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The crisis of identity in Toni Morrison's The Bluets Eye and Nella Larsen's Passing
How do the black characters build their identities in Nella Larsen's Passing and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye? The practice of racism has always left negative impacts on the colored and black people in white societies leading them either to self-loath or detesting the white culture. This study is an attempt to provide an answer for the above question and explores what motivates the black characters in the formation of their identities. The thesis will be conducted under the light of double consciousness theory put forward by W.E.B. Du Bois and it also looks at how this double consciousness plays a role in constructing the black characters' racial identities. In this study, I argue that black characters, Clare and Irene in Passing and Pecola in The Bluest Eye, make attempts to establish their identities under the influence of the dominant white culture and reject their black ones, thus they hold double identities. This twoness creates hurdles to their lives because beside their original identity, they should strive to build another one so as to be recognized in the white society. Holding double consciousness, the black characters look at themselves through the lens of the white people. On the contrary, the plight of racism makes Brian in Passing and Claudia in The Bluest Eye reject and create a sort of abhorrence towards the white culture. In contrast to Irene, Clare and Pecola, they are inclined to and endeavor to preserve their black identities and black community values, meanwhile they refute everything belonging to the dominant social white culture. The dominant culture causes the black characters of both novels to suffer and struggle to identify themselves. The holders of double consciousness in both novels are terribly in need of recognition in the white society, which does not recognize them unless they obtain the standards set up by the white dominant culture. The black community in both novels is in a terrible situation, and the black characters are expected to act and work in favor of the white society interests, which look at the black characters as secondary people. In Passing, Irene cannot find security and pleasure in the black community; therefore she feels comfortable and insists on living in New York, furthermore Clare concludes that she is incompetent of escaping her arduous life as a black servant, who is expected to only work hard, as a result she disguises herself as a white woman. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola is rejected in both her community and white society due to her blackness, and this results in her striving to beautify herself by attempting to attain two blue eyes, one of the white standards of beauty. Keywords: Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Double Consciousness, Racial Identity Construction, Passing, The Bluest Eye.
An analysis of a struggle between the worlds of the dominator and the dominated through Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Karel Čapek's R.U.R and Isaac Asimov's I, robot
Despite the fact that not only Mary Shelley's ignored and abandoned Frankenstein but also the robots are generally supposed as the tinny machines in some dystopian works such as Karel Čapek's R.U.R. and Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. These three works report a fiction about the artiificial lives created by human beings and the mutual relationship among these works can be mentioned like that all the authors have displayed the potential danger of man's bequested willing of claiming the role of God. The major characters in Frankenstein or R.U.R. attempt to create an artificial life with an excessive desire to control and reach the secrets of nature. It seems as if it questions about the presence of God when viewed from this side, but the theme which is basically focused on throughout the study is the struggle between the worlds of the dominator and the dominated. At the begining, their purpose is to help the humanity, serving better living conditions but then it is understood that the truth is totally different. The truth is as old as humanity. The powerful feeling that perfectly captures the human being is his hubris. On the other hand, the creature and the robots created by human beings seem to feel mostly lonely and strange in the society. Although they unconcsiously begin to be compared with humans, which partly means that they are seen the same as human beings, they are never accepted as an individual by human society. As a consequence of these damaging feelings, they unfortunately attempt to destroy their creator. It is something like a rule of the real world. First, human beings start thinking that they have godlike power while creating those artificial lives. As a matter of fact, creating such creatures which are really like human beings in some points, humans actually try to destroy their creator, who is God himself. Then, the human made creatures start to destroy human beings. This situation could be a punishment to humankind. Every attempt to destroy to law of the nature brings another destruction on humankind. As seen in the following pages, it has been the same in the history as well and every time a struggle has the one winning. The reason why human beings are looking for better choice than death seems that they are creatures many of whom are afraid of dissappering, whom are consciously willing to have a better human race for developing their civilization, and whom believe in their uniqueness with their unique mind. The idea of being immortal attracts humans' attention. Because death is terrifying to most people and this fear from past to present cause human beings reject the truth and seek for another solution for their conscious or unconscious desires. The message of these three works concerning the future would appear dystopian. However, many of the improvements in socio-economic and socio-political areas affect the situation in the natural frame of man and society that would be considered as some positive advancement yet it would horrify mankind. Because this new world order, combined with mankind's limitless enthusiasm reveals it as a great risk for humanity for he creates an artificial life, and then it turns into a struggle between the dominator and the dominated which ends with potential destruction and degradation of both sides.
The de(con)struction of the man-made language and ideology through female sexuality and textuality in the novels of Virginia Woolf and Erendiz atasü
Language, which is simply defined as the system of words or signs shared by a group of people to communicate and express thoughts, has always played an active and dominant role in creating a subjugated and subservient life for women. In this limited life, civilization is patriarchal, history is HIStory, literature is phallocentric and language is man-made. In order to break the chain of vicious circle, forcing them being the inferior 'others' of men, women seek the ways of de(con)structing all the fixed and the hierarchical structures of male discourse and its man-made language. Among those women are Virginia Woolf and Erendiz Atasü, who assert that women can transcend all patriarchal boundaries between body/mind, female/male and self/other through the 'all-encompassing female language', which enables a non-phallocentric 'feminine writing' practice. Depending on the similar concerns of women/women writers about the man-made language that constructs the rigid patriarchal norms, this study, first, puts forward how phallocentric ideology both affects women and how it is challenged by women's writing. Then, basing its argument on the theories of post-structuralist feminism, it analyzes the feminine texts written by Woolf and Atasü, who live in quite different periods and societies that have various philosophic, religious and cultural practices, in order to find out if the 'female language' shares common features despite all these boundaries. The comparative analysis of the two writers reveals that the female language challenges the speech governed by the phallus and brings down phallocentric discourse by writing the pleasures of female body, which are fluid, multiple, diverse and nonhierarchical. Thus, by liberating female body and experiences from the control and authority of the man-made language and ideologies, this new poetic language de(con)structs the distance between 'body and mind' and achieves 'wholeness' by moving beyond the fixed confines of sexual differences. With this all-encompassing unity, Virginia Woolf and Erendiz Atasü validate the possibility of creating a new world built on a true diversity and culture, where all sexes and genders will be equal. As a result, 'the female language' is proved to be offering an egalitarian basis for all humans, not just for women, by de(con)structing the patriarchally constructed gender roles.
An evaluation of the role of using facebook on language learning among EFL university student
Nowadays, social networking sites are becoming popular throughout the world and have been quite popular among various age group users particularly the young users but small number of researches have been done, especially in Iraq, on how much these websites can contribute to language learning and teaching though they seem to offer plenty of opportunities. This study provides insight into EFL students' opinions and attitudes of participating in activities through Facebook for language learning. Therefore, it aims at examining students' views about the online learning atmosphere after having an eight-week course using Facebook, and to find the role of Facebook in language learning. In addition, the study discusses the overall effects and possible uses for Facebook in the field of foreign language learning and teaching. Forty-six students at the English Department, School of Languages from University of Garmian in the academic year (2015-2016) participated as the sample in this study. They were third year University students in northern Iraq, who voluntarily joined a closed Facebook group. This study used a one-group pretest-posttest design to examine its research questions. A questionnaire form using a 5-point Likert scale was used for both tests with research tasks based on any tasks and lessons to improve English language skills. The results indicated that there is a significant difference between participants' attitudes before and after the course and it showed positive attitudes toward most activities for language learning following the completion of the study compared to prior opinions. In the pre-test, the majority of participants considered Facebook to be generally useful because through this network, they can communicate and share knowledge. After the online course, most students indicated that, Facebook has high possibilities for being used as an effective formal educational tool. Furthermore, the posttest revealed that students' positive attitudes toward the usefulness of social networks increased under the influence of research tasks and activities. Finally, this study confirmed that every participant considered Facebook to be highly effective and potential educational tool, especially for improving language knowledge and performance in various online activities.
On the effectof mind mapping to improve reading comprehension skill of iraqi ESP learners
Over the last two decades using visual organizers such as mind mapping in teaching and learning English language has become one of the wide spread used techniques. The current study concentrated on the impact of using mind mapping as a meaningful learning technique in teaching reading comprehension among the ESP learners. The participants of the study consisted of forty Iraqi students at Erbil Polytechnic University who randomly selected in Technical College-Erbil /Department of Business Management. They were divided into two different groups; experimental group which taught by mind mapping and controlling group which exposed to the traditional methods of teaching reading comprehension, 20 students for each group. Their ages were ranged between (18-19) years. The participants are nineteen males and twenty-one females. At the beginning of the study they were given a pretest to measure their reading comprehension ability. Then, they were given the treatment for twelve weeks. After that, they were tested in the posttest to know whether the experimental groups' knowledge increased comparing to the pretest or not. Finally, the findings illustrated a statistically significance difference between experimental group and the controlling group in terms of posttest achievement in reading comprehension scores. Thus, the mind mapping proved to be beneficial in teaching reading comprehension.
