References

Words and Worlds of Difference
Proceedings of the Second National Conference
for Students of English Studies
at the University of Suceava
22–24 April 2010
Editor
Cornelia Macsiniuc
Editorial board
Evelina Graur
Alexandru Diaconescu
Gabriela Rangu
Cristina Sturzu
Dan Nicolae Popescu
Valentina Curelariu
Daniela Hăisan
Onoriu Colăcel
Marius Gulei
The English Department
Faculty of Letters and
Communication Sciences
S, tefan cel Mare University, Suceava
13, Universităt, ii Street
720229, Suceava
+40 230 216 147 int 137
+40 230 522 978 int 137
Web: http://litere.usv.ro
Typesetting
Alexandru Diaconescu
ISBN 978-973-666-371-0
Contents
Literary Studies
1
Alina–Elena ANTON
Strangers in Their Own Country:
Negotiating the Self in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and John Okada’s No-No Boy
2
Andreea BURSUC
Wolf Impersonations and Gender Power in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber
14
Mircea Dănut, DRON
The Narrative of Stereotypes: Male Identity as Seen by John Fowles
28
Corina LUNGU
(Her)Story: Paula Vogel’s Desdemona. A Play about a Handkerchief vs. Shakespeare’s Othello.
The Moor of Venice
42
Mihaela PALIMARIU
Reconfiguring Chicana myths. The tale of La Llorona in Gloria Anzaldúa’s
Prietita and the Ghost Woman and Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek
52
Alexandra RADU
Uniting Worlds and Cultures
Writing as Atonement in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street
65
Anca RONCEA
Difference in the case of Creoles and French-Canadian Hetero-Images in “Désirée’s Baby” by
Kate Chopin and “Return of the Sphinx” by Hugh MacLennan
75
S, tefania STRAT
Virginia Woolf’s London: from islands of light to center of disillusionment
83
Lucia-Alexandra TUDOR
Dissolution and Reconstruction of the Feminine Identity in Margaret Atwood’s
The Edible Woman
96
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
Normal/Pathological Perversity in Alice Walker’s and Kara Walker’s Work
105
Cultural Studies
121
Ligia BRĂDEANU
Proverbs as Representations of Cultural Specificity
122
Ilinca-Miruna DIACONU
Subversion through Imitation:
The Women’s Emancipation Movements in 19th Century United States and Romania
134
Alexandra MIHAI
Success and Failure in Forum Theatre
142
László SZABOLCS
Taming The Three-Headed Beast
Or, Be careful what you call “multicultural”!
156
Language and Translation Studies
169
Sebastian BICAN-MICLESCU
Expletive Subjects in Varieties of English: A Case Study in Microvariation
170
Cătălina COMĂNECI
Negotiating Meanings in Media Translation
180
Diana IOSIF
Translating Political Discourses in the European Union
193
S, erban D. IONESCU
Cyberwordplay
207
Paul MOVILEANU
Job Ads on Romanian Job Websites: A Case of Abnormal Specialized Discourse
215
Costin–Valentin OANCEA
Gendered Languages: The Case of English and Romanian
233
Andreea-Mihaela TAMBA
Translational Norms and their Echoes in the Romanian Cultural Space
246
Laura Elena SUNĂ (MUNTEANU)
Striving to Cope with Cross-cultural Diversity in Translation
A Register-focused Approach
257
Literary Studies
Strangers in Their Own
Country:
Negotiating the Self
in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan
Alina–Elena ANTON
“Al. I. Cuza” University, Ias, i
American Studies MA, 2nd year
and John Okada’s No-No Boy
“This is my own, my native land.”
•
“. . . the Nisei are bitter. Too bitter for their own good or for Canada.”
esterday, December 7, 1941 is a date which will live in infamy. United States of
America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by navel and air forces of the Empire of
Japan [. . . ] and since the unprovoked and dastardly attack. . . a state of war has existed
between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
Y
So spoke President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his address to the American people (1941; The CBC
Digital Archives), twenty-four hours after the fateful dropping of the Japanese bombs on Pearl Harbor. An
official war declaration, these were also the words that started one of the largest mass exoduses in history.
As Japanese American writer John Okada put it, “the moment the impact of the words solemnly being
transmitted over the several million radios of the nation struck home, everything Japanese and everyone
Japanese became despicable” (Okada, 1986: vii). A treacherous act and angry words that severed at lightning
speed the roots hundred of thousands of Japanese immigrants had struggled to strike for decades not only
in the United States, but on the whole of the North-American continent.
The present article deals with two literary accounts of this often marginalized historical event that marred
the lives of so many American and Canadian inhabitants of Japanese ancestry. The psychological and
emotional trauma caused, on the one hand, by the violent uprooting and destruction of one’s community,
and by the irresolvable rifting of the self between two contrary forces, on the other, leads to a problematic
questioning and a re-evaluation of personal identity in two central novels of the Asian American literary
canon. It is along this line of negotiating the self that we will read Joy Kogawa’s acclaimed story Obasan
and John Okada’s seminal novel No-No Boy. But first let us review some historical facts that will put our
analysis in context.
Alina–Elena Anton
3
Pre-war Japan was very much a caste-like society, with rigidly delineated social categories, established
most often on hereditary, gender and economic criteria that made it close to impossible for members of
one category to move beyond the socially imposed limitations—and at times very difficult to exist even
within the categories themselves. In their struggle for survival, therefore, many looked beyond the national
borders to such places like the North-American continent, which was often advertised as a place of infinite
opportunity. Little wonder then that by the beginning of the 20th century more than 100,000 Japanese
immigrants had made Canada and the United States their home. However, as it often happens, the reality
rarely lived up to the golden promise, so that what awaited the immigrants was a life fraught with just as
much hardship as they had left behind: marked by their visible Asianness, they were openly discriminated
against. Employed most often in menial and low-paid jobs, they were barred from certain industries,
forbidden to become citizens of the countries they lived in or to vote, prohibited to marry outside their race
and to own land and relegated to racially segregated parts of the towns. Nevertheless, the determinate
endurance of their proud nature allowed most Japanese immigrants to persevere and achieve some measure
of success. In the United States, they moved from itinerant farm laborers to owners of farms and small
businesses; in Canada, they created a niche for themselves in the fishing and boat industry. And their
children, the Nisei or “second generation,” who through their being born on the North-American continent
were constitutionally granted citizenship, fought their way into such professions like doctors, teachers, and
newspaper editors.
The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, however, put a sudden halt to the Issei’s and Nisei’s struggle to belong.
In the anger-filled United States, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, at the recommendation
of Defense General John L. DeWitt, thereby granting the military the authority to forcefully remove
and incarcerate more than 110,000 Japanese Americans from the Pacific Coast, deemed as a threat to the
security of United States, “enemy aliens” and “non-aliens,” respectively, in the case of the Nisei (the second
generation). However, as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) website
points out, no actual documents have been found to support this accusation. In fact, governmental evidence
Alina–Elena Anton
4
most frequently noted “that Japanese Americans posed no military threat” (“World War II & Roundup”).
Two thirds of those interned were, in reality, American citizens and more than half of them were children.
Forced to sell their possessions and dispose of their properties in less than two days, the internees were
allowed to bring only a minimum of personal and household items and “families were registered and given
numbered tags to identify themselves and their belongings” (“Mass Removal”). Their evacuation trajectory
almost always implied a temporary stay in so-called “Assembly Centers,” from where they were then moved
to detention camps in isolated areas, with unsanitary conditions, nutritionally inadequate meals, minimal
medical care, barbed wire fences and armed guard towers. These were, in fact, prisons and their Japanese
American occupants prisoners (NAATA website: “Temporary Detention Centers”). Still, a sizeable number
of Nisei young men left the barbed wire confines to volunteer for the Army, mostly out of desire to prove
their loyalty and distinguished themselves in military service. In 1946, the last of the detention camps was
closed, and all Japanese Americans were permitted to return to their homes. Resettlement of the West Coast
had already been re-opened two years prior.
The experience of the Japanese community in Canada bears striking similarities to that of the Japanese
Americans. The efforts of this ethnic minority to establish a home on Canadian territory took place on the
background of a political denial since, as Ana María Frailé-Marcos notes, “in 1895, the provincial government
of British Columbia denied the vote to Japanese residents, [referring to them] as the ‘Yellow peril’” (2004:
179). Following the example of the United States, immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Canadian
government labeled all its Japanese coastal residents as “a threat to national security,” confiscating most of
their possessions (boats, radios, cars, etc.) and properties, closing down businesses and evacuating them
into forced detention in indigent internment camps improvised in inland mountainous areas, with base
living conditions. The War Measures Act of 1942 made legal this abusive treatment directed against the
entire Japanese community on the Pacific Coast, whose tribulations continued even after the end of the
war, when a new “repatriation and relocation scheme” resulted in the expatriation of around 4,000 averred
volunteers, the majority of them Canadian citizens who had never before set foot in Japan. And those who
Alina–Elena Anton
5
were allowed to stay in Canada, having had their properties forcefully sold by the government, and having
been stripped of their right to vote and with a limited freedom of movement, most often scattered eastward,
settling in poor living conditions on sugar beet farms in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. Only in 1949
did the Canadian government restore some of the Japanese community’s rights (the right to vote and the
freedom to move), but even so “since their property was not given back to them, few returned to their
original places, and their dispersal was definitive” (Frailé-Marcos, 2004:179).
The powerfully lyrical novel Obasan uncovers and strives to come to terms with this brutal historical
dislocation forced upon an ethnic people whose entire universe of existence orbits around the key notion of
community to such an extent that the “destruction of community was the destruction of life [. . . ]” (Kogawa,
1992: 223). Set in 1972, the book follows the memories and experiences of (Megumi) Naomi Nakane, a
36-year-old middle-school teacher working in the claustrophobically small town of Cecil, Alberta when
the novel begins. However, the death of her Uncle, Isamu, sends Naomi back to her childhood home in
Granton, to care for her widowed aunt Aya, to whom she refers as Obasan, the Japanese equivalent of the
English “Aunt.” Her stay with Obasan occasions Naomi to revisit and mentally reconstruct the painful
experiences she had as a child during and after World War II. The recollection process is aided by a box of
correspondence and journals sent to Naomi by her Aunt Emily, and which details the measures taken by
the Canadian government against the Japanese citizens of Canada and their aftereffects.
Naomi’s efforts of recollection, however, also confront her with the issue of her own self identity and
she finds herself orbiting between two pivotal dimensions: silence and sound, embodied most preeminently
in her two aunts—Aya Obasan, who represents the values of the Issei, and Aunt Emily, a true believer in the
potential of the Nisei.
Weighed with her mortality, Aya Obasan lives in silence. Even when her octogenarian husband dies, “the
language of her grief is silence. She has learned it well, its idioms, its nuances. Over the years, silence within
her small body has grown large and powerful” (17). Like Uncle Isamu, Obasan represents the silence of the
stone, “the starring into the night. The questions thinning into space. The sky swallowing the echoes” (2).
Alina–Elena Anton
6
Brought up in the traditional Japanese values, she uses silence as a mechanism of protection, as a container
for the trauma of her experiences, focusing on the mechanical aspect of survival. As Naomi observes, “her
hands, pulling, pushing, tugging, are small weak fists. They remind me—these hands that toil but do not
embrace—of the wings of a wounded bird, battering the ground in an attempt at balance” (28). Ruled by
the Issei’s shikata-ga-nai (“it can’t be helped”) principle, Obasan is oriented towards the past, but loses herself
in the spider web of memories until she becomes will dance and dangle in the dark, like small insect bones,
a fearful calligraphy—a dry reminder that once there was life flitting about in the weather” (31).
However, for Aunt Emily the shikata-ga-nai philosophy triggers a bitter anger that prompts a constant
struggle for redress. “A small tank of a woman, with a Winston Churchill stoop”, she is a true word warrior
crusading indefatigably in the name of her vision for the Nisei; as Naomi declares in a slightly sarcastic tone,
“she [is] one of the world’s white blood cells, rushing from trouble spot to trouble spot with her medication
pouring into wounds seen and not seen” (41). Enraged by injustice, Aunt Emily attends conference after
conference, writes letters, articles and even an unpublished manuscript, is an active fighter for rights and
social equality and, in general, “never stays still long enough to hear the sound of her own voice.” Still
single at fifty-six, she is hopelessly old-maidish, but indomitably refuses the label, considering the term “too
covered with cultural accretions for comfort” (10). Aunt Emily’s restlessness is prompted by a throbbing
anger that covers, like a thin crust, the unhealed wound of the past. Her political activism has therefore a
therapeutic function—more than a gratuitous quest for justice, it is her cry of pain and her medicine against
the gangrene of denial and forgetfulness. Because, as she advises Naomi:
You have to remember. . . You are your history. If you cut any of it off, you’re an amputee. Don’t
deny the past. Remember everything. If you’re bitter, be bitter. Cry it out! Scream! Denial is
gangrene. (60)
Ironically enough, however, she never moves beyond the level of anger—she keeps the past alive by
constantly talking about it, yet she symbolically fails to listen to the sound of her own voice. Her words
Alina–Elena Anton
7
serve both as a revolt against the silence with which the Issei surrounded their acquiescence and as
instruments for probing the still throbbing wounds—“What a conference! You should have been with me,
Nomi. . . There was so much to learn. I had no idea how much I still hurt. Just read some of these papers”
(39–40). Nevertheless, as Naomi observes at one point, “people who talk a lot about their victimization. . .
use their suffering as weapons or badges of some kind. . . [but] it’s the [people] who say nothing who are
in trouble more than the ones who complain” (41). Aunt Emily’s verbal cry is therefore reduced to the
uselessness of mere utterance.
Unlike Aya Obasan, Aunt Emily lives in sound, but her sound is overwhelming and just as dangerous
and hurtful as the “whirlpool of protective silence” with which the older members of the family have
surrounded the maiming experiences that tore apart their lives and communities. As it turns out, neither
silence, nor sound are adequate instruments for healing the trauma of forced geographical and familial
dislocation—the one mutes the pain and allows the past to feast upon the present, while the other falls like
hailstones but fails to address the hurt in its most essential aspects. In his analysis of the novel, Articulate
Silences, King-Kok Cheung brilliantly points out that Kogawa “privileges neither condition, but in fact
uncovers the strengths and weaknesses of each, maintaining a tension between the two, rather than asserting
a triumph of one over the other” (quoted in Goellnicht, 2009: 6).
Aunt Emily’s volubility and political activism are, as we have seen, in sharp contrast with Aya Obasan’s
silent endurance, and in her search for identity Naomi attends to both women, negotiating through the
silence that surrounds both the disappearance of her mother and the whole internment experience. Realizing
that “All our ordinary stories are changed in time, altered as much by the present as the present is shaped
by the past,” (30), Naomi’s quest is for a living, freeing word that will set free the “speech [that] hides within
me, watchful and afraid” (69). And the whole of the novel can be seen as structuring itself symbolically on
the Canto of “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” that Aunt Emily includes in her unpublished manuscript:
“At first I was proud, knowing that I belonged.
Alina–Elena Anton
8
This is my own, my native land.
Then as I grew older and joined the Nisei group. . . I waved those lines around like a banner in
the wind:
This is my own, my native land.
When war struck this country, when neither pride nor belligerence nor grief had availed us
anything, when we were uprooted, and scattered to the four winds, I clung desperately to those
immortal lines:
This is my own, my native land.
Later still, after our former homes had been sold over our vigorous protests, after having been
re-registered, fingerprinted, card-indexed, roped and restricted, I cry out the question:
Is this my own, my native land?” (48).
Aunt Emily finds her own answer to this question: “For better or worse, I am Canadian” she says. And for
this reason she is prompted to continue fighting. But in Naomi’s case, the question to be asked regards the
construction of a self strong enough to encompass the losses and wounds of the past and assert its presence
in the now and the tomorrow. However, not fully ready yet to embrace the amniotic deep (i.e. the memories
in the subconscious) from whence “the speech that fees comes forth,” Naomi pessimistically asks: “Is there
evidence for optimism?” (199), stating that “Dear Aunt Em is crusading still. . . She’s the one with the vision.
She believes in the Nisei. . . [But] for my part, I can only see a dark field. . . where the rest of us crouch and
hide, our eyes downcast as we seek the safety of invisibility” (38). “We are the Issei and the Nisei and the
Sansei, the Japanese Canadians. We disappear into the future undemanding as dew” (112). For her, then,
the question becomes “Is this my own, my native identity?” And something akin to an answer will only
come in Itsuka, Kogawa’s second novel and a sequel to Obasan.
Alina–Elena Anton
9
But let us move now from Naomi’s search for an identity along a matrilineal direction and within the
framework of a dislocated community, to John Okada’s seminal novel No-No Boy, which also deals with the
internment experience and more precisely its consequences on the individual, only this time on United
States ground and from a male-oriented perspective.
