, socially-approved norms and values against which judgments and assessments are issued. Zero persuasion or the first level of persuasion involves making persuadees deem and rate the message as true. The perception of the message as plausible is conditioned by the credibility of the message issuer. The more credible the persuader is the more truthful and reliable the message is rated and further ratified. It is generally assumed that the addressor’s credibility is influenced by factors such as knowledge, uprightness, good will, dynamism, in a word, demonstrable positive personal characteristics. A credible persuader demonstrates general knowledge and specific area expertise and experience, is able to build and organize his/her speech so that it reveals an honest and open mind, a dynamic person with good intentions. At this level, the addressor’s goal is to identify with the persuadee by invoking shared values, norms, principles and interests thus achieving enforcement of his/her credibility. It goes without saying that you cannot convince someone of something unless you are trustworthy and succeed in making your interlocutor believe in what you assert. 3.2. The emotional dimension The pathos element encompasses all the means to which the persuader resorts in order to establish emotional bridges of communication with the persuadee. Persuasive discourse relies heavily on emotional – participative communication in which reason is suppressed by emotionality. This type of communication is achieved by appealing to the persuadee’s emotions and needs and exploits emotional stimuli rather than logical stimuli. Logical reasoning is replaced by emotional, compulsive reasoning. Quite frequently, decision-making and cognitive processes do not rely exclusively on logical argumentation or emotions but presuppose an entanglement of the two. Whereas logical stimuli act and 388

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convince on a theoretical level, emotional stimuli induce action through the powerful emotions aroused in the individual and thus work more efficaciously on an actional level. The interplay between the logical and emotional premises is projected on a specific ethical background which may annihilate or enhance the persuasive force of the message issuer. On the other hand, an emotional stimulus can trigger a slight cognitive dissonance in the persuadee which, subsequently, backed up by logical argumentation, produces a change of opinion and behaviour. In Rhetoric Book Two (2004), Aristotle distinguishes between: anger vs. calmness, friendship (love) vs. enmity, fear vs. confidence, shame vs. shamelessness, kindness vs. unkindness, pity, indignation and envy and suggests that the appeal to these emotions will increase the persuasive force of the message issuer. The range of emotions ‘accessed’ by persuaders is wider and may include: grief, anger, rage, hope, desire, happiness, gratitude, disappointment, embarrassment, hatred, lust, remorse, vulnerability, guilt, frustration, disgust, confidence, solidarity, and the enumeration may continue if we think of Cosnier’s work (2002) in which he remarks that “ the vocabulary of emotions is extremely rich; hundreds of lexical items have been recorded in English, whereas I myself have identified 150 in French.” (my translation, 2002:13). In addition to emotions, persuasive discourse exploits the persuadee’s human needs which act as essential motivational factors. In A Theory of Human Motivation (1943), Maslow suggests a hierarchy of human needs arguing that individuals first meet their basic needs (physiological needs – eating, sleeping, breathing etc) and afterwards they seek to meet higher needs in a well established priority. His theory, known as Maslow’s pyramid, prioritizes human needs starting with the bottom level represented by the physiological needs, followed by safety needs, love/belongingness needs, esteem needs, and the top level corresponding to self-actualization needs which, in his view, are drivers of behaviour. Nevertheless, there are detractors of this theory arguing that a hungry person is capable of loving and the need for love does not disappear even if the physiological need of eating is not met. 389

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It is essential to point out that the success of the persuasive act lies in the persuader’s ability to identify and ‘access’ the right needs and emotions by recognizing the persuadee’s current needs and psychological profile. 3.3. The logical dimension The logos element designates a set of logical premises (logical and rational argumentation, scientifically-proved arguments, empirical knowledge, rebuttals, counter-arguments) which articulate a comprehendible message, perceived as true, plausible, and thus approved from, at least, a theoretical perspective. As pointed out in the previous paragraph, the emotional load of the discourse may stir feelings and passions but this is insufficient to change opinions and attitudes, it also needs a logical argumentation to bring the intended change in the persuadee. Logical argumentation is ensured by coherent verbalization of ideas, backed up by logical reasoning and scientific proofs. This dimension underlies the argumentative nature of persuasive discourse which advances arguments, demonstrates their validity and draws conclusions. The logical, emotional and ethical embedding differs among the various genres which qualify as persuasive discourse. In political speeches and manifestoes the credibility of the persuader is essential thus the ethical dimension is emphasized, whereas the emotional dimension typically presupposes appeal to the persuadee’s social liferelated needs. Advertisements give prominence to the emotional dimension, commonly built on the principle of pleasure and lust, and bank on the subliminal seduction of the persuadee. 4. Östman’s viewing of persuasion as implicit anchoring A quite original approach to persuasion is suggested by Östman (2005, 183-212), who argues in favour of analyzing persuasive discourse “in terms of concepts like negotiability, adaptability, ambivalence, and variability” on grounds of the interactive character of persuasion. He advances the theory of Persuasion as Implicit Anchoring as part of a larger theory Pragmatics as Implicit Anchoring, whose primary aim is “to investigate how interactants manage implicit communication 390

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and implicit anchoring, and how implicit choices aremade.” (Östman (2005: 193). Östman distinguishes between two simultaneously employed levels of communication or two types of communication, an explicit level (explicit communication), at which speakers make explicit linguistic choices to construe the propositional content of their utterance, and an implicit level (implicit communication), at which speakers make implicit linguistic choices in relation to their attitudes, interlocutors and sociocultural membership. Speakers explicitly anchor their discourse so that they can be held accountable for the propositional content of their utterances and, additionally, they implicitly anchor their discourse to signal their attitudes, feelings, involvement, views, ideologies, etc. Simply put “when we in everyday terms talk about reading between the lines of what people say, write, or sign, we are in fact attempting to decipher in what ways our interlocutors are implicitly anchoring their messages” (Östman, 2005: 192). Östman associates persuasion with implicit communication and implicit anchoring and analyses it in relation to three parameters: The parameter of coherence which designates the manner in which speakers anchor discourse to their socio-cultural membership; The parameter of politeness which designates interactional constraints imposed by the relationship among interlocutors; The parameter of involvement which designates emotion/affectrelated constraints according to which speakers anchor discourse to their own feelings, attitudes, and ideologies. In order to exemplify the explicit-implicit opposition, Östman discusses the use of the expression you know in the following contexts: 1) You know nothing about implicitness! (Östman, 2005: 193) 2) You know, nothing about implicitness amazes me anymore.(Östman, 2005: 195) Sentence 1 provides an example of explicit choice of you know since the issuer of this statement can be held accountable for the propositional content of the statement. Conversely, sentence 2 provides an example of implicit choice of you know signaling its persuasive potential as a phrase exploiting all the above-mentioned parameters. Östman argues that ‘on the 391

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Coherence parameter, you know is used to open up a new topic as if it wasn’t a new topic; on the Politeness parameter, you know is used as an indication that there is a need to change the participant relation from deferential to a camaraderie relationship; and on the Involvement parameter, affect is communicated by simulating similarity of feelings, and thus shared views.” (2005: 197-198). 5. Conclusion Persuasive discourse is to be approached in Aristotelian terms which point out the interplay of the language structures that appeal to the persuadee’s moral values, emotional behaviour and reason. It isequally important to view it through Östman’s terms of coherence, politeness and involvement which highlight the interactive character of persuasion. References [1] Aristotel, Retorica, Bucureşti, Editura IRI, 2004. [2] Aristotle, Rhetoric Book Two, Available at: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~honeyl/Rhetoric/index.html [2004]. [3] Breton, P., Manipularea cuvântului, Iaşi, Institutul European, 2006. [4] Cosnier., J., Introducere în psihologia emoţiilor şi a sentimentelor, Iaşi, Polirom, 2002. [5] Kapferer, J., Căile persuasiunii, Bucureşti, comunicare.ro, 2002. [6] Maslow, A., 1943, A Theory of Human Motivation. Available at: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.html [2000]. [7] Östman, J., ‘Persuasion as implicit anchoring: The case of collocations’ in Persuasion Across Genres: A linguistic approach. Halmari, H & T. Virtanen (eds), Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2005, pp. 183-212. [8] O’Sullivan, T., Hartley, J., Saunders, D., Montgomery, M., Fiske, J., Concepte fundamentale din ştiinţele comunicării şi studiile culturale, Iaşi, Polirom, 2001. [9] Rybacki, K., Rybacki, D., O introducere în arta argumentării, Iaşi, Polirom, 2004. [10] Stan, C.S., Manipularea prin presă, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 2004. [11] van Eemeren, F., Grootendorst, R., Jackson, S., Jacobs, S., ‘Argumentation’ in Discourse as Structure and Process. van Dijk (ed). London, Sage Publications Ltd, 1997, pp. 208-229. [12] Watzlawick, P., Jackson, D., Bavelas, J., Pragmatics of Human Communication, New York & London, W. W. Norton, 1967. 392

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LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE THROUGH GROUP ACTIVITIES BASED ON SIMULATION TA Truţia Daniela

“Carol I” National Defense University, Bucharest Abstract Starting from the widely-known fact that learning a foreign language implies communication and communication implies interaction, the present paper intends to emphasize the importance of group/class activities based on simulation. Unlike role-play activities, group/class activities based on simulation are extensive and involve more than two persons - actually the whole group/class – thus making interaction more imaginative and creative, which opens the path to more solutions and more possible courses of action. Like any other “alter ego” game, people (students) always enjoy divesting themselves of their own personality and discovering utterly new aspects of themselves.

Keywords: simulation

learning,

foreign

language,

group

activities,

1. Introduction Learning a foreign language is not an aim in itself, especially nowadays, when there are so many possibilities of getting acquainted with other cultures, otherwise than in a library. More than ever, any newly acquired foreign language is an instrument of and an open gate to communication. Communication and interaction are the ultimate purpose of our foreign language studies, of our language training abroad, even of our library studies, of our strive to develop our four basic skills. Interconnection being one of the bottomlines of today’s world, even the four basic skills are more often than not interconnected. 393

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Reading is often followed by writing, listening is combined with speaking, sometimes we need to listen and write down notes, some other times we need to speak and write. Language is not in the least a space divided into clearcut “slices” one has to study and acquire: language is a complex living organism, whose systems are so intricately intertwined that communication requires combined knowledge and proficiency of all of them. 2. Language and reality Bearing in mind the basic assumptions stated above, one cannot help reaching the conclusion that teaching and learning a foreign language has to have in view the pressure of reality. Language is and must be an “access code” to reality: to the reality of the target culture and to reality as a whole. Denying it this paramount function would mean dissociating it from the country/countries where it is spoken, from natives and from other people using it. Therefore, in our estimation, it is of overwhelming importance that the activity of teaching/learning a language should mimic reality: this is what will be called from now on simulation. The present paper intends to dwell mainly on those simulation activities that involve the group/class as a whole, this being a much more complex interaction process than the famous role plays, based on a much simpler kind of interaction. Group simulation activities prepare the student for extensive interaction and communication: according to their topic, they constitute themselves into micro-societies, where each individual has to play his/her own part, for the benefit of the whole group. In this kind of activities the individual no longer feels a “nobody” swallowed up into anonymity by the group: on the contrary, he/she develops a sense of duty and responsibility, receives or sets himself/herself specific tasks and is highly motivated to fulfill them, since this will mean recognition by the group, esteem, praise, sometimes a better position within the hierarchy of the group. On the other hand, not only is the group a mirror of society – with its achievements and failures, its order or turmoil, its good and bad sides, its hopes and its frustrations – but also the individual acquires a 394

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new personality: students simply love stripping themselves of their usual egos and slip into somebody else’s shoes. Everybody has a hidden histrionic side and, once it is set free, it can work wonders! Imagine a shy person turning into a bully, or a quiet one suddenly becoming talkative, or an eternally obedient one becoming a leader, just because the scenario allows endless possibilities for them to evolve, just because there will be no other consequences but an exciting and entertaining adventure within the four walls of the classroom! Imagine a new world, made up of so many new personalities moving in totally new circumstances and creating a completely new atmosphere! There is no doubt that such an experience will be not only beneficial to learning/practising a foreign language – the students get so much carried away with the new situation that they forget they are using a foreign language! – but also a good stimulus for enriching their self-knowledge and discovering their full potentialities. Another factor of paramount importance in this type of activities is humour. We could not emphasize enough the role of humour in teaching a language (and probably many other subjects). Now matter how serious the topic, funny situations always arise, engendered by everybody’s awareness that everything is a game, therefore “reality” can be stopped and re-created at any time, without serious consequences, a fact that adds to the excitement of the game. For illustration purposes we have chosen five such simulation group activities, which we have repeatedly practised with our groups, every time with the same excellent results. The reader is probably familiar with one or two of them, but one should bear in mind that, even if the game is not a novelty, it may always be enriched and diversified so as to meet the needs of a particular group. 3. A few suggestions of group activities based on simulation 3.1. The Desert Island I This is not the widespread survival exercise where students are asked to rank a number of items, their ranking being afterwards compared with the experts’ one, but a more sophisticated and enriched variant, somehow closer to reality. 395

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The students are asked to consider themselves survivors of a shipwreck or a plane crash. They find themselves on a desert island, with a wreck at hand and nothing else. Before the game starts, they are asked to think about the character they would like to impersonate (background, job, ethnic group etc), without being told anything about the scenario. Therefore, it is only after the accident that they will reveal who they are. Once the situation is described and the introductions are made, they will be on their own. The only injunction is that they HAVE TO SURVIVE by all means. How they will do it is up to them. Within a previously stated time frame, they will have to list their options, to prioritize them, then take concrete measures to perform their self-imposed tasks. Usually they get so much involved in the situation that the teacher will only rarely intervene. (Actually, it is important not to intrude at this point and let them by themselves: at the end, the teacher may very well discuss options, solutions, courses of action and language mistakes.) According to their individual options, the survivors will probably split into groups, trying to persuade one another that their choices are better. They will almost always choose a leader, which involves further persuasion work, arguments and counter-arguments, struggle, emotional clashes, etc – all this being voiced in a foreign language! If they are imaginative enough, they will create funny moments or utter funny comments and on the whole, they will have a great time with very little effort, all this because of their mental and emotional involvement and motivation. 3.2. The Desert Island II This time the survivors are supposed to have already spent a long time on the island. It is obvious that nobody will ever come to rescue them, so they have somehow started a new life. The task is to develop that island (which they have come to know well by now) into a small state, that is to choose a name, a capital, a national flag, a national emblem, a form of government, a national leader, ministries and ministers, to think about domestic and foreign policy, ways to develop industry, agriculture and trade or whatever other ideas they will come up with. 396

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3.3 The National Elections This situation could be a sequel to the one above or a topic in itself. The students are divided into teams, each team being requested to form a political party. It goes without saying that no reference to real domestic or foreign policy will be allowed. The parties will have to think of a name, a logo, a slogan, a leader, a spokesman and, last but not least, a political platform. When they are ready, they will be invited to a TV studio, moderated by the teacher, to introduce themselves and their parties and to speak for an allotted number of minutes about the political offer of their party. When all the parties “have addressed the nation”, the students will be requested to forget about whichever party they initially represented and to act like citizens voting for one of the parties. The teacher will count the votes, then, during the final discussion, “the people” will be asked to explain their political options. 3.4. The Press Conference Probably already known to or used by the reader, this is a more flexible form of simulation group activity, since it may be the framework for any current or important political, economic, social or environmental event. The activity is preceded by some brainstorming as to the most important world or national events of the week (or the last weeks). Once the students have settled for one of these events, the teacher will cast the roles. The class will be divided into two groups: the public persons invited to or calling the press conference and the representatives of the media. According to the situation, there will be slips of paper with the various personae involved. The teacher will either appoint the students or, if possible, have them draw lots. Mention should be made that such an activity may also be scheduled for the next day, in case the characters need time to prepare for their specific tasks. No need to say that no involvement or hint to real political personalities is allowed. Only the situations are real, the dramatis personae will be the students’ creations. 397

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What the students usually come up with are ministers, public persons, VIPs, military personalities etc, to which is added a PR representative, who will lead the proceedings. You will be amazed at the inventiveness of the questions coming from the media, as well as at the specific media they will choose to represent! Likewise, it often happens that the students’ solutions to some crises are better or more convenient than the official ones. 3.5. The Talk Show This is another very flexible and convenient framework-type group activity based on simulation, in that it may host any kind of event, national or international, and any kind of guest to any kind of TV channel. Student will love impersonating various TV interlocutors from the most diverse fields of activity and more often than not they will prove to be conversant with the most unexpected aspects of social, political, economic, scientific and artistic life. Once out of their daily selves, they may surprise everybody with the most amazing statements and ideas, to say nothing of the fact they will acquire the ability of conversing about a wide variety of topics. It is recommended that the teacher should be the moderator, so that he/she may deftly avoid any delicate moments and circumvent a possible stalemate. 4. Conclusions From the examples briefly mentioned and described above, an ingenious teacher may extract the essence and build up his own games and situations. All these games, and many others, have been tested in class by the author of this paper, therefore the comments and suggestions we venture to voice here are prompted by experience. One important conclusion is that students never get bored with such group activities. One reason would be that they are all involved simultaneously, they do not have to wait for their turn to speak, therefore their ideas may be expressed the very moment they crop up. Another reason is that such group interactions do mimic reality: the more personalities one is confronted with, the more complex one’s train of thought becomes, because of the necessity of adjusting one’s 398

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judgment to concrete circumstances, to the human factor, to time constraints etc. Another conclusion is that, leaving entertainment aside, such games are indeed loaded with benefits for language students: a multitude of topics, a large number of interlocutors, a diversity of life aspects and so on, all this pushing the students’ limits and forcing them upwards, since each and every one of them will be tempted to take part in the debate and take the opportunity of expressing his/her ideas. Another very important element is discipline in verbal interaction. Students learn how to express their opinion, how to interrupt, how to contradict, how to ask for clarification in a polite way. They learn to respect other speakers, other opinions, they learn to give up or alter their own opinions according to other people’s stronger arguments, they learn to use correctly both the formal and informal oral styles. Besides all this, they learn to adapt their reactions to the group stimuli, to the group mental and psychological input, they learn to be less self-centered and more self-conscious – in other words, a multitude of personal gains provided by a most entertaining type of activities. In the end, we would like to add that this paper is a result of personal experience and concrete teaching/learning facts, and if it is not teeming with high-brow eight-syllable words, this is because sometimes the teacher should leave his theoretical books and come down to earth for a little while, to stride among the mortals. References [1] Duranti, A. And Goodwin, C, Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, Cambridge University Press, 1992. [2] Hymes, D., On Communicative Competence, University of Pennsylvannia Press, Philadelphia, 1971.

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WORLD BY...WORDS Jr. TA Kaiter Edith

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa Abstract A number of writers asked themselves how similitude was conceived at the end of the 16th century. However, the most important form of similitude is, among others, convenientia. The paper deals with this kind of terms in Michel Foucault’s work “The Order of Things”. Starting from this point, the paper presents some of the relationships established between words within semantic fields and the elements that surround us in this world everyday. Terms such as resemblance, sympathies, or analogies are also discussed.