The third space, the desert and a new genesis: Bodies, hallucinatory spaces and hum/animals in Angela Carter's and Edward Abbey's fiction
The British writer Angela Carter and the American environmentalist writer Edward Abbey portray an apocalyptic America based on mythological and religious beliefs, as a third space that has become the site of power—a microcosm for the patriarchal capitalist society that is the "center" of the world's misery with its schizophrenic ideas of democracy, capitalism, and globalism. Capitalism and Globalism for Angela Carter, Edward Abbey, Ronald David Laing, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze induces madness with its discourses and grand narratives about success and growth and destroys the whole world by turning it into a commodity. Starting from the 17th century madness is excluded from the scientific and philosophic discourses so there could be no language between reason and madness as affirmed by Foucault. Discourses about animality and criminality were established in the context of madness. This also led to the racial, religious, lingual establishments consisting of valuable and invaluable human categories. Freudian and Lacanian concepts of lack contributed to further categorization. For R.D. Laing, M. Foucault and G. Deleuze & F. Guattari the institutions of psychoanalysis contribute to capitalisms negative aims. For R. D. Laing madness is not only an individual problem but must be considered in societal terms. And madness maybe considered as a form of personality. With his view of madness he gave voice to the mad people and with his idea of the divided self in existential terms he opened a third space related to perception of madness and personality. On the other hand, for Foucault, the body must be the focus in questions related to the self and madness. The body is shaped via the technologies of the self. With his view that all relations are power relations there is a shift to the space suggesting that all relations are spatial. The body being shaped by these power relations becomes also imprisoned in the soul. Madness may be a response of the individual and may be a form of personality or a choice of existence as suggested by Laing and it maybe a Flight from unwanted experiences, but this wiew will contribute to the ongoing system that will continue to induce madness. Then how is it possible to break away from the effect of prevalent discourses related to power relations and the self restrictive technologies of the self? So there is the necessity to employ Deleuze's "Nomadic thought" for "Flight," whom Foucault calls the philosopher of this century. In Deleuze's philosophy each concept in a thinking process must be analyzed in order to redifine and create new concepts that will enable Flight. Rather than focusing on lacks, gaps must be found in order to fill them with becomings. In doing this, two terms are crucial, active and reactive, are the terms which Deleuze took from Nietzsche and adopted in his own philosophy employing nomadic thought. Active forces are the possessors of power, who rule and dominate massess. Reactive forces are the ones, who react to these discourses, but remain passive as part of the massess. There is the necessity to go beyond and above these discourses to give way to active discourses that surpass those of the dominating and controlling forces. For this reason, there is the need to indulge in active thinking processes and to do philosophy. There is also the need to deconstruct the discourses related to doing philosophy, as it should not be the job of the philosophers only. It should be made the job of any thinking individual. In this process of thinking, the aim of this thesis is to take Homi K. Bhabha's concept of Third Space from its context of psychoanalytical tradition and discuss its application for possibilities of opening new third spaces via Deleuzian nomadic way of thinking. Homi Bhabha calls the" liminal" space between the two World or cultures of the colonizer and colonized as the " Third Space of enunciation." Entering the "Third Space" shows the potentiality of constructing a non-fixed identity, it generates a new sense of identity that maybe "almost the same, but not quite" thus discourses about madness, religion, science, sexuality and criminality can be changed with different discourses. Bhabha, uses the Freudian term, "the unheimlich" which means the 'Unhomeliness,' to suggest that what is involved in the construction of hybrid identity is an "estranging sense of the relocation of home and the world— the unhomeliness—that is the condition of extra-territorial and cross-cultural initiations." Being surrounded by this unhomeliness, the world will be "soundless," and "disorganized" for these hybrid individuals. Such a hybridity takes place as a result of cultural diversity, which keeps the different other under control and gaze in an alien territory. Angela Carter's and Edward Abbey's works present homeless characters as third space hybrid characters, who have open-boarded identity, to create various new concepts related to animality, criminality in its context of madness and to enable the possiblity for flight that is to bring about a new philosophy. This new philosophy is the ecosophy in Angela Carter's and Edward Abbey's novels. These characters are also polyhonic. They are also the outcome of the third space actual and virtual America, particulary the American and Russian Desert. These characters are made active and they use violence in order to give way to the creation of new concepts. For the analysis of these charcters, there is the need of doing an anti-psychiatric reading based on Laing's ideas of madness and a reading based on Deleuze & Guattari's anti-oedipal and ecopsychiatric reading alongside Edward Abbey's environmental philosophy of the self. The whole thesis is established on a reading of R. D. Laing's view of madness and the dynamics of crime in America based on the views of the writer and critic Joyce Carol Oates in her fiction as studied by Dilek Ünügür Çalışkan in her MA thesis Crime and Suicide as a Consequence of Madness in Joyce Carol Oates's Fiction (1998). Carter and Abbey by taking their characters from the capitalist comsumerist madness inducing environments into the Desert,,they try to establish their new philosophy, the ecosophy as the third space in the actual third space desert. The desert as an isolated place is excluded from the discourses of civilization in history and must be included in scientific and philosophical discourses. As Deleuze asserts, concepts have both actual and virtual meaning. The desert having both actual and virtual meaning must co-exist. concepts do not merely exist on their own and should be taken alongside with a cloud of meanings surrounding them. From this viewpoint the desert conveys several meanings, the desert in addition of being a technological testing site is the home for the indegenous inhabitants and several animate and inanimate objects. Unfortunately, it is turned into a place of suffering and pain for many people, among them the indegenous children and women who suffer the most. In addition, the desert is the place for evolution of nonbordered identities as it is a nonbordered open space of the nomad, like Mexican American, who travel in and out of Mexican border. Native American people and Russian Indegenous people are other nomadic people, who were forced to settle down in villages. In their stories the trickster figure and shaman are counter figures, who have counter stories against the mainstream stories of the West. When looked from this perspective Carter's and Abbey's characters are like Deleuzian characters very like in Kafka's minor literature and in minor art like the Chicana painting. Edward Abbey created his self, actually, his ecoself and new environmental discourses in the desert in his autobiography Desert Solitaire and opened a third space in literature. For him, the desert as a wild space must exist and the grand narratives about success and growth that contribute to the destruction of wild spaces must be changed. Reading Angela Carter's novels from this perspective, as she is also fascinated by American open spaces enables the reading of the desert and the open spaces, as the place for the creation of a new self, the ecoself. Her characters are subjected to shape-shifting to create an ecosophy. Alongside R. D. Laing's, M. Foucault's, G. Deleuze's & F.Guattari's views of madness and the self, Edward Abbey's description of the environmental self can be employed in reading of these three novels.for the creation of new selves in the context of the new philosophy, the ecosophy. These novels present mad, hybrid, assembled characters, whose reading cannot be based solely on the reading of the self & other, but there is the need to employ the notions of the self & multiple others. These characters are a little bit indegenous, animal, woman all at the same time and they are polyphonic suggesting nonbordered identity that cannot be categorized and classified according to western viewpoint. They are subjected to violence and experiential learning in the desert. These forms of violence stand for the visible and invisible crimes comitted in the society. By showing these crimes the self can be saved from its confinement in scientific, religious, philosophical and psychoanalytical discourses in history. And this cannot be done by ideology, but it can be done with the effort of the willing individual, who desire change and transformation. Discourses related to West & East and Capitalism & Communism are created in order to establish the third space American character the obeying and consuming Little Man of the mass. The model of the New Little Man is spread to the world through media and Hollywood. In addition stereotypes are created to make the consumerist Little Man common. It is also anounced as the only possibility of man and grand narratives are created that would accompany him as explained in the second part of this thesis. The intellectual background in America is established as the Third Space for philosophical, religious, scientific as well as psychoanalytical discussions and show how bodies and geographical spaces are shaped. The first part of this thesis, as the introduction part, discusses the necessity for a new philosophy employing the nomadic thought via a Deleuzian conceptual toolbox in explaining the hybrid, polyphonic, in-between, homeless characters in these three novels in the light of Laingian, Foucauldian, Deleuzian view of madness and environmental philosophy of Edward Abbey. In the second part concepts that are represented with the allegorical hybrid, polyphonic characters are discussed one by one applying the nomadic way of thinking in the light of R. D. Laing's view of madness of society, M. Foucault's technologies of the self, Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis and ecopsychology. In the third part of this thesis the body in its relation to space, and the discourses about the dynamics of thingification and environmentalism and the elements that shape and map the body and the land, are discussed in the works of Edward Abbey and Angela Carter. There is the discussion of the relation between self & other, self & others, us & them and how the desert is excluded from the discourses of civilization as an isolated space. First there is the dissection of human body and mind, then there is the rigid categorization of the human body with gender roles, and then there is the seperation of the human body from the animal body and lastly there is the seperation of the human body from the body of the Earth. With the disconnection of time and space the human being is doomed to dangle in a void. Now the human being has to look for the ways to connect to other bodies and the body of the Earth. The fourth part of this thesis analyzes The Passion of New Eve, Nights at the Circus, The Monkey Wrench Gang as an active third space and look for possible ways to create the new self in their eco philosophy. It also discusses scientific and psychoanaytical animality discourses based on Freud's view and sexuality discourses in juxtoposition with the counter discourses of animality based on animal symbolism in the indegenous counter stories. In this context western animal symbolism is discussed with the counter indegenous animal symbolism. Madness in this context is again important as it is one of the important characteristics of shamanism. It is important to note that shamanism should not be considered as a new religion. Here, being on the shaman's road and the effort in trying to connect to the sacred spirits is important. In other words it is a quest like pilgrimage that differs from religion to religion that will not be discussed in this thesis. Angela Carter's and Edward Abbey's characters are like a shaman, a historical, a political, a religious, a feminist and an activist figure and appear on other characters' roads as changing and shape-shifting allegorical characters that tell the only necessity of protection of the life on Earth and the preservation of Earth despite the differences in viewpoints. These openbordered identities are forced to use violence as it is a reaction to their violent environment. Their aim is not violence. The behavior of the mad characters can be considered as a reaction as they cannot distinguish real power from the false one. Change can be possible by opening the mind as a third space for thinking and imagination. In the sixth section of the thesis these characters can be thought as a possiblity of the creation of new concepts for the ecosophy presented in the three novels. And these newly created concepts (characters that shifted shape) ) show the possibility of Flight. In conclusion these new becomings can give way to constructive discourses. The various faces and roles of the shaman can show different ways in approaching the world that is the only real thing that makes life possible and is therefore sacred. There is the need to integrate the discourses related to the sacred Earth and life on it, into world religions to save, protect and enlarge the diversity of life on Earth as a third space in the way Carter and Edward Abbey in their eco philosophy do. Being active, indulging in thinking process, accepting only after questioning and challenging dogmas, being aware of real personal needs and real talents, respect for the different and diverse, the effort to connect one's body to the earth's body, not labeling people because of race, color, language and choices can be possible by creating an egoless self, an ecoself that will give way to ecodemocracy. Feminism, ecofeminism, environmentalism, tribal feminism can be active discourses, but being confined in one of these -isms, without being open to difference that can bring about change in eco consciousness would be restricting, considering the evolution and development of these -isms as a consequence, or complimentary part of the former –isms in history makes the rise of ecodiscourses possible. Alongside the scientific third space discussion related to the search of life on other planets like Mars, there is the necessity to create a third space in the present real world in respect of religious discourses that do not only center around the life after death (heaven & hell). World religions should open a third space for the real world rather than virtual world. Angela Carter and Edward Abbey by liberating the eye from the white face of the commanding and threatening master to travel around the world via the animal and black colored, beastlike faces of their characters that replace the white face of Jesus Christ and open a third eye to different perspectives that would allow the creation of new concepts. It also suggests, the possibility to look at the inhuman world through the eyes of different creatures and this is only possible with high levels of empathy. Angela Carter and Edward Abbey in opening a third space of philosophy as ecosophy in their active act of writing and art as they exorcise the evil residing in society.
Raising pragmatic competence in foreign language classrooms
Second language pragmatics has recently been a prevailing topic in the field of second language teaching. While many studies have been conducted about why, how and what to incorporate regarding the teaching of pragmatic competence, there are still unsolved issues about them. This study addresses the possibility of developing pragmatic competence in EFL classrooms through well-designed curricular courses. The study also examined the impact of proficiency in expediting pragmatic production in English L2 learners. Fifty senior university students (25 males; 25 females) with English high proficiency attended the course, participating in a pre-test before instruction began and a post-test upon course completion. The study addresses several significant questions, namely the relationship of proficiency and development of pragmatic competence, the impact of class-based explicit instruction in raising competence, and the role of gender as an influencing factor affecting competence. Unlike previous studies, this study covered more than one aspect of pragmatic production, including inference, implicatures, structural errors in meaning and interpretation, and speech act (requests, refusals, apology and offer). The study produced key findings that can help inform and improve the incorporating of pragmatic competence in language study; proficiency level significantly impacts pragmatic competence; pragmatic-based curricula are supportive in constructing competence; gender factor does not affect learning pragmatics, as both genders performed similarly in the tests. Eventually pragmatic competence can expectedly be raised via classrooms-based courses.