Set just after the end of World War II, No-No Boy begins with Ichiro Yamada’s return to the Japanese
American community in Seattle from a two year prison term. A twenty-five year old Nisei, Ichiro was
imprisoned for refusing the draft and answering “no-no” to both questions in the loyalty oath issued by the
War Department in 1943. Intended to sieve the “loyal” from the “disloyal,” the two questions were deeply
disturbing. The first, Question 27, asked: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States
on combat duty wherever ordered?”, while Question 28 read: “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to
the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or
domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other
foreign government, power, or organization?” Answering “yes” to the first question left the young men
completely vulnerable to be drafted anytime and sent to fight anywhere, as the Army decided. However, a
positive answer to the second question faced them with a much greater dilemma: considering that Japanese
immigrants were denied U.S. citizenship at the time, renouncing even their alleged Japanese citizenship
would have made them stateless persons.
However, Ichiro’s double negative to both loyalty inquiries not only brought him a two-years detention
in the federal prison; worse still, it made him an outcast in the Japanese community and a traitor to the
country. And it also brought him the label of “no-no boy.” The novel thus depicts Ichiro’s reunion with his
family and a rapid sequence of encounters with friends, neighbors and strangers, which form the backdrop
for the more serious events of the book: Ichiro’s rejection of his controlling mother, which leads to the
mother’s suicide, his brother’s betrayal and departure for the army, confrontations with “yes-yes” Japanese
Americans, friendships with other “no-no” boys, as well as a Japanese American veteran, added to which
are a love relationship with a Japanese American girl and the search for a job. As Fu-jen Chen explains,
Alina–Elena Anton
10
“all these illustrate Ichiro’s step from the trauma of being a no-no boy to his journey to reestablish an
identity out of fragments. Ichiro’s quest for a sense of self exposes the disfiguring effects of racism and the
internment not only on the individual psyche, but on the family as well as the community” (Chen, 2000:
282).
Ichiro’s self-probing begins the moment he is reunited with his fractured and disjointed family, which
consists in a maniacally patriotic mother who dominates an alcohoolic and ineffectual father, as well as a
rebellious and malicious brother. By examining his relationship with them and tracing his development from
childhood into an adult, Ichiro gradually understands his formation as a no-no boy. Under the influence of
a mother with very few feminine features—“a small, flat-chested, shapeless woman” (10)—Ichiro finally
recognizes her as the “unreckoning force,” whose power forced him to say “no.” Because the mother
declared herself loyal to the Japanese emperor and rejected as traitors those Japanese Americans who
enlisted in the U.S. military, Ichiro refused the draft and said “no” to the judge. In fact, what gave Ichiro
his sense of existence before the war was his mother’s repeated praise and affirmation—“You are my son.”
And he even recalls:
There was a time . . . [when] we were Japanese with Japanese feelings and Japanese pride and
Japanese thoughts because it was all right then to be Japanese and feel and think all the things
that Japanese do even if we lived in America. Then there came a time when I was only half
Japanese because one is not born in America and raised in America and taught in America and
one does not speak and swear and drink and smoke and play and fight and see and hear in
America among Americans in American streets and houses without becoming American and
loving it (Okada, 1986: 15–16)
It is precisely this contrary strain in his personality that most oppresses Ichiro, to the point where he wishes
to undo his rejection by exchanging places with his friend Kenji, who is now a war veteran, but who has
lost half his leg:
Alina–Elena Anton
11
I’ll change with you, Kenji, he thought. Give me the stump which gives you the right to hold
your head high. Give me the eleven inches which are beginning to hurt again and bring ever
closer the fear of approaching death, and give me with it the fullness of yourself which is also
yours because you were man enough to wish the thing which destroyed your leg and, perhaps,
you with it but, at the same time, made it so that you can put your one good foot in the dirt of
America and know that the wet coolness of it is yours beyond a single doubt (64).
More than a mere rewriting of his past action, Ichiro longs for the switch that will take away his burden
of shame that so oppresses him. He has internalized the meaning of the “no-no” to such an extent, that
it becomes impossible for him to rationalize his decision. But neither is without a price. As Jinqi Ling
puts it, “Kenji’s terminal physical wound will eventually deprive him of his life, while Ichiro’s festering
psychological wound robs him of the ground for moral recovery” (Ling, 1998: 40). Just like in Kogawa’s
novel, both silence and sound fail to bring one “to the freeing word” that will at least partly redress the
trauma of the past, so in Okada’s book, the cost of either compliance, or failure to comply with the dominant
discourse of Americanization is an annihilation of the individual.
References
Chen, Fu-jen, 2000. “John Okada (1923–971)”, in Nelson (250–282)
Frailé-Marcos, Ana María, 2004. “The Letter of the Law and Canadian Letters: Joy Kogawa’s Obasan”, in
Meyer (173–910)
Goellnicht, Donald C., 2009. “Joy Kogawa’s Obasan: An Essential Asian American Text?”, in American Book Review, Vol. 31, No.1, November/December 2009 (5-6).URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_book_
review/summary/v031/31.1.goellnicht.html (visited on 2010/04/18)
Alina–Elena Anton
12
Kella, Elizabeth, 2000. Beloved Communities: Solidarity and Difference in Fiction by Michael Ondaatje, Toni
Morrison and Joy Kogawa, Uppsala: Uppsala University Library
Kogawa, Joy, 1992. Obasan, New York: Doubleday
Ling, Jinqi, 1998. Narrating Nationalisms: Ideology and Form in Asian American literature, New York: Oxford
University Press
Meyer, Michael J. (ed.), 2004. Literature and Law, (Series “Perspectives on Modern Literature”), Rodopi
NAATA (National Asian American Telecomunications Association). “Exploring the Japanese American
Internment through Film and Internet” (project director Julie Hatta). URL: http://caamedia.org/jainte
rnment/index.html (visited on 2010/04/15)
Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath (ed.), 2000. Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Source Book,
Westport: Greenwood Press
Okada, John, 1986. No-No Boy, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 1941. “A date which will live in infamy...”, The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Last updated: May 7, 2008. URL: http://archives.cbc.ca/war_confli
ct/second_world_war/topics/568-2914/ (visited on 2010/04/18)
Alina–Elena Anton
13
Wolf Impersonations and
Gender Power in Angela
Carter’s The Bloody Chamber
Andreea BURSUC
“S, tefan cel Mare” University, Suceava
MA student, 2nd year
a i r ytales are basic stories which comprise a core set of moral meanings, usually easy to grasp
by those to whom they are directed. In the beginning they were transmitted orally and this opened
the way to many retellings and recreations of the same story, so that, in the end, there was only a
schematic hardcore of information which was common to all of these versions. Only later on, beginning
with the 17th and 18th centuries, owing to such writers as Charles Perrault or the Brothers Grimm, did they
acquire a written and maybe final form.
It is generally acknowledged that, in the hands of such writers, fairytales are short stories with a moral
meaning intended to educate children into leading a good life and become accepted by society. For example,
the fairytale of “The Little Red Riding-Hood” by Charles Perrault presents the little girl supposed to take
food to her grandmother as inexperienced and disobeying, so she is punished: she is eaten by the hungry
wolf. Fortunately for her, a hunter passes by the grandmother’s house and splits open the wolf’s belly, thus
freeing the girl and the grandmother. The meaning of this story is that children should be obedient and
respect all their parents’ teachings. That is what, at the end of the story, Little Red Riding Hood herself
decides to do in the future.1
Contemporary critics and literary writers find more connotations in these stories and prove that they are
only apparently exclusively directed towards children; in fact they have many adult implications. Angela
Carter, the author of The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales (1979), considered that fairy tales such as
“Bluebeard”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Puss in Boots” and “Little Red Riding Hood” were written more for
adults than for children, so she rewrites them in order to bring this aspect to our attention: “I was using
the latent content of those traditional stories, and that latent content is violently sexual” (Carter quoted in
Sheets, 1998: 103). The reasons for which Angela Carter chose to work on the fairytale are explained by
Sarah Gamble. First of all, they are folklore in which everybody believes. The teachings contained in the
F
1
For a version of this traditional story both in French and in Romanian, see http://www.parinti.com/modules.php?name=
Content&pa=showpage&pid=1864&page=2, available on April, 21st
Andreea Bursuc
15
traditional stories are like a sort of mythology, a set of golden rules to be obeyed by people. Yet, there is at
least one serious difference between myths and folklore. Myths are “extraordinary lies designed to make
people unfree” (Gamble, 1997: 130, quoting Carter), much too embedded in people’s consciousness and
therefore hard to tackle and reshape. Folklore however, is a much more flexible form of expression and it
can be analysed and recreated, it can be played with. Furthermore, it can be used in subverting myths:
Folklore, however, is an ideal tool for an author, “in the demythologising business”, because it
is “a much more straightforward set of devices for making real life more exciting and is much
easier to infiltrate with other kinds of consciousness”. (Ibid.)
Then, the fairytales, these flexible forms of expression, have long been a means for women alone to speak
and promote their culture, even from the times when there were no written versions of them. Thus, the
feminist perspective has its value restored:
the fairytale [...] is regarded as a domestic and personal narrative form, “a medium for gossip,
anecdote, rumour”, it has always been identified with women, who have played a large part in
its development both as tellers and as writers. (Ibid.: 131)
Before moving on to the actual discussion of the three stories ending Angela Carter’s book mentioned
above, which are “The Werewolf”, “The Company of Wolves” and “Wolf-Alice”, the important notions
of gender and sexuality should also be briefly discussed. Elaine Showalter (1989) presents us with a very
extensive explanation about gender from three perspectives. She brings to our attention the idea that
women have always occupied a secondary position in a predominantly masculine society and the best way
to prove this is by noticing the evolution of language: there are always words to name things in the English
language by using the “masculine linguistic norm” and the feminine is formed from these words by adding
a suffix, for example, as if women were appendices of men: “[...] the masculine form is generic, universal,
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unmarked, while the feminine form is marked by a suffix or some other variant” (Showalter, 1989: 1). Then,
a distinction should be made between gender and sex, which are not one and the same thing. If sex is
something people are born with, gender is acquired through education, by living in a certain society, at a
certain moment in time, and personal and social experience is most important. Thirdly, Showalter derives
from the second reason the fact that “talking about gender means talking about women and men” alike
(ibid: 2). Gender talk does not only mean discussing women from all point of views, as the researchers
of the 1970’s did, but trying to explore the relationships between men and women, to see how they have
interacted with each other in the course of time and how their perspectives on each other have evolved:
Our goal is to discover the range in sex roles and in sexual symbolism in different societies and
periods, to find out what meaning they had and how they functioned to maintain the social
order or to promote its change. (Davis, quoted in Showalter, 1989: 2)
Starting from these assumptions, writing is also supposed to be marked by gender: a woman will put her
imprint on the writing, just as a man will do. A woman’s writing will find the man and the woman in a
sort of dialogue, having equal rights and obligations, sharing everything as one. A man will be more bossy
in his writing, claiming for the male character more rights, assuming a patriarchal position. Showalter even
goes further as to say that even race and class mark writing, and all this gives a work its value.
This situation in which the woman is always on the second plane leads not only to difference but also to
otherness; the One is the important one, the right one, a position that everybody longs for, and the Other is
the being subjected to it, which brings to reality all the interests of the One and which cannot deny the
latter’s power. From this perspective, the woman is seen as man’s object of desire and seduction and she
cannot help it. She must obey. She must do whatever he asks. On the contrary, the male oppressor has
an active role, he is the subject in the relationship and he has the power. Traditional beliefs would never
envisage placing the woman in the position of subject, as her inner nature is commonly perceived as not
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allowing it. This is a perspective that the feminists have sought counter, and Angela Carter is one of them.
She has tried to prove in her works that a relationship of equality, of mutual consent and benefit, can and
should exist between men and women. This kind of relationship, in which the woman is not an object of
male desire any more, but assumes the position of subject, constitutes what Baudrillard has defined as
seduction, which is
not an annihilating, alienating force, though, but a game in which the stake is not possession or
mastery, and in which the privilege of the subject over the object – or one sex over the other –
ends. (Macsiniuc, 2002: 249)
Starting from all these perspectives, we can say that the three short stories of Angela Carter reconcile
the image of the woman in the contemporary society. The stories are interrelated, each continuing and
completing the previous one. They decrease in aggressiveness towards the male image, starting with a girl
who, very assertively, injures the wolf, and ending with the girl who tends the injuries that others, not she,
had inflicted on him. These are adult tales, not directed towards children, and only very little information is
kept from the traditional fairytale of Charles Perrault. This analogy is actually more implied than explicit in
the texts. The reader who has been formed by a certain culture, that of the childhood fairytales, who has
dear images of them in his heart, has certain expectations from these stories. Probably this was Angela
Carter’s intention, to attract attention and to maintain it, knowing that she can count on a broad public, so
that she could promote her feminist ideas.
The first story, “The Werewolf”, metaphorically depicts a prejudiced, fearful society, eaten by anguish
whenever something new comes in to disturb its order. This fear and lack of openness goes in line with the
myth–folklore distinction presented above and is visible right from the first sentence of the text. The setting
is succinct: “It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts” (Carter, 1979: 108). This
line clearly gives Angela Carter the appropriate material to begin her “demythologising business” and the
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setting that follows accounts for this undertaking. A mythical settlement is introduced, together with its
“poor” people, but this is an ironical perspective, built on the tradition of the fairytale style, and visibly
mocked; the people appear to believe in all sorts of mythical representations and practices, personified by
the Devil and even their dead are not allowed to rest peacefully:
no flowers grow there so they put out small, votive offerings, little loaves, sometimes a cake
that the bears come lumbering from the margins of the forest to snatch away. At midnight,
especially on Walpurgisnacht, the Devil holds picnics in the graveyards and invites the witches;
then they dig up fresh corpses, and eat them. Anyone will tell you that.
Wreaths of garlic on the doors keep out the vampires. A blue-eyed child born feet first on the
night of St John’s Eve will have second sight. (Carter, 1979: 108)
But they are most afraid of witches, old, ever-knowledgeable women whom they envy:
When they discover a witch – some old woman whose cheeses ripen when her neighbour’s do
not, another old woman whose black cat, oh, sinister! follows her about all the time, they strip the
crone, search for her marks, for the supernumerary nipple her familiar sucks. They soon find it.
They stone her to death. (Carter, 1979: 108)
An analogy can be made between these traditional stereotypical beliefs and the attitude towards feminists
and women writers who were not encouraged at that time by their male counterparts.
The story continues by introducing abruptly, without any preparation, as if she did not matter at all, a
person who is supposed to take some gifts to her grandmother. This is again an allusion to the insignificant
role that women play in men’s society, where they are as if inexistent, as if a pale and submissive shadow of
the male figure:
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Go and visit grandmother who has been sick. Take her the oatcakes I’ve baked for her on the
hearthstone and a little pot of butter.
The good child does as her mother bids her [...]. (Carter, 1979: 109)
These short lines suggest the submissive attitude that women are educated to follow and their acceptance
of the situation; as Angela Dworkin would say, women transmit to one another through education, from
childhood, their underprivileging, the status of inferiority to their male counterparts. In doing so, women
inflict pain on themselves and, therefore, “freedom for women must begin in the repudiation of our own
masochism” (Dworkin, quoted in Sheets, 1998: 99).
The clothes the girl wears depict an image of the immemorial, generally existing woman: “The child had
a scabby coat of sheepskin to keep out the cold” (Carter, 1979: 109). The next images show a courageous
girl, one who does not fear the wolves that her mother had asked her to stay away from, making her take
her father’s hunting knife. Her possession of the knife, this phallic object, seems to confer an artificial,
masculine identity on her. Soon, she is not spared the advances of a wolf which comes to her, but she
cuts off his forepaw with the knife. At this, “[t]he wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob, when it saw what
had happened to it; wolves are less brave than they seem” (ibid.). The girl takes the paw with her and
continues her journey to her grandmother. This may appear to demonstrate that men do not have the strong
character that society has educated us into believing they possess. They seem to give in when attacked on a
similar, aggressive, masculine ground. Yet, when analysing the scene from the perspective of the feminist
tradition of which Angela Carter is a representative, such an interpretation would appear over-simplistic.
The interest is not to show how powerful men are, and not even to shift the perspective of power from men
to women. This would imply switching the roles of subject–object between men and women, giving an
artificial, unnecessary power to women, making them subjects in a phallic tradition, a position they could
never occupy, because it was never meant for them. Instead, the interpretation should build on the idea of
seduction introduced before, a position which does not privilege man or woman, but makes them equal
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and encourages them to take turns in building their relationship. Yet, the fact that the girl takes the wolf’s
paw which she had cut with her phallic knife and continues her journey indicates that she is trapped in
a framework of traditional teachings that does not yet allow her the perspective of seduction suggested
before. This proves that she is probably not mature enough to start the life of a woman responsible for her
own transformation.