Keywords: similitudes, resemblance, sympathies, analogies, signature 1. The four Similitudes One of the constructive roles played in the knowledge of Western culture, up to the end of the 16th century, was resemblance. According to the Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary, resemblance means correspondence in appearance or superficial qualities and it is also very close with the term similarity. Therefore, resemblance stayed at the basis of text interpretation, made possible knowledge of things and tried to represent them. Taking into consideration the fact that resemblance implies also the term repetition, it is important to mention that different representations were forms of repetitions, for instance, in the domain of theatre or painting. A number of writers asked themselves how similitude was conceived at the end of the 16th century. It was discussed however that 400

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the semantic web of resemblance was quite rich – Amicitia, Consonantia, Concertus, Paritas, Conjunctio. However, the most important form of similitude is, among others, convenientia. This term stands for the adjacency of places and it is more representative compared to similitude. One of the definitions for convenience is the quality of being suitable or useful for a particular purpose. [1] Therefore, things called ‘convenient’ are the ones that are sufficiently close to one another to be in juxtaposition. This is where resemblance appears and it becomes double as soon as it is unravelled. The best example is ‘body’ and ‘soul’. They are doubly ‘convenient’ because the soul had “to be dense, heavy and terrestrial for God to place it in the very heart of matter. […] the soul receives the movements of the body and assimilates itself to that body, while the body is altered and corrupted by the passions of the soul.” [2] According to Michel Foucault, the different beings adjust themselves to one another in the syntax of the world. For example, flora and fauna communicate, so do the earth and the sea, and the man with everything around him. Convenientia is of the same order as conjunction and adjustment and is also connected with space in the form of a graduated scale of proximity. The world means a universal ‘convenience’ of things, for instance, as Foucault states, there is the same number of fishes in the water as there are animals, or objects produced by nature or man; the same number of beings in the water and on the surface of earth as there are in the sky, the inhabitants of the former corresponding with those of the latter, and finally, there is the same number of beings in the whole of creation as may be found eminently contained in God himself. Therefore, he states further, the world is linked together like a chain. [3] Each point of each contact begins and ends a link that resembles the one before it and the one after it and these similitudes continue in a circle. The second form of similitude is aemulatio, which according to Foucault is a sort of ‘convenience’ that has been freed from the law of place and is able to function from a distance, without motion. [4] Different from convenientia is the fact that the links of the chain do not exist anymore, they are no longer connected, but the circles continue to be held together at a distance one from another in accordance with a resemblance that needs no contact. The process is something similar to 401

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the reflection of a mirror and it is believed that things around the universe can answer one to another: “the human face emulates the sky and just as man’s intellect is an imperfect reflection of God’s wisdom, so his two eyes, with their limited brightness, are a reflection of the vast illumination spread across the sky by sun and moon; the mouth is Venus, since it gives passage to kisses and words of love; the nose provides an image in miniature of Jove’s sceptre and mercury’s staff” [5] The relation of emulation gives things the possibility to imitate one another by duplicating themselves in a mirror. Of course, several questions were asked, for example, if the reflections are original images or which one is reality, which one is projection. Foucault comes further on with an answer, advancing the fact that, emulation, being a sort of natural twinship existing in things, arises from a fold in being, the two sides of which stand immediately opposite to one another. [6] This fundamental duplication of the world is compared to the image of two twins who resemble one another completely, without being possible for anyone to say which of them brought its similitude to the other. [7] It is also possible that one figure may be weaker, and therefore more receptive to the stronger influence of the other. A very appropriate example is considered by Crollius the sky and the stars. He considers the stars as “the matrix of all plants and the sky is only the spiritual prefiguration of a plant, such that it represents that plant and just as each herb or plant is a terrestrial star looking up at the sky, so also each star is a celestial plant in spiritual form, which differs from the terrestrial plants in matter alone…, the celestial plants and herbs are turned towards the earth and look directly down upon the plants they have procreated, imbuing them with some particular virtue” [8] Another form of similitude is analogy and it is an old concept familiar to Greek science and medieval thought. The term comprises both convenientia and aemulatio, therefore its power seems to be quite relevant. The similitudes it treads are not visible or substantial ones; they are only subtle resemblances of relations and it can extend to an endless number of relationships. The best example that Foucault suggests is that the relation of the stars to the sky in which they shine may also be found between plants and the earth, between living beings and the globe they inhabit, between minerals and the rocks in which they find themselves 402

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buried, between sense organs and the face they animate, between skin moles and the body. [9] He also states that the stars, the plants, the minerals, the moles are parts of the systems in which they activate, transferring them important and relevant characteristics that they own as elements integrating in the systems. Thus, this reversibility and polyvalence endow analogy with a universal field of application. The human face is to the human body what the face of heaven is to the ether; man’s pulse beats in his veins as the stars circle they sky according to their own fixed paths; the seven orifices in man’s head are to his face what the seven planets are to the sky. [10] Foucault considers that the space occupied by analogies is really a space of radiation and man is surrounded by it on every side. But, on the other side, man transmits these resemblances back into the world from which he receives them. Man is the centre upon which relations are concentrated and the point from which they are once again reflected. Sympathies is considered the fourth form of resemblance and “it plays through the depths of the universe in a free state.” [11] It is a principle of mobility, “it attracts what is heavy to the heaviness of the earth, what is light up towards the weightless ether; it drives the root towards the water and it makes the great yellow disk of the sunflower turn to follow the curving path of the sun. […] Sympathy is an instance of the Same so strong and so insistent that it will not rest content to be merely one of the forms of likeness; it has the dangerous power of assimilating, of rendering things identical to one another, of mingling them, of causing their individuality to disappear – and thus of rendering them foreign to what they were before. Sympathy transforms. It alters, but in the direction of identity, so that if it’s power were not counterbalanced it would reduce the world to a point, to a homogeneous mass, to the featureless form of the Same: all its parts would hold together and communicate with one another without a break, with no distance between them, like those metal chains held suspended by sympathy to the attraction of a single magnet.” [12] Sympathy is compensated by antipathy, considered as its twin. It is antipathy that maintains the isolation of things and prevents their assimilation. The identity of things and the fact that they can resemble others and be drawn to them, though without losing their singularity, is what is 403

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assured by the constant counterbalancing of sympathy and antipathy. However, it seems that the sympathy-antipathy pair is a relevant example for all the forms of resemblance. All the echoes of emulation, all the linkages of analogy are supported and maintained by the space governed by sympathy and antipathy, which seem to be drawing things together and holding them apart. This is the explanation for the world remaining identical; resemblances continue to be what they are and to resemble one another. [13] 2. Signatures Convenientia, aemulatio, analogy and sympathy are the concepts that present the way the world must fold in upon itself, duplicate itself, reflect itself or form a chain with itself so that things can resemble one another. They also tell us what the paths of similitude are and the directions they take. Of course, these similitudes must be indicated on the surface of things and they must be visible marks for the invisible analogies. Therefore, there are no resemblances without signatures and it seems that the world of similarity can only be a world of signs; one should go straight to their marks if one wishes to know their nature. The system of signatures reverses the relation of the visible to the invisible and it is resemblance which was the invisible form that made things visible. This is the reason why the face of the world is covered with characters and ciphers. Pages are filled with strange figures that in some places repeat themselves and which wait to be deciphered. Due to the fact that sympathy creates communication between our bodies and heavens and transmits the movement of the planets, the shortness of a hand line can, for instance, reflect the simple image of a short life, or the intersection of two furrows mean an obstacle in one’s path, or the upward direction of a wrinkle – a man’s rise to success. Thus, the analogy between the human body and destiny has its sign in the whole system of mirrors and attractions and these analogies are indicated by sympathies and emulations. Therefore, emulation may be recognized by analogy. For example, the eyes are like stars because they spread light over the face, just as stars light up the sky and spread the darkness. In the same way, man’s face and hands must resemble the soul to which they are joined. 404

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Resemblances require signatures, because none of them would be observable if they were not marked. Resemblance signifies exactly what it is indicating, being in this way a similitude. What it does indicate is not the homology; it is another resemblance, an adjacent similitude, one of another type which enables us to recognize the first and which is revealed in its turn by a third. Every resemblance receives a signature and this signature is no more than an intermediate form of the same resemblance. As a result, the sum of all these marks, sliding over the great circle of similitudes, forms a second circle, which is an exact duplication of the first. The signature and what it denotes are of the same nature, they obey a different law of distribution and the pattern from which they are cut is the same. [14] The nature of things, their coexistence, the way in which they are linked together and communicate is nothing other then their resemblance. This resemblance is visible only in the network of signs that crosses the world from one part to another. 3. The Limits of the World Resemblance never remains stable within itself. It can be fixed only if it refers back to another similitude, which then, in turn, refers to another. Therefore, each resemblance has value only from the accumulation of all others and the whole world must be explored if even the slightest of analogies is to be justified and finally take on the appearance of certainty. By positing resemblance as the link between signs and what they indicate, sixteenth-century knowledge condemned itself to never knowing more than the same thing. [15] From this point on, microcosm comes into play. The notion appeared during the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Renaissance, by a certain neo-Platonist tradition. By the 16th century, it had a very important role in the field of knowledge. It was claimed to be a world view or Weltanschauung and it had one or two functions in the epistemological configuration of the period. It was believed to be a category of thought and therefore, it applied the interplay of duplicated resemblances to all realms of nature. It affirms that everything will find its mirror and its macrocosmic justification on another larger scale and that the visible order of the highest spheres will be reflected in the darkest depth of the earth. Seen as a general 405

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configuration of nature, it indicates that there is a greater world and that its perimeter defines the limit of all created things; that at the far extremity of this great world there exists a privileged creation which reproduces, within its restricted dimension, the order of the heavens, the stars, the mountains, rivers and storms and that it is between the effective limits of this constituent analogy that the interplay or resemblances takes place. In this way, the distance from microcosm to macrocosm can not be infinite. References [1] Longman Exams Dictionary, Pearson Education Limited, UK, 2006. [2] G. Porta, “La Physionomie humaine” (Fr. trans. 1655, p.i) in Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 20, 2002. [3] Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 21, 2002. [4] Ibid. [5] Aldrovandi, “Monstrorum historia”, p. 3 in Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 22, 2002. [6] Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 22, 2002. [7] Paracelsus, “Liber paramirum” (trans. Grillot de Givry, Paris, 1913, p. 3) in Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 22, 2002. [8] O. Crollius, “Traité des signatures” (Fr. trans. Lyon, 1624, p. 18) in Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 23, 2002. [9] Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 24, 2002. [10] Ibid. [11] Ibid. [12] Porta, “Magic naturelle”, p. 72 in Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 27, 2002. [13] Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, London and New York, Routledge, p. 28, 2002. [14] Ibid, p. 32. [15] Ibid, p. 34.

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TESTING STRATEGIES Călinescu Mihaela

Negomir Elementary School [email protected]

Abstract Testing is an area of English language teaching that many teachers shy away from. It is frequently viewed as a necessary evil, a topic where only ‘experts’ are competent, and where the average language teacher is inadequate. In the first place, testing is associated with competition rather than cooperation. Thus, while classroom activities may involve pair work and group work, such cooperation during a test is condemned as copying, and the individual is expected to work alone. An important point to consider is that the age, interests and backgrounds of students must also influence the choice of test type in the same way as they influence all classroom content and procedure. A student should be able to identify with a test as a measure of progress, and should be as confident and at home with the test as with the class teaching.

Keywords: classroom, methods of testing, foreign language, Whether a classroom achievement class is a good one or not is a judgement that the classroom teacher is in the best position to make. Firstly, as far as the content of a test goes, if teachers know what they are teaching, then they must surely know what they can test. Conversely, if teachers do not know what to test, then did they really know what they were teaching? In achievement testing, teachers are obviously the people most qualified to know what they intend to achieve. If achievement testing forces teachers to make explicit to 407

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themselves and to learners what they are trying to achieve, than this is surely no bad thing. Secondly, as far as the methods or techniques of testing are concerned, it is clear that day-by-day teaching in the classroom inevitably involves elicitation and assessment of what learners write or say or do. We may consider testing as a more elaborate and structured form of this elicitation and assessment of feedback, which is an element in any teaching. Teaching without any elicitation or assessment on the part of the teacher is arguably not teaching at all, but simply lecturing where the ‘teacher’ ploughs on regardless of any reaction form the learners. Any competent teacher must, by definition, be familiar with ways of obtaining and assessing feedback from the learners. It follows that such teachers must inevitably be familiar with techniques of testing. In short, then, a language teacher knows what to test and how to test. It may well be, however, that the teacher needs to make this knowledge more explicit, to develop it and to discuss it with others it can also be useful, clearly, to refer to the work of testing experts, though this should be done in a spirit of consultation rather than total reliance. Developing awareness in this way, of knowledge than one uses rather than analyses in one’s day-by-day work is not always easy. However, coming to terms with testing through examining what one is doing in the classroom is an exercise that is likely to have an improving effect on teaching as well as testing. An achievement test is one of the means available to teacher and student alike of assessing progress. An achievement test aims to find out how much each student, and the class as a whole, has learnt of what has been taught and therefore, by implication, to provide feedback on students’ progress to both student and teacher, to show how effectively the teacher has taught and to diagnose those areas which have not been well learnt. Many techniques are available for testing both language and skills, most of which are already familiar to teachers as teaching techniques. What is important is that they should also be familiar to students prior to being used in a test. Otherwise, the student may make mistakes not so much because of difficulties of the language or skills 408

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but because of a lack of understanding of what the task requires. Some methods of testing are better adapted to testing certain aspects of language learning, and some techniques are more suitable to certain age groups and ways of thinking. There are some examples of testing techniques: – listening: subjective methods such as open-ended question and answer, note taking, interviews and objective methods such as blank-filling, multiple choice questions, true/false questions; – speaking: subjective methods such as role plays, group discussions, interviews, describing pictures and objective methods such as sentence-repetition, ; – reading comprehension: subjective methods such as openended comprehension questions and answers in the target language or mother tongue, summary-writing, note taking and objective methods such as multiple choice questions, true/false questions, jumbled sentences or paragraphs, cloze; – writing: subjective methods such as guided writing e.g. letter completion, re-writing, free writing, compositions, essays and objective methods such as blank-filling, sentencejoining; – grammar: subjective methods such as open-ended sentence completion, re-writing and objective methods such as matching, multiple choice questions, odd-man-out, listen and match; – vocabulary: subjective methods such as compositions and essays and objective methods such as crosswords, matching exercises, classification exercises etc. The techniques mentioned above are divided into subjective and objective types, as these two categories involve different kinds of language, language learning and methods of marking. Subjective techniques tend to require students to produce longer stretches of language while, by contrast, objective testing techniques require students to recognize or produce a limited range of items in restricted linguistic and situational contexts, thus focusing more on the mastery 409

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of receptive skills, accuracy and certain discrete items that make up fluency. Which are better, subjective or objective tests? Both subjective and objective tests present advantages and drawbacks. In an achievement test, the choice of test type will depend on what has been taught, to what extend and how. An objective test is likely to be suitable for an elementary class that has learnt little more than to recognize items, for instance. Similarly, a syllabus that has focused primarily on reading comprehension might possibly be adequate tested by objective testing methods. On the other hand, a writing syllabus that has focused on vocabulary building, composition planning and the use of past tenses might require a subjective test, unless it was felt that students were not yet ready for this less guided format. Many achievement testes contain a mixture of test types in an attempt to cover the syllabus, different types of language learning and differing degrees of exposure to different learning aims. The main difference between subjective and objective tests lies in the way they are scored. Subjective tests, which elicit continuous language, rely entirely on testers’ opinion, experience and judgement and have poor reliability – the same test can be scored differently by different testers and even by the same tester at different times, according to his/her disposition or temper. Objective tests, on the other hand, accept only one correct answer, as they are scored on the right/wrong basis. They are extremely quick and easy to score (scoring can be performed mechanically, even by non-specialists) and have high reliability (as results are expressed numerically and are invariable, no matter who scores the tests). On one hand, classroom activities had to be modernized and brought closer to real-world performance. In reality, people speak to other people, because they want to say something, they are more or less formal, according to the person addressed etc. Tasks like ‘Write a 200-word composition on…’ or ‘Imagine a dialogue between a shopassistant and a customer’ are boring and senseless if the students don’t understand the immediate usefulness of the activity and they don’t get 410

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involved in it. Unless the students’ personal life experience and interests are stirred, such class activities will fail. On the other hand, teachers know only too well that items that are not tested regularly are either ignored by the students or soon forgotten. Speaking and writing must be taught and tested fully and regularly. Objective testing techniques are very useful for testing vocabulary and grammar, reading and listening. However, they are still limited to receptive language and can hardly test productive language, such as speaking and writing, for which subjective techniques are much more suitable. The most recent tendencies are to use a mix of objective and subjective items. As each type of testing has its advantages and disadvantages, it is advisable to use each type for what it can do best. Moreover, checking the results against each other will help the tester to decide on the relevance of his results. Bibliography Grigoroiu Gabriela, An English Language Teaching Reader, Craiova, Craiova University Press, 2002. Pacurari Otilia, Vizental Adriana, Orchestrating Strategies-Course in Methodology , Arad, 2000. Lazar Gillian, Literature and Language Teaching: A Guide for teachers and trainers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Harmer Jeremy, The Practice of English Language Teaching, London: Longman, 1991.

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CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT Curteanu Codruta Teodora Domnica

University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Craiova [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract Monitoring is a classroom management technique loosely defined as listening to the learners for their accuracy and fluency, or checking to see whether activities are going to plan and that the learners are 'on task'. However, monitoring is often carried out as a vague listening and looking exercise by the teacher, and sometimes not done at all, whereas in fact effective monitoring is a skill that needs to be developed if learners are to benefit fully from activities, particularly those of the information gap and group interactive types.