Political propaganda in Shakespeare's history plays
This dissertation has attempted to understand the political propaganda in the history plays of William Shakespeare and draw connection between the Shakespearean Stage and the mass media of our age in terms of the loss of the real concept of Jean Baudrillard and social psychology techniques such as primacy effect, cognitive dissonance theory and classical conditioning of the modern age. Analysing Macbeth, King John, Richard II and Richard III in the light of new historicism and deconstruction theories has given the chance of crosschecking the findings about the loss of the real through two different methods. Both the outcomes of the new historicist analysis, which demonstrated the distortions of the historical events from the windows of the Renaissance authors like Raphael Holinshed, Edward Hall, Richard Grafton and George Buchanan, and the outcomes of the deconstruction which revealed the binary oppositions causing violent hierarchies for the favour of the monarchy have indicated the fact that Shakespeare distorted historical realities in his history plays. Both the loss of the real as the outcome of the new historicist and deconstructive analyses, and Shakespeare's quality in using social psychology techniques such as classical conditioning, primacy effect or cognitive dissonance theory have enabled this dissertation to reinterpret Shakespeare from a different perspective. William Shakespeare, probably the greatest playwright of all times, always allows us to restudy and reinterpret his plays in the light different methods and techniques. As long as human being advances in time, science and technology, his plays allow us to reinterpret them from different perspectives. Therefore, it is possible to maintain that Shakespeare is never out of date and will always attract the attention of the researchers. Keywords: Elizabeth theatre, William Shakespeare, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, deconstruction, new historicism, social psychology, simulacra and simulation
The crisis of identity in postcolonial literature
During the second half of the twentieth century a new era arose when many countries gained independence, transitioning from colony to country. According to literary critics and theorists, the term "postcolonial" is defined as all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. Colonialism has had an immeasurable influence on history of the world, societies and individuals. It has penetrated the larger issues of culture, race, gender, and identity. Most themes that postcolonial theory and literature deal with are race, gender, ethnicity, identity and culture. One of the controversial issues of post colonialism is the question of identity and culture. In the modern world with the increase of immigrant numbers, hybrid nations, and constitutions of countries with different cultural diversities, the question of identity came to the surface. Theorists have paid a great attention to identity issues. Franz Fanon's argued about the consequences of colonialism and the change formed by the experience of immigration. For Edward Said, the central point of identity construction is the ability to resist and to recreate oneself as a postcolonial, anti-imperialist subject. At the same time, postcolonial novelists especially writers in former British colonies attracted the attention of readers and literary prizes. These novelists exposed and expressed the conditions of identity crises that emerged in postcolonial period. Their novels rarely avoided or escaped from the presence of Diasporas and exile and matters connected to identity. Chapter 1 of this thesis introduces the study and a brief account of the meaning and historical background of the term "postcolonial"; it also sheds light on some important issues of postcolonialism and its most commonly discussed terms, such as diaspora, hybridity, and displacement. In addition, it explains the nature of the novel and of the period and its emergence, figures and characteristics. The theoretical approach of the dissertation is discussed in Chapter 2, which explains briefly postcolonial theory, and then investigates outstanding theorists, Stuart Hall, Fanon, Said, Bhabha, Bill Ashcroft, Eduard Glissant, and others. These theorists have given greater attention to explaining identity crisis in the postcolonial era because of its importance in the complexity surfaced after colonialism. Chapter 2 also argues the value of identity as a thematic subject in the postcolonial period and literature. The chapter's main discussion focuses on the theorists' arguments about identity in the postcolonial world and their views about the construction of identity in former colonized countries. In particular, they note immigrants from postcolonial countries who suffered the diasporas and the dilemma of constructing a coherent identity. Chapter 3 is devoted to analyzing the novel The Lonely Londoners (1956), by the Trinidadian author Sam Selvon, and its connections to postcolonial theory, especially Fanon and Said, whose have discussed identity, homelessness, and the diasporas of the Caribbean immigrants in the postcolonial period. Chapter 3 also examines The Lonely Londoners as a textual space concerned with picturing the specific experiences of a marginalized and diasporic group of individuals encountering the colonial "centre" of London. Chapter 4 analyzes the crisis of identity in Nobel Prize-winner Naipaul's The Mimic Men (1967). The chapter derives its argument from postcolonial theorists Fanon and Said arguments about mimicry and the crisis of identity felt by Naipaul's protagonist. The discussion shows the impact of colonialism on individual ambivalence and the loss of identity and how this leads to an imitation of the colonizer's identity. Chapter 5 also shows the findings of the study, arrived at from the above postcolonial novels and analyzed according to arguments of postcolonial theories in issues of the identity crisis. The conclusion shows how pro-colonized people faced their crisis of identity as a dilemma, ascribed to the impact of colonial tradition; the history of colonialism weighed heavily even on immigrants who became citizens of colonizer countries. Finally, the strategy of colonial power has had an effective influence on colonized people losing their sense of identification and becoming mimics of their host countries and while remaining with a sense of homelessness.
Samuel Beckett ve Ferhan Şensoy'da uzam ve güç
The aim of this study is to analyze the concept of space and investigate the theory of power, the effects of power and panopticism over the characters in the plays of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame, and Ferhan Şensoy's Güle Güle Godot (Good Riddance Godot). Theories on space, power and panopticism of Michel Foucault form philosophical background of the study. The study is comprised of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the research questions and the second discusses Michel Foucault and his philosophy. The third elaborates the Theatre of the Absurd, Samuel Beckett, Turkish Traditional Theatre and Ferhan Şensoy and outlines the plots and the background of the plays in question. The fourth chapter addresses the research questions and carries the discussion forward into analysis of the plays. Detailed analysis and the discussion of the concept of space is presented for all three plays. The six principles of heterotopias of Foucault are examined in the plays in detail. Power in the plays is scrutinized and how the characters are affected by power is analyzed and discussed. The effect of panopticism is studied and the manners of the characters against panopticism is investigated. The final chapter of the study synthesizes the answers to the research questions. The answers that are found in the plays shed light to the societies that the plays belong to. The findings demonstrate that Şensoy's characters are more hopeful for their future than Beckett's. Beckett's characters are either in restrained action or in total confinement. Şensoy's characters even after psychological and physical destruction recover quickly and try to establish their own authority. Personal ties among the characters are stronger in Good Riddance Godot than they are in Beckett's plays. In Beckett's plays, there is an interchangeable power relationship between the characters, and this power relation is based on mutual need. On the other hand, there is a pure and sincere friendship among people in Good Riddance Godot. All the characters in the three plays studied are waiting but in different manners and with different expectations. They all want to change their circumstances and try to find answers to the questions mostly about themselves and the world around them. In Beckett, the questions remain unanswered, but in Şensoy, the main problem is at least answered.
The fall of masculinity through transfiguration in virginia woolf's "Orlando" and Angela Carter's "The Passion of New Eve"
Throughout centuries, 'sex and gender' phenomena have always been the unvarying subject of the primordial argument in the whole world, as people have been put into hard-edged stereotypes under the title of two certain roles "man" and "woman". However, as Judith Butler would also put it "gender is fluid" and we need to look at it from a broader perspective. Only if we remove the borders of traditional gender roles, can we see the fluidity and realize that there are also other gender related aspects like "Transgenderism", "Transfiguration" and "Transformation". The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter and Orlando by Virginia Woolf are two works which abolish the 'hard-edged' borders and deconstruct the traditional gender roles through Transfiguration. On the one hand, Angela Carter breaks down the hierarchical structure of the phallocentric, language, through 'transformation' of the two characters in her novel, Evelyn and Tristessa. On the other hand, Virginia Woolf melts down the solidity of the male centred world by fictionalising an ambiguous world where the main character experiences different gender roles via transfiguration. This study will account for how the balance of power replaces, how the concept of gender is associated with this balance of power with the help of Judith Butler's gender performativity and Michel Foucault's power-pleasure relationship theories by looking at the reasons and results of the transfiguration and the transformation of the characters in Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Angela Carter's The Passion of the New Eve.
Catholicism as an obstacle, or fostering, feminism in the twenty-first century
This thesis is addressed to our generation and to future ones, where - especially in the rich Western countries - respect for the person in all of his/her social, cultural, religious and emotional complexity is becoming lost. Our choice of this Thesis topic is influenced by the fact that never before our modern age have we witnessed such an attack on the family - in which the woman plays a key role. She is, in our opinion, the mortar that holds together the bricks that make up our civilized society. Hyper-reality has taken the place of reality, and the map has become the territory, as Boudrillard claimed; history is no longer based on the "verum ipsum factum" of G.B. Vico, but rather on the "interpretation of fact" anticipated by Nitzche and continued until the present postmodernism era. The division between "res cogitans" and "res extensa" of Descartes in the sixteenth century, which still influences Western thought, led to the extreme result of the exaltation of the object over the subject, and of the body over the spirit. We have reached a point of complete objectification and commmodification of the body in a society where production and reproduction of the object are the idols held as necessary for the welfare of the modern globalized world. In this situation, the wellness of the individual has a priority over the well-being of the collective, and the slogan "the body is mine and I manage it", especially among women, is the focus of a lot of commentary in both the literary and media fields, and also amongst politics and law. We are witnessing a "globalization of indifference" towards anything that does not produce wealth. In our time, it seems that nothing can be opposed to the ideology of "pensèe unique" or "weak thought" which tends to give the impression that the preferences of individuals have the same status as their rights. We argue in this Thesis that this ideology leads to a culture of weak and restricted thoughts, based solely on personal preferences and conformed to the spirit (logic) of the world that seeks to make humanity into a thoughtless mob – totally lacking in real freedom. Most of all, however, this ideology suggests to humanity a very dangerous offer in proposing a prêt-à-porter ['ready to wear'] way of thinking according to personal taste: 'I think as I like!' and therefore, "I do as I please". This individualist way of thinking, mainly based on the objectification of the human being, is one of the most divisive and dangerous elements to be introduced into our society. In fact, it is taking those of us who are living in the current post-modern globalized world into a "globalization of indifference" where the relationship with the other is being killed - leaving each person, and especially women – alone, and suffering unaccompanied through their existential problems. From the seventies onward, feminist lay movements have claimed roles for women that are vigorously different from the stereotype of the "mother-wife" and "angel of the house" (as Virginia Woolf cited in her work, "A Room of One's Own") and have violently attacked the Catholic Church and accused it of misogyny and carrying out a "demonization" of the female body and its sexuality. In fact, for a long time, when scholars studied the sources of anti-feminism, they considered Judeo-Christian culture as a primary obstacle to the emancipation of women. Certainly, from the origins of Judeo-Christian practices until modern times, the relationship between men and women has been of the patriarchal type. This was justified and supported by a male interpretation of the Bible, which for centuries led women to live in a marginalized and often servile relation to men. And in this context, lay feminist movements consider Italy to be one of the most anti-feminist countries in Europe, due to its obedience to the Pope, and its adherence to the Magisterium of the Church in defense of the natural family and in protection of the dignity of the human person from the moment of his/her conception. Therefore, the (pseudo) liberating individualism of the "single" thought has led in recent decades to the growth in Europe of a society capable of regarding certain members as "waste". This thought has increasingly eroded the traditional family consisting of: father, mother and children that should be regarded both historically and in the future as the vital cell of our society. The importance of our research consists in proposing to the reader a point of view that is different from the single thought; this alternative perspective allows for the emancipation of women and proposes that they be appreciated for their own mental and physical integrity: body–spirit. It is the intention of this Thesis to show that through honoring this body-spirit integrity in women, we have the opportunity to preserve and promote one of the most precious assets that we have for the progress of society as a whole, and for women as members of that society. Our thesis demonstrates how the aim of the Catholicism, in our postmodern era, is the promotion of the sacredness of the human being in all spheres of society without putting women in opposition to men, but rather, working together with him to build a New Humanism in which the word feminism makes no sense anymore.
The representation of existential anguish in absurd drama as reflected in Beckett's play: Waiting for Godot
This thesis intends to analyse the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett in terms of Existentialism within the genre of the Theatre of Absurd by investigating through the setting, context and use of language. It is argued in this thesis that as Samuel Beckett is concerned about human beings' problems of existence in the world in his plays, most of the time, he portrays the representation of human condition which makes his plays to be interpreted in the light of Existentialism. In the thesis, Existentialism as a philosophical movement has been introduced with its prominent names and examples, also the Theatre of the Absurd is explained in detail with its basic qualities to shed a light on how the characters' dialogues, monologues construct their existential anguish through the play while arguing that there are many existentialistic qualities in the play such as characters' searching for meaning and realizing the meaninglessness of the world and nothingness in the process of their waiting for Godot. Additionally, the link between Existentialism and The Theatre of Absurd is illustrated with a view of the play to prove that Waiting for Godot carries the traces of both Existentialism and The Theatre of the Absurd while the characters suffer from the existential anguish. More specifically, this study tries to reveal the fact that Vladimir and Estragon, the main characters in the play Waiting for Godot suffer from existential anguish and basically explores how the existential anguish is reflected through the analysis of the characters' language by means of dialogues, choice of words, repetitions and silences.