When the girl gets to her grandmother’s house, she discovers that the paw was her grandmother’s hand,
because the old woman was a witch and she had probably wanted to test the girl. She calls the neighbours,
who come and kill the old woman, leaving her to live and “prosper” in the latter’s house. Seen in the light
of the previous interpretation, the girl’s “prospering” is ironic, because she is left to live a life similar to
her mother’s and grandmother’s, that is, as an object of the male possession, therefore a traditional one.
This means that the grandmother herself has failed to change her condition of subject and now she has
condemned her granddaughter to it too. This may be a proof of the inescapable condition of woman, who
will always be subjected to men and to temptations, yet maybe this is the right condition to be in, as long as
you master it.
The next story, “The Company of Wolves”, is the longest of all and probably presents the “Little Red
Riding Hood” closer to the original than any of the other two stories. It also produces a shift in the girl’s
evolution, bringing her closer to the ideal of living in harmony, with her man, as an equal to him. Yet,
another story is intermingled in the beginning, that of a woman living in a strange situation for a traditional
woman and mother: that of having two husbands, both of them alive and unaware of each other’s presence.
The story begins by introducing the wolf, a “carnivore incarnate” and “[o]ne beast and one only [that]
howls in the woods by night” (Carter, 1979: 110). This howling is an assertion of male power. The wolf’s
eyes are presented as gleaming in the dark, in many shades of colour, especially red – “for danger”; the
wolves are “hungry” because it is winter, in fact, this is an image of the man who is anxious to exert his
power over the unsuspecting, uninitiated woman traveller who happens to “go through the wood unwisely
late” (ibid.: 110). Nature is seen as being hostile to the helpless woman, since winter is so cold and so many
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wolves, masters of the forest, roam the place; in this context, a fatal warning is given: “[...] if you stray
from the path for one instant, the wolves will eat you” (ibid.: 111). The voice of the woman narrator can be
heard at a certain moment, maybe to blame women for being weak, maybe to encourage them to accept
and ascertain their sexuality: “We try and try, but sometimes we cannot keep them out” (ibid.). Another
warning is given, as if foreshadowing what is to follow and as a further argument for the previous idea:
“Fear and flee the wolf; for, worst of all, the wolf may be more than he seems” (ibid.).
The story which follows, that of the woman with two husbands, is quite strange. This woman’s first
husband had disappeared on their wedding night, so after a while she married again and had two children
by her second husband. After a few years, the first husband returned home and was seen by the woman’s
second husband, who took action and killed the newly-arrived one. It was reported that “the woman wept
and her second husband beat her” (Carter, 1979: 113). This suggests the traditional relation of power and
submission, in which man is the One, the subject, and the woman is the Other, the object of his power.
There is an important fragment in this story, referring to the howling of the wolf:
The long-drawn, wavering howl has, for all its fearful resonance, some inherent sadness in it, as
if the beasts would love to be less beastly if only they knew how and never cease to mourn their
own condition. (Carter, 1979: 112)
These lines represent the essence of the whole story, inviting women to take action towards bringing the
relationship between themselves and men to a common ground of shared responsibility and benefit; it is
like a warning for women, to make them understand that, unless they are active participants in their sexual
lives, they will end up in submission to the male power. Another story before this one portrays another
jealous hunter killing a wolf which transforms himself into a man and the hunter is terrified. It is as if he
had killed himself there, as if he had destroyed his own masculinity. This story is also like a pairing double
to “The Werewolf” discussed before, only that now there is a male character engaged in the typical display
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of power; he is not to blame for his attitude though, since he has no female counterpart to show him the
way to equality without aggression.
Before presenting the story of the “Little Red Riding Hood”, the narrator evoques another spell to be
cast on wolves, foreshadowing the end of the story and reminding of the symbolic, ritualistic attitude of
people when dealing with things they do not clearly understand, because these things cannot be fitted into
traditional categories – an attitude presented more in detail in “The Werewolf”:
if you burn his human clothing you condemn him to wolfishness for the rest of his life, so old
wives hereabouts think it some protection to throw a hat or an apron at the werewolf, as if
clothes made the man. (Carter, 1979: 113)
The fragment could bring to our attention the binary opposition between the animal and the human identities
that characters must shift between in order to gain their final, true identity. This is the transformation
that the girls from “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” or “The Tiger’s Bride”, two other texts from this whole
collection of stories, underwent. In this case, the implication is that the wolf itself will be more open to
adapt to the girl’s demands, he will participate more actively in their common game, acknowledging the
limits of his power, so that they can emerge as equal partners in the end. This is a “metamorphosis” that
both partners must undergo.
The story of the girl with the red shawl – as she is not named “Little Red Riding Hood” – begins with the
sentence “She is quite sure the wild beasts cannot harm her, though, well-warned, she lays a carving knife in
the basket her mother has packed with cheeses” (Carter, 1979: 113). She knows that she is an adolescent, as
“[h]er breasts have begun to swell; [...] her cheeks are an emblematic scarlet and white and she has just started
her woman’s bleeding. [...] she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of
membrane; she is a closed system” (Carter, 1979: 113–4). She seems to understand her transformation and to
accept womanhood – “It is the worst time in all the year for the wolves but this strong-minded child insists
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she will go off through the wood” (Carter, 1979: 113). The knife that she is carrying with her, the phallic
symbol, will not fulfil the same role as in “The Werewolf”, she will not use it again against the stranger who
greets her, she appears to be hiding another strategy, deprived of aggression, although, for convenience and
to comply with her mother’s request, she still keeps it in her basket: “She is quite sure the wild beasts cannot
harm her, although, well-warned, she lays a carving knife in the basket her mother has packed with cheeses.
(ibid.). The story suggests that her mother had noticed the transformation but, being a woman herself and
having probably undergone the same test herself in her youth, “she cannot deny her”. Therefore, when the
girl encounters a bold man, she plays his game: she promises him a kiss if he gets to her grandmother’s
before her. Her womanly nature makes her break the promise of not straying from the path and she even
gives him her basket to take to the grandmother’s so that the old lady should not realize her granddaughter’s
transformation into a woman, a situation that she might not accept and that she might even try to oppose:
He went through the undergrowth and took her basket with him but she forgot to be afraid of
beasts, although now the moon was rising, for she wanted to dawdle on her way to make sure
the handsome gentleman would win his wager. (Carter: 1979: 115)
By the time the hunter reaches grandmother’s house, the reader realises that he is the wolf, and when he
enters the house he takes off his clothes and in doing so he metamorphoses into the wolf and eats the old
lady, burns her clothes and remains and hides her bones under the bed. The fact that the last thing the
old lady sees before her death is a handsome young man proves that she herself had experienced life with
the wolf. But now time has passed, she is old and she must die to make way for the young granddaughter
who might manage to tame the wolf-man. When the girl gets there she is afraid at first, but, realising the
situation she is in, she assumes the new responsibility, that of bringing the wolf to the original state of
equality with woman. Some critics have argued she was about to be raped and, understanding the fact
that she could not escape, she consented. We believe that she goes beyond this selfish male empowerment,
because, when he asks her to throw her clothes in the fire, she does the same with his, thus trapping
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themselves both in the never ending state of wolfishness, thus of equality and true nature. When they take
off their human clothes and metamorphose into wolves, they give up falseness.
The last of the three stories, “Wolf-Alice”, presents a girl who, right from the beginning of her life is
half-wolf, half-woman and, no matter the struggles of the nuns to bring her on the right path, she cannot
be educated into the selfishness and the superficiality of human beings. The idea that she cannot speak a
human language suggests that she will not be forced into the binary opposition man-woman, her name
cannot be derived from the male’s, the “linguistic norm”, as Elaine Showalter so explicitly conveyed in her
work (cf. Showlater, 1989, 1-2). The fact that she is sent to the Duke’s house, who is himself a wolf during
night time and who never cares for her during daytime, sets her apart even more from the traditional,
artificial, one-sided relationships between men and women and further proves her allegiance to a new class
of women, the ones who will have the power to operate transformations on their partners. She undergoes
all the processes of maturation by herself without the help of people, rejecting the teachings of the nuns,
only with the company of “wild beasts” – the wolves – which “tendered her because they knew she was an
imperfect wolf” (Carter, 1979, 121–2). The female narrative voice can be heard again, reproving women for
their usual non-intrusive attitude when it comes to their relationship with men and reminding them that the
state of underprivileging and disempowerment that they find themselves in is very much the consequence
of their relaxed attitude: “we secluded her in animal privacy out of fear of her imperfection because it
showed us what we might have been” (Carter, 1979, 122). The analogy that Carter makes to the biblical
episode of the Original Sin is based on the idea that in Eden Adam and Eve were sharing a commonly
gratifying experience, a state of affairs to be recovered by men and women in their common quest:
If you could transport her, in her filth, rags and feral disorder, to the Eden of our first beginnings
where Eve and grunting Adam squat on a daisy bank, picking the lice from one another’s pelts,
then she might prove to be the wise child who leads them all and her silence and her howling a
language as authentic as any language of nature. (Carter, 1979: 121)
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Probably her most helpful friend is the mirror which, by making her believe that she is actually seeing
another person in the room, helps her stay away from the wolfish attractions while she is a child and keeps
her company in all her key childhood moments. When she realises that it was her image she saw in the
picture, it was no longer necessary for her to be tricked, because she was an adult, ready to take a new step
in her life with the Wolf-Duke; which she does, by tending his wounds after a difficult night. She is the one
initiating him now, contrary to the image of the girl who had been introduced into the wolf life by the man.
She is in control now, she is the wolf, she has the power. But her power is mild, caring, it does not make
him suffer, but on the contrary, it soothes him.
Angela Carter is one of the greatest postmodernist feminist writers who has sought to bring a solution
to the never ending problem of the woman’s subordination. She has proven that a middle route exists, that
men and women can meet on equal grounds, because, even if they are anatomically distinct, “physically
male and female humans resemble each other in many more ways than [they] differ” (Nicholson citing Flax,
1990: 51).
References
Carter, Angela, 1979. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Penguin Books
Flax, Jane, 1990. “Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory”, in Nicholson (39–62)
Gamble, Sarah, 1997. Angela Carter: Writing From the Front Line, Edinburgh University Press
Macsiniuc, Cornelia, 2002. Towards a Poetics of Reading: Poststructuralist Perspectives, Ias, i: Institutul European
Nicholson, Linda J. (ed.), 1990. Feminism/Postmodernism, New York and London: Routledge
Sheets, Robin Ann, 1998. “Pornography, Fairy Tales and Feminism: Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’”,
in Tucker (96–119)
Showalter, Elaine, 1989. Speaking of Gender, Routledge
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Tucker, Lindsay (ed.), 1998. Critical Essays on Angela Carter, London : Prentice Hall International
http://www.parinti.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1864&page=2 (visited on 2010/
04/21)
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The Narrative of Stereotypes:
Male Identity as Seen by
John Fowles
Mircea Dănut, DRON
S, tefan cel Mare University, Suceava
English-German, 3rd year
u e to the constant rise of feminism in the past century, masculinity as a concept and as cultural
phenomenon has attracted less and less attention. If we were to consider the notions of feminism
and masculinity in a conflicting relationship based on action and reaction, all the actions of the
former (women receiving the right to vote, being accepted in what were formerly known as male-dominated
areas of life and abandoning their traditional role of housewife and matriarch) produce an equally important
reaction, that of the male becoming disoriented, losing his power and place in society, ultimately watching
the pillars of his temple of masculinity crumble all round him.
My paper will focus on this type of traditional man who is lost in a world of cultural changes as he is
constructed in the works of the English novelist and essayist John Fowles.
D
The Collector – the formulaic man?
The Collector was John Fowles’ first published novel and an instant hit among readers. Fowles lays bare the
issue of male violence as a trait of masculine power and its relation to male sexuality.
While talking about his work in an interview, Fowles mentioned the Bluebeard syndrome as the catalyst of
the novel. He also states that the idea of writing about a man who imprisons a woman in order to have
complete power over her came to him from the opera Bluebeard’s castle and also from a newspaper article
“of a boy who captured a girl and imprisoned her in an air-raid shelter at the end of his garden. . . there
were many peculiar features about this case that fascinated me” (Campbell, 1976: 457)
Before proceeding, I have taken the liberty of adding some information about the legend of Bluebeard
which I find relevant for the general understanding of this chapter. “Bluebeard” (French: “La barbe bleue”)
is a French folktale written by Charles Perrault and published in Paris in 1697. The story is about a violent
nobleman who has the habit of killing his disobedient and distrusting wives and collecting them in the
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29
cellar. The story is believed to be based on a historic person’s life, a nobleman and a serial killer named
Gilles de Rais who lived in 16th century Brittany.
We may consider The Collector “a casebook” (Woodcock, 1984: 27) of patriarchy in a number of ways:
Clegg is a case-study of masculine behavior and sets the basis of the male characters later developed in
Fowles’ fiction. Also, Clegg represents a model of the male behavior in general; his attitude reflects the
general fixation of the male to idealize women and is representative for how male power feeds and enforces
itself onto women through such an idealization.
Moreover, “Clegg’s emotional and sexual fascism is common to all of Fowles’ male characters, though it
differs in degree of intensity and overtness” (Woodcock, 1984: 30).
Patriarchy is one of the main issues we come across in the book. When reading The Collector as a
manifesto of patriarchal power, we not only find a definition but also learn the mechanisms of male behavior.
Arguments in favor of this affirmation are brought throughout the book by both the male and the female
comments. Thus, Miranda writes about Clegg that he is “this weird male thing. Now I’m no longer nice.
They sulk if you don’t give and hate you when you do. Intelligent men must despise themselves for being
like that. Their illogicality” (Fowles, 1977: 54). It is from this statement that we may conclude that the male
psyche permanently oscillates between two classic views on women: that of “Madonnas to be worshipped
and whores to be reviled” (Woodcock, 1984: 28). Clegg himself admits to manifesting a bipolar conduct
when it comes to his idealization of women; on the one hand he has a desire for “higher aspirations”
(Fowles, 1977: 12) and on the other he confesses to having a raw, instinctual nature, “the crude animal thing
I was born with” (ibid.: 10). These two behaviours manifest themselves most poignantly in his dreams: one
time he dreams about them getting married and forming a family ( the one he was deprived of as a child) –
“Nothing nasty, but of course all the other men green around the gills” (ibid.: 6) – and on the other hand he
sees her with another man: “I let myself dream I hit her across the face as I saw it done once by a chap in a
telly play” (ibid.: 7).
The conclusion is, as Bruce Woodcock puts it:
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The contradictions between the rational and the sexual, between the authoritarian control and
irrational passion, are shown as centered within the male as the pivots of patriarchy. (Woodcock,
1984: 28)
By branding Clegg as both Ferdinand and Caliban, Miranda seems to suggest that he is the prototype of
masculinity, “the two polar opposites of the male spectrum” (Fowles, 1977: 46).
The man’s romantic illusions are actually fantasies designed by the male psyche and acted out on women
which represent the subdued objects. Miranda eventually recognizes the two persons living inside Clegg:
“Deep down in him, side by side with the beastliness, the sourness, there is a tremendous innocence. It
rules him. He must protect it” (Fowles, 1977: 252). This insecurity results in a desire to control and impose
himself upon women. Moreover, since Clegg’s narrative is told by a man, it is safe to assume that all men
can be seen “as potential if not actual Cleggs – collectors, possessors, controllers, using power to compensate
for inadequacy” (Woodcock, 1984: 29).
Miranda sees Clegg as a weak, cheap imitation of a man and this is what frustrates her the most. She
calls him “exactly the sort of man you would not suspect. The most unwolf like” (Fowles, 1977: 128). The
man’s insecurity and lack of a masculine aspect is yet another means of manifestation of his inadequacy.
Clegg compensates for his flaws through money. He buys Miranda the best of everything not because he
is genuinely concerned about her welfare but in order to achieve (financial) power over her. He actually
tells Miranda: “You could lean on me financially” and her reply is “And you on me for everything else?
God forbid!” (ibid.: 63). When it comes down to money, Clegg’s opinion is that “Money is Power” and his
general take on life is that “a lot of people which may seem happy now would do what I did or similar
things if they had the money and the time” (ibid.: 23). Being aware of the fact that he lacks the status of a
macho, he suggests a relationship where he has physical and economical control while Miranda offers him
emotional comfort: “She always seems to get me on the defensive. . . in my dreams it was always we looked
into each other’s eyes one day and then we kissed and nothing was said until after” (ibid.: 37).