Keywords: classroom, management, monitoring, Monitoring is a classroom management technique loosely defined as listening to the learners for their accuracy and fluency, or checking to see whether activities are going to plan and that the learners are 'on task'. However, monitoring is often carried out as a vague listening and looking exercise by the teacher, and sometimes not done at all, whereas in fact effective monitoring is a skill that needs to be developed if learners are to benefit fully from activities, particularly those of the information gap and group interactive types. Monitoring goes on all the time, but particularly during speaking activities when the teacher is concerned with the general assessment of learners' performance in relation to general progress or recent language and skills development. Monitoring of individual learners takes place during written practice exercises, when the aim is to point out errors and encourage self-correction. Guided practice activities, particularly of the 412

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pair work format, are monitored for accuracy, while less guided group work activities are monitored for task achievement and fluency. Monitoring may be general or multipurpose, focusing on one or more of the following aims. Purposes of monitoring Goals for monitoring include keeping track of individual performance and growth in academic areas, group skills, and individual behaviors. Not all learners develop at the same rate. Monitoring offers the opportunity to assess the progress of your students, and often provides an indication of what to re-teach or practise further. It precisely points at the “weak” points your students may have when working individually or in group. The main objective of student work management is to help all students become independent learners. Specific aims of monitoring, depending on the stage of the lesson and the activity, include: a) Listening for errors in the target language, particularly during guided practice activities; correction is required here, since these are usually accuracy-based activities; b) Listening to ensure that learners are on task; some re-instruction, modeling of the activity or prompting may be required; c) Taking opportunities for micro-teaching to individuals or pairs who have clearly not grasped the target language; d) assessing both individuals and the whole class; monitoring provides clues to individual and group difficulties and progress, thus it is a kind of on-going needs analysis-all students should receive some attention, even if it is only a few words of encouragement; e) Adding input – particularly in fluency activities, learners may not be able to sustain output. The teacher's role here is to feed in language and ideas when appropriate to keep the activity alive; f) Assessing the development of fluency. This involves monitoring from a distance, and the teachers role is often to take notes about common errors to be dealt with in a delayed correction slot, as well as mentally noting the use of target language in a freer context; g) Assessing the task. Some activities work better with one class than another; others are being tried out for the first time. Monitoring offers the teacher the opportunity to assess the success of an activity and to get feedback from the learners; h) Planning. Monitoring facilitates decision making in terms of what to do next, whether to 413

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modify the original lesson plan, planning future lessons and giving feedback to students on their performance; i) Maintaining discipline. Large groups may become restless and bored if some learners have finished a task before others. The teacher should have some short backup activities for these learners, or could use the quicker learners as assistants to help slower groups. j) Being aware of the whole class. The teacher should always be aware of how the class is getting on, whether the pace is too fast or too slow, and which students may need individual attention. There is often a tendency to teach to the lesson plan and materials at the expense of teaching the learners themselves. How to monitor Monitoring is an acquired skill which hopefully becomes a good habit. Less experienced teachers may feel that they need to monitor closely and maintain control of activities, while other teachers feel that they should be involved at all times, and that monitoring is the solution. In either case, there is a danger of over-monitoring, interference, and a tense rather than relaxed, student-centered learning environment during less guided practice activities. Close monitoring needs to be carried out sensitively, and an element of personal and cultural awareness is required. Some learners resent a very close physical presence, others object to the teacher crouching in front of them. Monitoring from in front of the learners is distracting and sometimes intrusive, tending to interrupt the activity and shifting the focus onto the teacher. Students then expect the teacher to provide some input, make a comment, or correct them. Unobtrusive monitoring is most effective, and is often best done from behind the learners. Some useful tips are: a) Move chairs away from walls; b) Make sure that there is a clear route around the classroom; c) Arrange seating so that all students are visible from wherever the teacher is positioned; d) Monitor pairs or groups randomly; e) Don't spend too much time with one individual, pair or group, and make sure that all learners are monitored; f) Sit with pairs or groups; g) A chair with wheels is an ideal vehicle for moving from group to group. Monitoring from a distance is done from any position in the classroom which offers the possibility of 'tuning in' on different conversations. In larger classes, the teacher may need to move around 414

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the room. It is important not to sit near one group for the whole activity, suggesting that the teacher is listening only to them. Often, the best position is behind the learners, out of their field of vision, so that they are focused on the task and each other rather than the teacher. Learners may want to ask questions during freer practice activities. The teacher's response will depend on the activity, but it is a useful learner-training exercise to teach the learners to note down any questions to be asked at the end of the activity. There are possibilities for self and peermonitoring. Self-monitoring involves training in self-correction. All learners may be involved in peer monitoring, but a useful technique is to ask learners to work in threes rather than pairs, with learners taking turns in monitoring the performance of the other two. Conclusion The monitoring techniques above apply to all teaching and learning situations, but monitoring also achieves the purpose of providing discipline in certain circumstances. In classes where there are less-well motivated or younger students, and often in monolingual and mixedability classes, the temptation for the learners may be to abandon the task, leave the task to more able students, or to lapse into the mother tongue. Sometimes the presence of the teacher in a supervisory role is enough, but careful monitoring guarantees the best performance from the learners and provides the most instructive feedback for the teacher. References [1] Joyce Mcleod, Jan Fisher, Ginny Hoover, The key elements of classroom management, ASCD, Alexandria, USA, 2003. [2] Edmund T. Emmer, Carolyn E. Everton, Murray E. Worsham, Classroom management, Pearson Education, Boston, USA, 2006. [3] Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman University Press, UK, 1997. [4] Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory, Cambridge University Press, USA, 2004. [5] www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/1999/06/rinvolucri

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ERROR CORRECTION Curteanu Codruta Teodora Domnica

University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Craiova [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract When it comes to error correction we are dealing with one individual's reaction to a student's piece of writing or utterance. This inevitably means that there will be some disagreement among teachers about what, when, and how to correct. Therefore the aim of this article is to highlight some key areas. In the first part we look at attitudes towards error correction, and in the second part we deal with categorizing errors, models for correcting writing/speaking and practical techniques for correcting writing/speaking.

Keywords: interlanguage, comprehensibility, fluency, accuracy 1. Introduction Attitudes to error correction vary not only among teachers but also among students. A teacher may be influenced by the fact that English is their second language and great emphasis was placed on correctness at their teacher training college, by the specific approach he/she has adopted in teaching(behaviorism, suggestopaedia, total physical response, etc.), thus highlighting the results and effects of error correction on students. As for students, we need to consider both their age and also their approach to learning. Some students are risk-takers, while others only say something they are completely sure it is correct. While being a risk-taker is generally positive as it leads to greater fluency, some students only seem to be concerned with fluency at the expense of accuracy. The same can be true when it comes to writing. Some 416

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students take a very long time to produce a piece of writing, while for most students the writing is done as fast as possible without any planning or editing. 2. Dealing with errors 2. 1. Categorizing errors We can categorize an error by the reason for its production or by its linguistic type. Thus errors may be: pre-systematic (as a result of random guess), systematic (as a result of testing possibilities), or postsystematic (as a result of carelessness, fatigue – it is a slip of a tongue, a lapse a mistake), according to their production reason. From a linguistic point of view, we can identify lexical errors (vocabulary), phonological errors (pronunciation), syntactic errors (grammar), interpretive/semantic errors (misunderstanding of a speaker's intention or meaning), and also pragmatic errors (failure to apply the rules of conversation). In order to simplify, we can classify errors as productive (spoken or written) or receptive (faulty understanding). To be sure about the type of error produced by a student we need to know where the student's interlanguage is (the language used by a student in the process of learning a second language). 2.2. Correcting Writing/Speaking When writing students do not have the chance to rephrase or clarify what they are saying. The message must be clear the first time. Written errors are also less tolerated than spoken errors outside the classroom. A possible model for correcting and evaluating written work needs to include the following focus points: comprehensibility of the written piece (teachers check-up areas of incoherence and their effect on the overall message, output understanding, communication break-ups); task completion (teachers check-up if the students have successfully addressed the task); linguistic performance (teachers check-up whether the students’ syntax is appropriate for the task and their lexis is accurate). Giving students enough time to plan results in a wider range of language being used, and it helps students to avoid some of the 417

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following frequent errors: lack of cohesion, inappropriate layout, lack of paragraphs, and inappropriate style. It can be difficult to decide on what and how much to correct in a student's piece of writing. Students can develop a negative attitude towards writing because their teacher corrects all their errors or only a few. There are several correction techniques appropriate for different teaching situation. Teachers should decide which one they use. These correction techniques include: underlining inappropriate language in a piece of writing using a specific color; underlining examples of appropriate language with a different color; correcting errors by writing the correct forms in their place; pre-establishing symbols for each type of error, then putting students to correct errors; students correcting each other's work using one or more of the techniques above. From time to time teachers should give students an individual breakdown of recurring problems in their written work. In contrast to writing, students have very little processing time when it comes to speaking, so it is hardly surprising that the following may occur. Students don't experiment with new language presented by the teacher. At lower levels students' output is mostly lexical. The more accuracy-focused students test the patience of the listener in the time they take to say something. The speech of some very fluent students is littered with errors and therefore may have a negative effect on the listener. Just as with writing we can help students to improve their accuracy and fluency. Teachers can help students improve their fluency by giving guided preparation time for a task. Students receive specific guidance in choosing appropriate language as well as rehearsal time. Task-based learning research shows that this leads to a greater range of language being used. When it comes to accuracy, research into second language acquisition says that the first stage of improving accuracy is awareness-raising, i.e. raising students' awareness of gaps in their inter-language. Teachers can do it by using awareness-raising exercises to focus on specific linguistic areas in the recording.

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2.3. Practical techniques / ideas for correcting writing/speaking. In order to improve their students’ writing skills, teachers should train students for editing. Even though students invest a lot of time in doing a writing task, they often don't spend a few more minutes checking their writing. There are various activities which help not only students develop editing skills in a fun way, but also enable the teacher to focus on key errors without individual students losing pace. For example, “grammar auctions” are highly enjoyable and motivating. Students receive a number of sentences taken from their written work. Some are correct, some wrong. In groups, students have to try to buy the correct ones in the auction. Having a limited amount of money, the team with the most correct sentences wins. Another activity that challenges students is “mistakes mazes”. Students have a list of sentences. Their route through a maze depends on whether the sentences are right or wrong. They follow white arrows for correct sentences and black ones for incorrect ones. If they have identified all the sentences correctly they escape, if not they have to retrace their steps and find out where they went wrong. For speaking, there are several on-the-spot correction techniques used for dealing with errors as they occur: a) using fingers – to highlight an incorrect form or to indicate a word order mistake;b) gestures – using hand gestures to indicate the use of the wrong tense; c) mouthing – useful with pronunciation errors; d) reformulation (example: Student: I went in Paris; Teacher: Oh really, you went to Paris, did you?). Teachers may also use delayed correction techniques, depending on the teaching situation. Delayed correction techniques include: a) noting down errors – either on an individual basis, i.e. focusing on each student's mistakes or for the class as a whole, special cards can be used to focus on recurring mistakes. The students then have a written suggestion of what to work on; b) recording – recording students (individually, in pairs, in large groups) during a speaking task to make them aware of errors that affect communication. At the end of the discussion task students analyze their performance with the teacher. The focus is on improving the quality of what they say and 419

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expanding their inter-language. Although this form of discussion may seem artificial, it has two main advantages: students pay more attention to what they say as they are taking part in a kind of recorded performance; students not only become more aware of gaps in their spoken English but also can see how their spoken English is improving. References [1] Joyce McLeod, Jan Fisher, Ginny Hoover, The key elements of classroom management, ASCD, Alexandria, USA, 2003. [2] Edmund T. Emmer, Carolyn E. Everton, Murray E. Worsham, Classroom management, Pearson Education, Boston, USA, 2006. [3] Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman University Press, UK, 1997. [4] Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory, CUP, USA, 2004. [5] Penny Ur, Andrew Wright, Five-minute activities, CUP, Cambridge, UK, 2005. [6] www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/1999/06/rinvolucri

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ACTIVE LEARNING – A ‘MUST HAVE’ OF TODAY’S TEACHING PROCESS Dragomir Isabela, TA Cosma Brânduşa-Oana

Foreign Language Center, Sibiu, “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract Beginning from the second half of the twentieth century, experts in the field of education and psychology have conducted extensive research to get a clear picture of classroom and to figure out the dynamics of the learning. The paper advocates the importance of using active methods in the classroom, starting with a definition, then a dissection of the three coordinates that influence active learning (individuality of students, planning strategies of teachers, classroom context) and finally underlining its advantages, not only for the process of teaching, but also for the student as an individual who has to learn continually. The concluding thought of the paper reiterates the importance of implementing active learning strategies through joint efforts at all levels of education.

Keywords: active, learning, teaching Throughout the years, preparing the individuals for a demanding life and providing the society with socially and intellectually mature citizens have been one of the most important missions of schooling. Assuming this noble mission, educators have sought ways to fulfill the individual’s need of being proficient enough to cope with the challenges of the world. In order to achieve this end, through the behaviorist reign, the learner has been regarded as a passive member of the classroom which is shaped by the holy dominance of the omnipotent instructor. 421

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Due to the fact that teacher planning influences opportunity to learn, content coverage, grouping for instruction and the general focus of classroom processes, teachers must be sensitive to their students’ peculiar properties and plan their activities in accordance with the students’ individual needs. Through the teaching process, teachers consciously or unconsciously make decisions on the basis of the available information. Decision making is a product of a complex cognitive process and any teaching act is the result of a decision. On the average, teachers make one interactive decision every two minutes. So, every two minutes at least one student is subject to input from the teacher which in return guides his/her behavior in the classroom. Instructors are responsible for providing the learners with rich learning environments offering choice to the individual learner and shaped by social interactions, group discovery, individual search and reflection. Definition Active learning is a process whereby learners are actively engaged in the learning process. Students who actively engage with the material are more likely to recall information later and be able to use that information in different contexts. However, adopting active learning does not mean eliminating the lecture format. Activities that encourage student involvement are incorporated into the teaching plan. Active learning is based on a process rather than an outcome. What is learned as the activity takes place is as important as any of the facts that are an outcome of the activity. It is the interaction among the students that bring this learning about. Furthermore, active learning is an effective tool to teach not only information, but lifelong living skills. Through the process, an individual can internalize information and assume responsibility for their decisions regarding personal lifestyle choices. Active learning is a concept which has people participate in their own learning process by involving them in some type of activity where they physically become a part of the lesson. It is learning by 422

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doing. Examples of this would be role-playing, simulations, discussions, games, etc. One of the widely used teaching techniques fit into the concept of active learning is cooperative learning. [1] Importance of Active Learning “The only learning that really sticks is that which is self discovered.” Carl Rogers A great deal of research has been done into the way people learn. One fact keeps repeating itself over and over again and that is people who are involved in their own learning process will understand more and remember the information to which they were exposed for a longer period of time. Howard G. Hendricks in his book Teaching To Change Lives, stated it this way, “Maximum learning is always the result of maximum involvement.” [2] It is involvement that seems to be the key. The truth is, students of all ages love being actively involved in their learning. Active learning allows people to become involved in their education. This involvement can occur through role playing, simulations, games, discussions, demonstrations and problem solving initiatives. In the book Creative Teaching Methods, Marlene LeFever puts it this way, “Participation in the learning process stimulates learning and encourages growth. When children and adults participate in the learning process, truth becomes real in their lives.” [3] We talk about teaching values and attitudes, but few teaching techniques allow us to really affect the inner mind of people. This is one of the important factors of active learning. It is a teaching method which allows students to transfer facts into behavior. People do not succeed by facts alone. The education system has recognized this fact for some time now and has been aggressively teaching life skills, living skills and social skills for the past several years. Active learning uses many approaches to address these skill areas and apply that knowledge to the lives of individuals. Spencer Kagan, in his book Cooperative Learning points out the benefits of participatory learning in the area of self esteem. He states, “Almost all studies which compare the self-esteem of students following cooperative and traditional interaction, show significant gains favoring students in cooperative classrooms.”[4] 423

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Helping kids to succeed after graduation means giving them the skills necessary to communicate and interact with others. John D. Rockefeller was quoted as saying, “I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.”This thought is reinforced by one survey which determined that the most common reason people are fired from their first job is not what they know, but rather their inability to relate with others on the job. Even with this knowledge, traditional teaching methods consistently emphasize information at the expense of interpersonal skills. David Johnson, in his book, Cooperation in the Classroom, states, “grades in school do not predict which students will have a high quality of life after they graduate. The ability to work with others does.” [5] Active learning can provide a vehicle for the teaching of these interpersonal skills while still covering material that is basic in any educational system. These interpersonal skills are not only important in the work place, but in all areas of our lives, whether it be our job, marriage, community or relationships. This teaching technique allows a variety of ways to foster communication skills, higher-level thinking skills and social skills. These are skills which are in demand no matter what area of life you wish to discuss. No longer can we sit back and give book knowledge without rounding out the educational process with skills that allow our graduates to participate in our increasingly complicated and interdependent society. These skills are not easily taught nor easily learned. This difficulty is exactly why the use of active learning is important. It allows the student to practice these skills while in the safe confines of a classroom and with the guiding hand of a teacher. The Advantages of Active Learning 1. Students are motivated. The approach has a certain amount of fun included in it. Fun is a motivating factor for learners. It is easier to teach people when they think they are enjoying themselves, even if the fun involves learning. Just by doing something that is a little different, everyone becomes motivated to participate. 2. Takes place in a safe environment. The classroom is a place where experimentation and failure should not only be allowed, but 424

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encouraged. Without risks being taken, real learning comes to a halt. The teacher can provide that safe environment through modeling and setting acceptable limits of behavior in the classroom. This would include ruling out name calling, singling out individuals for ridicule, sarcasm, and other degrading behaviors. 3. Participation by the entire group. Being actively involved means that the students are part of the lesson plan. Information is not given to them; they go after it. This is a “get up and go” type of learning that places everyone in a position to benefit from being a part. Some activities require strength; other activities require brains, and still other activities simply require a person to be a part of them. Everyone finds a place and contributes in his own way. 4. Each person takes responsibility for his own learning. As a participant in the active learning process, the students must make their own assumptions and decisions about what is taking place. Others can tell them what to think, but each person is responsible for deciding if that reasoning is right for him/her. This is the challenge of an active learning model. No one has the right or wrong answer, each person can interpret the action for themselves and apply it to his/her own circumstance. 5. It is flexible and thereby relevant. The same activities can be used with a wide range of age groups. Some of the rules or language may have to be changed when sliding up and down the grade levels, but the basic activity can remain essentially the same. By making changes you can make an activity relevant to a wide variety of age groups while still exploring the same concepts. Age or developmental appropriateness is easily accomplished through variations and adaptations which can be made by the teacher. 6. Receptiveness is increased. Many topics when approached through traditional teaching models are automatically tuned out by kids because they feel “preached to.” By using an active learning approach where the principles and application of those principles are expressed by the kids themselves, the information becomes easier for them to hear and apply. 7. Inductive reasoning is stimulated. Answers are not given, but rather explored. Questions must be asked and answered before the 425

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activity can be completed. Many of the questions and answers come from the students themselves during the course of the activity. Kids will use trial and error to move through many of the activities. It will be during this discussion of ideas and the subsequent processing, that much of the learning will take place. 8. Participants reveal their thought processes. While the activity is taking place and during the discussion after the activity, the teacher is able to determine the level of student understanding. The teacher can now concentrate his/her teaching in the areas of greatest need. The key is to listen to what the students are saying. Their words are a window into their minds. Too many of our teaching techniques emphasize the instructor doing so much talking that he/she never gets to hear what the students are thinking other than the required responses during question and answer time; Active Learning allows you to hear them as they think, decide, act and process different situations that you place them in. 9. Allows for the correction of failure. In real life when we make a mistake it is hard to go back and replay the tape of life and correct it. In an activity format, if you make a mistake that results in failure you can stop the activity, discuss other options and start over again. Barriers and dead ends become “teaching moments” where the class learns that mistakes can be beneficial and lead to something better, rather than failure being the end of trying. 10. Allows for greater risk taking. Kids feel free to participate and learn through involvement because they know the activity is not real. Taking risks is hard in a society that idolizes winners and throws away losers. When we see an Olympic athlete who has finished second being asked why he didn't get the gold, you know that winning is everything. By allowing students to participate without the stress of having to win, you give them the freedom to try without the disgrace of failure. Research suggests that the use of active learning techniques may have a positive impact upon students’ learning. Research evaluating students’ achievement has demonstrated that many strategies that promote active learning are comparable to lectures in promoting 426