Politics of location: Spatial images and imaginings in David Greig's plays
Space and place determine how we perceive, experience, understand and interpret the world. Since the 'spatial turn' in the 1980s, space has become a popular multidisciplinary concern in literature, human geography, sociology, fine arts, and architecture. The aim of this research is to explore David Greig's social and literary significance in the last two decades of British theatre and to investigate a spatial analysis of his work. The thesis analyses his stagework as a combination of political content and a richly allegorical style. Place has a vital importance in David Greig's plays. In his sets and settings there are evocations of real places through verbal and visual spatial references. Drawing on theorists of space such as Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Soja, Edward Relph and Marc Augè, the thesis argues that theatre is a heterotopic space in which one can map linguistic geography, and that Greig's metaphorical use of space proposes a sense of non-place and placelessness in the contemporary world. The thesis focuses on the written text rather than the aesthetics of performance. Greig creates a metaphorical meaning for the mappable place. His mimetic and diegetic places are combined with characters' emotions to represent a sensual dimension. He breaks the naturalism's fourth-wall through certain characters in each play who are in direct contact with the audience/reader. Eventually the thesis evidences that theatre is a heterotopic place, a production, a thirdspace, a geopathology where space turns into place. Greig evokes real places to explore the fluid borders between fact and fiction. He explores the interconnectedness between individual private lives and large scale political issues. The spatial images and imaginings used in his texts suggest both metaphoric and geographical reference. His plays both political and lyrical; they employ innovative theatrical forms and explore daring social and political themes such as racism, xenophobia, globalisation, homelessness, displacement, rootedness, mobility, and alienation. The implicit references of the Afghanistan war in Dunsinane and the suggestions for the Balkan unrest in Europe by means of powerful and vivid spatial images make his plays universal and timeless. This research indicates that the texts should not be reduced to a series of simplistic definitions; rather they should be appreciated for their richness and complexity. Spatiality is only one of the many perspectives to anatomise the plays' various and intricate insights.
Memory in the age of "Hearth and Salamander'' and "Memory Hole" memory and totalitarianism in George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Regarding Pierre Nora's contribution on the memory studies and Hanna Arendt on totalitarianism ,Arendt believes that memory is dangerous for the totalitarian powers. That is why they deliberately tackle memory for the sake of their present interests, in the result the hegemonic powers erase some parts of the past, some are more focused and others are forgotten. Nora states that some subjects are very crucial and they have energetic power because those subjects are capable of retrieving the past memories. In both the novels the past memories are erased and updated, and the authoritarian regimes of both novels prohibited those subjects (ink, book, diary and pen). In this thesis, memory is used to indicate the past (history and knowledge) of the nations. The totalitarian regimes in both the novels in a minute by minute manner update and destroy undesired parts of the past heritage of their community. The issue of memory in both dystopian fictions is paid much consideration by the totalitarian regimes of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, because it links with the identity and unity of the nation. The past is not what the totalitarian regimes desire for that is why the past is rubbed out by the dominant power in both novels, instead the original past; the totalitarian powers invent new types of memory that fulfills their ideological ends. For exposing and implementation the new memory media, language and technology have a great impact. Clinging to the past memories makes outstanding transition in the life of the protagonists.
Cross Roads: A fantastic Journey from Alice's Advantures in Wonderland to the Chronicles of Narnia
This qualitative-analytic study has been designed to compare two fantasy novels: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia. The current study reveals many similar points between the works of Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis. The commonality of the two writers lies in the fact that they apply fantastic elements and anthropomorphic beings as tools to discuss the problems in their society and it wouldn't be wrong to say that, these stories serve both children and adults. Another commonality of the works under study is that the writers no longer apply Realism or Naturalism. Their claim is that there is no actual truth and everything is relative, that literature is self-contained and everything is in the hand of the writer. Even though they belong to different times, they are of the same opinion concerning Modernism and modernist perspectives. Both writers move from reality to subjectivity which is a representation of Modernism. This can be explained by their emphasis on mind. Mind has the significant role in Lewis Carroll's fantasy world and C.S. Lewis's ideological world. Lewis Carroll's focus is more on the role of mind since he takes the reader on a journey in to a fantasy world that requires mental engagement in the story. The mental engagement is a necessity to proceed with the journey and to enjoy the scenes delineated by the writer. C.S. Lewis's work requires a mental presence as well. However, what makes it different from Lewis Carroll's book is the theological color. According to the current analysis, it can be argued that despite the fact that both writers share the same modernist style, a slight difference exists between their works regarding the main themes. While C.S. Lewis's work is more engaged at theological and ideological themes, Lewis Carroll's work takes the reader into a fantasy world which is not necessarily based on religion and religious concepts. This is in keeping with Brazier's view who argues that C. S. Lewis is critical of Modernism and deals with new aspects and changes on human existence which result in rejecting God. From another perspective, this analysis brings up the two concepts of childhood and adolescence. In an attempt to compare childhood and adolescence stages in Alice in Wonderland, it is revealed that Alice tries to find out who she is through her journey. Carroll adopts many childlike and adult features at the same time. As Alice keeps changing, she begins questioning the real-world issues which are in line with the writer's interpretation of Realism. Alice enters into a stage of uncertainty. She feels confused since the dominant rules that she used to be familiar with do not apply anymore. Wonderland represents a world which is run by a totally different system. This finding is in keeping with Johannessen's study who argues that Alice tries to understand who she really is since nothing seems right anymore. C.S. Lewis's work on the other hand, is more theological and religion-oriented. He mainly issues the existence of God and includes Christian elements in his stories. In general, it can be argued that both Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis were religious men of their time and fantastic literature has made it possible for them to imply common issues of their time.
On sekizinci yüzyılda İtalyan teknik literatürü, Giovanni Polini'nin bilimsel düşüncesi ve aydınlanma
Translating a text written in the technical Italian language of the eighteenth century, the time of Enlightenment, into contemporary English involves twofold process,i.e. interlingual translation, when it occurs between two languages, and the intralingual translation, when it occurs in the same language; the translation becomes harder when the language is subjected to changes over the centuries. On this purpose, the thesis puts three languages and cultures in confrontation: old Italian, modern Italian and modern English involving, therefore, both interlingual translation, between two languages, and the intralingual translation, only in one language. Taking into consideration the above-mentioned construct, the current thesis aims at exploring and discussing the strategies used in translating Le Memorie Istoriche della Gran Cupola Vaticana (the Historical Memories of the great Dome of the Vatican Temple) of Giovanni Poleni, from the eighteenth century Italian Language into modern English. The attention of my thesis was on the first part of the text which was translated in a literary mode according to Chesterman's theory. Thus, functionality of the target text and the loyalty towards the source text, two important considerations taken in the translated text, are employed as an empirical data to explain to which extent the text adapts to the reader of contemporary English language maintaining the ideas and the style of the source text. Therefore, the present study analyzes the extratextual and intratextual factors which have determined the translation. The intratextual factors serve to exert strategies according to Christiane Nord's translation oriented text analysis, which underlines the importance of the communicative function as prior to the semantic and syntactic features; and at the same time refers to Hans Vermeer's Skopos theory according to which the aim or skopos determines the product, which is the translation. The extratextual analysis contextualizes the sender and the text in a historical and cultural background; whereas the intratextual factors analyze the subject matter, the form, the lexical features and the syntactic structures of the ST.
Woman, Desire and Education in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Villette
The thesis deals with the position of women in the society and women's nature and role in the Victorian period. Charlotte Brontë's novels Jane Eyre and Villette portray how it was to be a woman in the Victorian age. Thus, this thesis is analysis of these two novels. This analysis had as its aim to truthfully show what were the lives of women like and what it meant to be a woman in the Victorian period. The thesis is divided into five parts. The first part is introduction, the second part deals with the theoretical background where I went over the Victorian age and women in the Victorian age, female subjectivity, education of women and desire and sexuality in the novel. Also, I provided some information about the author of the above mentioned two novels, Charlotte Brontë. Psychological analysis of the novels is also provided in this part. The third part deals with the novel Jane Eyre. In the third part, I provided general information about the novel and dealt with the position of women as seen in the novel Jane Eyre. Here, I provided my conclusions of the analysis when it comes to female subjectivity, women's question, education of women and female desire in this novel. These three subchapters gave theoretical view of these issues mixed with the analysis of the novel. The fourth part deals with the novel Villette. In the fourth part, I provided analysis about the women's question, education of women and female desire conducted in the previous novel, took place in this novel as well. Hence, in these three subchapters I went over the women's question and talked about their political, social, legal and educational rights in the Victorian England and how they are presented in the novel. Also, in the second subchapter I wrote about the education of women in Villette, taking into an account the reality and the situation in the novel, and thus I compared and contrasted the two and put my conclusions on the paper. In the last, third subchapter, I wrote about the desire in Villette and offered a view on the sexuality of the main heroine that defies all the norms and rules of the golden ages of Queen Victoria's reign. In the end, the last, fifth part, is the conclusion where I summarized all the points made in the above mentioned chapters.
The effect of oral corrective feedback on the article errors in l3 English: Prompts vs. recasts
This study examines the effect of prompts and recasts in providing CF for the article errors by Kurdish-Arabic bilingual adolescents who learn English as a third language. For this purpose, 39 lower-intermediate Kurdish-Arabic bilingual adolescent learners of L3 English were tested on three tests: pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests involving articles in four contexts; [+def, +spec], [+def, -spec], [-def, +spec], [-def, -spec], in L3 English. The participants were randomly put into three groups: (1) prompt group (n =15), (2) recast group (n = 14), and (3) no feedback group (n = 10). Each group completed 28 dialogues, which included articles in a forced choice elicitation task as a pre-test. The same test was given to the three groups as post- and delayed posttests. Between the pre-test and the post-test, the prompt group and the recast group took a treatment. The treatment involved an interactional activity (dialogue build) which aimed the FCET, eliciting the students to make dialogues in which the former took CF in the form of prompts, and the latter took it as recasts for their article errors in L3 English during the activity. Results of the FCET showed that both prompt and recast groups developed on the posttest. Whilst, prompt group significantly outperformed recast group on the long term, recast and no feedback performed equally at delayed posttest. A two-way ANOVA of the accuracy data showed that there were no significant differences among the three groups in the pretest and posttest. However, there were very significant differences between the prompt and the other two groups in the long term in which the prompt group outperformed the other two groups. Analysis of the error data revealed that the errors mostly fell in substitution, which indicated that the students were fluctuating between choosing the correct article to use in all the semantic contexts especially in [-def, +spec] context. Given the Fluctuation Hypothesis, L1 speakers of non-article languages will either fluctuate between definiteness and specificity when learning a language that encodes the features [+definite] or [+specific] or will select the appropriate value for the target language (Ionin, 2003, p. 23). However, L1 Kurdish and Arabic both are [+article] languages based on definiteness. Our results suggest that a specificity-based choice of articles can occur even when the L1 is an article-based language which is based on definiteness. Prompt group significantly made fewer errors than the recast and the no feedback groups in the long term.
Incidental vocabulary learning through reading authentic text
This study examines whether authentic reading texts are more effective than simplified reading texts in improving incidental vocabulary learning in instructed foreign language classes. We compared the vocabulary development and retention of randomly divided two intermediate level groups through matching, sentence completion and production tasks after reading authentic story and simplified authentic story. Results of the pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test showed us that both of the groups could boost their vocabulary knowledge and usage however, experimental group given authentic text, achieved higher scores in all tests. Consequently; authentic text has been proved to be beneficial for the students at intermediate level without simplification, as the rich input together with interaction and attention leads to better vocabulary development.
Beyond holocene: The question of peak oil in eco-fiction
During the latest decades, significant issues that are correlated with maintaining the environmental balance and the depletion of oil reserve started to gain wide popularity amid serious challenges the world is facing today. Commonly, the nature-writings and sciences are interacting with each other in imaging, picturing out and forming the humans' life. The first question that comes to mind is what about the contribution of literature as an active role in stirring up the cultural imagination? In a point of fact, many Eco-critics and scholars started to call for a deeper invest in geological and ecological disciplines, noting that Eco-criticism is regarded as the interdisciplinary field that calls for a deeper understanding of both humans and the nonhuman's world. Accordingly, Eco-fiction works have come to evaluate the sustainable means of life, by referring to cases strained the dominant culture like the impacts of the world-wide immoderation of climate, pollution and the depletion of oil. In response to the challenges that contemporary societies pose to literature, it is important to shed light on novels that demonstrate different approaches in quest to see how the Eco-centric topics are represented and what is the relevance of oil implication? Considering the fact that Michael Crichton's State of Fear still fuels contradicted Eco-centric views and attitudes, however, focusing on the debated work aforesaid in addition to Alex Scarrow's Last light is an attempt to show that as an acknowledged approach, Geoscience in literature is better suited to arouse common sense on many phenomena articulated with the surrounding world. It can be argued that, by adopting this understanding, the two novels are able to hold on to the traditional literary concepts; thereby, constructs the route by which the development of Eco-fiction is likely to take.