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31
Politically speaking, Fowles links this “narcissistic and parasitical” (Woodcock, 1984: 27) hobby with
totalitarianism: “anyone who still collects (i.e. kills) some field of living life just for the pleasure and vanity
of it has all the makings of a concentration-camp commandant” (Fowles, 1977: 38).
Another trait of patriarchy exposed by Fowels is his male character’s egoism, which is of the utmost
importance to the social legacy of masculinity. Be it Clegg, Nick or Miles, all the male characters Fowles
creates are concerned only with themselves and how to exert power and achieve pleasure. Clegg goes so far
as to completely lose touch with reality and imagines that the girl he kidnapped, locked up and tortured
might one day actually love him and consent to becoming his wife: “If she’s with me, she’ll see my good
points” (Fowles, 1977: 17). All of Clegg’s affirmations are deeply self-centered: Miranda is “the purprose of
my life” (ibid.: 20), “I knew my love was worthy of her” (ibid.: 30), “you’re all I’ve got that makes life worth
living” (ibid.: 54), “It was like we were the only two people in the world” (ibid.: 68). Here we see a romantic
idealization and a desire for power, Ferdinand and Caliban come together with the same purpose, that of
turning women into instruments of male gratification.
Clegg’s passion for taking photographs becomes a fetish when it is oriented towards Miranda. He
never visualized her as a living being, but most often as an image of feminine perfection, a picture he can
create and achieve satisfaction from again and again. The goal is, of course, Clegg’s personal pleasure.
Thus, Miranda is objectified into the image of his lust and the photograph he takes of her becomes the
ultimate tribute to male power. Every time Miranda tries to escape or is disobedient, Clegg reacts with
force, not so much because he is afraid of getting caught and arrested but in order to demonstrate to her
that he is powerful, that he is a man: “It was like I’d showed her who was really the master” (Fowles, 1977:
94).
When realizing that Miranda is a real person who is intellectually and emotionally superior and will not
bend to his will, the photos remain Clegg’s final consolation: “Because I could do it. The photographs, I
used to look at them sometimes. I could take my time with them. They didn’t talk back at me” (Fowles,
1977: 113).
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Although Clegg is not a macho like other men, there are other aspects which he and the rest of the male
population have in common. Miranda considers him abnormal and his actions may be shocking but the
motivation behind these actions is something quite normal and widespread among men, if we were to
follow the author’s opinions. Clegg tells Miranda: “you think I’m not normal keeping you here like this.
Perhaps I’m not. But I can tell you there’s more of it now than anyone knows” (Fowles, 1977: 75). The
conclusion would be that all men “are in one sense or another complicit in a system of power relations
rooted in forms of appropriation and violence as means of dominance and control” (Woodcock, 1984: 33).
Bruce Woodcock goes further to explain that “all men may not be actual rapists; but potentially they
can and are because of the relation of social power and dominance they maintain over women. The violent
forms into which sexual relations have been shaped, whether it be rape, pornography, prostitution, marital
coercion, actual physical violence, psychological pressure or whatever else, are all constructed to embody
and enforce dominantly male prerogatives. Fowles explores the implications of these issues through
Miranda’s narrative and her views on Clegg” (Woodcock, 1984: 34).
It has been said that “men see objects and women see the relations between objects” (dennydavis.net).
This affirmation is supported by Miranda when she writes in her journal that “the ordinary man is the
curse of civilization” (Fowles, 1977: 137). What she considers “ordinary” about men and being male is “all
that clumsy masculine analysis” (ibid.: 140). She sees Clegg, the collector, as destructive as a scientist who
captures and examines a living being, with himself dominating the operation. She hates the fact that men
are interested in the dominant study of an object and not in the autonomous, relational analysis based on
equality. It is this cold, hard, factual rendering of life that annoys Miranda, not only in her relationship with
Clegg, but also in past relationships she mentioned in the journal. This is most obvious in a discussion she
had with a friend of hers about a former lover: “He said men are vile. I said, the vilest thing about them is
that they can say that with a smile on their faces” (ibid.: 190).
Before dying, Miranda realizes her one true fault in this whole story: the fact that she existed. She
considers herself the center of Clegg’s obsession, thus symbolizing the character’s demise: “I could never
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cure him. Because I’m his disease” (Fowles, 1977: 257). Miranda was half right: she was the object of
Clegg’s passion and unfulfilled ideals, but what he actually suffered from and what brings about her death
is really his desire to dominate, his own male perspective on power.
Manly fantasies and phantoms in Fowles’ Mantissa
One of Fowles’ greatest merits and one of the aspects he went down in English literary history for is the
fact that he managed to decipher the male persona and expose it – as a warning for all men – in his literary
works. His male characters are average, even plain men, both physically and psychologically. They are
middle-class products, representative of their generation and even of the present-day generation of men.
They are teachers, writers or social servants who share one thing: an obsession with male power associated
with blatant male anxiety. The roles they play in society are unimportant and yet not irrelevant. Fowles’ novels
are built on essential details and not taking them into account can lead to a misunderstanding or a complete
lack of understanding of the text. In Mantissa, all the descriptive aspects (be it the walls of the room, the
clothes of Nemesis, Miles’ nudity or Doctor Delfie’s name) give us hints regarding stereotypical male behavior.
The “male Angst” (Woodcock, 1984: 200) is most present in men belonging to the bourgeoisie. This is
mainly the result of the two World Wars, which were the largest, most vivid enactment of masculine power
and men’s fear of losing it. With their failure came the end of the secure masculine persona, anchored in
reality and parading age-old patriarchal principles.
What followed, probably, was not a few decades of women’s struggle to gain power but years in which
men kept losing it. It is this poor, little man, who thinks he is in control of reality and of the women around
him that has been chosen to become the hero of Fowles’ novels.
When speaking about books such as Mantissa or The Collector there is much room for a so-called double
analysis: the first stems from the text and contains Fowles’ ideas, his attempts to surprise the male brain,
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and the second refers to the novelist himself; the readers are dealing with an analysis of masculinity done
by a man; Fowles’ objectivity is clearly limited, if not completely absent, therefore the second aspect which
must be examined, apart from what is being said, is what is not being said; one needs to deal with the
author’s personal demons as well.
Fowles tried to set out early on to expose male behavior, to find out what makes men tick. He probably
realized the answer after writing his first novel. His books are case studies and their lessons are all there for
us to learn from.
One of the main ideas which the novel Mantissa focuses on is related to the notion of power and how
the two sexes relate to it; the author presents the forms power takes when it is exerted by men upon women
in their fantasies. Wendy Holloway points out in one of her essays the fact that both men and women are
equally attracted to the idea of power, attempting to inflict it upon the mate. Both sexes see the vulnerability
in the other as a source of power waiting to be tapped into – “[t]he way that vulnerability is a product of
desire for the other may well be the same for men and women” (Holloway, 1983: 136).
Some fundamental aspects related to men which appear both in Mantissa and in Wendy Holloway’s
essay are that the majority of men are one-dimensional, instinctual creatures – “Your true evolutionary
function as a male is to introduce your spermatozoa, that is, your genes, into as many wombs as possible”
(Fowles, 1982: 42) – and the most important thirst they are trying to quench (even more important than sex)
is the one their ego has for power.
What is quite interesting is the way in which the two sexes understand the notion of power: women
respond to the vulnerability in men with a maternal desire to nurture and heal, whereas men respond to
the vulnerability in women with an urge to dominate and consume. Conclusively, what both Fowles and
Holloway point out is that women see power in caring and men see power in conquering.
Men’s interpretation of women is a dual one: on the one hand, they see in the weaker sex all the traits
which are lacking or poorly developed in themselves, therefore women become objects of interest and items
of the hunt; on the other hand, they represent all the beauty, mystique and frailty of this world. This may
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bring out the passive side of men and they must consequently bring the female under control. Men don’t
see human beings or relationships, they see extensions of their ego and means through which they can get
what they want. This fact is stated by Woodcock in her essay as well:
this legacy of the social construction of masculinity continually reconstructed in the images men
make of women, images which are conversely images of men themselves. . . it is not that women
are passive. They represent male passivity and that is what has to be destroyed, over and over
again, and with compulsive monotony – created with the gags and hoods and the bondage and
then fragmented with the power of the prick. (Woodcock, 1984: 27)
Mantissa deals with the male Angst and man’s desire to dominate in the form of a surprising, playful and
comic novel which is not even taken seriously by its own author, but which makes a very serious statement
about men, women and (sexual) power.
It may come as a surprise to many that one of Fowles’ most famous books was one of his least favorites.
Moreover, he himself declared in an interview that he never intended to publish it, but was bullied by his
publisher at the time. Indeed, the accounts are a bit too private and not at all flattering, if we consider this
novel from a man’s point of view, but we can consider it a necessary evil, an exposé of great interest for
both men and women.
Fowles had been considering the idea of writing about a confrontation with his muses for a long time:
“I have often thought about bringing the muse into the twentieth century” (Hall, 1982: 92). He constructs
this meeting in Mantissa and designs the Muse – his female principle – after a “Jungian pattern” (Edinger,
1996: 64), giving her the tasks of creating animosity, tricking and exasperating the male.
The relationship between the male author and the female muse, with all its implications, and “the
intrinsic oppositeness of man and woman” (Woodcock, 1984: 148) build the subject of the novel, just as
Fowles himself once declared: “In Mantissa, this all comes out in the open. The author and the muse, in that
book, are deceiving each other all the time” (Hall, 1982: 92).
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Since we are not dealing with a standard relationship between man and woman, but a metaphorical
one between author and muse, one of the essential details when reading Fowles, if not the most important
aspect, is language – more exactly, the use of language in a literary relationship whose lovechild is the story
that Miles produces.
Fowles himself considered the book to be a metaphor for the growth of language, much in the line of a
small and private intervention in the debate about language and literature.
Bruce Woodcock states the following about Mantissa in his book entitled Male Mythologies: John Fowles
and Masculinity: “Crucially, it shows how men construct fantasies of women and obtain power through
language, forms of discourse, systems of representation” (Woodcock, 1984: 150).
David Lodge claimed that Mantissa “sounds like something from the page of Penthouse” (Lodge, 1982:
5). And at a first glimpse one would say that this is all there is to the book. From what I have mentioned
so far, this is clearly not the case, although pornography does play a big role when it comes to dissecting
the male psyche and implicitly to Mantissa. In his book, Woodcock states that there is a large number of
feminists who “in different ways put the case for seeing pornography as the paradigm of male sexuality,
male violence against women and a vehicle for maintaining male power” (Woodcock, 1984: 163).
In her article, “A feminist interest in pornography: some modest proposals”, Beverly Brown points out
that
pornography is best considered not as a certain kind of explicitness in terms of content, but as
a scenario of strategies designed to trigger male sexual fantasies. These exist within a wider
spectrum of representations, most notably the representation of women to men and men to
themselves in relation to women. Such general representations, advertising and so on, are part
of the social power of men over women and pornography is part of the process, with its own
repertoire. (Brown, 1981: 6–7)
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The conclusion is that it is possible to see “pornographic writing as writing, the verbalization of sex and the
construction of fantasy” (Brown, 1981: 7), this being the case with Mantissa. This reinforces my previous
statement according to which, in the novel, language plays an important role in obtaining power and sexual
satisfaction.
The strong pornographic nature of Mantissa is supposed to emphasize its parodic nature as “pornography
isn’t a form that can parody itself, since it is already structured as a theater of stereotypes preferring the
ready-made limits of its own self-satisfied routines” (Sontag, 1982: 96). The characters of Mantissa also
emphasize the parodic aspect of the novel as well. Bruce Woodcock defines Miles Green as a “self-parody,
an erotically obsessed fantasist for whom writing is sublimated sex, and sex itself is fiction. Green is
shown trapped in his own text, an anxious and incompetent novelist, caught in the limits of his own sexual
fantasies, endlessly revising them” (Woodcock, 1984: 152).
Despite sympathizing with feminists, Fowles doesn’t shy away from creating a humorous feminist
character in Mantissa. Nemesis is the avenging female punk-rocker, who burst in to punish “the fucking
chauvinistic pig” (Fowles, 1982: 52) for his supposed backlashes against women’s rights movements,
probably materialized in some of his previous works. She calls Green “a typical capitalist sexist parasite”
(ibid.) who is only concerned with “degrading women and turning us into one-dimensional sex-objects”
(ibid.: 55). The role of Nemesis in the novel is to represent a parody of radical feminism.
Mantissa sums up aspects from all of Fowles’ novels as if the author were trying to free his mind from
all the phantoms that have haunted his work and decides to mock them by bringing them back to life in a
story about a show-down between man and woman, ironically depicted by a poor excuse of a novelist and
the muse of all artists. Thus, Mantissa can be interpreted as the meeting between the sexually incompetent
Clegg and Erato, the woman he could never add to his collection, or between a female Conchis, trapped in a
secluded and mysterious place, who is trying to initiate the blunt Nick into another dimension of knowledge.
In the beginning, Green is an amnesiac suffering from a “power cut”. Conveniently enough, the only
way this powerless man can regain his identity is by having sexual intercourse with two powerful women.
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His second problem is that he is lacking a basic sense of reality, being “over-attached to the verbalization of
feelings instead of to the direct act of feeling itself” (Fowles, 1982: 42-43).
It is this excessive verbalization that helps produce the first part of the novel. Miles’ orgasm at the end
of the first part is brought on by Doctor Delfie’s accelerated speech. This funny little story is Miles’ baby,
which he made all by himself. Language also exposes the self-enclosed nature of male sexual imagination
and helps create an image of the way in which men see women. It defines and contains women within the
stereotypical mind of the male author.
If in the first part language could be interpreted as a sexual act, in the episode of Erato’s visit the tone
becomes more sober (for a while). For the greater part, the discussion between Erato and Miles is a sort of
foreplay during which the participants throw taunts at each other.
In the case of both Doctor Delfie and Erato, the fantasy Green builds is one based on the dominance of
the woman and the submission of the man. He calls it “Rape. The other way round” (Fowles, 1982: 42).
Despite being cast in dominant roles, Doctor Delfie and nurse Cory are rendered passive through
language in order to appeal to the male reader. Green is asked “to see and feel my defenselessness. How
small and weak I am, compared to you – how rapable as it were” (Fowles, 1982: 43).
Erato starts out as the perfect fantasy girl – sweet, wholesome, inspiring and yet slightly perverted –
and ends up being every man’s nightmare:
You look stunning. Out of this world. More childlike. Vulnerable. Sweet.
More feminine?
Incontestably.
Easier to exploit.
I didn’t mean that at all. Honestly. . . a dream. Just the sort of girl one would like to take
home to meet mother. (Fowles, 1982: 59)
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Erato is essentially a tease, a temptress trying to show men the cramp limits of their imagination while
appealing to them on a sexual level.
For a male reader, Erato’s encounter with the satyr and her being raped by the mythical sexually potent
creature would seem amusing. The reason for this is that, although the story concerning rape is being told
by a woman, the accounts are being presented from a male point of view. That Erato’s age is constantly
shifting to appeal to the masculine psyche is proof of the dominant male viewpoint behind the lovely mask
of the Greek muse.
It is this woman who also presents man with the limitations of his own sexual fantasies: “As soon
as it’s a matter of his lordship’s pleasure, reality flies out of the window” (Fowles, 1982: 81). She also
designates her place and all women’s place in male-written fiction as “one more miserable fantasy figure
your diseased mind is trying to conjure up out of nothing” (ibid.: 85). The fact of the matter is, as Bruce
Woodcock states, that “all these fantasies involve two entirely mythical beings, the male’s view of himself as
a sexually potent satyr and his view of the woman as an instrument for achieving gratification” (Woodcock,
1984: 157).
The struggle for power within Miles’ brain seems pointless for two reasons. On the one hand, the author
is trapped in his imaginary world together with the beings he created and cannot escape. Erato actually
tells him that “you cannot walk out of your own brain” (Fowles, 1982: 123). On the other hand, there is the
option of reconciliation put forward by the muse but vehemently declined by the author:
You may take my clothes away, you may stop me leaving, you cannot change my feelings.
I know. You silly thing.
Then this is a ridiculous waste of time.
Unless you change them yourself.
Never. (Fowles, 1982: 124)
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This final quote emphasizes even more the relationship between author and muse, creator and creation,
man and woman. All these relationships have one thing in common: they represent struggles for power, for
being the dominant element in a binary relation.
In conclusion, Fowles’ formulaic man is first and foremost a re-enactment of pre-war traditional modes
of thinking taken to the extremes (kidnapping); he is struggling to accept the new, powerful roles women
play in society, but, at the same time, focuses all his frustrations upon female members of society who,
much like phantoms, trick, haunt, tease and exasperate him.