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mastery of content but superior to lectures promoting the development of students’ skills in thinking and writing. Research also indicates that by re-organizing or adapting the ways they present material to students, instructors can create an environment in which knowledge retention is significantly increased; of course, such situations require the cooperation of the students themselves. One of the best methods is to implement so-called active learning. Most of the time, in a typical classroom setting, students are involved only passively in learning, i.e., in listening to the instructor, looking at the occasional overhead or slide, and reading (when required) the text book. Research shows that such passive involvement generally leads to a limited retention of knowledge by students, as indicated in the “cone of learning” shown below. [6]

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Perceived Barriers Before commenting on the obstacles associated with the use of active learning, it is necessary to identify and understand common barriers to instructional change, including the powerful influence of educational tradition; faculty self-perceptions and self-definition of roles; the discomfort and anxiety that change creates; and the limited incentives for faculty to change. But certain specific obstacles are associated with the use of active learning including limited class time; a possible increase in preparation time; the potential difficulty of using active learning in large classes; and a lack of needed materials, equipment, or resources. Perhaps the single greatest barrier of all, however, is the fact that faculty members' efforts to employ active learning involve risk--the risks that students will not participate, use higher-order thinking, or learn sufficient content, that faculty members will feel a loss of control, lack necessary skills, or be criticized for teaching in unorthodox ways. Each obstacle or barrier and type of risk, however, can be successfully overcome through careful, thoughtful planning. Conclusion Any reform in instructional practice at all levels of education must begin with instructors’ efforts. An excellent first step is to select strategies promoting active learning that one can feel comfortable with. Such low-risk strategies are typically of short duration, structured and planned, focused on subject matter that is neither too abstract nor too controversial, and familiar to both the instructors and the students. Academic program managers can help stimulate and support instructors’ efforts to change by highlighting the instructional importance of active learning in the newsletters and publications they distribute. Further, the use of active learning should become both the subject matter of faculty development workshops and the instructional method used to facilitate such programs. And it is important that faculty developers recognize the need to provide follow-up to, and support for, faculty members' efforts to change. 428

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Academic administrators can help these initiatives by recognizing and rewarding excellent teaching in general and the adoption of instructional innovations in particular. Through the coordinated efforts of individual faculty, faculty developers, academic administrators, and educational researchers, however, higher education in near future can make real the promise of active learning! References [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_learning [2] Hendricks, H.G., Teaching to Change Lives: Seven Laws of A Teacher, Oregon, Multnomah Publishers Inc., 2003, p. 56. [3] LeFever, M., Creative Teaching Methods, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Cook Ministry Resources, 1986, p. 79. [4] Kagan, S., Cooperative Learning, San Clemente, California, Kagan Publishing, 1994, p. 84. [5] Johnson, D., Cooperation in the Classroom, Minnesota, Interaction Book Company, 2004, pp. 1-10. [6] Dale, E., Audio-visual Methods in Teaching, New York, The Dryden Press, 1954, pp. 29.

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DESCRIPTION AND EVALUATION OF THE STANAG LISTENING SECTION FOR THE ROMANIAN MILITARY PERSONNEL Eftimescu Gabriela

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract The purpose of the present paper is to describe and evaluate the Listening Section of the STANAG test which is currently used to measure the proficiency in English of Romanian military personnel with a view to their participation in peace-keeping missions/multinational exercises. The criteria for evaluating the STANAG Listening Test will be provided in the format of a checklist which was designed within a theoretical framework of current thinking on assessment. Subsequently all the sections included in this paper are designed in two dimensions: one describing the test features and specifications and the other evaluating the features by using the checklist. Firstly the paper will attempt to define the listening construct in order to provide the theoretical framework on listening comprehension and its testing principles. Next the elements of the STANAG Listening Test will be described and evaluated against the checklist and also in theoretical terms referring to current thinking on assessment of listening ability. Ultimately the paper will consider recommendations for modifying the test which arise from the evaluation findings.

Keywords: listening skills, language testing, assessment 1. Introduction There is common agreement among educational researchers that teaching, learning, and testing of second language listening ability constitute an essential element of any EFL programme. A research 430

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study conducted by Feyten (1991) indicates that out of the four skills involved in the framework of general language proficiency, listening plays a considerable role with forty-five percent of the total time communicating being spent on listening (in Buck, 2001: 95). As a result listening has received a great deal of attention over the past two decades and efforts have been made to find effective and efficient ways of assessing this key skill so as to improve the quality of language learning. The nature of listening: defining the construct Although Underwood states that “no one exactly knows how listening works or how people learn to listen and understand”, researchers have tried to establish various theories pertaining to listening (1989: 1). Listening is sometimes described as a passive language skill along with reading, in contrast to the output skills required of speaking and writing. However research has pointed out that listening is a complex and active process of constructing meaning, which requires the listeners to process incoming information, and to interpret it by using their cognitive and metacognitive strategies based on both previously acquired language knowledge (grammatical, discourse, pragmatic and sociolinguistic) and the context in which it occurs (Buck, 2001: 247; Underwood, 1989: 2-3). It is through such processing that comprehension comes into being. As a result of language processessing involved in listening comprehension, researchers have developed various taxonomies, one of which differentiates between bottom-up processing and top-down processing of the aural message. (Brown, 2001: 260; Buck, 2001: 2-4; Richards, 1990: 50-54; Nunan, 1997: 1-2; Nunan, 1998: 4). The former type refers to the linear process in which the listener decodes the incoming information, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to complete texts, whereas the latter refers to the process where the listener reconstructs the original meaning of the speaker, using his/her background knowledge, such as previous knowledge about the topic of discourse and the contextual or situational knowledge (Richards, 1990: 51; Nunan, 1997: 2). It is important to mention that the various language processing levels and different types of knowledge involved 431

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in language comprehension do not occur in a fixed sequence: they might be simultaneous and interact in a continuous manner. Research has shown that most listening tests are concerned with non-collaborative listening, as a process of understanding of what his/her interlocutor communicates within the context of noninteractive situations (Buck, 2001: 98). However the ideal situation of testing listening would involve the development of interactive assessments (Brindley, 1998), which would better fit into a valid listening construct definition of a communicative approach to language testing. There are a number of drawbacks derived from the nature of such procedure; interactive assessments are expensive and time consuming and they also require expertise associated with testing other skills e.g. speaking. Hence they might pose problems at the level of intervening variables in that the test will contain constructirrelevant abilities. One compromise solution to this problem is to define listening construct for the development of test specifications in terms of competence i.e. ‘can do’ statements. Within an adult second language educational context such as the military context under analysis, where the students possess relatively well developed and stable cognitive abilities, the emphasis should be placed on testing language competencies (grammatical, discourse, pragmatic and sociolinguistic) rather than strategic competencies. 2. Test description The Romanian STANAG 6001 Test is a Global Proficiency Test. It is designed by the Romanian National Test Team in accordance with the Ministry of Defence regulations and has been supported by the British Council’s Peacekeeping English Project, on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Commonwealth Office and the Defence Language Institute, English Language Centre, on behalf of the US Department of Defence. The purpose of the test is to assess the overall English language proficiency of each candidate in order to make useful inferences about the test-takers’ communicative language ability. It is a high-stakes test that is designed to meet the Romanian MOD needs for personnel selection based on English language requirements as a step to NATO accession and achieving 432

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interoperability. It is a performance, direct test based on “can do” objectives, which aims to assess the candidates’ linguistic abilities to deal with tasks for real life situations. The MoD objectives for NATO membership and participation in the PfP initiative have called for high levels of communicative professional competence. Candidates of any language ability can take the test and, if they meet the minimum requirements, be awarded a formal diploma or where the minimum requirements have not been met a certificate of attendance. The assessment aims at testing the four language skills of Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing according to specific criteria and levels of understanding as defined in the STANAG 6001, document. The test battery consists of four sections testing the four language skills: Reading 90 minutes; Listening 60 minutes; Writing 60 minutes; Speaking 45 minutes. Sections appear in the above order at the exam. Candidates are given a level for each of the four skills. This skillsbased approach assesses the extent to which the candidate is able to communicate effectively in their present and possible future professional, social and daily environment. Therefore the listening construct of the test was defined in terms of the candidates’ competencies. This type of performance test has been criticised because the focus of assessment is not “the candidates’ capacity to perform the task, but to elicit a language sample so that second language proficiency […] may be assessed” (McNamara, 1996: 44). 3. Listening section: purpose The aim of the Listening Section of the test is to measure the overall listening comprehension ability of the candidate according to specific criteria and levels of understanding as defined by STANAG 6001. The listening test under analysis was designed for military personnel aiming to achieve level two in English. Its main purpose is communicative providing comprehension questions, grids to fill in etc. The STANAG listening test focuses primarily on testing the candidates’ language competence, which includes grammatical, discourse, pragmatic and sociolinguistic knowledge. Here the term “knowledge” is understood to mean procedural knowledge, the ability 433

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to apply knowledge in efficient and automatic processing (Buck, 2001). 4. Target Language Use Situation (TLU) The domain is broadly defined as ‘English on the job’. TLU situation means using English in the professional field of militaryrelated contexts and English for social and everyday communicative needs. It is obvious then that the theory of language underpinning the testing principles is the communicative type where the candidates are assessed on whether they can actually use the language to communicate in the target language use situation. Language proficiency is therefore viewed as communicative competence (Hymes, 1972), which is in line with the teaching approaches. 5. Construct The assessment tool aims to test the ability to recognise the communicative functions of speech according to situations, participant(s), goals, and to identify relationships among units within discourse (e.g. main ideas, supporting ideas, generalisations, hypotheses, examples) in real time with a variety of native and nonnative accents. 6. Setting The STANAG listening test is administered in language laboratories where the computers deliver the sound through individual headphones. Thus the listeners can improve sound quality by reducing the effect of background noise. The test takers are able to make all the necessary adjustments during a pre-test. 7. Tasks All the tasks used aim to replicate target-language use tasks. The listening test makes use of a variety of testing techniques and requires fast, automatic, on-line processing of texts starting with the easiest tasks so as to give low-level ability students the best chance in their performance; then the test gradually increases in level of difficulty. The tasks cannot entirely replicate target-language use tasks simply 434

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because the testing situation “is different from the real-world communicative situation” (Buck, 2001: 108). Therefore the focus should be worded in terms of similarity of interaction competencies between target language use task and the test task. Some of the tasks succeed in their attempt to replicate target language use situations and tasks such as the task requiring to listen to the airport announcements or the note taking task while listening to a report, and imply a certain level of interactiveness; others fail completely such as the case of the last task which requires the candidates to choose the best title for five news reports from multiple choice options. In this last example there is no such similarity as test task/real life task because under real life situations people are rarely asked to match the gist of a piece of news with its title out of a four option series. Other tasks, such as the gap filling on summary seem to claim their origin from theories of integrative testing rather than communicative testing principles. Nevertheless it has been regarded as a reliable testing instrument because it has good construct validity as it is more related to tests of listening than to tests of reading which used a similar format. Furthermore it is an acceptable listening assessment task because it requires the candidates to understand discourse features, to summarise and make inferences about the overall meaning. Most of the task types are multiple choice, short open-ended questions and matching and are aimed at eliciting performance that can be reliably scored. The test techniques are economical of time and effort; however there is no clear relation between the students’ knowledge and their ability to perform in particular target language situations. Ultimately guessing may have a considerable but unknowable effect on test scores and cheating may be facilitated. All in all the tasks succeed in their attempt to evaluate the students’ general level of comprehension (direct, inferred and contributory meaning comprehension as described by Weir (1993)) in response to various oral language input. 8. Text types All texts are taken from authentic sources edited if necessary, and recorded in accordance with copyright laws. Texts can be monologues or dialogues (or both) and include: telephone conversations, 435

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directions, announcements, messages, commentaries, interviews, briefings, instructions, lectures, reports & speeches. Therefore they are authentic, genuine texts containing straightforward information that does not leave room for multiple interpretations. In addition the texts display the characteristics of speech: phonological modifications, hesitations, speakers’ repairs. However there are no long texts therefore it is not certain whether pragmatic competence is actually tested. All texts require understanding of message either literal or inferred. 9. Topics Topics used in texts are drawn from the following areas: general English in a military context (technical terminology may occur but is not tested), global affairs, social interaction, general professional work and daily life. There are a variety of topics included in the STANAG listening test and special attention was paid so as not to include requirements with regard to the candidates’ background knowledge, which might have otherwise included undesirable construct-irrelevant variance. 10. Rubrics All instructions are given in simple unambiguous English with wording on the paper identical to that on the tape, including the example. The tape, once started, does not stop for any reason. Candidates will hear: the type of text they are going to listen to, the number of times they will hear the text, what they are expected to do, the length of pauses and the time they will have to read through their answers, when they are expected to answer. One observation regarding the rubrics is that their structure does not replicate the effect of a real-world listening purpose and as a result the authenticity of the tasks is diminished. 11. Marking Scheme Each correct answer receives one point. There is no single correct answer and any other acceptable alternatives might be considered as valid and will be marked accordingly. This marking procedure is in 436

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line with the purpose of the listening test in that STANAG test aims to check for the candidates listening comprehension ability, not production. Therefore the marking scheme relies heavily on the notion of acceptability, which is a clear indicator of whether the candidates understood the text, rather than on whether their responses fit appropriately into the text. Recommendations One of the most important recommendations with regards to the STANAG Listening Test concerns the approach used to define the listening construct in terms of target-language use tasks rather than competencies. The next step in adopting this approach would be to replicate these tasks in the test under analysis. As a result the important competencies to test are automatically included in the test. Research has suggested that such a procedure is useful for testing listening for specific purposes. However there is a major drawback attached to the implementation of this new procedure: this relates to the fact that the target language use situation is not clearly defined. Therefore the next recommendation will look at the definition of the TLU which needs careful revision so as to be made more specific. This is a necessary step for the improvement of test specifications because target language use will vary according to the various roles undertaken within a military context i.e. logistics, diplomacy etc. It is obvious that the test designers need to be better informed about the description of various roles subsumed to TLU. Therefore careful and thorough needs analysis of the Romanian military personnel’s use of English should be carried out so that it could be used as a purposeful basis of construct definition and test design. Our test designers have been confronted with a daunting task when they had to approximate the domain and made guesses at much of the English that would be necessary in most military work places. As a result, due to the lack of a precise definition of what target language use situation is, there were no criteria to determine the appropriacy or authenticity of the test tasks; therefore the only viable solution in order to define the listening construct was to make use of a competency-based approach to testing listening. 437

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Nevertheless the STANAG Listening Test provides a good measure of the core linguistic skills required in everyday communicative situations and it also makes use of a variety of realistic tasks. Thus it can be stated that the test under analysis incorporates a good basic design for a general test of listening comprehension. Another recommendation refers to the adoption of a thematic approach of the test design. In doing this, the test structure will have a coherent context. The procedure will involve the organisation of the tasks around a theme which will create a known situation that can be used to test context-embedded interpretations, sociolinguistic competence and inferences based on knowledge previously provided. For example test takers could be asked to imagine they were undertaking a mission abroad; a coherent set of tasks could be built around that theme. Consequently test takers could listen to plane timetable, follow directions, instructions, choose the best alternative for a particular course of action, listen to various persons talking about their jobs, hobbies, interests and then select main idea and supporting details; listen to military briefings and identify the main points, etc. The greater and more varied the sample, the more likely it is to represent the listening construct in a fair manner. The format of the test could be also improved so as to present the listening texts through a video format. This procedure might be beneficial in that the visual information could supplement the audio input and convey a richer source of information and interpretation of meaning for the test takers. A final recommendation for the improvement of the present test with regard to the criteria for scoring which should be weighted differently for different parts of the test. References Brindley, G., Assessing Listening Abilities, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 18, 1998, pp. 171-191. Brown, H.D., Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education 2001. Buck, G., Assessing Listening, Cambridge: CUP, 2001. 438

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Hymes, D., On Communicative Competence, In: J.B. Pride and J. Holmes (eds.), Sociolinguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, pp. 269-293. McNamara, T.F., Measuring second language performance, London: Longman, 1996. Nunan, D., Listening in Language Learning, The English Centre, University of Hong Kong, http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/97/sep/nunan.html 1997 Accessed on 18.04.2008. Nunan, D. Language Teaching Methodology, Harlow: Longman, 1998. Richards, J.C., The Language Teaching Matrix, Cambridge: CUP, 1990. Underwood, M., Teaching Listening, London: Longman, 1989. Weir, C.J., Communicative Language Testing, New York: Prentice Hall, 1990.

APPENDIX CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING LISTENING TESTS WITHIN A COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TESTING I. Clear definition of listening construct. II. Operationalisation of the theoretical notions about the listening construct: design of test items. III. Avoidance of construct-irrelevant skills or abilities when testing listening. IV. Evaluate students’ general level of comprehension in response to oral language input. V. Variety of testing techniques: authentic replications of target language use tasks or as close to them as possible; tasks should require fast, automatic, on-line processing of texts (more comprehensive lists of microskills required to successfully complete proficiency listening tests are included in Buck (2001): 56-57; alternatively, Munby, 1978). VI. The test should involve task interactiveness (to ensure construct validity). VII. Variety of authentic, genuine texts. VIII. Texts should contain unequivocal information, which does not lend to multiple interpretations. IX. There should be longer texts in addition to shorter texts so as to engage aspects of pragmatic knowledge and strategic competence. 439

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X. Test language competencies: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic knowledge. XI. Test should check for comprehension of inferred meaning, not only literal meaning. XII. Variety of language input: accents, functions (both interactional and transactional). XIII. Ensuring there is no specific background knowledge required in order to perform the tasks. XIV. Input format: audio text complemented by video to ensure a more realistic replication of real-world listening. XV. Ensuring validity, reliability, practicality and authenticity of the test. XVI. Considering the washback effect. XVII. Start with the easiest task and then increase level of difficulty. XVIII. General setting: y Test conditions must ensure good acoustics and minimal background noise so that test takers can hear clearly and comfortably. XIX. Test specifications: y Description of theoretical framework underlying test design: communicative testing; language for communicative purposes; language is based on interaction, unpredictable, contextualised, purposeful, authentic features; it is performance and actual behaviour. y Explicit definitions of the listening construct operationalised: inclusion of skills that are unique to listening (speech characteristics) y Purpose of the test. y Explanation of why construct operationalisation meets the purpose of the test. y Test-takers: age, proficiency, L1, cultural background, education etc. y Target-language use situation. y Text-types: sources, topics, functions, nature of the language, level of formality, instructions on how they will be selected; how the texts will be presented, main idea, specific details, inference, following instructions. 440

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y Language elements: a list of structures, vocabulary, notions, functions, speech acts. y Type of tasks: authentic, objectively scorable y Number of items in each section: relative weighting in final score, details of scoring. y Testing techniques: multiple-choice, short-answer comprehension questions, gap filling, statement evaluation etc. y Time allotment. y Rubric: instructions to the candidate, example items; language used should be simple and clear (in order to keep the construct variance to a minimum level). y Criteria for marking: what is considered a satisfactory response, and what is not; there should be stated clearly what constitutes a sufficient response. y Guidance on suitable preparation. (adapted from Buck, 2001; Weir, 1990; Bachman, 1990; Hughes, 1989; Bachman and Palmer, 1996; Douglas, 2000)

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CLASSROOM OBSERVATION: PRINCIPLES AND PROCEDURES. A REFLECTIVE APPROACH FOR AN INSETT PROGRAMME Eftimescu Gabriela

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa [email protected]

Abstract Observation of lessons, from micro-teaching lessons to a full lesson, is one of the most helpful sources of critical insights to which teachers have access. Classroom observation is particularly useful for trainee teachers participating in an in-service training programme, therefore the focus of this paper is to look into the underlying theoretical principles and procedures relating to classroom observation in order to find model which has practical application in the military educational context.