The effect of reading novels on Iraqi EFL learners, vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension ability
The study investigated the effect of reading novels in learning English as a foreign language(EFL)among sixty-five students at the Department English Language and literature/ Sulaimani University. The participators were intwo groups (control and experimental groups) including both sexes (39 male and 21 female). All of them were third-year students; they had already studied literature for two years prior to their participation. order to determine the effect of reading novels on language learning, it was necessary to measure placement test, vocabulary and reading comprehension tests, Rosetta Stone software for vocabulary knowledge and Tell Me More software for reading comprehension. The findings showed that control and experimental groups both reported higher than vocabulary in language learning with the mean score of pre-test 15.16, and that for post-test being 17.03. The findings also revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between both groups' vocabulary knowledge, while a statistically significant difference was found to exist in the post-test. The findings showed that reading comprehension reported higher than control and experimental groups in pre-test with mean 14.30 while in post-test, control and experimental groups scored higher than Reading comprehension with mean 17.03. Again, there was no statically significant difference in the mean of the scores of the pre-test of reading comprehension of both groups, while statistically significant difference in the mean of the scores of the post-test of reading comprehension of both groups existed. Correlation analysis was carried out to determine the relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge, adhering to the administration of tests. In both groups, the results demonstrated that there was appositive relationship between the students' reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge in their learning of English as a foreign language.
Love and War from (Both arms and the man) and Majör Barbara
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), the Irish comic playwright, literary critic, and a Fabian socialist thinker occupies a prominent position in the history of modern English thought in general and English drama in specifics. This is mainly due to his unconventional treatment of the conventional topics or ideas in his plays. Shaw wrote sixty-three plays which are all comedies that criticize wittily the social diseases prevalent in his society during his lifetime. Shaw's plays are dramas of ideas. He deals with many themes in his plays such as morality, wealth/poverty, society and class, hypocrisy, power, religion, heroism, violence, war and love. This research analyzes two themes of love and war in his two well-known plays Arms and the Man (1894) and Major Barbara (1905). In the study, the complex meanings of love and war will be tackled with special focus on the unconventional outlook of the writer about the traditional concepts of love and war. The aim of the study is to confirm the intermingle of love and war in Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man as well as Major Barbara. The approach chosen by the researcher of the study will be cultural materialism, as it is broadly known as new historicism. This approach will focus on the social, political, and cultural events that happened during the period of Shaw's lifetime and how those events are reflected and have been dealt with in the mentioned dramatic works under study.
Multiple intelligence theory in multiple children: Twins and triplets
The aim of this dissertation is to investigate 6/7- 11/12 year-old 679 co-twins and 33 triplet siblings' multiple intelligence types in Turkish context and to find out how they differ in terms of birth order, zygote type, gender and grade level factors. The subjects, aged 7- 12 were chosen from the 1st and 6th grade levels, in 42 schools (21 Primary, 21 Middle schools) in Esenler/Istanbul during the Spring Term of 2014-2015 and the Fall Term of 2015-2016 academic years. The data of the study was gathered through two data collection instruments. The first data collection instrument was an adapted version of Shearer's (2007) "Multiple Intelligences Development Assessment Scales (MIDAS)" and the second one was a "Family Information Form". The analysis of the data obtained from 679 co-twins and 11 sets of triplets (712 children in total) tried to answer four research questions. The first research question aimed at investigating the relationship between birth order and multiple intelligence, and it was found that there was no statistically significant relation between birth order (Child A, Child B and Child C) and multiple intelligence types in twins and triplets. The second research question focused on analyzing the effect of twin types (zygote types) on multiple intelligence type, and it was found that fraternal/DZ twins had significantly higher scores on verbal/linguistic and musical intelligences than identical/MZ twins. However, zygote type was not considered and analyzed in triplet students since their zygote types were not known. The third research question was on the analysis of gender factor among twins and triplets and it was found that female co-twins had significantly higher scores on verbal, musical and inter-personal intelligences than male co-twins. However, male co-twins had significantly higher scores than female co-twins on mathematical intelligence. As gender factor was analyzed, no significant difference was found in triplet students. Last research question aimed at investigating the relationship between grade level and multiple intelligence in multiple children. It was found that there were significant differences at four intelligences in twins: mathematical/logical intelligence, kinesthetic/bodily intelligence, nature intelligence and intrapersonal/individual intelligence. At mathematical/logical intelligence,5th grade students had significantly higher scores than 1st grade students. At kinesthetic/bodily intelligence,5th grade students had significantly higher scores than 1st and 2nd grade students. At intra-personal/individual intelligence, 4th, 5th and 6th grade students had significantlyhigher scores than 1st grade students. At nature intelligence, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students had significantly higher scores than 1st grade students. Among triplet siblings, it was observed that 6th, 5th and 4th graders have significantly higher spatial/visual intelligence scores than 1st graders. As a result, it was seen that even though twins were born together, their multiple intelligence rates and types were different from each other, and were affected by "twin type", "gender" and "grade level" factors but not by "birth order" factor. In triplets, it was found that there was a statistically significant relation between grade level factor and multiple intelligence types but not between gender and birth order factors and multiple intelligence types. Keywords: Twins, Triplets, Multiple Intelligences.
The Iraqi EFL pre-service student teachers' on teaching grammar at ELT departments of Salahaddin University in Erbil
This study aims chiefly to know the pre-service teachers' perspectives about learning and teaching grammar at ELT departments in Erbil especially English departments at Salahaddin university-SUE in Erbil, because the majority of pre-service teachers suffer from the pattern and the old methods and basically attempt to teach and learn a foreign language in a new and quick. Consequently, many of pre-service teachers favor at teaching and learning grammar with four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). But some pre-service teachers are against this perspective and likes to learn grammar as an independent course. There are obvious that language is null without grammar. Yet, some linguists believe that grammar is not needed while some claim that grammar is necessary and should be taught. If teaching grammar is needed, what approach teachers should follow and use. To investigate the aim of the study, both approaches qualitative and quantitative has been adopted in which the approaches to teaching grammar, the benefits and drawbacks of each approach are discussed. A questionnaire was administered to the participants. The questionnaire was administered to 60 pre-service teachers who were randomly selected from College of Languages, Education and Basic education at Salahaddin University for the academic year of 2015-2016, they were chosen as the sample of this research. The questionnaire was used to gather the data about their perspectives to teaching and learning grammar. The results confirm that students are motivated to learn English language unconsciously and to be exposed to English language for learning it and majority of the pre-service teachers think that grammar should be taught in learning English because grammar plays a crucial role in language learning and teaching and it helps the learners to improve their grammatical and communicative competence. The participants, also think that the pedagogical objectives can be attained in teaching grammar courses and achieve the learning outcomes.
Analysis of George Orwell's nineteen eighty-four narrative within the framework of literary semiotics theory
Semiotics is a critical approach to analyze and interpret the facts and incidents related to societies and their cultures. Therefore, it is possible to define it as an art of signification of signs produced by people. Semiotic theory enables to analyze both linguistic and non-linguistic signs including implicit and abstract concepts within a system. The system represents a specific semantic universe which is created thanks to the articulation of those concepts and signs with each other. In a semiotic sense, semiotics is the system which has the characteristics of being an umbrella term divided into many sub-divisions. Whether scientific or non-scientific, each of these divisions stands for different branches. One of those branches is the literature of which semantic universe is created by the intimate interaction of signs with each other. It is the literary language, far from conventional language, that makes the texts precious and complicated. The value and complexity of the work of art stem from the linguistic revolution of its author who generates the text mysteriously. As a result of the usage of implicit signs and symbols, the text turns into a enigmatical meaningful whole which needs to be discovered. It is the work of semioticians to unfold that arcane semantic universe, which is full of complex and implicit signs, systematically. Semioticians are the experts who can always ascribe a meaning to the goings-on around them with their metalinguistic ability. They are the sign hunters who can investigate the meaning formation process of all kinds of texts to reveal all the implicit and invisible facts to make the work of art understandable. The research object of this study is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four narrative which is presented with a sophisticated structural organization from the deep to the surface meaning layers. What makes the text worthwhile is, in fact, the world of imagination of Orwell and the mastery of him in selection and combination of signs. Literary semiotics criticism and its analysis procedure are mainly considered through the analysis as the focal point of this study is related to language and literature. Thus, the study has been conducted with an interdisciplinary perspective based on language, literature and semiotic fields. In this respect, the structural organization of the semantic universe of Orwell's narrative has been analyzed within the scope of Greimas's semiotic analysis trajectory. Through the analysis, a systematic procedure from the surface to the deep structures has been strictly followed. Accordingly, this study consists of five main parts: In the first part, a general discussion related to the semiotic criticism theory that established the base of the study was initiated. Through the discussion, the significant elements that contributed to the formation of sings as a meaningful whole were addressed within the scope of the terms sign, signifier, signified, and signification. Then the background and purpose of the study with the main and sub-research questions were explained. In the second part, the premises of general semiotics with leading figures and the contributions of their studies to the contemporary semiotics were discussed. Later, the relationship of the studies of these figures with the literary semiotics was handled. In the third part, the historical development of the literary semiotics theory as a transdisciplinary approach, and critical semioticians and their studies were considered. Especially, Greimas's semiotic approach and his analysis instruments were dwelled on. In the fourth part, different meaning layers of the text, the levels of a systematic semiotic analysis, basic concepts, instruments, and techniques were presented in detail. The theoretical frame of the study and the procedure were elaborated regarding the literary semiotics theory. Throughout the analysis, each of the semantic structure of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four narrative with the formative elements of these structures was tried to unfold to be able to reach the semantic organization of the text in both surface and deep structures. In the fifth part, obtained findings during the analysis process in the previous part were interpreted within the framework of the stated research questions earlier. Finally, the study was completed with important suggestions for the subsequent researchers.
The pragmatic transfer of requestive speech acts by Arab and Turkish EFL learners at the preparatory school
Cross-cultural pragmatic transfer is one potential cause of inappropriate performances in a second or foreign language. It occurs when nonnative learners converse in the language they are learning and transfer the conversational rules of their first language into the language they are studying. The present study is an endeavor to find out whether Arab and Turkish EFL learners convey their first language requesting strategies into English language. To this end, a Discourse Completion Task(DCT) and an oral interview task were adopted to verify pragmatic transfer from Arabic into English and from Turkish into English, if there was any. Three groups participated in this study, where the first two groups included Arab EFL learners living in Turkey and the third group included Turkish EFL learners. Leaners' language proficiency was measured using computer based and paper based tests to divide thirty Arab EFL learners into fifteen high proficient learners and fifteen low proficient. Three versions of written DCTs were used, an Arabic version, an English version, and a Turkish one. The Arabic version was distributed to the two groups of high and low proficiency Arab EFL students prior to distributing the English one and the Turkish version was distributed to the Turkish students prior to distributing the English one. Qualitative data gained from the Turkish and Arab EFL learners responses to the DCTs and the oral interview were graded according to a criterion and the results were quantified to analyze them descriptively by using the Turkish and Arab EFL learners responses as a baseline.