References
Brown, Beverly, 1981. “A Feminist Interest in Pornography – Some Modest Proposals”, m/f, Nos. 5/6 (5–18)
Campbell, James, 1976. “An interview with John Fowles”, Contemporary Literature http://www.dennydavis.
net/poemfiles/wmnmen.htm (visited on 2010/03/15)
Edinger, Edward, 1996. The Aion Lectures: Exploring the Self in Jung’s Aion, Los Angeles: Inner City Books
Fowles, John, 1977. The Collector, London: Triad Panther
Fowles, John, 1977. Thomas Hardy after Fifty Years, London: Macmillan
Fowles, John, 1982. Mantissa, London: Cape
Hall, Donald, 1982. “John Fowles’s Gardens”, Esquire, Oct. (90–102)
Holloway, Wendy, 1983. “Heterosexual Sex: Power and Desire for the Other”, Sex and Love: New Thoughts on
Old Contradictions, London: The Women’s Press
Lodge, David, 1982. “Bibliosexuality”, The Sunday Times, June (23–25)
Sontag, Susan, 1969. “The Pornographic Imagination”, in The Story of the Eye, London: Secker and Warburg
Woodcock, Bruce, 1984. Male Mythologies: John Fowles and Masculinity, The Harvester Press
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(Her)Story: Paula Vogel’s
Desdemona. A Play about a
Handkerchief vs.
Shakespeare’s Othello. The
Corina LUNGU
Ovidius University Constant, a
MA student, 2nd year
Moor of Venice
o s tmodern performance, in a similar vein to postmodern narratives, has mainly been characterized
in terms of its break with tradition, of its shift towards plurality and elusive meanings. Following
Barthes’ claim regarding “the death of the Author” (1977), dramatists had to accept the fact that
the playwrights’ stance and intention have been superseded by the intrusive audience, whose own prior
knowledge and system of values may give various significations to a cultural production. Moreover, if
contemporary plays can be interpreted in more ways than one, why should traditional dramatic discourses
contained within the literary canon not be reconsidered and presented through a new lens, providing a
new understanding of the dramatic situations and bringing peripheral characters to the center? Thus,
Paula Vogel’s Desdemona. A Play about a Handkerchief brings back to light a dramatic text with which the
audience is presumably familiar, i.e. Shakespeare’s Othello. The Moor of Venice, attempting to deconstruct
and reconstruct the traditional discourse and de-center the male protagonist, turning the female characters
into subjects instead. Therefore, the playwright uses her play as device meant to raise what Lyotard termed
“incredulity towards meta-narratives” (Lyotard, 1984: xxiv), challenging traditional myths and causing the
audience to question what they had previously taken for granted.
In (re)-constructing her play, Paula Vogel plays with the Shakespearian hypotext, transforming not only
the content, but also the pattern of the Renaissance tragedy, in an attempt to challenge the traditional
discourse and provide her audience with a commentary on the effect of silence in the contemporary world.
In his attempt to define myth, Paul Ricoeur challenges the assumption that this only represents a false
explanation for a certain event or situation. Rather, he claims, myths bear explanatory significance and
contribute to our understanding of the world. Thus, myths have a symbolic function, which can change
according to the cultural evolution of the society within whose boundaries they have developed (Ricoeur,
quoted in Coupe, 2009: 5). Therefore, considering the contemporary postmodern context, it is possible for
the playwright to provide a voice for the previously silenced female characters, who move to the center of
the revised myths, pushing the former male protagonists towards the margins.
P
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When contrasting the traditional text/performance of Shakespeare’s play with Vogel’s revised version,
the audience/reader is confronted first of all with the discrepancy regarding the amount of time and/or
space provided for the male and female protagonists. Although Desdemona does appear on stage in
the original play, her presence is not as overwhelming as that of the male protagonist, mostly due to
the restriction characterizing her discourse. She is marginalized by being silenced, thus leading the
audience/reader to see her from a male perspective, i.e. of the male playwright and the male characters.
Considering the fact that even the seldom appearing female characters were in fact meant to be played
by male actors during the Renaissance, one concludes that females were virtually outcast within these
performances, especially if one takes into account the typically Western metaphysics of presence which,
according to Derrida, lies at the foundation of logocentrism, i.e. the doctrine by which the word and (male)
rationality, as opposed to female silence and elusiveness, represent the center of the world.
By constructing such a discourse, the male writer subscribed to the ancient “game of Truth” (Foucault,
2001: 1668), allowing those with power to exercise what Marilyn French calls “power-over”, as opposed to
“pleasure-with” (1985: 72). Hence, not only does this text support the further silencing of females, but it
also promotes the idea of punishing the women who dare to cross the boundaries prescribed by paternal
law. According to the Shakespearean text, Desdemona defends her choice of the husband over the father by
claiming that she had been in fact charmed by Othello’s heroic discourse. She would only listen, rather than
talk herself, although she still showed submission by taking care of the house-affairs, as her role of “woman
of the house” prescribed. In turn, Othello admits to loving her for the emotional way in which she reacted
to his discourse, thus proving that his affection for his wife is in fact a form of narcissism:
My story being done, /She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: /She swore, in faith, ’twas
strange, ’twas passing strange, /’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful: /She wish’d she had not
heard it, yet she wish’d /That heaven had made her such a man: she thank’d me, /And bade
me, if I had a friend that loved her, /I should but teach him how to tell my story. /And that
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would woo her. Upon this hint I spake: /She loved me for the dangers I had pass’d, /And I
loved her that she did pity them. (Shakespeare, 1886: Act 1, Scene 3, ll. 153-164)
During the trial in front of the Venetian Senators, Desdemona admits that she is bound by her duty to two
men, the father and the husband, but that, according to the custodial culture, she must respect the latter
more, just like her mother did with Brabantio:
My noble father, /I do perceive here a divided duty: /To you I am bound for life and education;
/My life and education both do learn me /How to respect you; you are the lord of duty; /I am
hitherto your daughter: but here's my husband, /And so much duty as my mother show'd /To
you, preferring you before her father, /So much I challenge that I may profess /Due to the Moor
my lord. (Shakespeare, 1886: Act 1, Scene 3, ll. 180-189)
Although the Senators sanction the marriage, encouraging Othello to “use Desdemona well,” (Shakespeare,
1886: Act 1, Scene 3, line 293; emphasis mine), she is eventually punished for having trespassed her father’s
authority. Once she decides to choose her own husband and thus reject becoming a symbolic object meant
to be engaged in a power exchange between the two paternal figures who are supposed to protect her, she
loses her market value, leading her father, Brabantio, to declare that she is “dead” to him (Shakespeare,
1886: Act 1, Scene 3).
Therefore, the female figure mentioned above is subjected (rather than subject) to male authority, both as
far as the content of the discourse is concerned, being turned into a victim of male power, and in terms of
authorship. Since, as Virginia Woolf puts it in “A Room of One’s Own,” there was no sister of Shakespeare
to represent the female version of such mythopoeic pieces of literature (2001: 1020–1), women lacked
discursive autonomy, becoming mere Others for the assertive male selves:
That is, precisely because a woman is denied the autonomy – the subjectivity – that the pen
represents, she is not only excluded from culture (whose emblem might well be the pen) but
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she also becomes herself an embodiment of just those extremes of mysterious and intransigent
Otherness which culture confronts with worship or fear, love or loathing. As ‘Ghost, fiend,
and angel, fairy, witch, and sprite,’ she mediates between the male artist and the Unknown,
simultaneously teaching him purity and instructing him in degradation. (Gilbert; Gubar, 1998:
598)
Susan Gilbert and Susan Gubar go on claiming that a woman who cannot write her own story has no
such story and is, thus, “self-less” (1998: 599). According to the two critics, the representation of female
characters only through the perspective of male writers has lead to the development of a simplistic binary
opposition, consisting of the “angel” versus the “monster.” Hence, by placing as Shakespeare’s Desdemona
in this male generated literary paradigm, one notices that she is unable to escape the angelic label even
when confronted with the peril of death. This changes, however, in Paula Vogel’s Desdemona. A Play about a
Handkerchief. Although the playwright appears to resent her play being viewed solely through a feminist
lens, she seems to have managed to “come to terms with the images on the surface of the glass, with, that
is, those mythic masks male artists have fastened over her human face both to lessen their dread of her
‘inconsistency’ and by identifying her with the ‘eternal’ types they have themselves invented to possess her
more thoroughly” (Gilbert and Gubar, 1998: 596).
The difference in perspective can be traced starting with the titles of the plays: while Shakespeare
emphasized the centrality of the male protagonist, whom he turned into an eponymous hero, Vogel disrupts
the tradition and chooses to name her work after the heroine. Hence, Desdemona is no longer only Othello’s
wife. On the contrary, the reader/audience views Othello through the female characters’ perspective, thus
perceiving him as Desdemona’s husband. Moreover, while the subtitle of the Shakespearean play further
empowers the male character, offering more information regarding his identity, Vogel’s play places emphasis
on what would represent, taking into consideration Greimas’ actantial model (cf. 1983: 174-185), an actantial
object. Although the model was conceived in order to be applied to narratives, one can employ it in
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analyzing the dramatic conflict in Desdemona. A Play about a Handkerchief, since the theft of the handkerchief,
the symbol by which Othello marks his property rights over Desdemona’s sexuality, provokes the rising
action, i.e. the second part of dramatic structure, according to Freytag (2008: 129). Moreover, Othello is
never present on stage throughout the performance. His existence is only marked by the references made by
the three female characters the audience is introduced to, as well as by the sound of his slapping Desdemona
off-stage.
In Desdemona. A Play about a Handkerchief, Vogel presents only three characters, all females with a different
social background and different perspectives. Although on the surface all three of them seem to have been
assigned a clear-cut role and been placed in a definite relationship with the others, the reader/audience
gradually realizes that the dynamic of the protagonists is much more complex than it might seem at first
sight. Desdemona is a seemingly promiscuous and spoiled young woman, who would rather commit
adultery than be faithful to her husband. However, by the end of the play one realizes that she has taken on
various roles in order to pretend that she can enjoy freedom from the constraints of paternal and marital
conventions. Moreover, she is subjected to her husband’s jealousy and physical abuse, not because of her
sexual affairs, but due to the intricate plan that has turned a seemingly unimportant object, such as a
handkerchief, into the symbol of faithfulness and private property. Emilia, Desdemona’s servant and the
one who has enabled Iago’s plans, seems to be another representative of custodial culture: “But you’re
a married woman now; and when m’lord Othello gives you a thing, and tells you to be mindin’ it, it’s
no longer dear to drop it willy nilly and expect me to be findin’ it –” (Vogel, 1994: 7). However, she also
seems to be the victim of both her husband’s and her mistress’ whims, although by the end of the play
she proves to be more attached to the latter than she had previously thought. Bianca is an uneducated
prostitute, despised by Emilia, yet appreciated by Desdemona, who sees her as a symbol of the liberated
woman, capable of earning her money and thus enjoying absolute freedom. Nevertheless, Bianca falls
prey to Cassio’s charms, proving to be yearning for a husband and the comfort of a conventional life as a
housewife.
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Thus, the playwright seems to be following the precepts underlined by Virginia Woolf in “A Room of
One’s Own,” presenting women not only in their relation to men, as wives and daughters, but mostly in
their relationships to themselves, as friends and confidantes. The reader is invited “behind the curtains”
(Woolf, 2001: 1024), being allowed to take a peak into the private life of Desdemona, who had never been
shown in the comfort of her own room before. And since “a man is terribly hampered and partial in his
knowledge of women, as a woman in her knowledge of men” (Woolf, 2001: 1025), the conversations carried
by these women in their private space are bound to also refer to men, especially to the aspects one might
not be entirely familiar with. Therefore, there are instances when their discourse centers on male sexuality,
as the women are trying to improve their knowledge by sharing whatever information they have gathered
so far.
Desdemona and Emilia in Desdemona. A Play about a Handkerchief devote part of their conversation
to the analysis of the male body, more exactly to the size of their husbands’ genitalia and to the sexual
performance of men, which is thus turned into a spectacle: “DESDEMONA. Oh me, oh my – if I could find
a man with just such a hoof-pick – he could pluck out my stone – eh, Emilia? Emilia – does your husband
Iago have a hoof-pick to match? (. . . ) EMILIA. Miss Desdemona! DESDEMONA. Come now, Emilia –
it’s just us –” (Vogel, 1994: 9; emphasis mine). Thus, as Desdemona emphasizes, in the privacy of their
chambers women are allowed to share information which is considered private and to which they would
make no reference in the outside world. Such a dialogue would never have been imagined by male writers,
as in the traditional myths women were envisioned as silent and incapable of bonding with each other.
Such a relationship between women would have proven subversive of male dominance, especially since a
dialogue such as the one between Desdemona and Emilia is quite derisive not only of male sexuality, but
also of the phallus and thus, of phallic power, which is reduced to a ludicrous aspect characterizing married
life.
The changes brought to the traditional story enable the contemporary playwright to provide a voice for
the previously silenced female protagonist. Therefore, one is presented with her side of the story, which
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48
is slightly different than the male discourse but which, most importantly, provides a form of insight into
what might have been, hence causing the reader/audience to realize that the myth may have more than one
version and a plurality of meanings, waiting to be rediscovered. By featuring prominently as the subject,
rather than the object of the play, Desdemona is allowed to provide an alternative story, which does not
present her as a naïve young wife, fallen prey to the intricate scheming of Iago. Desdemona. A Play about a
Handkerchief presents her in the midst of the rising action, after her handkerchief, the symbol of her marital
faithfulness, has been stolen by Emilia following Iago’s request. Caught in an abusive relationship with
her husband, as seen later in the play, Desdemona finds her freedom in two ways: by engaging in random
sexual relationships and by playing with language. From the first scene of the play, she is depicted as a
somewhat loose woman whose language is inappropriate for an aristocrat: “Oh – skunk water! (. . . ) Dog
piddle! (. . . ) God damn horse urine!!!” (Vogel, 1994: 6).
However, Desdemona places great emphasis on the form of discourse. Although she uses foul language
and borrows various expressions from the uncultured Bianca, she always reminds Emilia that she must
improve her diction in order to achieve a better status within her household: “Really, Emilia, you’re quite
hopeless. However can I, the daughter of a senator, live with a washerwoman as fille de chambre? All
fashionable Venice will howl. You must shrink your vowels and enlarge your vocabulary” (Vogel, 1994:
17). Thus, language acquires great importance within the social hierarchy, making the difference between
those holding the power and the powerless. Later on, Emilia will employ the same condescending attitude
towards Bianca, who belongs to an even lower rank and whose speech betrays her poor social condition:
“Lux-i-o-ri-us! If I was you, I’d large my voc-abulary an’ shrink me vowels” (ibid.: 24).
Nevertheless, if proper diction and an adequate vocabulary are part of the markers of cultural and social
habitus, slang and informal language represent a form of liberty that Desdemona is fascinated with. She
uses such language borrowed from Bianca as part of her playing various social roles meant to provide her
with a form of escapism from her unhappy marriage. Having partially adopted the behavior of a prostitute,
she manages to also include various colloquial expressions within her upper-class speech: “‘Crack a crust!’
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49
How clever you are, Bianca!” (Vogel, 1994: 29). Yet, no matter how much freedom she seems to take in her
discourse, Desdemona is silenced by her husband by means of violent behavior. Both she and Emilia refuse
to talk about Othello’s aggressive attitude, focusing mostly on frivolous topics of conversation: “And then
we hear the distinct sound of a very loud slap. A pause, and Desdemona returns, closes the door behind her, holding
her cheek. She is on the brink of tears. She and Emilia look at each other, and then Emilia looks away” (Vogel, 1994:
13; author’s emphasis).
Thus, Paula Vogel revises a traditional myth, allowing the previously silenced female character to
present her version of the story. Although Desdemona suffers the same fate and is still a victim of male
dominance, she can express her concerns and enjoy the little freedom her boudoir allows for. Hence, this
contemporary take on an older myth compels the reader and/or the audience to question the so-called
“grand narratives” presented previously especially by male authors, as well as the meanings of this myth
when read in contemporary contexts.
References
Primary sources:
Shakespeare, William, 1886. Othello. London: J.B. Lincott Company
Vogel, Paula, 1994. Desdemona. A Play about a Handkerchief. New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc
Secondary Sources
Barthes, Roland, 1977. “The Death of the Author”, in Image, Music, Text. Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath.
New York: Hill
Coupe, Laurence, 2009. Myth (The New Critical Idiom), London & New York: Routledge
Corina Lungu
50
Foucault, Michel, 2001. “Truth and Power”, in Leitch (1667-70)
Freytag, Gustav, 2008. Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art, trans. Elias J.