Keywords: classroom observation, micro-teaching, language training program Theoretical principles Observation could become a learning tool as trainee teachers will gain new insights into their own actions in the classroom. Consequently classroom observation is often included as an important component of either pre- or in-service teacher training programmes. The reason behind the implementation of such procedure is generally viewed as benefiting the trainee who has “the freedom to look at a lesson from a range of different perspectives outside that of the actual lesson plan of the teacher” (Wajnryb, 1992: 7). As a result of being released from the pressure to perform (to teach), the teacher trainee 442

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has time to observe, absorb and reflect. It is this type of deliberate reflection which could help teachers in their professional development and one of the essential ingredients that has served in the design of the previously outlined teacher-training programme. Observation is seen as a useful means of focusing reflection whereby the revision of the observation schedules is seen as a valuable opportunity in developing critical awareness (Swan, 1993; Wallace, 1991). Reflection is an essential part of classroom observation as it has been considered a purposeful, deliberate act of inquiry into one’s thoughts and actions through which a perceived problem is examined so that a thoughtful and reasoned response could be tested out (Loughran, 1996). In order to become a reflective teacher one has to move beyond the primary concern with the instructional techniques and “how to” questions and ask “what” and “why” questions which look at instruction and managerial techniques not as ends in themselves, but as part of a broader educational purpose (Bartlett, 1990). However several theoreticians noted problems with the reflective model: Hatton and Smith (1995) consider the irrelevance of reflection to trainees’ needs, the strength of participants’ own conceptualisation of teaching and the shortage of time and opportunity to reflect. Possible solutions to these problems would be to analyse the needs of teachers, to allow teachers to express their own ideas and give them time to reflect on the new input, facts which have been taken into account in the design of the present in-service teachertraining course. Other aspects, which have not been considered within a positive perspective of classroom observation, concern the observed teacher. More than often the teacher being observed might experience negative feelings towards the observation process and perceive it as a threatening experience especially within a teaching/learning context where the stakes are relatively high such as the Romanian Naval Academy context. As a result the whole classroom dynamics is affected no matter the amount of care the observers have taken in order to minimise the intrusion. As a consequence, classroom observation has failed to accurately capture the events of the classroom which in turn has diminished the validity of the whole 443

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procedure. Additionally observation as an objective tool could be undermined by the supervisor’s subjective and therefore unreliable impressions. One pre-emptive solution to this problem could be the increase in frequency of observation sessions in order to familiarize the teachers with such a procedure. Alternatively observation could be focused on aspects of classroom behaviour instead of accurate record of classroom events which might indicate areas of improvement not only for teaching, but also areas related to effective learner achievement. In spite of the claims that classroom observation is nothing but beneficial enabling the teachers to exercise control and open up the possibility of transforming their everyday classroom life, teachers at the above mentioned institution have often displayed reluctance towards observation practices even in the case of peer observation sessions. Therefore another possible solution is to gradually introduce classroom observation through in-teacher training programmes while viewing a demo lesson or observing microteaching sessions of their peers. It is assumed that such a procedure could underline the classroom observation instructional purpose freed from pressure and teachers could then undertake observation as a regular and systematic procedure in order to aid and improve their teaching. The area of focus for observation may vary. For example, topics may include giving instructions, student-teacher reactions etc. In observing their peers and experienced teachers, trainees are provided with opportunities to be exposed to different styles of teaching and are provided with opportunities for critical reflection on their own teaching (Wallace, 1991, 1998; Freiberg and Waxman, 1990; Williams, 1989). All the afore-mentioned studies have stressed the importance of classroom observation and their main argument is that classroom observation provides teachers with an opportunity to develop their own judgements of what goes on in their classroom. In addition, it is claimed that classroom observation sharpens teachers’ awareness of what their students are engaged in and the interactions that take place in their classes. Also as it has been previously stated observation could increase trainee teachers’ ability to evaluate their own teaching practices. 444

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In the light of all the above considerations it is assumed that one useful observation system that could be used in the Romanian INSETT programme is the Flanders’ interaction analysis categories. It has been stated that the model is highly applicable to foreign language classes as it makes use of verbal behaviours involved in specific types of lessons and as a result goals become more readily attainable: “the teacher sees which verbal behaviours are involved in each kind of lesson” (Allwright, 1988: 71). Moreover the system assesses classroom climate which is thought to be an essential factor in foreign language learning. Other positive aspects of the Flanders system refer to the teacher’s enhanced ability in having better control and understanding of his participation during the class. There are certain operations that the teachers complete while using the Flanders system: behaviour analysis; comparison between actual/desirable behaviours for specific types of lesson; change of behaviour to approximate the model. The beneficial result is that the teacher through constant process of making his behaviour match his intentions will transform the goals of language teaching into reality in the class. One limitation to the implementation of the Flanders system is that it requires separate and extensive teacher training. It is also possible that training in interaction analysis might require a whole intensive teacher-training course based on systematic observation. Therefore it might prove ineffective of time and costs. A modern model for teacher observation, which is more likely to be in line with the previously outlined reflective approach to teacher training, is the task-based experience. The assumption behind the adoption of such procedure is that observation skills could be learnt through “a set of classroom tasks which engage the observer” (Wajnryb, 1992: 13) and which is based on a number of teacher trainee’s features that have been delineated under the “Procedures for observation” heading. To sum up on the advantages of classroom observation, one could synthesize them into the following statements: 1. Observation supports teaching in that it can be positive and can help teachers to work co-operatively. As trainees and teachers may both have different experiences in the past, the observer or facilitator 445

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should discuss the nature and purpose of the observation beforehand. This procedure could in turn help alleviate the threatening aspect observation might pose to some teachers. 2. Observation enables trainee teachers to see at which stage they are and how they may further develop i.e. to understand what is going on in the classroom at a particular stage. 3. Trainees are helped to distinguish between effective and ineffective classroom practices. 4. Trainees are aided in their development of the awareness of principles and decision-making that underlie effective teaching by means of observation. 5. Trainees are given the opportunity to try something that is different or new and to assess it themselves. Techniques and practices are identified and they could be applied to their own teaching (Wallace, 1998; Wajnryb, 1992; Day, 1996; Williams, 1989). Principles of observation Observed teachers need to be informed about the principles that are embodied in observation (Richards, 1991; Richards and Lockhart, 1994; Williams, 1989). First of all observation has to have a focus. Only one or two items should be focused on in each observation session, especially within the context of peer observation of teacher trainees where due to time limitations microteaching might constitute a viable alternative to teaching a full lesson. These items would depend on the trainee’s needs and within the context of the aforementioned teacher training programme the observation tasks that need to be completed while observing demo lessons could range from teaching behaviour and learning behaviour to patterns of interaction, from observing different learning styles, concentration spans to patterns of group dynamics. As has already been mentioned the literature on classroom observation indicates that any observation session should have a clear purpose before the actual procedure takes place. In addition research mentions that arrangements and information should be available to and accepted by both observer and observed beforehand and they could be summed up as it follows: 446

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a) the reasons why the observation is taking place; b) the procedures to be followed; c) an agreement about the recording of any evaluation outcomes made and their reporting; d) a discussion about the aims and objectives of the lesson; and e) where relevant, the identity of the person from whom further information may be obtained if required. Within the context of an in-service teacher-training programme all these steps could be simulated as a necessary preliminary procedure to the actual observation. Secondly the observer needs to make use of a set of specific procedures, which would make the task more effective. The third principle relates to the observer role which does not involve any participation in the classroom activities. Another principle states that observation should enable and promote the development of the trainee or teacher. The trainees should be left with an instrument for self-development. The last principle refers to observation feedback that should be constructive and not fraught with negative criticism. Instead observation feedback should be built on the positive aspects of the lesson. Procedure for observation There are three main phases for classroom observation: preobservation, observation and post-observation (Day, 1993; Wajnryb, 1992, Richards and Lockhart, 1994). The observation sessions of the teacher-training programme previously outlined will be developed on these three phases based on the model of the teacher as a reflective practitioner (Schon, 1983; Richards and Nunan, 1990; Bartlett, 1990) which could be described through a number of key features: 1. The trainee teachers are viewed as valuable resources who actively engage themselves in the observation process and share ideas on an ongoing basis. 2. The trainee teachers’ learning process takes place in a creative, dynamic and personal way. 3. The trainee teachers are the initiators and therefore responsible for their own development (adapted from Wajnryb, 1992: 10). 447

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Following on from these features, the in-service teacher training sessions on observation at the Naval Academy have been designed around the notion of teacher autonomy derived from the fundamental principle of the model of teacher as a reflective practitioner which states that teacher educators cannot offer formulaic, top-down prescriptions: “Not only do these tend to close off the pathways to autonomy for the teacher, as well as invest responsibility for change in the educator (instead of shifting to the teacher), but they simply cannot provide answers for anything other than low-inference – readily learnable – skills” (Richards, 1990: 8). In the pre-observation phase, the focus of the observation is identified and the developing procedures for the observer to use are set. During the observation the observer should concentrate on the focused content discussed in the pre-observation and gather a complete set of data. It has been suggested that during the lesson, the observer should respond positively to any reasonable requests from the teacher being observed. The observer should act in as unobtrusive, sensitive and professional a manner as possible. The post-observation session includes the feedback discussion/reflection and information sharing. A development of greater awareness of the classroom and the trainees themselves is enhanced. As Wajnryb states: “observation is a multifaceted tool of learning” (1992: 1). The preparation for observation may not only include the selection of a focus, purpose and method of data, but collaboration with all involved. The follow up includes analysis, discussion and interpretation of the data and experiences acquired in the classroom and reflection on the experience as a whole. Therefore, classroom observation aims to demonstrate once again a reflective attitude towards one’s own teaching. As a result trainees could be made aware of the advantages of working collaboratively by engaging in dialogues with their peers and sharing ideas which will aid them in developing a willingness to be tolerant of differences, suspend judgement and to openly and honestly share opinions (Richards, 1990). At the same time, observation will provide the trainees with an opportunity to develop their own judgement of what has been carried out in the phases of active experimentation and strengthen their ability 448

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to evaluate their own teaching. As Wajnryb points out: “Developing the skill of observing serves a dual purpose: it helps teachers gain a better understanding of their own teaching, while at the same time refining their ability to observe, analyse and interpret, an ability which can also be used to improve their own teaching” (1992: 7). Therefore the feedback offered following the observation should be well balanced and constructive. Where possible, feedback should be given at the time and in the manner agreed during pre-observation discussions. Feedback may take a number of forms. In many cases, a brief discussion after the class has been dismissed will be sufficient. In other cases, where it is agreed that there is a need for a more detailed analysis, a suitable opportunity should be agreed as soon as possible after the observation. This should be within the normal school day, and in an appropriate environment which ensures confidentiality. If both the teacher and observer agree to feedback, proposed during a school break or lunchtime, the teacher must have the opportunity to take a reasonable break as compensation before going to his/her next class. Teachers should be allowed to read any notes arising from the observation before any discussion takes place. They should also have the opportunity to record their own comments if they wish. Feedback should identify good points from the lesson and constructive advice on any areas for improvement. Discussion of the teachers’ professional needs should be built into any feedback and used to identify opportunities for support and continuing professional development. Any reports arising from observations should be kept in a secure place and remain confidential to the observer, the observed and the direct supervisor. The teacher should be made aware of any proposed wider circulation. Conclusion The reflective, task-based model of classroom observation represents one important component of any type of INSETT programme due to its wide practicality and therefore it is applicable within the teacher-training programme previously outlined. Its aim is to encourage teachers’ reflection on their teaching practices in a voluntary, autonomous and personalised way. This however could 449

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only happen in a supportive professional context which promotes an inquiry-based, discovery-oriented and problem-solving attitude. References Allwright, D., Observation in the Language Classroom, New York: Longman, 1988. Bartlett, L. Teacher development through reflective teaching, in: J.C. Richards, and D. Nunan, eds. Second Language Teacher Education, Cambridge: CUP, 1990, pp. 202-214. Day, C. Professional learning and school development in action: a personal development planning project, in: R. McBride ed. Teacher Education Policy: Some issues arising from research and practice, London: Falmer Press, 1996. Freiberg, H.J and Waxman H.C., Reflection and the acquisition of technical teaching skills, in: R.T. Clift, W.R. Houston and M.C. Pugach eds. Encouraging Reflective Practice in Education, London. Teachers College, 1990, pp. 119-138. Loughran, J., Developing Reflective Practice: Learning about teaching and learning through modeling, London: Falmer Press, 1996. Richards, J.C., The Language Matrix, Cambridge: CUP, 1990. Richards, J.C., Towards Reflective Teaching, The Teacher Trainer, 1991, 5 (3), pp. 4-8. Richards, J.C., and Nunan, D. Second Language Teacher Education, Cambridge: CUP, 1990. Richards, J.C., and Lockhart, C., Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms, Cambridge: CUP, 1994. Schon, D.A., The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, New York: Basic Books, 1983. Swan, J., Metaphor in action: the observation schedule in a reflective approach to teacher education, ELTJ. 1993, 47 (3), pp. 242-249. Wajnryb, R., Classroom Observation Tasks: A resource book for language teachers and trainers, Cambridge: CUP, 1992. Wallace, M.J., Training Foreign Language Teachers: A reflective approach, Cambridge: CUP, 1991. Wallace, M.J., Action Research for Foreign Language Teachers, Cambridge: CUP, 1998. Williams, M., A developmental view of classroom observations, ELTJ. 1989, 43 (2), pp. 85-91.

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EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS ACHIEVED THROUGH PUBLIC SPEAKING Ion Ana

“Mircea cel Bătrân” Naval Academy, Constanţa Abstract Apart from transmitting knowledge, one of the teacher’s role in class is to build in students the faith that learning a foreign language is not only about what they say, but also about how they say, in order to prove their knowledge in a confident manner. The English class should develop students' speaking skills, in addition to skills of reading and writing. Students should be encouraged to develop interest in speaking in front of an audience and deliver good speeches that inform and capture their listeners' attention. This has a positive effect on both speaker and listener, and makes it possible to communicate in a clear and precise manner. When you speak up you learn. During a class discussion, your opinion and questions will be beneficial both for the speaker and for his peers. If you don't speak up and ask questions you will not learn. When you practice speaking in front of an audience, you force yourself to figure what matters to you. When you speak about what matters to you, you are sharing with others, which is the main aim of communication. Effective communication skills are essential for members of a democratic society. A few techniques that can help in achieving the characteristic of a good public speaker are presented in this paper.

Keywords: communication, skills, public speaking Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud. Hermann Hesse, (1877-1962, German Writer)

As a follow up of the above quoted motto we may say that for many people, standing up in public, or in front of a group, and doing a speech is 451

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not that easy. For many language students in particular, this is quite a challenge. This is not too much to worry about, since there are some ways that can be of help in overcoming such difficulties. Public speaking involves talking in front of a group of people, or an audience. It can be in front of people that you know (e.g. at a family celebration) or a crowd of strangers. There can be a lot of opportunities when anyone of us can be in the position of a public speaker; at a certain point in their life people may need to stand up and speak on different topics or occasions. In such a case the speaker has to either inform or persuade, or simply to entertain or announce something. Certainly there may be more reasons for giving a speech. Unlike a presentation, there normally is not a lot of opportunity for interaction between the audience and the speaker – the speaker speaks, and the audience (hopefully) listens. The feed back is not immediate, not to say that it may not exist at all. That is why the speaker has to be knowledgeable, skillful and very self-assured in delivering a speech, in order to have an effective and successful speech. Speeches can have different functions. These include being persuasive (e.g. trying to convince the audience to vote for you), informative (e.g. speaking about the dangers of climate change), entertaining (e.g. a best man’s speech at a wedding) or celebratory (e.g. to introduce the winner or an award). Some speeches may have more than one of these aims. One may wonder why we considered that public speaking is useful for students. Most people, at some point in their life, will need to stand up and speak in front of a group of people. Teaching students the necessary skills for doing this will therefore help them to do this more successfully. Many students get incredibly nervous the first time they have to do a speech in front of their classmates but with practice the nerves subside and they usually begin to enjoy the whole process. Working on public speaking also helps to develop students’ overall fluency and requires them to consider how they speak as well as what they say. This is useful for speaking in any situation, public or otherwise. In order to achieve good communication skills and appropriate behaviour students should be taught some strategies of what to include in a speech, and how to present the information it contains. 452

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Lotsof students find getting started quite difficult. The author herself encountered situations in which students couldn’t and didn’t want to come to the front of the class and face their colleagues, for fear they would be misunderstood or laughed at. It is a good idea to have the students work in groups especially at the planning level. It is often useful to get students working in groups at the planning stage, helping each other to come up with ideas. Showing students a variety of ways of making notes of ideas works well as not everyone likes the same methods. These could include mindmapping, making lists or writing ideas on post-it notes and then arranging them on a piece of paper into groups. In what the structure of the presentation, or speech is concerned the teacher should remind the students that the whole thing should not lack organization: beginning, middle and end. You might then like to give show them a standard introduction. For example, “Good evening. My name is … and today I am going to talk about ... . I will talk about three main areas, x, y and z’; this, then gives them a focus for the structure of the rest of the speech. It can seem a little dry, however, so once they get the idea it is worth experimenting with different styles of beginning – e.g. using jokes and anecdotes, short stories. Many students may want to rush to the end of their speech, and may miss the conclusion, or do not do any. Again, a standard format may help them to summarize what they have said. In order to increase confidence and obtain an overall effectiveness of the whole speech it is useful to chunk the material. This means that during the speech stress and pauses can be of help. The key words should be stressed and pauses should follow these, as well as the end of the sentence. For example, “I want YOU to do this now. I am sure you CAN”. A good example to show the students, is Martin Luther King’s speech “I have a dream”, in which they may be asked to listen carefully and identify the stressed words and the pauses. You could also try getting the students to speak in front of three or four others at the beginning, then adding to the number as they become more confident. Reminding students to breath properly while they’re speaking as well as thinking positively about their ability to speak well will also help. All this should go along with lots of encouragement! 453