Defragmentation of social genocide in A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul and A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
This dissertation aims to state "social genocide" term in post-colonial era and analyse them in the selected works, in the order of; A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul and A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o. In this respect, the perspectives of the two writers about colonisation, imperialism and social genocide are examined in the light of their other works and other sources related to the topic. In the analysed literary works, the coloniser is shown as the superior force and the basic structure of the social genocide because of their subhuman wills. As the initiation and the source of these aims, the Industrial Revolution is examined in the first place. The Industrial Revolution was a turning point in the world and it caused several major changes for each society during its time and afterwards. Even though it brought many benefits to England, it also ended up with harsh conditions for its own society. On the other hand, the thought of having an endless power created a way for Europeans to have an idea of possessing other regions with this power and brought colonisation to African countries. However, colonisation did not remain only as a policy and did not bring civilisation to the countries as it was claimed. It changed the lives, culture, language and traditions of the indigenous people. Furthermore, this practice brought about genocide but not only physically, but also socially and psychologically because the destruction of a society's culture means destroying that society which leads to social genocide. All these perspectives of colonisation and the results of it as a social genocide are narrated in the works of V. S. Naipaul and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. V. S. Naipaul demonstrates both the colonisation and neocolonialism periods by the characters and the themes in A Bend in the River. By the characters he embodies the colonisation and in this way as a result of it, social genocide is clearly seen from each perspective. In another perspective, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o describes colonisation by narrating only four days before the independence of Kenya. However, these four days express all the incidents and the hardships of indigenous people caused by colonisation, and thereby, this work goes beyond its time. Considering all the evidences from these two novels and the secondary sources, colonial periods, the effects of colonisation, the roles of the coloniser and the colonised and social genocide as a result of colonisation are examined in this study.
The role of discourse information in the resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguity in l2 English
The present thesis aims to examine the role of discourse information in determining the relative clause (RC) attachment preferences of Turkish second language (L2) speakers of English and monolinguals of English, and compares their sentence processing strategies in sentences including a complex noun phrase (NP) structure consisting of two NPs and a prepositional phrase (PP) [non-local NP + PP + local NP] modified by RC such as the following: Someone shot the servant [non-local NP] of [PP] the actress [local NP] who [RC pronoun] was standing on the balcony. The present study aims to investigate whether L2 speakers and the monolinguals perform the discourse information similarly or differently, during online and offline experiments of RC attachment ambiguity. Inference through the discourse relations is another distinguished feature of the IC (implicit causality) concept, which is supposed to overcome the syntactic information in the resolution of the RC attachment ambiguity, because the IC verbs require additional explanation about the reason "why". As the previous studies confirmed, the discourse inference can affect the syntactic process, IC verbs yield an expectation referring for the high attachment (non-local attachment) and non-IC verbs point to low attachment (local attachment). A set of offline (a sentence completion and a multiple choice questions test) and an online (a self-paced, word-by-word online reading test) experiments were given to 30 L2 speakers and 30 monolinguals. The data were analyzed with a 2X2X2 repeated measures ANOVA by condition (IC and non-IC sentences) and type (local attachment forced, non-local attachment forced) as within-subject variables. With respect to IC and non-IC conditions, there is a significant effect of discourse information in the resolution of RC attachment ambiguity for the monolinguals, on the other hand, the L2 speakers showed only high attachment in both IC and non-IC conditions which means that there is not any discourse effect on processing L2 English. This finding is consistent with the predictions of constraint based sentence processing theories and models such as; Referential Theory (Crain & Steedman, 1985; Altmann & Steedman, 1988) in L1 English. Nevertheless, the results of the L2 speakers' can be explained by the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) (Clahsen & Felser, 2006).
The impact of educational games and gender on five-year-old iraqi efl learners
The present study aimed to investigate the impact of educational games as a significant learning technique in teaching English Vocabulary among five-year old Iraqi EFL learners. The participants of the study were 32 preschool children at Wano private kindergarten. They were divided into two different groups; the experimental group which was taught by educational games and the control group which was exposed to the traditional methods of teaching English vocabulary, there were 16 students for each group (8 male and 8 female). A Checklist was used as Data collection instrument which consist of 36 EFL vocabulary items. At the beginning of the study, they were given a pretest to measure their vocabulary performance. Then, after six weeks of treatment, they were given posttest. The outcomes showed a significance difference between the experimental group and the control group in terms of posttest achievement in English vocabulary scores. Therefore, the educational games proved to be useful in teaching English vocabulary. Furthermore, the influence of gender on five-years-old Iraqi preschool kids in learning new English vocabulary with educational games in the experimental group and without educational games in the control group was conducted by means of independent sample t-tests. The analyzed data showed non-significant gender effect for both groups in learning new English vocabulary.
Body politics in Angela Carter's works
This dissertation scrutinises body politics in Angela Carter's works with an approach to gender studies and politics, and it argues demythologised representations of women. This dissertation argues that androcentric system's subversive panorama for women is able to be critiqued through demythologisation. On this basis, this study will explore body politics of female stereotypes in Carter's works entitled: The Heroes and Villains, The Sadeian Woman, The Passion of New Eve and selected rewritten, intertextual stories in The Bloody Chamber. This study thus aims to discuss demythologising and dephilosophising processes of Carter to show the female body empowerment. In this study, there will also be the theoretical framework built on gender and body politics. Apart from that, this study also explores the textual, intertextual and tactical strategies employed by Carter in order to subvert, demythologise and revise the patriarchal ideology in her works and re-written fairy tales and short stories to come up with the new female body politics.
Christopher isherwood: A life story dedicated to the act of writing in search of an artistic, sexual and spiritual identity
As an author who attributed a deeply significant personal meaning to writing, Christopher Isherwood's main purpose in fiction was to discover who he really was and what his life meant to him. The act of writing was not something mundane for Isherwood. The raw material of his art was his own personal experience and life story. For this reason, the structure of his many works are autobiographical and self-defining. Therefore, interpreting Isherwood's fiction independently of his life story is impossible. The theoretical framework that strengthens this study is the 'Life Story Model of Identity' theory presented by personality psychologist Dan P. Mc Adams. Beginning from his early career as a writer until the end, Isherwood's motivation for writing was to speak out of his own experiences, making meaning out of them and reflecting them into his fiction. The incidents he went through in life play a critical role in understanding his fiction and, years later, Dan McAdams has provided an ideal approach that helps us to grasp what Isherwood was really doing with his fiction. During my research, what thrilled me most was exploring how the relationship between Christopher Isherwood's life story and his fiction chime with McAdams' claims and observations about life narratives. McAdams claims that personal stories are our identities. Like a novelist, we work on our lives to make sense and meaning out of them. Our experiences, values, beliefs and objectives in life affect the formation of our identities. For McAdams, identity is a story which has a beginning, a middle and an ending, with a plot, theme and characters in it. Drawing upon the framework of Dan P. McAdams' life story model of identity, the aim of this study is to portray the relationship between personal story telling and identity construction in Isherwood's novels. By analyzing Christopher Isherwood's fiction within the performance of his life story, my intention in this research is to unravel the formation of the artistic, sexual and spiritual identities that he constructed in different periods of his life. McAdams notes that there are key scenes in every individual's life story and Isherwood's life was full of with transitions, gains, losses and struggles that stand out as turning points. For this reason this study focuses on three different episodes of his life: London, Berlin and California. The experiences he had in these cities contributed Isherwood's storytelling and help us to reach a better understanding of the fiction he produced these distinct times and places. Starting from his early work All the Conspirators continuing with The Memorial, Mr. Norris Changes Trains, Goodbye to Berlin, Prater Violet, The World in the Evening and finally until his most critically acclaimed novel, A Single Man, it is possible to observe how the identities of Christopher Isherwood have been shaped, changed, developed and integrated into a coherent life story as an author, as a homosexual and as a spiritual individual.
Technoculture and hyperreality in Don Delillo's Americana, Great Jones Street, and White Noise
In 21st century, many postmodernist authors, theorists and critics explain and argue in their works that the contact with the 'reality or real' have been lost in various respects, and people have been fascinated with this loss, and that the sense of historicity has disappeared or forced to be replaced with other ways or forms of historicity, and that consumer society dominates over the masses, and that the copy or copy of copy defines the sense of 'reality or real', and that media technologies and mass media have a domineering power over the guidance of people's lives. Most specifically, the masses around the globe in the 21st century are forced to consume through media and their contents such as advertisements, movies, interviews and so forth. The consumption is transformed into insatiable desires and wishes rather than needs. Furthermore, individuals forget their 'authentic self' and identities, and adopt the self and identity of the masses. The effects of late capitalism and culture industry, the death or end of the subject are reflected in the plays and novels of Don DeLillo, a contemporary American writer. In this respect, this dissertation argues causes and effects of the physical and psychological states of the characters in White Noise, Great Jones Street and Americana based on postmodern concepts such as technoculture and hyperreality. In addition, this argument will be supported by the postmodern theory in general terms, and with Jean Baudrillard's Simulation theory, his theories of the consumer society and the masses, Marshall McLuhan's media theory and specifically 'hot' and 'cool' media, Zygmunt Bauman's 'liquidity', and 'need', 'desire', and 'wish' and François Lyotard's Postmodern Condition more specifically.
Writing through the experience of fire: Bachmann and Plath
Sylvia Plath and Ingeborg Bachmann were two outstanding contemporary post-war writers of the same ethnicity, dealing with the place of women in the social order and examining the characteristics of relationships in order to shed light on the self-destructive and suicidal inclinations in the female psyche. In their works, they provide a psychoanalytic perspective by presenting their mental state, sufferings, and the consequences of their emotions and actions. Suffering similar psychological problems and having experienced alike treatments like the electro-shock therapy, the stimuli for their self-destructive behaviors will be analyzed through various psychological theories. Considering the direct reference to the 'anima-animus theory' in Malina and associating Ich's dream cycles with Esther's employment of 'stream of consciousness', Jung and Freud's researches on the structure of the psyche will be a fundamental medium to interpret Malina and The Bell Jar. The sociological dimensions of these novels will also be discussed through Emile Durkheim's theories on suicide within the framework of 'integration' and 'alienation'. This work will make an intensive study of self-destruction and the suicide of women as a consequence of fascist behaviors. It will compare the process of self-destruction in two works of literature, Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, examining the female protagonists' personality traits and their identities to reveal common motives for suicide. It will also examine and analyze events and secondary characters leading the narrator protagonists to suicide, using the reflections of Bachmann and Plath to interpret The Bell Jar and Malina. It will concern itself with the psychological dimensions of norms and regulations that function in a fascistic and depressive way, limiting females and depriving them of authenticity and individuation. This study will also attempt to explore the purpose of myths from a sociological perspective, to display how they function and what they intend to accomplish.