MacEwan. Charlestone, SC: BiblioBazaar, LLC
French, Marlyn, 1985. Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals. New York: Summit Books
Gilbert, Sandra; Gubar, Susan, 1998. “The Madwoman in the Attic”, in Rivkin; Ryan (45–51)
Greimas, A.J., 1983. Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, trans. Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer,
and Alan Velie. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press
Leitch, Vincent (ed.), 2001. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, New York: Norton
Lyotard, Jean-François, 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Rivkin, Julie; Michael Ryan (eds.), 1998. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers
Woolf, Virginia, 2001. “A Room of One’s Own”, in Leitch (1021–9)
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51
Reconfiguring Chicana myths.
The tale of La Llorona in
Gloria Anzaldúa’s Prietita
and the Ghost Woman and
Mihaela PALIMARIU
“Al.I. Cuza” University Ias, i
MA student, 2nd year
Sandra Cisneros’ Woman
Hollering Creek
y referring to the above mentioned authors, this paper aims at discussing two antagonistic perspectives in the representation of womanhood in the Chicano community: that of the traditional,
patriarchal discourses and that of the feminists of color. Initially, the present study will explore the
condition of women in the Chicano community and the complex religious and cultural foundations on
which it has been created; the second part will focus on feminist subversions of this condition, based on
re-conceptualizations of the popular La Llorona tale.
Perhaps to a greater extent than others, the Mexican culture stands out as one that has particularly endorsed
gender based preferential treatment between the sexes, resulting in foregrounding the role of the man –
traditionally seen as the cornerstone of society and the sole provider of the household – and diminishing
the status of the woman, expected to renounce education and fully dedicate herself to domestic life, where
the husband exerts supreme authority. Financially dependent and frequently brutalized, women have been
indoctrinated to act passively and submissively, which resulted in alienation. Emerging from this complex
environment, the Chicano culture – a border culture – has inherited certain social, cultural and religious
practices that continued to undermine female status and subordinate it to male discourses. The positioning of
women in Chicano society has been established through the conjugated efforts of two sets of factors.
The first is represented by the repeated historical oppressions and religious substitutions enacted by
emerging patriarchal cultures – the Aztec Empire, the Spanish Conquistadors – on former matrilineal
societies – the Pre-Aztec Toltec civilization (Anzaldúa, 1987: 27, 32). The present-day Chicano culture rests
on a historical background of recurrent subjugations and aggressive militaristic invasions: initially, the
male-ruled Aztec tribes conquered the weaker matriarchal Toltec clans, only to fall, centuries later, under
the domination of the Spanish conquistadors. Whilst early pre-Aztecan civilizations were characterized by
a balanced gender system materialized in their worship of Coatlicue, the Lady of the Serpent Skirt, who
embodied the antagonistic forces of both masculine and feminine principles, the later Aztec tribes were
subordinated to the Mexica god of war Huitzilopochtli, who preached warfare as a means of effecting a
hallowed mission – subduing and unifying all other tribes on earth into a single state (Anzaldúa, 1987: 32).
B
Mihaela Palimariu
53
Consequently, the prevailing female goddesses were either displaced from their highly ranked status in
favor of male deities either endowed with destructive attributes intended to undermine their agency.
This process acquired new dimensions after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, when the Catholic Church
antagonized female identity even further by desexualizing Tonantsí – an aspect of Coatlicue that came to be
associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe – and thus dissociating her from the more sensuous aspects such
as Coatlalopeuh. This insidious deprecation of womanhood in Mexican culture has led to the delineation of
the virgin versus whore paradigm, a standard that has been employed to control Mexican and Chicano
female behaviour up to the present day. Such acts have persisted in the cultural memory of the Mexican
people and later that of the Chicanos and have unconsciously contributed to challenging women’s authority
and advancing false prototypes of womanhood. Women’s position within Mexican culture has also been
determined by the perpetuation – by the Catholic Church and misogynistic discourses – of feminine
mythological icons that additionally stereotyped woman identity by advocating female betrayal, treachery
and foul play as defining traits.
Three cultural images have attained extensive notoriety: the Virgin of Guadalupe – the patron saint of
Mexicans, La Malinche – the Indian whore held accountable for selling out her people to the Spanish – and
La Llorona – the negative maternal figure who drowned her children and is consequently doomed to wail
eternally. The Virgin and La Malinche are inscribed within the virgin versus whore paradigm and therefore
stand for conflicting values. Whilst the image of the Virgin – extolled and upheld beyond consideration –
was employed to instill in women such features as chastity, passivity, humility or selflessness, the figure of
La Malinche was used as a counterexample to sanction female agency, rebelliousness and ambition. The
third cultural figure, La Llorona, embodies a combination of the two extremes and has been regarded as “a
seductress and murderess who continues either to commit treacherous behavior or eternally and impotently
weep for her sins” (Carbonell, 2000: 3).
The story of La Llorona, which literally translates “the weeping or the wailing woman”, is regarded as
one of the most prominent Chicano myths due to its wide circulation in several versions and its subsequent
Mihaela Palimariu
54
vast popularity. The legend refers to an emblematic character who weeps over the death of her children
whom she is thought to have killed herself, by drowning (Carbonell, 1999: 2). Consumed by remorse, she is
condemned to wander at night in the proximity of water – lakes, rivers or lagoons – lamenting her sins
and looking for redemption. Or, as other versions show, La Llorona becomes a revengeful figure who
either seduces men, or murders children and women out of jealousy. The majority of existing versions fall
under three encompassing categories: ethnographic accounts that place an emphasis on folk belief and
superstitions, historicized versions that underscore the factual perspective – the arrival of the conquistadors
in Mexico – and reports that situate the tale within a clearly demarcated social setting, that of a stratified
Mexican society, where race, gender and class divisions are responsible for initiating La Llorona’s dramatic
fate. Taken collectively, all these versions corroborate to polarize the character of La Llorona by depicting
her both as a disparaging seductress agent and a defiant maternal figure.
The myth is based on certain recurrent motifs that have contributed to the creation of a biased image of
femininity relentlessly associated with danger and obscurity – the surreal white gown, the incidence of water
surfaces – which, by metaphorical transfer, acquire pessimistic undertones – nightfall and darkness. On the
one hand, water represents the setting where the murder is committed and therefore stands for evil, violent
and foul enterprise. On the other hand, lakes and rivers represent the sole locations where La Llorona is
doomed to expiate her sins, a sort of purgatory site that offers neither salvation nor eternal damnation, but
perpetual sorrow. The temporal coordinates are also of importance in the economy of the tale, as the mythical
figure makes her ghastly apparition solely at nighttime, in dim surroundings. Therefore, the myth is timeand space- bound. Under these circumstances, it becomes rather obvious that such accounts perpetuate a
discriminatory image of womanhood, associated with obscurity, malevolence and treachery.
In an attempt to destabilize such viewpoints and re-empower Mexican-American women, Chicana
feminist writers Gloria Anzaldúa and Sandra Cisneros manage to articulate original reinterpretations of the
myth of La Llorona by constructing defiant female protagonists. In Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), Anzaldúa
asserts that the legend takes its roots from Amerindian culture, more exactly from the mourning rites
Mihaela Palimariu
55
that Indian women performed during the time of the Aztec Empire. In this respect, Anzaldúa makes two
references. She initially places these mourning rituals within the historical context of the so-called “flowery
wars”, armed confrontations between local tribes that were fought according to well established rules and
with a precise religious function: securing prisoners that will serve as offerings to the Gods (Anzaldúa,
1987: 32–3). The wailing occurred prior to the departure of the men to battle, and it marked the parting
moment. The wailing procession has a collective character, as it is performed communally by all the women
in the community. Anzaldúa departs from the explicit level of factual events and offers personal subtextual
interpretations for these rituals. She argues that the mourning performed by the Aztec women should
not be regarded as a weakness in their nature – a preconception men often attributed to women – but
rather as an act of defiance and of ultimate protest. The protest was directed at the cultural alterations that
have resulted in the disruption of the equilibrium between the feminine and the masculine principles that
have subsequently lead to the disempowerment of women in society. Wailing becomes the single form of
rebellion available to Indian, Mexican and Chicana women when they are left with no other alternative.
Hence, Anzaldúa rejects the reading of the La Llorona myth as a story of betrayal and abandonment and
reclaims women’s former status by advancing a theory of resistance and protest.
She exemplifies such theories in her children’s story Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita y la Llorona
(1995), an illuminating juvenile narrative which should not be regarded as peripheral to her more conjectural
work or dissociated from the overall educational purpose of her writings. On the contrary, although
children’s literature has often been disconsidered and disregarded as infantile and thus ignored by scholars,
it can occasionally conceal more profound substrata of meaning. In this respect, Anzaldúa’s stories strive at
educating the younger audiences from a very early age and demystifying fear- instilling legends. Moreover,
since the tale of the Ghost Woman has successfully been employed by Mexican-American parents as
a bogeyman character intended to make children obedient and thus to subordinate them to adults, a
consideration of this children’s story is not only desirable, but relevant in the context of Chicana attempts at
rearticulating this myth.
Mihaela Palimariu
56
Prietita, a courageous young Mexican-American girl, embarks on a quest to find a remedy for her
mother’s illness while having to overcome various obstacles – trespassing a menacing “gringo” ranch (and
thus facing potential death), traveling unaccompanied at nighttime, losing her way or surmounting her own
fears in relation to La Llorona. Nevertheless, with the aid of the “weeping woman”, Prietita is successful in
her undertakings and not only manages to restore her mother’s good health, but also establishes herself as
the ensuing “curandera” of the community.
In fabricating this children’s story, Anzaldúa reconfigures the myth of La Llorona as a compassionate
maternal figure by reversing the previous negative attributes – murderess and appropriator – into positive
aspects – health bestower and retriever. Whereas folk versions accentuated her treacherous, foul nature,
in this case the “wailing woman” is an affirmative agent who acts to restore children to their familiar
environment. Anzaldúa’s recuperation of the Ghost Woman’s persona as a beneficial female deity epitomizes
her revolt against “colonial, patriarchal and child domination ideologies” (Keating, 2008: 69). Consequently,
her story operates in the manner of liberating and re-empowering both women and children. Moreover,
according to AnaLouise Keating, Anzaldúa’s portrayal of la Llorona reminds of the protective Greek gods
who assist the questing hero of the mythical Homeric epics (2008: 67). Since the narrative depicts La Llorona
as a “dark woman dressed in white” (Anzaldúa, 1995: 22) – therefore identifying her primarily on ethnic
grounds as a Native American – Anzaldúa also reinstates Indianness – a side of Chicana culture that has
either been completely denied or perceived as evil and immoral since the Spanish conquest.
The “weeping woman” comes to Prietita’s aid in two ways: first, she facilitates the discovery of the
medicinal plant and second, she ushers her back to familiar grounds. However, La Llorona does not reveal
herself in the initial stages of the young girl’s search and her apparition is originally foreshadowed by her
dreadful cries, that recall Prietita of her grandmother’s warnings of the ghost woman who wanders at night
stealing children.
The Ghost Woman is circumscribed to and operates only within the boundaries of the supernatural,
fantastic realm of aiding mythical animals, omens of good fortune and ghastly apparitions. Such a
Mihaela Palimariu
57
perspective would unequivocally justify the abrupt disappearance of the weeping lady as soon as Prietita
traverses back the impeding fence. Thus, the myth is set against a background of colliding realms. Whereas
the village constitutes the familiar, recognizable universe, the domain of the King Ranch and the dim
forest represent the unfamiliar, the unsafe and the esoteric. The two intercepting realms are symbolically
demarcated by a fence of barbwire – a recurrent metaphorical image in Anzaldúan prose – suggesting the
violence of the separation as well as a brutal and hostile passage.
Acting against deprecatory readings of the myth, Anzaldúa deliberately endows the Ghost Woman with
ritualistic functions that operate on multiple metaphorical levels meant to create a multifaceted mythological
figure of La Llorona. She represents the one that performs the role of light-bearer and light-caster in the
tenebrous nocturnal setting. As such, there can be identified two major sources of light in the narrative:
one is the natural light radiated by the moon and the other is the aura that envelops Llorona herself. The
moonlight operates as a counterpoint to Llorona as it discloses itself only when she makes her entrance into
the scene. Making use of her incandescent nature, La Llorona brings revelation by exposing the location
of the rue plant to Prietita and thus advances “conocimiento” and awareness. Moreover, the legendary
figure fosters transformation and marks the pathway to change. Her appearance immediately opens up
spaces that had previously been congested and inaccessible such as the obstructing ground vegetation – that
prevents Prietita from pursuing the signs – or the dense woodland canopy – that obscures the firmament
and hinders the girl’s sense of space. Not only does Llorona modify settings, but she engenders intricate
personal, ethical, cultural and spiritual transformations in Prietita, who eventually emerges as a reflective,
unwavering and clairvoyant figure.
In Anzaldúan theory, individuals emerge as holistic human beings who incorporate a balanced opposition of both masculine and feminine principles (Anzaldúa, 1987: 31–2). From Aztec times and continuing
through Mexican culture, the female side has, however, been denigrated and corrupted. Prietita attempts to
re-affirm and reinstate the female aspect as a positive principle. Therefore, the story unmistakably makes a
clear case in favour of Chicana feminism by exclusively portraying potent, benevolent women characters.
Mihaela Palimariu
58
Sandra Cisneros performs a similar symbolic reconfiguration of the legend in Woman Hollering Creek
(1992) by converting La Llorona – the woman who weeps – into La Gritona – the woman who shouts – and
thus foreshadowing a gradual progression towards a new Chicana consciousness.
The narrative in question – that also gives the name of the entire collection – tells the story of Cléofilas,
a credulous Mexican girl, the youngest in a family of six brothers, who marries a working-class Chicano
“from the other side of the border”. Shortly after she settles in the tranquil town of Seguín Texas, Cléofilas’s
idealistic vision of America fails and her marriage proves to be disillusioning, as she becomes the subject of
numerous restrictions and repeated domestic violence, even when she is pregnant with the couple’s second
child. Fortunately, she benefits from the assistance of two compassionate women – Graciela, a nurse and
Felice, her friend – who orchestrate her return home to Mexico.
Since early childhood, Cléofilas has revolved exclusively in a male dominated environment that acted
condescendingly and exploitatively toward her. Being the single female presence in a household of six
brothers and an unreliable father, Cléofilas was required to devote herself to domestic responsibilities
and attend to her siblings. Deprived of a beneficial maternal figure or of any other female role model to
revere, Cléofilas has particularly been liable to internalizing unidimensional – and ultimately reductive –
representations of womanhood, activated through the concurrence of deterrent mythological figures and
contemporary popular culture. While on the one hand Cléofilas has been raised on traditional readings
of La Llorona that accentuate a grieved figure caught in a state of everlasting sorrow, on the other hand
she proves extremely responsive to newer cultural icons such as the ones depicted in telenovelas and
according to which she constructs an entire system of expectations and cultural values. She originally forges
a romanticized vision of life across the border, namely the United States, where women live in fancy houses,
wear glamorous outfits and have fashionable hairdos. More dramatically, Cléofilas forges an unrealistic,
idealized image of marriage that preaches love at any cost and equals romance with suffering. However,
after the newlywed mood disappears, Cléofilas gradually becomes aware of the painful reality and begins
to identify male personas negatively: “this man, this father, this rival, this keeper, this lord, this master, this
Mihaela Palimariu
59
husband till kingdom come” (Cisneros, 1991: 49). Hence, man becomes a multiple oppressor – an opponent
to overcome, a confining guardian, a higher ranked individual who, by birth, inherited a superior social
status. The closing part of the statement alludes to the ingrate fate of the woman, inextricably chained to
her spousal partner for life by means of profoundly ingrained cultural inoculations. Trapped in a hopeless
situation, the woman of color has few alternatives at her disposal: “There is no place to go. Unless one
counts the neighbor ladies. Soledad on one side, Dolores on the other. Or the creek” (ibid.: 51). She is
presented with two options: resignation – which translates in internalizing the pain and anger directed at
her husband – and living in solitude, “or the creek”.
The traces of passivity that we detect in Cléofilas at the beginning of the story have been deeply
implanted in her by cultural practices that have without exception shown preferential treatment to males as
the dominant voices in family life and society. In this respect, it is culture that makes Cléofilas numb and
incapable of responding when Juan Pedro batters her. In social gatherings – periodical encounters of the
men at the ice house – women are treated as decorative objects not allowed to intervene in any manner in
the conversation: “[she] accompanies her husband, sits mute beside their conversation, waits and sips a beer
until it grows warm, twists a paper napkin into a knot, then another into a fan, one into a rose, nods her
head, smiles, yawns, politely grins, laughs at the appropriate moments (. . . )” (Cisneros, 1991: 48). Women
have repeatedly been overlooked throughout history and when they have been acknowledged, it was merely
to endorse and promote a certain category of values such as dormancy, servitude and submissiveness.