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Speaking too fast can be a great drawback, since this is usually created by nerves. A solution to this is to get students to talk extremely slowly, in order to raise their awareness on the subject and on their posture while making their presentation. Another point is to make students aware of how important the audience is. For example, if they want to do a speech about the dangers of smoking, but no one in the class smokes, this probably won’t be very interesting. Encourage the students to think of creative ideas for their speeches – do the planning stage in class so that you and the other students can monitor and give advice on topics that look like they might get the audience bored. Last, but not at all least (this alone can be the subject of a separate article), they should be aware of the body language. There are various statistics for how much of our communication is done through our body language – they seem to be around 70%, which is a lot, so some work in this area is a very good idea. Doing an activity where you get everyone to stand up and then suddenly ‘freeze’ works well. You then ask everyone to stay still but look around at how everyone is standing. Then try getting everyone to stand straight and well-centred, and not rock from side to side or slouch. Gestures, too, should be kept under controll. One way to practice this is to give out some sentences with key words in them, and have them practice saying these, while standing up, and work out what gestures might be the most appropriate. Stress the importance of keeping gestures controlled.It is also of utmost importance that speakers make eye contact with all areas of the room, ideally with every person. However, this is not possible with large audiences. Many students tend to look at one spot or at the teacher. One way to practice this is to ask each student to do a short 30 second introduction and then at the end get any student who feels the speaker did not look in his/her direction to raise their hand. The best results can be obtained when students have their speeches video-taped, so that they can look at themselves and see their weaknesses and strengths. In this article we have looked at a variety of techniques that can be used to help students develop the necessary skills for delivering public speeches. Practice in these areas can help to increase the students’ overall confidence and fluency and provide an interesting and useful diversion from regular language work. 454

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AN APPROACH TO THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH Mincă Nicoleta Florina

University of Piteşti [email protected]

Abstract Any history of English has to incorporate the findings of the variationist approach, because they reflect the interaction of language and society in language change and provide a deeper insight into the relationship between the external and the internal history of the language. There are ‘local changes’ operating over two or three generations and dealing with individual structural features of the language. There are also ‘global changes’, which manifest themselves over centuries, and which eventually result in a new language type, a new structural design with different general properties. Perhaps one of the tasks of the forthcoming histories should be to make this interdependence and the relationship between such internal factors and the external factors that motivate the variationist approach more explicit.

Keywords: history of English, variationist approach, local changes, global changes, interdependence The variationist approach to the analysis of the history of English takes language as a living, dynamic entity, consisting of a number of variant ways of saying the same thing. The choice between the variants is influenced by language-external factors, the most important of which are the following:

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1) Sociolinguistic variability and the influence of social change and mobility on the development of language, including participant relationship and the level of formality. 2) Textual variability, i.e., the interrelation between the genre or topic of the text and linguistic expression, including discourse situation and medium. 3) Regional variability and the differentiation and amalgamation of regional varieties, including contact phenomena. The analysis should concentrate on the role played by these (and other) factors in the changing shape and size of variant fields. In addition, the language historian should pay attention to the effects of language-internal processes of change, such as the tendencies towards grammaticalisation and topicalisation, and the increasing analycity of the overall structure of the language. Ideally, a history of English should offer us an integrated account, and even an attempt at explanation of the paths of change over the centuries, an account which would take into consideration both internal processes and external factors. One advantage of this emphasis on the variability and dynamism of language is that it naturally links history with present – day varieties and dialects. Developments of the past can be correlated with present-day variation, and it is possible to understand the variable character of present-day English only if it is viewed as a logical outcome of long-term developments. A broad perspective of description also combines the theoretical and generalising discussion of the effects of internal processes of change with the communicationbased and sociolinguistically shaped levels of language. The influence of external factors on language change can only be approached through a careful comparison of texts of different types and by describing their similarities and differences both qualitatively and quantitatively. This requires adequate means of storing and handling very large amounts of texts furnishing the most multifarious information on the language of the past. These means are provided by computerised corpora and new types of corpus-based concordances, thesauruses and dictionaries. We can now describe the language of the past in all its variability and dynamicity through novel and exciting kinds of evidence 456

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derived from literary and non-literary, speech-based and non-speechbased, standard and non-standard, formal and informal text sources. The writing of a history of English should combine a solid theoretical description of the language and its change with an awareness of a variety of extralinguistic factors causing unexpected twists and turns in its development. The variationist approach also rightly emphasizes the importance of text type differences (genres) in the propagation of a change, which has so for been more or less overlooked in the standard histories of English. But this approach necessarily deals with series of what we may call ‘local changes’, operating over two or three generations and dealing with individual structural features of the language. There are, however, ‘global changes’, which manifest themselves over centuries, sometimes even millennia, and which eventually result in a new language type, i.e. a new structural design with different general properties. Such typological changes are very often the basis for recognizing major periods in the history of the language, such as Old English, Middle English or Early Modern English, although this is not always made sufficiently explicit in the existing histories. Their very existence suggests that local changes very often operate directionally, i.e. have some internal coherence or logic, which cannot be explained by the same factors that govern the actual selection of a variant in a local change. In other words, there seem to be language-internal forces, which also play a role in this selection process, but which are more indirect and less obvious. Because of them, the selection process in a local change is not totally random but usually fits into a more general, long range development, a drift. These factors are usually neglected in the existing histories, because these concentrate rather more on series of individual changes and less on the way in which the English language has undergone a profound transformation since its earliest stages. Of course it is mentioned that the language has moved from a synthetic to an analytic type, that it has developed a fixed word order as a compensation for the loss of case endings, that it has lost gender also a consequence of the loss of inflection, or that it has acquired a mixed Germanic-Romance vocabulary with repercussions for the phonological and morphological 457

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system. But unfortunately these aspects are hardly ever discussed systematically, although it is such transformations that “make sense” of individual changes and that convert a series of seemingly unrelated phenomena into a so-called “coherent narrative”. There are three fundamental factors that are responsible for this directionality: 1) The interaction of linguistic levels like phonology and morphology, morphology and syntax, or the lexicon and phonology/morphology; 2) The inherent momentum of a change: once it has started and has acquired a certain significance, it may begin to affect areas outside its original domain; 3) basic design features of a language or language family, which create a “hotbed” for certain changes, which therefore repeat themselves over the centuries. None of these aspects has been given systematic attention in the existing histories, nor have these issues been made explicit. We will seek to show how a wider perspective can make sense of more local developments, by illustrating each of these factors with some examples from the history of England. Local changes sometimes may remain local in the sense that they only affect the linguistic level on which they occur: thus the creation of front rounded vowels by i-mutation in pre-Old English (cf. OE full: fyllan) or the development of an/u/:/Λ/ contrast in Standard British English (cf. push: flush) change the phonological system by adding a new contrast, but there are no further repercussions for the overall structure of English phonology, nor for other linguistic levels. The introduction of French and Latin loans, on the other hand, i.e. a change in the make up of the lexicon, does have such a far-reaching effect. Not only brings it about the introduction of numerous new word-formation patterns affecting morphology, it also affects phonology and the interaction between these two levels. Thus, together with the adoption of these loans, a new type of stress pattern is introduced: whereas in the native part of the vocabulary, stress was usually fixed on the first syllable, in this non-native part stress can alternate, cf. hístory: históric: historicity, and some linguists even claim that the Romance stress 458

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pattern replaced the Germanic pattern completely, which implies a total restructuring of the prosodic system. One of the characteristic feature of the Germanic languages is the adoption of fixed initial stress, when they separated from the IndoEuropean language family. A consequence of this is the progressive weakening of unstressed syllables, especially in final position. These syllables in final position are often inflectional endings and mark grammatical function, so their obliteration had dramatic consequences for the overall structure of the English language in various ways. The general loss of inflectional endings results in a typological change from a basically stem-based morphology (where each word-form had an inflectional ending) to a word-based morphology, where there is at least one form that occurs without an inflectional ending. Perhaps the most important type of level interaction is that between phonology and morphology, usually referred to as morpho(pho)nology or morphophonemics, which describes alternations such as keep:kept, deal:dealt, sing:sang:sung, etc and their history. We witness a total structural reorientation of English, which, however, is not mentioned in the existing histories. Thus, Old English is characterized by pervasive stem variation, partly due to ablaut (e.g. singan:sang:gesungen; singanvb:sang), but also to more recent phenomena such as umlaut (e.g. full:fyllan, helpan:hilpst, mus:mys), West Germanic Consonant Gemination (e.g. trum:trymman:trymede). This principle of variation was given up in Middle English and replaced by a principle of stem invariability. As a result, those alternations which have been preserved, e.g. keep:kept, lose:lost, sing:sang:sung, mouse:mice count as irregular, or are a characteristic feature of non native word-formation, as in instances like sane:sanity, serene:serenity, etc. We would like to point to the almost total loss of nouns derived from strong verbs with a different ablaut grade, i.e. the type sing:song, write:writ, etc. While such nouns (and also adjectives) formed part of the core vocabulary of Old English (and still do in German), most of them were lost in the middle English period and replaced by nonalternating forms. This must be seen as a result of the general development of the language towards a non-alternating morphology, i.e. a typological change gathered momentum and dragged some part of the 459

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vocabulary with it, which as such had nothing to do with the change itself. Otherwise it would be very difficult to explain why all these ablaut nouns and adjectives had disappeared from the vocabulary. Finally, there seem to be some inherent tendencies in the English language, which are difficult to pin down, but which seem to have been responsible for certain cyclical developments. Thus, at several stages in its history English acquired front rounded vowels (through i-imlaut in pre-OE, through borrowing in Middle English), but somehow these sounds never survived for long but were unrounded again-in contradistinction to German, which even exploits the contrast for morphological purposes (cf. Mutter, ‘mother’: Mütter ‘mothers’). On the other hand, English seem to have a tendency to diphthongise long vowels (eg. OE win; Mod. E wine). Then it goes much further than that and is repeating this phenomenon, cf. the present development of /i:/ and /u:/ in Southern Standard British English, where diphthongal quality has become the rule, and the Great Vowel Shift seems to repeat itself. It is such general, long range developments which future histories of English should also pay attention to, not only the individual local changes. Both are interdependent, but one of the tasks of the forthcoming histories will be to make this interdependence and the relationship between such internal factors and the external factors that motivate the variationist approach more explicit – perhaps even make it a separate topic of research. There is another aspect that should be mentioned at the end of this paper. As the examples have hopefully demonstated, for this kind of enterprise it is not necessary to embrace any particular formal linguistic theory, although the narrative has of course to be quided by theoretical considerations. Those will, however, have to be more of a functional and typological nature than of an abstract theoretical-formal system. References [1] Blake, N.F., A History of the English Language, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1996. [2] Lass, Roger, Historical Linguistics and Language Change, Cambridge: CUP, 1997. 460

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[3] Lass, Roger, ‘Phonology and morphology’, in Blake Norman, ed. The Cambridge History of English Language, vol.2, Cambridge, CUP: 23-155, 1992. [4] Samuels, M.L., Linguistic Evolution, with Special Reference to English, Cambridge: CUP, 1972. [5] Smith, Jeremy, A Historical Study of English: Function, Form and Change, London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON WRITING BOOK REVIEWS Nistor Virgil-Cosmin, Arapu Laura Foreign Language Center, Sibiu

Abstract Writing is probably one of the most difficult skills that teachers have to induce and have their learners do, since the majority of students does not manifest eagerness to writing texts, especially when writing is not so much based on a creative basis, but guided by a set of rules, or patterns. Another reason is that writing can be preceded by a reading activity, which might lengthen the span of time dedicated to this activity. Irrespective of these reasons students still have to write, and the book review is one of the activities that constitute a purpose for those following an English course at upper-intermediate or advanced levels. The purpose of the study here is to shed light on aspects such as the selection of the book, development of the assessment before the writing process, choice of the type of review, some essentials on writing and some mechanical steps. All these are meant to give students a more approachable and mild glimpse over the issue of this complex writing activity.

Keywords: book review, descriptive, critical 1. Introduction Writing a review is a complex activity, it can range from simple forms to more complicated ones. It involves at least two language skills, so it is what methodologists call an integrative skill activity. It may have at its basis a listening or video material which is further developed into a writing task, or, as it is much common, it can start from a reading material which stands at the basis of the writing task. 462

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So, the skill integration involves a receptive skill developed into a productive one. 2. What is a review? It is a written text which takes the form of a special type of article intended for publication (the case with movie reviews and chronicles), or as an evaluation tool in an academic environment. It is usually defined by the fact that “it gives a brief description and evaluation of a film, book, play, TV/radio programme”, as stated by Virginia Evans [1]. According to the same source it can be written in a formal or semiformal style, as this depends on the type of audience. The review, thus, seems to offer the simplest form of this complex writing activity which can be reduced to a 5-6 paragraph writing text. The very first paragraph which coincides with the introduction sets the background, including reference concerning the title, type of story (whether a book, play or film), then the setting (when/where), the theme, the main characters. The second paragraph would usually comprise the main points of the plot, without revealing the ending. A third paragraph would contain comments on various features such as acting, plot, characters, style, directions. The next paragraph(s) usually deal with explanations, reasons and examples of the features presented in the previous paragraph. The concluding paragraph in this type of basic review contains an overall assessment of the work studied and, sometimes a recommendation accompanied by a justification. In some cases, a review may contain reference to the way it influenced the reviewer. 3. What is a book review? A written text, which presents a summary and a critical analysis of a text. It should also include reference to the key points of the book and to its overall value. It should briefly offer a glimpse over its content and the way it is perceived by the reviewer, style, quality, and usefulness of the text, plus recommendations. This is the way a book review is recommended to military students and it practically covers all aspects of the issue. Of course, the text reviewed is one covering a military subject, so its straightforwardness, brevity and conciseness 463

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speak for themselves. It also fits a review for a non-fiction text intended for scientific reasons. Other theories consider that a book review (here we put together fiction and non-fiction texts) should basically offer a critical perspective on a text [2]. Thus, the book review should offer a process and suggest some strategies. And this is the idea that will govern our study in its development. The critical perspective ensures the intellectual overlook of a trained reader who ponders over the text he has read. This critical evaluation can refer to anything, from a text, to an event, phenomenon, object, literature, art, architecture, fashion, restaurants, policies, exhibition, performances, and so on. The critical perspective is the best corner of study for all types of reviewers, as we have considered here the military personnel attending foreign language courses and students in the field of international relations. One might say that only a student in languages and literature is to deal with critical perspectives and evaluations of texts, but we consider that this would unjust towards the other categories, mentioned above. The review should make an argument, meaning that a review equates a commentary, not merely a summary [3]. This does not come in opposition with the military type of review we mentioned above; it is in fact an extension of this form, not its restriction. The commentary invites the reviewer to make his point, express an argument, an opinion, agree or disagree with the author of the written text. It is as if the reviewer enters in a sort of dialogue and discussion with both the author of the text and his audience. It is a kind of mediation, a personal insight, a self-explanation made explanation for the others. The reviewer has also the opportunity to state whether the work is exemplary or deficient in its knowledge, judgement and organization. The written and argued opinion on the written text resembles in fact other types of academic writing, in that it contains a thesis statement, supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion. 4. How to prepare the book review? This is a question that concerns those facing this writing activity. Since it is an integrated skill activity, we obviously start from the reading part. The advice that has proven the best is that, while reading 464

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the book, the reviewer must take notes on the key points of each chapter, or even write a short summary of what he has read. Sometimes it is wise to simply mark as notes the key concepts, details concerning the key characters (important actions, descriptions), and the key paragraphs crucial to the development of the plot. A second step, and a good exercise is to write the book review as a summary and critical analysis, using the memorandum format or essay format. This is extremely helpful since the summary format is going to be a point in itself in the writing of the book review. And even more, the critical analysis is many times a development of the summary, containing other important things worth mentioning. A last specification is that brevity, clarity and conciseness are extremely important [4]. This goes perfectly with the military students, probably not so well with students in political sciences, who, by nature, would attempt to criticize and insist upon their point. Of course, to quote specific details, passages, proves helpful in supporting an idea, but these above mentioned terms should not be taken in their extremes: neither too concise and brief, nor too expanded. 4.1. How to develop an assessment? This is the part where the critical thinking process should be at its maximum. Theorists that agree that writing is a two-step process: developing an argument about the work under consideration and secondly, making that argument as you write an organized and wellsupported draft. In support of developing this critical thinking stage of the book review we have identified some questions that might prove helpful in focusing the thinking [5]. Of course, a reviewer should not consider all these questions; a selection is to be made in accordance with the purpose of the review and the type of text. A first question refers to the thesis of the book, what its main argument is? What would be the idea that the author wanted you to get from the book? The second question tackles the topic (or subject) of the book. Does the author cover the subject adequately? And do all aspects of the subject appear in a balanced form? The next question refers to the argument and the way the author manages to support it. 465

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What is the evidence used by the author to prove the point? Another important aspect refers to the structuring of the argument. Does the author structure the argument? Does the argument make sense? Is it persuasive? Last but not least there is a question that invites to further personal thinking: How had this book helped the reviewer understand the subject? Would he recommend the book? This is in fact a personal argumentation about the quality of the book: recommendation and why, and to what sort of target audience. Other aspects that might prove helpful refer to the author (nationality, training, intellectual background and interests, personal history, direct experience) and the book’s genre (the domain it belongs, if it conforms or departs from the conventions of the genre). 4.2. The descriptive book review. The descriptive type of the book review is defined by the fact that it gives the essential information about a book, and the techniques to achieve such type of writing are descriptions and expositions, by stating the perceived aims and purposes of the author, and by introducing significant quotations [6]. This is basically the form required and accepted by military students. The writer is a bit detached, objective. The requirements specific to this type of book review are: Firstly, the reference part that contains the key data about the book, and then some recommendations about the book in establishing the target audience for this book plus some reasons. Secondly, there is the analysis of the author which comprises the background of the writer, the purpose of the book, then the sources – whether personal or indirect experience is to be presented, and the objectivity of the narrator. Another step is the analysis of the content which contains the thesis, the synopsis (short summary) of the book, a presentation of three key characters and the evidence for the choice, some key passages followed by a personal analysis which evidences the importance of their choice in the economy of the book. Another aspect is the analysis of the quality of the book with reference to style. The last but one step refers to lessons learned, namely what can a reader learn from the book, what it teaches. Finally, but probably the most 466