The critique of neoliberalism in David Hare's plays
This study aims at exploring the significance of neoliberalism in the selected plays written by David Hare. Acknowledging that any literary production cannot be examined without considering a bigger and more complex social structure, the study attempts to find out about the dialectical relationships among Hare's selected plays, the societies which they reflect and the neoliberal policies which have been perceptibly dominant in the world politics since 1970s. Using dialectical method, this study deals with the analysis of the interactive arrangements between the plays and their socio-political context. The impetus behind this study is therefore to investigate the ways in which David Hare critiques neoliberalism which destroys the foundational values of the western society and the social consensus lying in its base by deepening the economic and social injustices. In the parts of analysis and discussion, the thesis argues that, first; Hare presents the historical development of the neoliberalism by underlining its current political dimensions such as neo-imperialism. Second, neoliberalism is examined as a thematic marker in Hare's plays implying politics of dispossession and privatisation. Consequently, corruption of institutions is analysed in terms of legitimacy market capitalism and cynicism of the labour. Keywords: David Hare, Neoliberalism, Theatre, New Imperialism, Dispossession, Privatization, Social Integrity
Comparision of Virginia Woolf and Joumana Haddad as angry women
This study compares Victorian women with today's Arab women in terms of their social identities and living conditions in the light of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) and Joumana Haddad's Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman, I Killed Scheherazade (2010). The aim of the study is to draw attention to the fact that today's Arab women live in a male-dominated society just as Victorian women did and within this society, they struggle against being oppressed, early marriages, deprivation, in other words, against gender inequality existing in every field of daily life. The first chapter points to the psychoanalytic theories related to the construction of gender roles and identity acquisition process so as to clarify the relationship between women and men. Afterwards, the chapter focuses on 'female identity' in Victorian England and today's Arab world. In the second and third chapters of the study, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Joumana Haddad's Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman, I Killed Scheherazade are analysed with the purpose of offering an insight to the conditions and struggles of the Victorian and today's Arab women. In the last chapter, the existential struggles and self-identity explorations of women in their patriarchal societies are analysed from Virginia Woolf's and Joumana Haddad's point of view by comparing and examining the two preceding polemic books of both writers. At the end of the thesis, it is concluded that throughout history women have been forced to live with male-determined identities and values in male-dominated societies, and although we have come a long way in the struggle of disposing the impositions, male-based values and recreating the social and personal identity of women, there remain millions of angry women who are being deprived and restricted of their human rights in every field of life such as family, education and career. Keywords: Victorian Women, Arab Women, Struggle, Identity, Patriarchy
The demon female: A manifestation of Edgar Allan Poe's hidden terrors
This thesis examines the relationships and similarities between the female characters in Poe's short stories and the women in Poe's own life, particularly his mother, his stepmother and his wife, Virginia. This thesis analyzes and attempts to explain the reasons behind the female characters' apparent wickedness and evil, their depression and wickedness, and their power and cleverness in changing the entire lives of the male protagonists. Explanations are drawn from the Old Testament Bible and psychoanalytic and feminist theory. Edgar Allan Poe's mother Elizabeth (Eliza) died when Poe was a small child, leaving Poe deprived of maternal affection. Poe's stepmother Frances Allan adopted him and Poe again suffered additional trauma upon her later death. Poe's cousin and wife Virginia passed away at a very early age. Under the weight of these accumulated events, Poe developed a belief that he was cursed in relation to women. An enmity against all women grew within him. His works reflect this enmity. This enmity– even jealousy, womb envy – can be traced to the jealousy of woman's capacity to create: she can give birth to a living thing through her body, creating new life. Poe, like other men, may see this as a source of power. It may be possible to say that instinctively man wants this creation power for himself, resulting in his growing enmity and wrath. The female characters in Poe's works identify with Eve, the first woman, named in the creation story in Genesis. Adam, who is mentioned as the first man, is perhaps the initiator of Poe's wrath and envy. Eve eats from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge and the two are cast out of Heaven. In the aftermath of this Fall, God gives the gift of birth to Eve. Even though it is called a punishment, it is actually a prize. The jealous response of all mankind is to attribute anything that goes badly, any misfortune, any disappointment, any unrealized promise, to woman. This is enough to keep alight man's enmity and envy of woman. Later a new field for psychoanalysis develops: Female Psychology. Women respond with feminist theories as a means of expressing themselves. It is possible to trace this sequence of theoretical developments by observing the female characters in Poe's works. This study aims to explain the terror and psychologic neuroses behind wrathful male authors who, like Poe himself, use female characters as vile manifestations of evil in their works. Explanations are founded on the theories outlined above. Keywords: Adam and Eve, Feminism, womb envy, Edgar Allan Poe's female characters, fear of women, woman in society
Virginia Woolf'un öz psikanalizi: İğfalin baskılanması
Modern psikiyatrinin babası olarak, Sigmund Freud, insan ruhuna tüm çatışma ve zorlukların kaynağı olarak yaklaşır, ve insan ruhunun belirleyicileri ile yüzleşmek için bir çözüm arar. Bilinçaltına uzanan bir merdiven olarak düşündüğü bağlantı ve kelimeler yoluyla insan ruhunu çözümlemek için bir araç olarak psikanalizi önerir. Freud'un teorileri, kendi iç çatışmaları ve toplumun kültürel çatışmaları ile mücadele etmek zorunda olan, modern edebiyatın öncü isimlerinden Virginia Woolf'u etkiler. Woolf, psikanalizi, hayatının belirleyicisi olan, ruhun derinliklerini keşfedebilmek için kullanır. Bu tez, Virginia Woolf'un uğradığı cinsel tacizler sonucunda acı çektiğini, Freud'un yaklaşım ve teorilerinden etkilendiğinini, iyileşmek için öz psikanalize başvurduğunu kanıtlamayı hedefler. Bu tez aynı zamanda Virginia Woolf'un hayatını, edebi kişiliğini ve Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse ve Moments of Being olmak üzere üç eserini psikanalitik bakış açısıyla tahlil eder. Bu tezde yapılan tahliller, Freud'un psikanaliz, savunma mekanizmaları, yaratıcı yazarlar ve onları harekete geçiren güçler konusundaki yaklaşımlarını ele alan ifade ve açıklamalarla desteklenmiştir. Bu tez, aynı zamanda, Virginia Woolf'un, kökeninde psikolojik ve entelektüel mirasının, çocukluk anılarının, savunma mekanizmalarının, cinsel eğiliminin ve hayatındaki cennet-cehennem nöbetlerinin yarattığı zorluklarının yansıtmaktadır. Virginia Woolf'un hayatını zorlaştıran bu sıkıntıların yansımaları, ayrıca, 1939 yılında eşiyle birlikte kendisini ziyarete gidene kadar çalışmalarını okumadığını iddia ettiği Freud'un teorilerini farkında olmadan haklı çıkardığı eserleri yoluyla incelenmektedir. Anahtar kelimeler: Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, öz psikanaliz, yaratıcı yazarlar, cinsel eğilim, baskılama, intihar, Eros, Thanatos.
The effects of explicit/ implicit instructions on the development of advanced EFL learners' pragmatic knowledge of english: Apology speech act
One of the important elements of communicative competence is pragmatics and one of the effective ways for an efficient communication is by keeping pragmatic competence vital. Despite the fact that pragmatics has drawn attention in foreign language learning, it has been largely neglected in foreign language classrooms. The current study explored the effects of explicit and implicit instructions on the development of advanced EFL learners' pragmatic knowledge in terms of apology speech act. A total of 10 English native speakers and 40 advanced EFL students participated in this study. The Iraqi Kurdish EFL learners were selected from grade 12 in British International School in Erbil/ Iraq and their level was determined by a proficiency test called the Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). These 40 participants were divided randomly into two; explicit group (EG) who was taught various ways to apologize explicitly through warm-up activities at the beginning of each lesson, exercises, short videos and movies, pictures, songs and direct feedback, whereas the participants of the implicit group (IG) were taught apology strategies through the same materials but with a different technique of implicit teaching, receiving indirect feedback and without receiving warming-up activities. They were provided a pre-test called Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT) which consisted of 10 different situations of apology and were based on the participants' real-life situation, each situation included 3 options and only one answer could be selected which they believed is the best. The aim was to show if there were any significant differences between EG and IG. The English native speakers were given the same (MDCT) and were asked to choose the most appropriate answers. After the treatment, (EG) and (IG) were provided the same MDCT as a post-test. The findings revealed that the results of EG and IG were significant and they showed improvements after the treatment, and the EG outperformed the IG. In post-test both groups of EG and IG received the same MDCT as a delayed-test. The findings showed that, the results of both groups were significant but EG stayed at the same level and outperformed the IG meanwhile IG showed reduction of their progress.
A deconstructivist and structuralist depiction of women in Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" and Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"
This analysis of the short stories "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" and "Hills Like White Elephants" is based on a Structuralist and Deconstructivist reading in relation to the female characters. Two stories analyzed, by D.H. Lawrence and Ernest Miller Hemingway, present women in both their life and love affairs. Hemingway's female character will be examined through a Structuralist reading, while Lawrence's female character will be examined through a Deconstructivist reading. Structuralism, as a theoretical orientation that looks for the underlying structure in a society's culture, social institutions, or social relationships in accordance with society as defined in Encyclopaedia of Sex and Gender (C. Ember & M. Ember, 2003, p. 31). In this regard, the language a woman uses may be harmonized accordingly. In this thesis, the relationship between Structuralist reading and Feminism will be discussed regarding female behaviours and language in relation to Structralist reading and Feminism. This work argues that Hemingway's specific female character, is depicted as submissive and silent when she is read through a Structralist reading. This woman who is familiarized with the expectations of society regarding the behavioral and linguistic analysis disregards Feminism, and this female character is willing to serve for the expectations of the male-dominant society. Calvin Thomas in The Lessons in Theory: An Introduction to Theoretical Writing (2013) credits Niall Lucy's definition of Deconstructivism and says ''Deconstructivism begins, as it were, from a refusal of the authority or determining the power of every 'is', or simply from a refusal of authority in general '' (Thomas, 2013, p.205). The woman in Lawrence's short story "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" defies the expectations of society through her determination to be self-sustained and authentic. Lawrence's woman is reflected in a setting in which she is enabled to be strong enough to move on, make her own choice, when she has to make an important decision, or to challenge the expectations of society and familiar female behaviours in her love affair with the help of her self-esteem in relation to Feminism. In this, she reflects a strong personality through a Deconstructivist depiction. Finally, this thesis discusses how gender biases define women and how women define themselves socially in relation to Deconstructivist and Structuralist reading. Keywords: Structuralism, Deconstructivism, Feminism, Women, and Society, Hemingway's Women, Lawrence's Women
The acquisition of articles in English by Arabic EFL learners
This study looks at the acquisition of English articles (the, a/an) by L1 Arabic learners of English as a Foreign language (EFL) to examine whether L1 Arabic learners with a definiteness-based L1 transfer L1 parameter or fluctuate between the definiteness and the specificity settings of the article choice parameter (ACP). If they fluctuate, then, within the L1 Arabic group, the fluctuation effect should be less robust in the intermediate group than in the beginner one, given the latter group's lower English proficiency. Arabic and English are article-based languages and overtly mark definiteness, however, they differ in overt morphology that marks indefiniteness. Arabic has a phonologically overt definite article al which is a bound morpheme, prefixed and attached to the noun it defines, but it does not have a phonologically overt indefinite article. We tested a group of Arabic-speaking EFL learners and native English speakers on two written production tasks: a forced choice-elicitation task (FCET) and a picture-description task. The FCET involved 36 experimental dialogues in four contexts, each of which had 9 dialogues: [+definite, -specific], [-definite, -specific], [-definite, +specific] and [+definite, +specific] singular object noun phrases (NPs). The picture description task, on the other hand, required subjects to provide a written description of five pictures involving a short story in which definite and indefinite articles are used with singular NPs. The results obtained from the FCET indicate that L1 Arabic EFL learners are almost as successful as native English speakers in using definite article 'the' in [+def, + spec] and [+def, - spec] contexts and indefinite article 'a' in [-definite, -specific] context. However, they were significantly less accurate than the native English speakers in providing indefinite article 'a' in [-def, +spec] context. Results from error analysis indicate that L1 Arabic- EFL learners have more substitution errors than omission errors in the [-def, +spec] context. Results from proficiency test reveal that the intermediate group is slightly better than the elementary group in all contexts including [-def, +spec] context. Results from the picture description task are in line with the findings of the FCET. These results show that adult EFL learners regardless of their L1 background experience fluctuation between the two settings of the ACP at the initial stage of L2 acquisition of articles and suggest that fluctuation is a developmental process (Zdorenko & Paradis, 2008) rather than a transfer from the L1. Keywords: Articles, definiteness, specificity, fluctuation L1 Arabic, EFL, English
A comparison regarding the educational system through Dickens and Kingsley Amis
In 'Hard Times' by Charles Dickens, the Gradgrind family and their sorrowful experiences are narrated. Towards the end of the novel, the readers realize that a rational education system as a guideline to reach the ideal of 'Merry England' actually misguides the family members and turns their lives to grief. In this study, various views and examples of 'Hard Times' are provided in order to demonstrate the proposal that education solely cannot always bring people to happiness. 'Lucky Jim', an English Campus Novel written by Kingsley Amis, can present a comparison to the teaching approaches in 'Hard Times'. In the novel, the academics' cruel rivalry can be seen as influential in their moral corruption. In this academic circle, Jim Dixon, an inexperienced history lecturer, presents a free willed, relaxed character as quite contrary to the academic principles of the 'Post War England'. In this thesis, unlike disregarding of such individuality by the contemporary academics, it is stressed that Dixon can overcome the difficulties in his new working place thanks to his distinguishing characteristics, and his sincerity facilitates him in the quest for happiness. As a result of this thesis; it will be predicted that paying attention to such lively people's personalities as Dixon has can be resulted in directly or indirectly a happiness in everyone's life and as an outcome of an analysis; the reader will also be presented what sorts of education method can be effective to have a pleasant life. Keywords: Mechanization, Science, Strictness, Disregard, Alienation, Happiness, Wonder, Self-Realization, Fancy, Imagination.