This line of thought transpires from Felice’s concluding dialogue with Cleofilas: “Did you ever notice,
Felice continues, how nothing around here is named after a woman? Really? Unless she’s the Virgin. I
guess you’re only famous if you’re a virgin” (ibid.: 55). One such strategy of subduing the woman through
cultural stereotypes – promoted by those in power, men – have worked in the manner of increasing women’s
reliability on men: “because the towns here are built so that you have to depend on husbands” (ibid.: 50–51),
referring to women’s restrictive access to private transportation. The fate of Mexican women has solely
been marked by pain (“Dolores”) and loneliness (“soledad”).
Mihaela Palimariu
60
Reassessing these premises, Cisneros offers a fresh, imaginative and innovative reconsideration of the
tragic fate of La Llorona, which she envisions as a potent and resourceful Gritona – a hollering woman.
Her adaptation of the legend relies on the allegorical interdependencies between two elements: a river – a
traditional theme commonly associated with the myth, which Cisneros revives and endows with a highly
symbolic name – and the introduction of an indisputable element of originality – Felice, the aiding agent
and the contemporary embodiment of La Llorona.
When considering the first mythical constituent – the creek – mention should be made of its startling
denomination (“Woman Hollering”) and blurry etymology. It seems that the Chicano community in the
small town of Seguin has dissociated itself from its ethnological history to such an extent that not a single
person can retain or shed light on the derivation of the stream’s name. What is more, the inhabitants of
the town seem totally dismissive of and uninterested in the provenance of their local toponymy, which
suggests a certain level of rupture with their past. Locals’ evasiveness and unsolicitous nature when
discussing this matter is concentrated in a single reference to the name: “Pues, alla de los indios, quien
sabe” (Cisneros, 1991: 46) which stands for “Well, way back from the Indians, who knows”. However
vague, this statement offers insightful information both for elucidating the origin of the toponym and
for establishing an explicit connection to La Llorona. The hypothesis according to which the river was
named when Indians were the only inhabitants of the area is extremely significant for a number of reasons.
First, it alludes to the tumultuous historical background of Texas, formerly an integral part of Mexico,
later annexed by the United States in 1845. And second, it suggests that the name dates back from the
Pre-Columbian period by invoking the Indian factor, which serves to link this toponym with the legend of
La Llorona. The creek’s name presumably lost its meaning in translation and even the two neighbouring
ladies, Dolores and Soledad, the sole characters who were previously in possession of its significance,
fail to provide any elucidation, a fact deemed highly illustrative of the manner in which the Chicano
community has distanced from folkloric culture, Indian beliefs and practices. On the contrary, Cléofilas,
from her initial contact with the brook when Juan Pedro first drove her over the bridge, seemed to develop
Mihaela Palimariu
61
a fascination with this place, which alludes to a strong unconscious ancestral bond. She is particularly
intrigued by the causality that determined the woman’s yell and, until the moment Felice enters the
scene, she only considers viable two explanatory options: the woman hollered either out of pain or anger.
Cléofilas’s spirituality and inquisitive nature distinguish her from the other inhabitants and establish her
as an active, action-oriented individual.
Closely associated to the creek stands the most authoritative female character portrayed in the narrative
– Felice, the “comadre” of the practioner nurse that consults Cléofilas and the one who drives her to the
Greyhound bus station. Rejecting stereotypical gender representations, she is a resilient person who talks
inappropriately – according to formulaic femininity standards – and laughs clamorously. What is more,
Felice’s Tarzanian yell, which adds to her self-imposed manly nature, comes to challenge the constraints of
pre-assigned gender roles. The “hoot” that Felice releases tackles the silence that has subdued women to
their dishonest fathers, brothers and husbands. An autonomous spirit and a financially independent woman,
Felice does not have a husband and drives a pick-up car – a vehicle usually associated with manhood
and a commodity seldom available to Mexican or Chicana women. She assists Cléofilas with her escape
yet she soon becomes much more than a mere transporter. She marks Cléofilas’s existence in a positive
manner as she implies that there are various distinctive modes of referring to a single situation and multiple
perspectives to consider. Felice holds a key position in the narrative as the one who introduces a third
possible interpretation of the Llorona myth: the woman hollers out of rebelliousness, liberation, satisfaction,
happiness, thus releasing wild and creative energies.
While Cléofilas is depicted as the representative of a conventional Mexican culture, Felice is an agent
of change in a liberal Chicano environment. Unlike Cléofilas, exposed to a single confining culture and
therefore offered no alternative model of femininity, Felice is a “mestiza”, a border crosser that defies
linguistic and gender boundaries. The easiness with which Felice switches codes – from English to Mexican
Spanish and vice-versa – and juggles with conflicting gender identities – the virgin and Tarzan – is revelatory
for her mental flexibility (Wyatt, 2004: 164).
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62
The encounter with Graciela and later Felice makes Cléofilas aware of a third possibility – daring to
manage on her own and being contented. Even if Graciela and Felice underpin Cléofilas’s decision to
leave Juan Pedro, her own role in the process should not be underestimated. She is the one that eventually
comes to the realization that returning home constitutes her only chance of survival irrespective of how
painful this may prove. It is with this hidden intention in mind that she secretly saves money for the
bus fare to Mexico. Accordingly, her decision to abandon her husband constitutes an act of defiance of
male authority and, simultaneously, an exertion of motherly love, through which she desires to protect her
children, and ultimately herself. Moreover, Cléofilas rebels against her own cultural heritage – symbolized
through the presence of Soledad and Dolores – and chooses the third option – the creek – no longer an
agent of destruction but a negotiator for action, affirmation, women liberation and empowerment. Thus,
the narrative marks spiritual evolution and development in the life of Cléofilas, who sets out as a naïve
and inexperienced girl, enticed by the prospect of romantic love akin to the one idealistically depicted in
Mexican telenovelas only to finally emerge as a rebellious spirit.
In the end, Cléofilas emerges “completa” as she identifies with La Gritona – the positive recuperation
of La Llorona – reaffirming her status as a powerful and pro-active woman: “Then Felice began laughing
again, but it wasn’t Felice laughing. It was gurgling out of [Cléofilas’s] own throat, a long ribbon of laughter,
like water” (Cisneros, 1991: 56). As Carbonell argues, this substantiation points to the archetypal role of
Llorona’s indigenous roots which prove invaluable resources as they endow modern Mexican women on
both sides of the border with significant “strategies of resistance” (1999: 12). Cléofilas’s previous affliction
is cathartically transcended into a swirl of laughter that embraces Cléofilas’ s entire being, marking her
symbolic transformation from a woman who cries into a woman who laughs (Wyatt, 2004: 165).
Cisneros juxtaposes the traditional outlook on the legend with her novel and authentic reinterpretation.
The former is presented in connection to the two guarding neighbour ladies, Dolores (pain) and Soledad
(solitude, loneliness) who stand in stark contrast with the beneficial, potent, transformational characters of
Graciela (grace) and Felice (happiness). While the first part of the narrative is dominated by the presence of
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the former two figures, who perpetuate the traditional take on the legend and warn against ill fortunes,
the second part accentuates the beneficial presence of the latter two protagonists, who not only catalyze
Cléofilas’s decision of leaving her abusive husband but also reconfigure the highly dreaded tale of the
weeping woman.
Thus, through such revisions of the Llorona tale, Anzaldúa and Cisneros advance new and liberating
models of female behaviour that denounce cultural indoctrination and blind obedience to patriarchal
norms and plead in favor of revolutionary transformations that will eventually modify mentalities. These
short-stories contribute significantly to the Chicana emancipation process, which aims at giving a voice to
women of color and help them re-write history as ‘her’ story.
References
Anzaldúa, Gloria, 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books
Anzaldúa, Gloria, 1995. Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita y La Llorona, San Francisco: Children’s Book
Press
Carbonell, Ana Maria, 1999. From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue in Feminist Tales by Viramontes and Cisneros,
Academic OneFile. Gale. 26 aug. 2009
Cisneros, Sandra, 1992. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Vancouver: Vintage Books
Keating, AnaLouise, (ed.), 2008. EntreMundos/AmongWorlds. New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan
Vásquez, Edith, 2008. “La Gloriosa Travesura de la Musa Que Cruza/The Misbehaving Glory(a) of the
Border Crossing Muse: Transgression in Anzaldúa’s Children’s Stories”, in Keating (63–75)
Wyatt, Jean, 2004. Risking Difference: Identification, Race, and Community in Contemporary Fiction and Feminism,
Albany: Suny Press
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Uniting Worlds and Cultures
Writing as Atonement in
Sandra Cisneros’ The House
on Mango Street
Alexandra RADU
AL.I. Cuza University, Ias, i
MA student, 2nd year
h e purpose of this paper is to explore the world inhabited by the Chicanas in Cisneros’ novel The
House on Mango Street. The exploration will not only consist in analyzing spaces and situations
but also the characters who provide the reader with a diversity rarely met in any other novel. The
barrio and the Mexican traditions and ways of life are the main focus in the bridging of the two worlds:
the American and the Mexican-American one. Writing is seen as a tool used to express feelings, present
situations but also as a way of escaping and redeeming oneself.
The House on Mango Street is a Bildungsroman with strong autobiographical accents, as we can associate
Cisneros with Esperanza, the leading character of the novel. She moves together with her parents to Chicago
(just like Cisneros moved from Mexico with her parents and brothers to a Puerto-Rican neighborhood in
Chicago, where she spent most of her childhood) and dreams of having a house of her own one day. The
novel is made up of several short vignettes which Cisneros calls “lazy poems” because they are in-between:
not truly poems, but not long enough to be considered stories either (Cisneros, 2003:79). Through these
vignettes Cisneros introduces to the reader the whole neighborhood, Esperanza’s friends and family, while
depicting glimpses of barrio life in a very natural way. From these short stories we learn about Esperanza’s
life, and events which she experiences during one year of her existence, a decisive year at the end of which
she finds herself changed, more aware of the fact that she knows that things are not going to be the same
again. By using a child’s point of view, Cisneros makes use of the language of an adolescent to present the
barrio in short sentences and limited vocabulary. Consequently, the novel is considered to have a young
adult audience as target readers, but according to Maria Gonzales, the critique Cisneros provides of the
violent world this child inhabits is clearly meant to educate more than just children – therefore children are
beaten, cars are stolen, wives are abused and the narrator is raped. Esperanza may be naïve and innocent,
but she clearly records more than she understands. And it is here that the reader feels the presence of the
adult and more experienced author who, although managing to offer the illusion that the story is perceived
through the eyes of a young girl, has some “slips” and sometimes judges facts from the viewpoint of a
person who has seen and felt more than Esperanza.
T
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66
Some critics have associated her book with “A Room of One’s Own” because, just as Virginia Woolf
wanted a room for writing, my guess is that Esperanza wants to own a house in which she would be the
only inhabitant for the same reason; but because this seems impossible for the moment she finds refuge in
writing. The main focus of the novel is on women’s life in a Hispanic barrio where the patriarchal way of
life is still unaffected by the social changes outside the community. Cisneros feels it is her duty as a writer
to express the sufferings of her community (she even dedicates the whole novel to las mujeres), especially of
those who suffer from double discrimination being both women and Chicanas.
The novel begins with Esperanza describing her current home, the “new” house her parents bought
on Mango Street, which is a step-forward towards owning a beautiful house where one does not have to
pay rent or in which the pipes are all broken. Still, Esperanza is not satisfied with the house because “it’s
not the house we thought we’d get. [. . . ] . . . it’s not the way they told it at all” (Cisneros, 1984: 4). The
novel follows her development from a little girl to a young woman and presents every stage in a different
vignette. Beginning with her dissatisfaction related to her own name which does not sound like “the real
me, the one nobody sees” (ibid.: 16), continuing with her making new friends in the barrio, meeting boys,
knowing her neighbors, walking on high heels, going to the new school, becoming aware of her bodily
changes – announcing her passage to womanhood – experiencing sexual assaults, facing death, meeting the
“three sisters” who will foresee her fate and ending with her setting down to write as a way of escape.
The vignettes explore a whole year from Esperanza’s life, who is about twelve years old. The family moves
to a new house on Mango Street and even if this is an improvement from the previous dwelling, it is not the
house Esperanza dreams of, not only because it is small but also because it is situated in a marginal barrio
where all the poor families live. Immediately after her moving she makes friends with her neighbors Lucy and
Rachel with whom she experiences a lot of new things beginning with buying a bike, learning exciting stories
about boys from Marin, an older girl who dreams of getting married, exploring a junk shop and having intimate
conversations with them while playing the jumping rope. During the first half of the year, Esperanza and her
friends, Lucy and Rachel, still enjoy childhood, but the change to puberty occurs suddenly and it is marked by
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the high heels episode, when Esperanza realizes that she is beginning to develop her sexuality; this continues
with Esperanza’s first job and first kiss forced on her mouth by an old man. Then, the death of aunt Lupe makes
her more aware of the fact that she is not a child anymore, and from this moment on she suddenly gives more
attention and importance to the women in her barrio considering the fact that each of their fates could be hers –
the woman from the “No Speak English” episode, who is entrapped in her new home because of the language
barrier as she does not speak English; Rafaela who drinks coconut and papaya juice and who is kept prisoner in
her own house by her husband because he is afraid that she would run away; Marin, who dreams of getting a
job downtown and hopes that maybe one day a car will stop and someone will change her life by marrying her;
Rosa Vargas who is entrapped because she has too many children and no husband.
Each of these women represents a possible fate for Esperanza if she stays in the barrio. Her decision to
go to college and study, just like Alicia, is the only thing that would make her earn her independence, and
be different. She does not want to take her place by the window like most married women, including her
rebel grandmother, who eventually got tamed by her husband. From each member of her community she
will learn what to become and what not to become. For the most part, Esperanza learns her lessons from las
mujeres (the women), to whom Cisneros dedicated the collection. According to Bridget Kevane (2003), the
dedication to the mujeres attests to Cisneros’s desire to recognize and acknowledge the difficult path that
Latina women face, especially when they choose to better themselves. Esperanza’s escape depends entirely
on her pursuing her studies and on her future as a writer – but from the way in which she paints her life
and others’ in the barrio, one can presume that she will make her dream come true, writing about it as
atonement, because the guilt of leaving the barrio would always haunt her. She confesses: “I like to tell
stories. I tell them inside my head. [. . . ] I make a story for my life, for each step my brown shoe takes”
(Cisneros, 1984: 102). According to Maria Gonzales (1996), the acknowledgment that Esperanza can voice
her own story makes her able to say goodbye to Mango, but with the promise to return and help others.
For Cisneros, included in the responsibility to oneself is the responsibility to the community: “They will not
know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind” (Cisneros, 1984: 110).
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The writer’s awakening within her is a gradual process. If in the beginning Esperanza still enjoys riding
a bicycle bought together with her two friends, by the end of the novel the only thing that she desires is to
get away from Mango Street, and have a life and a house of her own – just like a writer aware of her need
for solitude and distance for creation. She is however aware of the fact that she will always come back to her
community through her writings to express the suffering and abuses of the women “who cannot out” (ibid.).
It is for this reason that The House on Mango Street was criticized; Esperanza’s desperate need to leave the
barrio and escape is sometimes regarded as a proof that she betrays her community. However, her betrayal
should not be analyzed at the superficial level, because Esperanza presents a collective image of the women
and she realizes that she will always be Mango Street and that she will write in order to express not only her
feelings, but also those of the women who have “chosen” the traditional fate of Mexican married women.
Cisneros was also criticized because all men in her novel are depicted very stereotypically as wife-beaters,
overbearing husbands. But how could she have described them differently when the social class from which
they belonged encouraged this kind of ill-treatment towards women? The lack of money and of proper jobs
make men less respectful to their wives, who do not have jobs and are totally dependent on them, almost
prisoners in a marriage in which love and care are replaced by jealousy and violent behavior, spurred by
alcohol and a deep sense of frustration. Taught from an early age to be submissive and modest, women in
the barrio accept their fate taking refuge in domestic activities, religion and telenovelas/soap operas, as the
patriarchal society in which they live would have them do.
Indeed, when it comes to gender roles, Esperanza is aware of the fact that boys and girls have different
worlds, just as she puts it in the “Boys and Girls” vignette. Later on she will learn that girls/women have
to be subdued and accept violence and maltreatment, while boys/men are not to be held guilty for their
violent nature. Although one may think that the sexual assault that Esperanza experiences towards the
end of the novel may have had a great impact on her, one is surprised to see that towards the end of “Red
Clowns”, in which Esperanza talks about the assault, she is not enraged with the boys, but with the fact that
her friend Sally lied to her: “Sally, you lied. It wasn’t what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched
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me. I didn’t want it Sally. [. . . ] . . . the way it’s supposed to be, all the storybooks and movies, why did you
lie to me? (Cisneros, 1984: 99). Sally is at fault because she let Esperanza all alone with all those boys at the
carnival; and also the books and movies are to blame because there love is depicted as a romantic act. All
the telenovelas/soap operas depict wealthy families and romantic love stories between the poor girl and the
rich handsome boy, so Esperanza’s idea of love was originally that shaped by such fairytales and not by the
reality of the barrio.