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important is the final thought, in which the reviewer has to give a personal thought over his experience with the material he has read. This last step can sometimes be extended to the form of an essay with different arguments brought into discussion. 4.3. The critical book review. The critical review is the one in which the reviewer actually evaluates the book, with personal involvement in terms of literary and historical standards, and supports his arguments with examples from the text [6]. This type of review is specific to students who bring their personal enthusiasm into shaping the critical approach of the text. The critical thinking process is at its best in this book review type. The requirements a critical book review has to accomplish should be based on the knowledge of the work being reviewed and the requirements of the genre to which it belongs (whether it is a short story, a novel, etc.). Here we firstly include knowledge of the author, as above mentioned (nationality, context etc.), and also an understanding of the author’s purpose with the subject book. Reference to the genre would mean an understanding of the art form and its functioning; it gives a historical and literary standard of evaluation. Secondly, a reviewer should consider some essentials as there are to give a description of the book and not a summary in order to give the audience some understanding of the author’s thoughts; then something about the author (not a biography), and an indirect appraisal through description and exposition and based on the aims and purposes of the author. Since the critical review is a statement of opinion, it has to include the following aspects: a) a statement of the reviewer’s understanding of the author’s purpose, b) how well the reviewer feels the author’s purpose has been achieved, c) evidence to support the reviewer’s judgement of the author’s achievement. 4.4. Points to consider, common to the descriptive and critical book review. The thesis statement, also called the central idea of the book is to be stated in the introduction. The advice theorists give is gaining an 467

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overview of the book that will help realize its purpose and main ideas is to read the preface and the introductory and concluding chapters. The thesis statement covers the form of a single sentence that formulates both the reviewer’s topic and point of view. It is, in a way, the answer to the central question or problem raised. Writing it enables the reviewer see where he is heading and to remain on the productive path. The summary is considered one of the most difficult parts because so much depends on audience. The question is whether the book review is written only for the instructor, who is familiar with the book, for the audience of the classmates, or for other people who are not familiar with the subject. Usually the instructor informs on the type of audience the paper should address. A summary should generally be brief, as analysis takes priority, but as the work progresses the reviewer will back up the assertions with concrete evidence from the book, so some summary will be dispersed throughout other parts of the review [7]. The conclusion contains the summing up or the restatement of the thesis, or, a final judgement regarding the book (the final thought). Only the final thought, if expanded to an essay form, should contain some ideas that go beyond the book, if they extend the logic of the reviewer’s own thesis. The concluding paragraph needs to balance the book’s strengths and weaknesses in order to give a unifying aspect of the evaluation. The reviewer should plan to end with his general reaction: if favourable, then weaknesses should be dealt with first; if unfavourable, its strengths first. To conclude, there are some general considerations that we would like to stress upon: first, the student should reviewer the book in front of his eyes, not the book he wished the author had written. Secondly, a precise language used by the reviewer allows control of the tone of the review. Specific examples should be cited to back up the assertions. Last but not least the reviewer should present a balanced argument about the value of the book for its audience. Sometimes a reviewer is obliged to voice strong agreement and disagreement. Even a bad book takes as long to write as a good one, and every writer needs fait treatment, so a reviewer should also be careful about this aspect. And 468

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above all, this constitutes the critical thinking work a reviewer can entwine into the pattern of the book review, so as to give a pre-thought personal view over a written text. References [1] Evans, Virginia, Successful Writing: Student’s Book, Proficiency, Express Publishing, 2000, p. 99. [2] http://teacher.scholastic.com [3] http://www.indiana.edu [4] http://lhs.loswego.k12.or.us [5] http://www.lavc.edu [6] http://teacher.scholastic.com [7] Gibaldi, Joseph, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, New York, The Modern Language Association of America, 1995, p. 30.

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THE INFLUENCE OF MILITARY JARGON ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Oana Simina-Ioana

„Alma Mater” University, Sibiu Abstract The phenomenon of jargon and slang still represents nowadays an interesting and endless debate from the sociolinguistic point of view. Identifying and clearly defining what is and what is not considered to be slang are the main reasons for this controversy. Some try to restrict the concept of slang or jargon to something that is wrong, to define it as a vulgar and inappropriate language. Others appreciate it, as it is an original means of communication. This paper proposes to expose theories and definitions of jargon and slang, to study and explain some terms and expressions from the military jargon and to underline the practical and useful aspect of this informal style, in the sense that it can enrich a language with fresh and innovative vocabulary allowing thus the speaker to better express his thoughts and feelings.

Keywords: jargon, language, military, communication 1. Introduction The worldwide trend of English being used and learned more widely as the dominant international language has led, in each country, to the intrusion of English into domains in which other languages have been unchallenged up to the present. English is increasingly prominent in such key domains as business, education, the media and even the military domain. English language is increasingly used in public, professional and private life, education and in the army for external communication purposes and familiarity with the cultural heritage. More intensively in recent years, there has 470

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been a gradual shift towards English becoming by far the most widely studied foreign language on the continent of Europe, taking over space, both in western and eastern Europe, occupied earlier by other foreign languages, French, German and Russian in particular. The resolution of international conflicts and subsequent peacekeeping operations require organisations such as the United Nations and NATO as well as individual nations to supply military support and personnel. Army, navy and air forces from many nations need to work together effectively, using English as the lingua franca. Therefore, the English language has been going through a developing and evolution process. A large number of words and expressions that were not recognized a few decades ago are commonly used in present. English has been continuously changing for several reasons. One of them is that along with this widespread of English and its continuous changing process, people from all over the world have not only “adopted” it as a common language of communication together with almost all of its specific phonetics, lexical and grammar elements, but have also contributed to its development through typical local words and expressions, including jargon or slang. 2. The meaning and the role of jargon. Most dictionaries agree that the word „jargon” may be defined in at least two ways: first, as a restricted speech of isolated or specific groups in the society and, second, as an unconventional vocabulary with formal and informal conotations. Other definitions of the term „jargon” emphasize its aspect of novelty and freshness and describe it as a language variety leaning towards lexical innovation. According to the Longman Dictionary, jargon is „the equivalent for those technical words and expressions that are used mainly by people who belong to the same professional group and are difficult to understand. While slang is a very informal language that includes new and sometimes rude words, especially words used only by particular groups of people such as criminals, schoolchildren, or people who take drugs. For example „screw” is a slang word used by prisoners to mean prison officer” [3]. 471

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This paper proposes to underline the influence of military jargon and slang on the English language. As related to the military jargon, Wikipedia presents the following definition: „a set of colloquial terms used commonly by military personnel, often as abbreviations or derivations of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, or otherwise incorporating aspects of formal military concepts and terms. Military slang is often used to reinforce the (usually friendly and humorous) interservice rivalries. Some of these terms have been considered derogatory to varying degrees and attempts have been made to eliminate them” [6]. „Military” for the purposes of this article means „armed forces” and therefore includes slang which is unique to or originates with army, naval and air forces. Military slang has often been incorporated into wider usage, consequently contributing to the enrichment of the language. 3. Understanding military jargon, as well as its impact. The influence of other societies and cultures on English is the primary reason for its continuous change. Many phrases, words and military slang made their way into everyday spoken English, with the help of British and American soldiers and other native or non-native English speaking soldiers, interacting during the world wars, who actually transfered military slang between each other. Nowadays, during military operations, soldiers are still exposed to different new cultures and societies. As a result of the influence from other cultures, they start using jargons and slang in their conversation. Acronyms, truncated words, nicknames, radio terminology, and obscenities play a key role in the Army lingo. For example truncated words, such as: „medevac”, which stands for medical evacuation; „comms check” for a communication check; „ammo” for ammunition and „warno” which means a „warning order”, these words and expresions often occur in the American movies, especially those having as a central theme: the Vietnam War. The first thing a new recruit learns is that the Army speaks a different genuine and innovative language variety than the rest of the English speakers. Recruits will know some terms most of the time, such as “latrine” rather than “bathroom”, but others are not so popular. 472

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Here are a few interesting terms and phrases from the typical military jargon: • AAR refers to an “After Action Review.” Everything done in the Army should end with an AAR to identify lessons which can be used to improve the next such operation. • Blue and Red are terms used to describe the friendly and enemy forces. A “Blue on Blue” would be a friendly fire incident, while “Red on Red” would mean our enemies don’t get along with each other. • „Concealment” is something that protects you from being seen. • „Cover” is something that protects you from being hit. • FA stands for Field Artillery, one of the most important features distinguishing the Army from the Boy Scouts. • MSR stands for Main Supply Route. This is the path the supplies and replacements and such take. • An ASR is an Alternate Supply Route. • OPFOR, Opposing Force. This is a friendly unit that is tasked with being the other side in a training event. Sometimes it is used ironically for real enemies. • PT is Physical Training, or exercise. It is not Practical Torture. • ROE stands for Rules of Engagement. These are strict rules that change over time as the chain of command reacts to changing situations and which is different from one theater to another. Knowing and following the ROE is serious business. • SOF stands for Special Operations Forces, the ones that the news always calls Commandoes out of a sense of ignorance. • TLAR means That Looks About Right [7]. These acronyms and abbreviations enable the soldiers to have a reassuring sense of belonging to a united and solidar group whose members speak the same „encoded language” that the enemy could never be able to decipher. These jargon terms also permit them to transmit their messages more quickly and clearly, time cannot be 473

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wasted when lives are at stake, consequently, clear and efficient communication is crucial. Here are some examples of jargon terms or expressions, which are the proof of the influence of other cultures and languages, as they were „gathered” by the English language, through soldiers, during their various world military expeditions: • Bleu (France) A recruit. Derived from the French term for barely-cooked steak, symbolizing a "raw" recruit. • Bagger (IRL) derogoratory term refering to an Irish reservist soldier, comparing him/her to a sandbag, useless. • Circus Battalion (Canada) Play on Service Battalion (Logistics and Supply) due to the excessive number of tents used in its deployment and the general state of coordination among its personnel. Generally pejorative, when used outside the company of said personnel. • Green Eyed (UK) Excessively keen or professional soldier. • Sandbox (US) Informal term for a forward deployed location. Also a miniature model of an area for troops to study for familiarization before an operation. • Cockster (Singapore) a person who is habitually confused or amusing in a weird way [8]. As it can be seen from the examples explained in this paper, military jargon is most of the times closely related to technical language and thus it represents a variety of English responsible with the emergence of new words out of the need of the Army to find new terms and expressions for new entities within the military subject field. Apart from innovating technical terminology, military have a tendency to produce words and slang expressions with humorous and sarcastic association closely related to their interests. Consequently, these words and phrases are intended to meet communication needs among military groups’ members. 4. Conclusion Jargon is a practical linguistic instrument serving heterogeneous purposes and obtaining different, even divergent effects. The usage of jargon or slang, not only in the military field, enriches the language 474

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with a high potential and semantic innovation as it leaves place for genuine and fresh conversations. By continuously spreading across speech, this creative phenomenon of a language shows not only its originality in forms and meanings, but as the examples presented in this paper have shown, it can also develop and enrich its vocabulary. Hopefully, this paper will succeed in encouraging the teaching and learning of English jargon in various types of education institutions either for military purposes or for other fields of activity, as it is authentic, original, fresh and thought-provoking, enabling thus interesting and vivid conversations between native or non-native speakers of English. References [1] Brookes, M. şi Horner, D., Engleza pentru afaceri, Bucureşti, Teora, 2002. [2] Graddol, D., English Next, British Council, 2006. [3] Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. The Complete Guide to Written and Spoken English, Longman Group Ltd, 1995. [4] Spears, R.A., Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions, McGraw-Hill Companies, 2000. [5] Tăbăcaru, O., Dicţionar de expresii idiomatice al limbii engleze, Bucureşti, Editura Niculescu, 1999. [6] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Military_slang [7] http://ezinearticles.com/?Understanding-Milspeak-(MilitaryLingo)&id=469866 [8] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Military_slang#B

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DEVELOPING SPOKEN LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS AT INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS Poşa Oana

Foreign Language Centre, Sibiu [email protected]

Abstract Undoubtedly, the supreme function of the spoken language is maintaining social relationships. In dealing with this aspect of the language, the paper aims at emphasising the role that language functions play in communication. As a matter of fact, the language function itself is a communicative act, namely the use of language to achieve a social purpose. When it comes to the intermediate student, he needs the language functions that ensure him a limited working proficiency and the teacher has at his or her disposal a vast array of activities to help them achieve this. Acquiring the complex functions of the English language is a demanding but rewarding process at the end of which the English speakers will accomplish the ultimate goal – appropriate social language behaviour.

Keywords: social, interaction, function, communication The primary means of communication has been, is, and will always be the language. It is the language that communicates personal details and emotional states, it is the language that forms and maintains relationships, it is the language that supports thought, rationalization, creativity and self-expression. It builds upon the interpersonal and individual functions, being thus the foundation and the bottom pillar of society as a whole. However, despite the tremendous importance language has in society, it has rarely been regarded as the major factor of its stability and even existence. On the contrary, people are so used to the 476

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language as the primary means for communication that they fail to realize what the language functions are. Due to their variety, the functions of language might be divided into two main categories. The status of the human being as a social individual is best expressed through the use of functions belonging to the first category, the macro functions [1]. It is here that we have the interpersonal function, that emphasizes the language is a social phenomenon. It is also here that we find the ideational function, referring to the conceptualizing process involved in our mental activities, and the poetic function, that enables the speaker to manipulate language in a creative way. In order to express his thoughts, the man needs the textual function, with the help of which he creates long, cohesive utterances. The second category contains the functions referring to specific individual uses. Because of their limited, restricted scope they have justly been named micro functions. Here we can mention the psychological function, used by the speaker to release the physical and nervous energy. The most recognizable use of this function is during sport events and the supporters express support, disappointment or happiness by cheers or curse words. The human being, by his nature, lives among people, in society. Establishing contacts with the others is essential, hence another function of the language, namely the phatic function used for sociability. It is the phrases like “how do you do” that links people together and establishes nice, pleasant relationships. One ingredient in keeping the relationships alive is sharing important experiences or events, resorting to a common past to build a common future. For this, the function of language that comes into use is the recording function because by this the human being is able to record things that ought to be remembered. The most important micro function of language is, however, the identifying function that enables the speaker to identify the objects and events of the world he lives is. After the identification, the stimuli from the outside world get to the speaker’s mind, who filters and analyses the information. Thus, a new language function is used, that is the reasoning function. The conclusion of the reasoning process, the 477

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reaction to the outside stimuli is verbalized with the help of the communicating function, which is definitely pointed at as the function most widely used by the majority of the speakers. The above mentioned functions are not discrete. Nor are they naturally exclusive. They join and mingle in order to accomplish the communicative competences of the language, namely the grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic, as they were defined by Michael Canale and Merrill Swain [2]. Pragmatically speaking, the functional aspect of the language is best represented within the sociolinguistic competence. According to Savignon, sociolinguistic competence “requires an understanding of the social context in which language is used: the roles of the participants, the information they share and the function of the interaction” [3]. This approach emphasizes once more the interactional function of the language, necessary to establish a social contact while sharing information about themselves or by the society itself. The intermediate student will prove limited working proficiency when communicating in everyday social and work place situations. The teacher has at his or her disposal a wide variety of activities whose purpose is to help the learner use and develop the language functions necessary to accomplish the ultimate goal of studying the English language, namely functioning in an English speaking environment through communication. First and foremost the speaker should be aware of his environment, of the people he interacts with, of the places he performs his activities and of the things he comes in contact with. Using the identifying function of the language he accomplishes this without difficulty. Linguistically, it is translated in his ability to describe people, places and things. Methodologically speaking, the mastery of this skill of this ability requires a pretty long process. In the first stage, the teacher should provide students the necessary lexical tools. The starting point could be some pictures of people or places, or, in case of objects, even realia. Having displayed these materials in front of the students, the teacher should try to elicit from the students as much vocabulary as possible related to physical description. 478

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e.g. ‘What color does this man’s hair have?’ ‘Taking into consideration this woman’s age, how could you describe her?’ For the practice stage, the students may solve vocabulary exercises that require them to fill in the blanks with the missing appearance-related adjectives or, to have more fun, a crossword puzzle would do as well. After completing this stage, the students can move on, to the production stage, in which they may be required to describe a member of their family, a holiday place or their favorite object at work. The recording function of the language, and not only, can be very well observed when the students are put in the position to make use of another language function, namely to talk about past, present or future events, in the form of narration. The speakers prove besides their ability to move on the timeline and to make adequate time references, their mastery of the textual language function by creating strings of related sentences, in the format of a well organized, cohesive paragraph. For the achievement of this function one should not neglect the importance of the lexical-grammatical language tools. That is why it is essential to focus, at the beginning, on the time markers. The teacher may start with drills on narrative tenses and adverbial modifiers used to indicate time. After these time markers are practiced enough we can proceed with a more complex activity, namely the narration itself. The recording language function can very successfully be put at work by resorting to students’ personal experience. A verbal stimulus like: “Tell me about your first week in the military school” would surely make the speaker remember and verbalize the most important activities of that period. Talking about similarities and differences are two language functions performed by the intermediate student, but they are more demanding than the ones above, as they require more complex mental processes and other functions as well. It is not enough for the speaker to identify, recognize and describe the people and places from his area of interest or his workplace. To the identifying function of the language we should add the reasoning function, as the speaker has to 479

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make use of his ability of analyzing, synthesizing, comparing and contrasting the traits that two people, two places or two objects have in common or what differentiates them from each other. Due to the complex mental processes involved in this function, its development should be performed gradually. At the beginning, the teacher will insist upon the vocabulary and grammar sections that signal the compare and contrast structures. We can mention here conjunctions and adverbs like: “similar”, “just as”, “on the other hand”, “yet”, or the degrees of comparison of the adjective. After that, the teacher can continue with teaching the two kinds of compare and contrast structures, namely the block pattern (the first topic is described entirely, then the second topic is presented), or the point-by-point pattern (the two topics of comparison are presented alternatively). Just like with the other functions, the performance of this language function would be more effective is the speaker is asked compare and contrast people or places that he is emotionally related to. e.g. ‘Compare two friends of yours. Talk about their similarities and differences.’ Taking into consideration the complexity of this function it would be advisable for the students to practice it in written at the beginning, and to perform it in speaking only after the required structured are well mastered. Foreign language learners might have different ages, different studying methods, but they are joined by the same purpose: to use the language in order to meet a specific need or desire. In a foreign language environment, the intermediate language speaker should be able to elaborate in common daily communicative situations and to make non-routine changes or deal with problems that may appear in social arrangements. Only one language function would not be enough or the accomplishment of this goal. It also requires an array of lexicalgrammatical means. The teacher can guide the students in the process of learning the necessary tools for managing the above mentioned situations by creating, in the classroom environment, real lie situations, in the form of role plays. A variety of language functions 480

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will be used when the students simulate shopping or food, eating in a restaurant or buying a house. But for the outcome to be the desired one, students should practice under the careful surveillance and guidance of the teachers, which should build up gradually on their students surviving skills. First of all, the students should acquire the specific vocabulary necessary for each situation. Let us take, or example, the following situation: e.g. “You have decided to eat out with a friend, in order to celebrate your birthday. You go to a restaurant, make your order, but, when the waiter comes, you notice there is something wrong with it. Try to solve the problem. Your desk mate will play the role of the waiter.” In this case, restaurant related vocabulary should be taught before the role play itself. After this vocabulary was practiced through drilling activities, one can start with the dialogue focusing, at the beginning, on the functions used. The teacher should create exercises that limit students’ attention to the linguistic forms of the target functions so that they can be accurately produced. These exercises should be meaningful and realistic, not a simple mechanical transformation, where the students would supply the correct linguistic form for the functions without considering the meaning of the whole exchange. The next step would be doing less controlled exercises, and focusing more on the meaning component. The students will have the opportunity to use the functions in a logical and coherent sequence, making realistic use of the language in order to accomplish a realistic task. For the exemplified situation, the sequence of functions would be the following: • Greet the waiter • Order food • State preferences when ordering • Identify the problem • Express complaint • Solve the problem 481

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• Thank • Request bill • Say goodbye The situations just presented are only a sample of what the complexity of the language as a whole means. They are a tool for facing social situations and for meeting social needs. But this tool could not operate by itself. The lexis, the grammar, and, most importantly, the language functions come to complete and perfect the process. References [1] Finch, G., How to study linguistics, Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 1998, pp. 35-50. [2] http://linguisticsearth.blogspot.com/2006/11/communicative-competence-inlanguage.html [3] Savignon, S.J., Communicative Competence: An Experiment in Foreign Language Teaching, Philadelphia, The Center for Curriculum Development, 1972, p. 73

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EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL PATTERNS – GROUPWORK Poşa Oana-Alida, Dragomir Isabela Anda

Foreign Language Center, Sibiu [email protected] [email protected],

Abstract The communicative approach is continually shaping the teaching and learning process. The changes this new trend brought about have affected not only the form and the content of the information to be taught, but also the way in which it is transmitted. This new direction has highlighted the imperative to detach the teacher from the learners and let them handle the linguistic tasks by themselves or with each others’ help. Hence, the tremendous importance different types of student groupings have acquired. This paper is exploring the benefits of class organizational patterns, with emphasis on the linguistic, psychological and cognitive factors that contribute to their success.