Possibilities of female liberation at the turn of the twentieth century
This dissertation reads the problems of women and their living conditions in the light of the feminist theory. Female entrapment in some premises such as motherhood marriage and social environment is what is questioned in this work. My intention in this study is to discuss some possible ways of liberation for the women to escape the patriarchal conventions by using Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, 'Making a Change' and 'An Unnatural Mother', Kate Chopin's The Awakening, 'The Storm', 'Her Letters' and 'A Respectable Woman' and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. The first chapter will deal with Charlotte Perkins Gilman's presentation of women entrapped in motherhood. Gilman is of the opinion that motherhood is natural; however, she claims that it should be professionalized. The second chapter will handle with Kate Chopin's works stated above in terms of the sexual liberation for women who are made to live in their asexual marriages. How adultery is found natural and humane in the confined marriages of the time is my main focus in this chapter. I will then analyze Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth in which Lily is entrapped in her single life and in the upper-class society which expects her to marry in order to secure her life. By analyzing these three major 20th century writers, I conclude that Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton complement each other and that is why analyzing them altogether enables us to see the big picture for the entrapment and the liberation of women. Keywords: Entrapment, Motherhood, Sexuality, Single life, Liberation
The role of motivational strategies on motivating Iraqiefl students to speak in English
Motivation determines the degree of students' desire to learn English. Thus, the current research is discovering the role of motivational strategies to improve Iraqi learners' speaking skills. The problem of the study is that Iraqi learners (EFL students) at the departments of English at Salahaddin University are normally not motivated enough to learn English. Three research questions were designed according to the aims of the study which are: finding out the types of the motivational strategies used by university teachers to improve the students' speaking skill, the extent to which teachers of English language use motivational strategies and the students' attitude toward motivational strategies in speaking classroom. The instruments included questionnaires and interviews. The participants of the study consisted of 113 EFL students in different years of study; second, third and fourth year at salahaddin university-college of languages-department of English language. Also, 18 EFL teacher whose teach English language at the same college participated in the current study. So, the questionnaires and interview were administered to both groups of the participants. Finally, after collecting and analyzing the data, the findings indicated that the strategies such as applying role-play, debate and problem-solving, employing group/pair work discussion and providing friendly learning environment are very important to engage students in speaking activities. The teachers also reported that providing students with different activities, asking them to do presentation, adopting student-centered approach, paying attention to individual needs and preventing students from using L1 are among strategies teachers can use to help students engage in speaking activities. Also, the majority of the students was motivated and thinks that motivational strategies are important to improve speaking skills. Also, they think that friendly relationship, group work and creating enjoyable atmosphere are the most effective motivational strategies to develop the students' speaking skills. Finally, some recommendations shown are; motivational strategies are important to encourage the learners to speak, the learners must rely on different motivational strategies to master their speaking skills and it is necessary to use different types of motivational strategies in class.
The role of teaching lexical collocations in raising EFL learners' speaking fluency
Collocations and its relations to learning languages have attracted the attention of linguists and scholars so far. This thesis investigates the importance of teaching lexical collocations to improve EFL learners' oral fluency. The hypothesis is that knowing collocations specifically lexical collocations and collocational usage in the right order would eventually improve their oral fluency and helps them speak as natural as native speaker of English language. The thesis sheds light on the origins of collocations, its types, and patterns. Forty five first grade students of English Language Department-Soran University were selected and divided into two groups of experimental and control groups. Students were tested for collocational knowledge and vocabulary usage. In the experimental group's class lectures were given with highlighting collocations and specifically focused on lexical collocations in. While with the control group the lectures paid no attention to collocations. The empirical study consisted of collocation exercise, students' pre-test, students' questionnaire, teachers' questionnaire, students' post-test. The results of the collocations exercise showed that the students did not have knowledge of collocations and the ways of using them. Also, the results of the pre-test showed that the students were not proficient in speaking. However the results of the post-test showed that after lectures about collocations and focusing on lexical collocations their speaking proficiency was improved and the hypothesis of the thesis had been true. Knowing the ways of mastering vocabulary segments either single words or sequences including collocations, gives the learners ability to speak fluently and overcome the anxiety of making mistakes and mis-collocations.
Self & peer assessment in EFL writing classes
This study investigated the benefits of self and peer assessment in EFL writing classes at university for both students and teachers. Besides, it examined the correlation between self, peer and expert given marks for students writings. To this end, 17 B1-level participants who study in English preparatory programme at a foundation university were examined for 7 weeks. First, the students were informed and trained as to how to assess a writing using a rubric. Then, each week after students composed a writing, a paragraph for the first three weeks and an essay for the remaining four weeks, they were asked to assess and mark first their own writing then one of their friends' writing by using self and peer assessment forms. After the students, the teacher and a co-teacher also assessed and marked the papers. The average of the marks given by two different teachers were calculated creating the expert mark. All given marks were noted each week to be compared at the end of the study. In addition, a questionnaire was conducted at the beginning of the study to investigate whether the students could identify their own strengths and weaknesses in writing, whether they could make sense of the criteria that are used for writing quizzes, and whether they made sense of the feedback given by the teachers for their writings. The same questionnaire was conducted again on the last day of the research to check whether the participants changed their opinions. Moreover, students were interviewed twice, once in the 3rd week and once in the last week, for the study. The first interview was planned to capture the early impressions of the students regarding self and peer assessment procedures. The students were interviewed again in the last week with the same questions to check whether they changed their opinions after being involved in self and peer assessment activities for a while. The results suggested that the students improved their assessment performance including their understanding of rubrics over time by practice, they offered quality feedback to each other regarding their writings, they understood teacher feedback more easily, and they participated in the lessons more by interacting with one another. As for marking, self and peer given marks were correlated to the expert given marks only twice out of seven suggesting the students could not mark their own and their peers' writings as correctly as their teachers. Keywords: Self-assessment, peer assessment, EFL writing.
A case study: Indonesian students' speaking anxiety in learning English as a foreign language
The aim of this research was to investigate the factors contributing to the students' speaking anxiety in learning a foreign language and to find out English language teachers' suggestions to reduce the students' anxiety in learning a foreign language. The participants of this research were a total of 94 third-year students and 5 English language teachers teaching in the same school. The data collection instruments used in this study were Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), which was developed by Horwitz & Cope (1986) and a structured interview. The findings of this study indicated that almost half of the participants experience communication anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, test anxiety and English class anxiety. The participant teachers' suggestions to reduce the students' speaking anxiety included frequent involvement in language practice and vocabulary building activities; building the students' confidence in speaking by creating a low-anxiety classroom atmosphere; using group work activities so as to reduce student mistakes through peer support; correcting the student mistakes indirectly in front of their peers; using media and entertaining language teaching materials to engage the students speaking practice and the teachers taking the role of a facilitator in language classrooms so as to support the students in their language learning process.
Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories from the perspective of literary semiotics
Semiotics which is defined in its simpliest form as the study of signs has developed rapidly since 1960's until the current time, and it has headed to a greater aim than the one it involves in its name. This aim which is far beyond the identification of mere signs or the functional classification of them is to explain the way the signs get systematized and to examine those systematized signs. One of the systematized signs is the piece of literature. A work of literature is a systematized sign which is consisted by the integration of linguistic signs. It is the literary semiotics that has undertaken the analysis of such a sign system. When we assume that we live in a world full of signs, it would not be faulty to assert that there are lots of systems formed by the same kind of signs, and lots of semiotic enterprises to analyze them. One of those enterprises is literary semiotics. In this study, three horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe have been analyzed by taking into consideration of the tenets of literary semiotics. The aim of the study is to present the ways of implementing semiotic analysis and to examine the semantic universes of the stories. In the conclusion of the study, the issues involving in what ways Poe created the sense of horror, and on which oppositions he structured his stories have been revealed. In the light of the findings, it has been identified that the directions of transitions in three stories are from life to death, good to evil, from existence to absence, and from bright to darkness. The study consists of four main chapters. In the first chapter, the aim, importance, problem and assumptions of the study have been identified. There is also a literature review part comprising the variable studies in Turkey and other countries in the field of semiotics. In the second chapter, a comprehensive explanation of semiotics has been made, and information on its history and development has been given. Then, it has been given place to the studies of Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure who are the two important names of current semiotics. Subsequently, there has been given information on Algirdas Julien Greimas who is accepted as the founding father of literary semitoics, and Paris School of Semiotics. Lastly in this chapter, the semiotic method of the study used for the analysis of Poe's stories, and sequence of its implementation have been defined. In the third chapter, three horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado" have been analyzed. Each story has been examined in three levels which are respectively discursive, narrative and deep-abstract levels. The reason for doing so is the tendency of semiotics to handle a text as complete as possible. The fourth chapter is the last one in the study. In this part, the gathered outcomes of the analysis performed in previous chapter have been presented, and it has been attempted to give answers to the basic and sub-problem questions. Keywords: Literary Semiotics, Greimas, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, Semiotic Analysis, Horror Story
An action research study: Benefits of using active learning strategies and activities in speaking classes
This action research study was conducted to improve the students' level of participation in speaking classes by implementing collaborative communicative activities in speaking sessions at a preparatory school of a foundation university. An eight-week action research study was conducted with 25 A1 language profeciency level students during the speaking/listening sessions. During the instructional intervention process a variety of communicative activities was used in order to identify the types of activities that would motivate the students and increase their level of participation in speaking classes. More specifically, the instructional intervention consisted of active and animated speaking activities: group-chatting, small or big group works, practicing listening to native speakers using movies, commenting on the movie that the students had watched, making student presentations in the class. The data of the study were collected using student diaries, teacher-researcher`s field note, open-ended student interviews and a questionnaire. The results indicoted that creating a lively learning atmosphere was achieved by the aid of communicative approach. It also showed that the students work well together as a group. Regarding group work activities, the students expressed that working in groups could increase their confidence in speaking and participation in speaking tasks. This action research study has also increased the researcher's confidence to apply and adopt a number of possible activities to develop the participation of the students in the future. Keywords: Teaching speaking, speaking skills, communicative activities.
Haunting legend trimetric projection of Boudica in the hunger games trilogy
This dissertation focuses on The Hunger Games trilogy through an Archetypal Criticism in terms of rebellious women warriors to show the correlation between Boudica, the legendary Celtic warrior queen of the Roman Conquest of Britain and the British Revolt against Rome in AD 60, and Katniss, the fictional rebellious character. This study also examines and analyzes how Collins deconstructs the real historical character Boudica and reveals the fictional heroine character Katniss as a trimetric projection of Boudica. However, this dissertation also aims to demonstrate how society forces the ever-ready heroic qualities in Katniss and Boudica to emerge, in what ways dystopian societies force certain roles on the main characters and how the myths of Boudica contribute to the quest and deconstruction of the hero's journey. Keywords: Myths, Fantastic Literature, Archetype, Boudica, The Hunger Games Trilogy.