Keywords: student groupings, group work, factors The best answer to the question, “What is the most effective method of teaching?” is that it depends on the goal, the student, the content, and the teacher. The next best answer is, “students teaching other students.” This is a matter of classroom management, basically defined by the way the students are organized for work. Despite the preconceived idea that the class should be treated as a whole group, we should not underestimate the learners’ ability to function efficiently in pairs and small groups. Grouping students in order to involve them actively in the solving of linguistic tasks is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their 483

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understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is being taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. Still, any group of students, brought together in different linguistic situations, will have different expectations from each other and from the teaching and learning context. The gap between projected expectations and the reality of the teaching process (including the students, the teacher and the learning activities) may lead to inconsistencies in terms of classroom dynamics and student behavior. Therefore, barriers impeding the efficient transfer of information and altering the relations between learners are likely to appear. These can be viewed from three perspectives: linguistic, psychological and cognitive [1]. In order to combat possible problems that may affect the content and the quality of the teaching process and to maximize the benefits of grouping students for different activities, we propose a set of interaction-oriented strategies functioning as annihilators for the problems encountered in each of the three mentioned aspects. The linguistic factor should probably be the first to address, since the target language is the source of many difficulties and obstacles. It is sometimes believed that the students do not know enough of the language to express themselves with ease and confidence. Since most learners seek and find security in number, it is obvious that a learning setting that groups students together will provide the necessary comfort for free expression. Whereas during whole class activities not all the students have equal chances to perform, working in groups or in pairs is the ideal organization where students can try the language for themselves and make the best use of what they know. Contrary to the belief that the teacher is not able to listen to everyone and hear what they are saying in order to correct and give feedback, we advocate the usefulness of this strategy within the communicative approach. Pairing or grouping students this way shifts the focus from accuracy to fluency, offers the teacher the “hat” of facilitator and promotes linguistic and psychological comfort [2]. 484

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There is a large array of activities used in the practice and production stages of the lesson, which lend themselves to this type of classroom organization. We will mention some speaking activities with focus on fluency, which have proven effective in our work with adult learners. Role-plays, information transfer activities, questions and answers work best with paired students, while simulations, debates, group discussions, problem-solving are more effective with groups of 8 to 12 students. The second factor, the psychological one, is double-edged. On one hand, although some students are happy to speak in chorus or under the teacher’s guidance, they are inhibited when they are asked to speak freely in front of the whole class. This may happen because of not having been encouraged enough or because of being afraid of being corrected by other students [3]. It is the teacher who has to pull down these psychological barriers and create a stress-free environment. This can be achieved by placing students together with peers they feel comfortable with, according not only to the language level, but also to the personality make up. If for the solving of the linguistic problem the focus was on the type of activities to choose in order to promote free expression, the psychological obstacle can be overcome by carefully mixing the students as individuals. Although the general tendency is to form mixed ability groups (since good students will help weak students through cooperation and collaboration), we strongly suggest forming same ability groups, especially at the beginning of the course, when the psychological factor is more powerfully manifested within the class. Having groups formed on the basis of equal linguistic ability empowers the teacher to dedicate more time and attention to helping weaker learners and to focus intentionally on their specific needs. The psychological advantage of such grouping is that weak students function in a more relaxed manner within the frame of this comfortable equality. On the other hand, the psychological analysis of the teaching process brings about the issue of motivation. Motivation is a key factor when we want learners not only to solve a task, but to solve it together. Therefore, grouping students on the criterion of common 485

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interests and goals ensures cooperation and collaboration, the main ingredients of a joint effort toward achieving the linguistic task. How do we select activities which will arouse the interest of the learners and make them want to work together? No universal panacea is known. The selection should take into consideration the imaginative, cognitive and personal factors that go into the make up of the learner, as an individual and, ultimately as a member of the group. In this respect, we advocate the use of unconventional group projects, a very successful activity that breaks the students free from the traditional end-of-the-course exam and has them use their language, imagination, creativity, personal and interpersonal skills in order to exploit, revisit and reinvent the taught material in an innovative manner. On the cognitive level, the most complex of the three, the question of production versus reaction should be addressed. For the previous levels, the teaching focused on what the students know about the language and on how they feel towards the learning activities. At this level, the emphasis is on reactions, attitudes and opinions, using strategies that evoke language knowledge filtered through personal responses and imaginative approaches. An indisputable place is occupied by the stimulus – the type of input the student receives. Whether it represents a topic, a theme or a problem to be solved, the stimulus should not be, at this level especially, verbal. It has been proved that a picture, for example, can be more effective in conveying ideas for the students to talk about. Some may wonder how a picture can be used to stimulate interpretation and discussion. For this, we have to go beyond what is actually seen in the picture to what is implied by it. In order to be effective, pictures should provide a fertile source of speculation. There is nothing elementary about visual aids. It is the use that makes them count. They offer a non-verbal framework for language practice and appeal to superior cognitive processes by activating critical thinking skills [4]. Functions to be developed in this way include supporting opinion, hypothesizing, defending policy, synthesizing and abstractisation.

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Organizing the class for groupwork involves respecting several principles: forming the group, choosing the group leader, the role of the teacher and the importance of the feedback. We have already mentioned the factors that affect the creation of the group from the psychological point of view. When it comes to forming the group as an organization, we should mention the importance of the size; the smaller the group, the more effective the performance. Although the general rule is that there should be 5 to 8 students in each group, the size of the group should be established in direct relation with the number of students in the class. Consequently, if the class is made up of 10-12 students, the group shouldn’t exceed the number of 3 or 4 members. No matter how small the group is, it is vital to appoint a leader of the group, in order to ensure cohesiveness and unity. Whether the leader is appointed or chosen by the students themselves, his function is not to dominate but to coordinate the activities and to be the interface between the students and the teacher. The teacher has a well-defined role in classroom organization. It is far from the conventional role of simply transmitting information, as it implies selecting and planning the activities, giving instructions, managing and monitoring students’ activities, and providing feedback. The success of groupwork activities greatly depends on the input the students receive, the type and the quality of the stimulus they are provided with. Therefore it is important for the activities to be chosen carefully. The teacher should ensure that they can be performed well with the language the students master. Presenting the activities and the goal to be achieved is a key factor in their success. Instructions should be kept simple, concise and clear. It is advisable to provide students with a sample of what is expected from them and, if needed, to even do a “trial run”. While the activities are in progress, the teacher acts as a monitor and facilitator, walking around, listening discreetly, making a mental list of the errors to be later used as the basis of feedback, helping students with clarifications and language. Apart from the language feedback that is provided automatically at the end of the activity, the teacher has to be prepared to offer a 487

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different kind of feedback, that is related not only to the quality of the output, but also to the methods of achieving it. The teacher should be sensitive to the group psychology, to its dynamics, to the relations established within the group, to the amount of “student teaching” involved. Such a feedback is helpful for the entire teaching process, as it regulates future class organization patterns, and, more importantly, it gives students a sense of achievement in relation to their performance not only linguistically but also from an interpersonal point of view. Numerous researchers have voiced different approaches to using groupwork, discussing advantages and disadvantages to such organizational patterns and the way in which they ought to be used. The central concept of the paper is that communicative activities cannot function properly in the absence of the flexibility and the dynamics that characterize the modern class. Groups in a learning environment are an oasis of comfort, relaxation and language creativity. They offer the students a safe zone where they can “move” freely, alone or accompanied, towards achieving proficient linguistic skills necessary both in and outside the classroom. References [1] Byrne, D., Teaching Oral English, Longman Group UK Limited, 1986, pp. 75-76; pp. 81-82. [2] Byrne, D., Techniques for Classroom Interaction, Longman Group UK Limited, 1995, pp. 8-10. [3] Underwood, M., Effective Class Management, Longman Group UK Limited 1993, p. 40. [4] Dragomir, I. and Posa, O., Developing Productive Critical Thinking Skills, Proceedings of 2nd International Scientific Conference Alma Mater Sibiu, Romania, May 2007, pp. 480-485. [5] www.teachingenglish.org.uk

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ENGLISH AS AN INSTRUMENT OF COMMUNICATION Moise Judith, Para Iulia

West University, Timisoara Abstract This paper is about the English language as an instrument of communication in the 21st century, about who will speak it and for what purposes. It also tries to study the impact on English of developments in communications, technology, growing economic globalization.

Keywords: communication, language, globalisation, English. Although linguists have not yet found the final answer to what real/ meaningful communication is, “directed conversation practice is probably the most reliable route to true communication” (Dobson, 1988:1). Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture defines communication as the act or process of communicating and to communicate: 1. To make (opinions, feeling, information, etc.) known or understood by others, e.g. by speech, writing or body movements; 2. To share or exchange opinions, feelings, information, etc. Experts and dictionaries have given more than 130 definitions to communication (Prutianu, 2000:27). Anyone thinks s/he knows what communication is, until asked to define it – then they realise that in fact they cannot; still, they have always communicated and it is human communication that keeps us together as it is built up on feelings, emotions, attitudes, and interests. Maybe the verb to share would be the best, the most appropriate verb to express that, the relationship 489

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built during process of communication, is much more important than the information conveyed by the message. Unlike computers, which only deliver the input they got, people add to communication feelings, attitudes, and connotations. In real life, human communication uses three types of languages: – The verbal language (articulated speech and the meanings conveyed by means of words); – The para-verbal language (the meanings beyond the words, a whole set of stimuli and signals conveyed by the tone, volume and rhythm of the voice). – The body language (the complex of stimuli and signals conveyed/suggested by our own body, face-expression, gestures, looks, proximity). In other words, our voice and body convey further information; add something to the meaning of the words, something beyond the meanings we find in the dictionaries. If we try to memorize an impressive number of words in a foreign language and become ourselves a kind of “walking dictionaries”, it does not mean we can actually communicate. Until recently, foreign languages were not taught and studied, so as to enable the learners to communicate. The students were only interested in learning how to read and write (to use the language for documentation purposes only) and not to speak, as they had no contacts with any native speakers, nor could they travel because of the political barriers which did not facilitate any opportunity for communication. But, today it is very rarely that someone would like to study a foreign language and do not have the desire to speak it, in fact this is the reason why they want to study that particular languageto communicate. Therefore, it is our task to help the students move from pseudo-communication (in which everything is predictable)- to communication, where they can express their personal ideas and needs in the context of reality. Conversation should be introduced as soon as possible, and not only when the students have reached an intermediate or advanced level. The traditional grammar-translation method, used for many years in Romania, helped the student perform satisfactorily in the most complicated exercises, but completely unable to carry on 490

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an elementary conversation. This was due to the fact that the students were psychologically unprepared to use the foreign language as a means of expression for a meaningful communication. Students actually learn to communicate by communicating and, it is motivation that makes students communicate, and try to simulate real-life situations, find solutions to various problems and state their opinions. Conversation, “the informal interchange of thoughts and information by spoken words (Dobson, 1988: 17) is made up of 2 activities – speaking and listening. The interlocutor should listen carefully to the speaker s/he can store useful information in her/his memory to be used later, if needed during the conversation. Listening is not a passive activity and therefore good listeners, in any language, are extremely rare. The poor listener is usually scarcely interested in the topic and sometimes too eager to talk her/himself. Therefore students need to be “educated”, i.e. trained to become good listeners as sometimes our success in life depends on how well we listen, weather in our modern tongue or English. Due to a series of factors (historical, economical, and political), English was promoted as the first world language. Millions of people all over the world have to communicate with one another meaningfully, because their lifehood depends on the outcome of their meaningful communication. Many people have important jobs in multinational companies, foreign subsidiaries, or in foreign trade, so English is used as a lingua franca, it is the instrument of communication which they use. In some institutions, e.g. the European Central Bank, located in Frankfurt, conducts all of its business in English. Diplomats or representatives of countries culturally far apart, must out of absolute necessity communicate with one another effectively; otherwise misunderstandings or even conflicts may result scholars and scientist taking part in international programmes (e.g. the Geneva programme), symposiums, meetings, conferences, use English too, but each speaker with her/his own particular accent and, if 20 different nationalities take part, one may hear at least 15 varieties of English. The world then is becoming more and more a “melting pot”, and communication has become a must, if people want to understand entirely different cultures. In other words, 491

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“the will and determination to communicate effectively is there – and that, is relatively new on such global scale” (Stern, 2000: 18). It is not in fact difficult to understand the importance of foreignlanguage learning in today’s world. As the planet becomes smaller, and the means for moving around it easier, so it has become more multicultural and multilingual. “Not so long ago we used to be able to talk of nation states which could be associated with single languages – in France they spoke French, in Germany German, and so on. But it is no longer like that” (Crystal, 1997:75). Though Earth’s surviving languages will continue to change in familiar ways, a traditional linguistic dimension has been altered forever. Language throughout history has meant geographical territory-land. Now, the linguistic atlas has become all but meaningless. Language primarily means technology and wealth, a new borderless world with the only directions up and down, separating the haves and the have-nots. “Proficiency in the planet’s ‘corporate language’ – perhaps ultimately English –will soon define each person’s place on Earth…and beyond” (Wallraff, 2000:25). Although globalisation is not entirely new, much of this early globalisation was limited in scope and intensity. It mainly involved western countries with Britain as the hegemonic power prior to 1914 and America filling the role after World War II. Today, with the participation of many countries in Asia and the former Soviet Union, as much as two thirds of the world’s population is involved in globalisation in some way or another. This expansion and acceleration of globalisation is relatively new. For hundreds of years, English speakers were small in number and the language’s sphere of influence confined to the immediate area. “Even at the time of Shakespeare’s writings, considered a milestone in the development of the English language, English had little value outside of England and was unknown to the rest of the world, not even having established itself fully in Ireland or Wales” (Barber, 1993:234-5). Now, English is the global language. How did English attain this position? Once again, it is important to keep in mind that “the fortunes of languages are not decided on purely linguistic terms but are linked with the power and influence of 492

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their speakers” (Loveday, 1982:22). While English may well have been assisted by its large number of loan words, flexibility in coining new phrases and many monosyllabic words, “had Hitler won World War II and had the United States been reduced to a confederation of banana republics, we would probably use German as the universal language” (Eco, 1995:331). “English did not become the global language because it is intrinsically better than any other language but rather due to cultural, political, economic and social factors” (Crystal, 1997:7;). There is general agreement that the expansion of English across the world was due to “large scale migration and settlement of native language speakers, military imposition (colonialism), commercial or political power and prestige derived from scientific, cultural or other achievements” (Loveday, 1982:186). Whether or not English maintains its current position cannot be predicted with any certainty. After all, Latin and French were once world languages too, albeit on a smaller scale than English. It is possible that English could fragment or change; the many different varieties of English could ultimately become entirely different languages in the same way that Italian, Spanish and French evolved from Latin. “Changes in the global balance of power such as the forming of regional trading blocs or political alliances not involving English speaking countries are not out of the question, nor is a backlash against Western values or the development of important technologies in non-English speaking societies, all of which could impact on the status and usefulness of English” (Wallraff, 2000). However, factors such as electronic communication and air travel mean contact between speakers of different varieties of English is easier and English is unlikely to change beyond recognition. We are, for the foreseeable future at least, stuck with English. As Honey (1997:249) puts it: English is the world language – at least for the next five hundred years, or until the Martians arrive. Something like a quarter of the total population of the globe now speak, or are trying to learn, English – a proportion without precedent in the history of the world. 493

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Conclusion To communicate effectively, one has to understand one’s partners, not only from the linguistic point of view, but also culturally, not to judge too quickly and be deceived by appearances. True communication is eventually making yourself understood and understanding “the other”, as citizens who live in a global world in which knowledge is power and cultures are on a convergence course. References: Barber, C., The English Language, Chapman and Hall, London, 1993. Crystal, D., English as a Global Language, CUP, 1997. Dobson M, Julia, Effective Techniques for English Conversation Groups, English Language Programs Division, United States Information Agency, Washington, 1988. Eco, U., The Search for the Perfect Language, The Making of Europe, 1995. Honey, J., Language is Power, Faber&Faber, London, 1997. Loveday, L., Language Learning, University of Michigan, 1982. Stern, Susan, These Strange German Ways, Atlantik – Bruke, 2000. Stanton, N., Comunicarea, S.C. Ştiinţifică şi Tehnică, 1995. Prutianu, S., Manual de comunicare şi negociere în afaceri, Polirom, 2000. Wallraf, Barbara, What Global Language?, University of York, 2000. ***, Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, Longman, 1994.

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