In the episode entitled “The Three Sisters” Esperanza realizes that even if someday she had the chance
to leave her barrio and escape, she would still have to come back so as to help the other women who are
entrapped there. One of the three sisters tells her that her wish to leave the neighborhood will come true but
that she has to remember to come back for the others. “A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza.
You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are. [. . . ]
you must remember to come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily as you. You will remember?”
(Cisneros, 1984: 105). She is different from the others because she is a Chicana, different from the Chicanas
because she does not follow the traditional path, yet she will always remember to come back to the barrio,
if not physically then at least through her writing.
The issue of identity comes again into question, as in the “My Name” vignette, in which Esperanza
introduces herself and explains the story of her name: “In English my name means hope. In Spanish it
means too many letters” (ibid.: 15). She also explains whom she was named after, that is her grandmother,
who was herself a rebel soul, “so wild she wouldn’t marry until my grandfather threw a sack over her
head and carried her off. [. . . ] I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the
window” (ibid.). Just like all the other women in the barrio, her grandmother did not have any chance but
to accept a woman’s fate and become a mother and an unhappy wife, sitting by the window, imprisoned in
a life that she probably did not want and did not imagine. In fact, all the women in the novel seem to be
confined to the small world of the house and the barrio because, as Bridget Kevane points out, “the denial
of the traditional gender role is seen as a betrayal of Mexican culture. Esperanza will reject one part of
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her grandmother’s captivity tale: she vows not to live her life esperando (waiting) on a windowsill. Rather,
she espera (hopes) that she will inherit the wild, independent side of her great-grandmother” (2003: 55).
Maybe the only female character in the novel who refuses to adopt the traditional way and who pursues an
university education is Alicia, but she is torn between her will to study and her duty to keep the house
clean and to wake up early in the morning to bake tortillas for her father. Esperanza’s intention to change
her name into a more Anglo-like one, like Zeze the X, represents her desire to re-invent herself and the
will to come out of the anonymity to which her community confines women. Maria Gonzales explains that
“[b]y baptizing herself, Esperanza can cleanse herself of the past and begin anew without a predestined role
in patriarchy ( 1996: 83).
The end of the novel finds Esperanza still living on Mango Street, but she is now a mature young woman
who has realized that, for the moment, only through writing is she able to escape just a little the world in
which she lives. The open ending leaves the reader with the impression that, in the future, Esperanza will
be able to leave the barrio to pursue her studies and will return to it only through her writing. But, for the
moment, the new beautiful house she dreams of can be found in the blank pages that she is about to fill
with her stories.
In the novel it is not only Esperanza who has dreams. Alicia is trying to attend university, Ruthie dreams
of a happy life and marriage, Sally of escaping her father, Esperanza’s mother dreams of offering a better
life to her children, Louie’s cousin Marin dreams about getting a job “downtown because that’s where the
best jobs are, since you always get to look beautiful and can meet someone in the subway who might marry
you” (Cisneros, 1984: 26). But despite all the dreams and happy times, patriarchal oppression is omnipresent
through men’s abuse and rape. Esperanza’s first “encounter” with sexuality is through Marin, who seems to
have a bad reputation, then Esperanza’s walking on high heels makes her realize that shoes can transform
her into a nice young sensual woman. The growing of hips makes her realize that women’s role is to give
birth to children, but also that men are more attracted to hips. Then at her first job she is assaulted and
kissed by a man by force. Further on, Esperanza’s longing for being touched and desired suggests the fact
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that she is turning into a woman with true sexual needs. Then, her discovery of her own sensuality and
sexuality – the sexual assault – makes her feel angry and enraged. She is hurt because Sally left her all alone
and frustrated because everything was exactly the opposite of what she had expected it to be.
The neighborhood in which Esperanza lives seems to be rejected by the outside world because it is
considered dangerous – it is only inhabited by Latinos, who feel at home in their barrio. Or maybe it
is rejected just because it is different, and people are always afraid of those different from them; what
is different always attracts reticence and it may go as far as rejection. Esperanza says at one point that
those who don’t know that the neighborhood can be friendly come to it very scared. But just as Mango
Street is rejected and secluded from the outside world, the same seems to be happening to Esperanza,
who gradually separates herself from her community. Even though she takes part in many of the events
in the barrio, has a lot of friends, and belongs to a big family with aunts, cousins and grandparents, she
seems to be alienated because inside her soul she rejects the barrio, she cannot accept the fact that she
lives there, and consequently she dreams of a better life outside it. Even though the whole barrio can be
perceived as a big family, as a community, which follows its norms and laws and has its own cultural
and religious practices, each family deals with its own problems differently and separately, without any
intervention from the neighbors. This is the case with Ruthie and Edna’s family (“Edna’s Ruthie” chapter),
Sally’s family – more precisely her violent father, and further on Sally’s new family – with her husband
who forbade her to look out of the window and even to talk on the phone. In a review on The House on
Mango Street, M.B. Levine says that “Esperanza spends her adolescence becoming reluctantly intimate with
the neighborhood: the sadness and poverty that run through the alleys and circles around the edges of
what passes for front yards. [. . . ] Esperanza learns that it is the people of Mango Street that make the place
home” ( http://recommended-fiction.suite101.com/article.cfm). And this is precisely what justifies and
gives value to her fiction. Through her writings, the barrio comes to life before our eyes as a special place
where the many otherwise invisible, unknown women live, love, suffer, struggle. . . And from which she
gradually separates herself as the different one; different from the different ones.
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72
Throughout the novel, Esperanza evolves from a shy young girl, with a low self-esteem, to a spiritually
rich person, confident in her strength. Although for the moment poverty impedes her to leave and fulfill
her dreams, she is optimistic about the future and knows that one day she will become independent. She
wants more than what life has to give her and she feels she is different; since her childhood she has felt
she doesn’t fit in just like the other girls do, she has different expectations (even the house disappoints her,
instead of making her feel happy that it is a bought house, not a rented one), she has a developed sense of
observation and sees a lot of things for a child of her age; instinctively she feels that she cannot integrate
and starts to distance herself and withdraw inside her. The novel can be considered a Bildungsroman, a
novel in which the leading character changes and becomes more mature, even if the events presented cover
only one year of her existence. Friendship is occasional and rare, and the reader is left with the feeling that
she does not seek friendship or company, but solitude and independence, because she somehow feels it in
her heart that she is going to become a writer and stand out of the crowd. The type of Bildungsroman that
Cisneros creates is not a typical one: this novel presents one year in the life of a little girl who wants to
be different from all the other women she knows. Refusing to be tamed, to conform to the norms of the
barrio and walk on the path to marriage and motherhood, Esperanza seems to begin her journey towards
self-awareness and self-affirmation outside the world of the barrio, though never completely forgetting
about it or denying its importance in her understanding of the world.
References
Cisneros, Sandra, 1987. “Do You Know Me? I Wrote The House on Mango Street”, The Americas Review. Vol.
15, No. 1, Spring (77–79)
Cisneros, Sandra, 1984. The House on Mango Street, New York: Vintage Books (Vintage Contemporaries)
Alexandra Radu
73
Gonzalez, Maria C., 1996. Contemporary Mexican American Women Novelists – Toward a Feminist Identity, New
York: Peter Lang Publishing
Kevane, Bridget, 2003. Latino Literature in America, Westport CT: Greenwood Press
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mangostreet (visited on 2010/04/20)
http://www.bookrags.com/notes (visited on 2010/04/15)
http://recommended-fiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_house_on_mango_street (visited on 2010/04/01)
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74
Difference in the case of
Creoles and French-Canadian
Hetero-Images in “Désirée’s
Baby” by Kate Chopin and
Anca RONCEA
University of Bucharest
MA student, 2nd year
“Return of the Sphinx” by
Hugh MacLennan
r e nch influences have always been very strong in the culture of the North-American continent.
Their legacy has been embedded in both American and Canadian literature through the presence of
Creole and French Canadian elements. This essay means to analyze the hetero-images of Creoles and
of French Canadians in the short story “Désirée’s Baby” by American writer Kate Chopin and respectively
in “Return of the Sphinx” by Canadian writer Hugh MacLennan. It will start by discussing the two writers’
perspectives, namely Kate Chopin’s and Hugh MacLennan’s as these images are the product of their
own subjectivity. It will later compare the background created in these works and the different elements
which help build these hetero-images: the level of assimilation into the new culture as well as the level of
dislocation of the Creoles and of the French Canadians in these worlds.
F
Firstly, it is important to analyze the perspectives of the authors, which determined the tone of the narrator
in both “Return of the Sphinx” and “Désirée’s Baby”. Hugh MacLennan was a widely respected Canadian
novelist and academic. His works were the first to tackle Canadian themes and he was credited for
being the first writer to establish a national literary identity for Canada. He was born in Nova Scotia
and, although educated in England, MacLennan’s perspective may be considered Canadian in terms of
ethnicity. The novel “Return of the Sphinx” was published in 1967 and analyses the political, social as well
as ethnic turmoil in Canada after World War II. It shows the country as a social time bomb waiting to
explode into a civil war between the French Canadians and the English Canadians while also in danger of
losing its autonomy and national identity. Therefore, the characters and events are seen from a very wide
perspective.
Kate Chopin’s perspective is however very different. She was born and raised in America, from an
Irish father and a French mother of French Canadian descent. Chopin lived a great part of her life with
her husband and family in Louisiana. This land will be her inspiration as most of her short stories are set
here. Louisiana used to be a French territory until the United States purchased it in 1803. At that time the
Louisiana territory used to stretch from present day New Orleans to the present day Canadian Border. The
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76
action of “Désirée’s Baby” is set at the end of 19th century in Louisiana. While telling the story of wealthy
Creole families, the short story deals with matters of slavery and racism.
The world of the wealthy Louisiana plantations from “Désirée’s Baby” is very different from that of late
1950s Canada in “Return of the Sphinx”; however they both describe the same French-descending culture.
In both cases there is a culture historically derived from France, which has experienced changes in one way
or another in its process of assimilation. According to the Oxford American Dictionary, a Creole is a “white
descendant of French settlers in Louisiana and other parts of Southern United States”. As it appears in
Chopin’s short story, wealthy Creole families have kept a strong connection both culturally and socially to
France. In the case of the French Canadians, MacLennan also shows us a very rich family who is still true
to its bonds with France. Therefore what we are shown is the image of a 19th century Creole family and
mid-20th century French Canadians.
The foundation for the hetero-images of the Creoles and of the French Canadians in these literary
works is the environment in which they are described. In “Désirée’s Baby” the action is set on a Louisiana
plantation, in a Creole family which seems to have kept most of its French culture. They seem to be true to
French fashion, as it exerts the power of an arbiter elegantiae for these families. It appears that when it comes
to matters of fashion the wealthy and respectable families of Louisiana import everything from France:
He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it
arrived; then they were married. [. . . ] She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir,
listlessly drawing through her fingers the strands of her long, silky brown hair that hung about
her shoulders. (Chopin, <3>)
The French-Canadians, in “Return of the Sphinx”, are also culturally bound to a French style. However
here it no longer appears as imported but rather a legacy which they do not necessarily choose to have but
which follows them into Canada:
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77
She moved lightly about and came to rest beside a high, dark armoire where he kept his china
and liquor, and passed her hand over wood satin-smooth from the polishing of three centuries
of human hands.
“How I crave this old furniture of yours, Gabriel!”
“Too many memories, Chantal, sometimes I wish I’d left it in France.” (MacLennan, 1971: 35)
These appear for Gabriel Fleury as the material symbols of his homeland culture and as long as they are
with him, the proof of his belonging to that culture. However different the historical contexts of these French
descendants they all appear as being bound to France culturally and committed to their French legacy.
One of the elements that creates the hetero-images of the Creoles in “Désirée’s Baby” and of the FrenchCanadians in “Return of the Sphinx” is the large French influence that we find in the speech of the characters.
In “Désirée’s Baby”, characters often use French especially in expressing their joy or their wonder, coming
out as an impulse. Despite the fact that Désirée, for example, was born in America, most likely by a
non-Creole family, she was raised to speak French and even so it came natural to express herself in this
language.
The little cochon de lait! Look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and fingernails,—real fingernails. (Chopin, <2>)
The narrator at some point tries to explain the many French influences in the speech of the characters,
attesting to this influence which is, after all, not adopted into their culture, but innate.
“This is not the baby!” she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the language spoken at
Valmondé in those days. (Chopin, <2>)
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78
In “Return of the Sphinx” however, the matter is more intensely debated. There are different reasons why
the French Canadian are shown speaking French. Firstly, as there is a great deal of tension due to national
identity issues; it is a matter of pride and of stating their ethnicity:
I know quite a few French Canadians and I like them. I always have. They can’t accuse me of
not speaking their language, either. But they are too suspicious. (MacLennan, 1971: 9)
In this conversation between Tarnley and Fleury, this tense situation is clearly discussed and Tarnley is
implying that, in order to be accepted by the French Canadians, one must speak French. It therefore doesn’t
come as natural as it did for the characters in “Désirée’s Baby” to speak French; the image created here
shows that it is rather an element that sustains their national identity. However there are also characters
whose speech is not politically involved and they represent a type of French Canadians for whom it is again
a matter of dislocation and French serves as one of their connections to their homeland:
I remember old Grandfather Provencher with his pipe on an night when there was one of those
fabulous Lauretian sunsets and he was looking at it and I came up and sat on the log beside
him. After a while he said “Le bon Dieu nous aime, ce soir! ” (MacLennan, 1971: 40)
Here, Chantal’s grandfather stands for a generation who was culturally much closer to the culture depicted
by Chopin in Louisiana than to the one of his own grandchildren in Canada. Even Chantal at some point
describes her grandfather in French terms “Un très bon catholique de la vieille roche” (MacLennan, 1971: 41).
This shows that Chantal could only attribute a French identity to her grandfather. It is also relevant to note
that many of the names that appear in these two works are French, in the case of “Désirée’s Baby” even the
slaves are given French names (Zandrine). In “Return of the Sphinx”, it seems that the young generation’s
names are reflections of their own personality: Chantal’s image is that of a French coquette, therefore her
name is much more French than her brother’s, Daniel, a more neutral name, as he is a character who is
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fighting for his status as a Canadian. Again the image that is created through the characters’ speech is that
of people very much connected to their homeland, who in some cases cannot and in others will not forget
their origins.
As it has been previously implied, one of the most important elements which the Creoles in “Désirée’s
Baby” and the French Canadians in “Return of the Sphinx” have in common is that they all seem to be
subjects of dislocation. They all express a longing for their homeland, France, which apart from being
expressed directly is also demonstrated through their everyday life. The simple fact that Armand had a
“corbeille” ordered in from Paris and that for him made the marriage arrangements complete proves that
his ties to this country have not been broken. For Gabriel Fleury, it seems that even his furniture represents
the memories of his life in France and his acknowledgment of dislocation:
The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought
him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. It was a sad looking place,
which for many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny
having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever
to leave it. (Chopin, <2>)
You know Gabriel, when you went back to France last summer I was sure you were going to
stay. It was in your mind to stay, wasn’t it? (MacLennan, 1971: 38)
It is shown that they do not completely belong to their new world; in fact, all of the characters at some point
go back to France and then return to the North-American continent. There is also the case when they are
simply born in France, move to America but can never fully be assimilated into the culture.
Another element playing a role in creating the hetero-images of the Creoles and of the French Canadians
is the way in which they view African Americans. In both cases they appear equally intolerant, and appear
as considering them less than human. In “Désirée’s Baby” racism and slavery is in fact one of the main
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themes of the short story. The reason why Désirée has to leave the home of Armand’s highly respected
family is that the daughter that she has given birth to has dark skin, and as Désirée’s own origins are
unknown, it is likely that she “belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery”(Chopin, <6>). It
was considered that by giving birth to a child with a dark skin she would bring an “unconscious injury [. . . ]
upon his home and his name”(Chopin,<5>). In the end Armand, who up to then was known for battering
his slaves, would find out that he himself was an illegitimate son of a black woman, thus Chopin condemns
the racism shown by this highly esteemed Louisiana family. However, the image that remains is that of
Creoles that were racist and often cruel to their slaves.
In “Return of the Sphinx”, though not a world of slavery anymore, French Canadians are portrayed by
MacLennan as highly racist as well:
He wasn’t in one of those places, he was right on a corner of Sherbrook Street. He wasn’t
entirely naked, of course, but he was certainly stripped to the waist and he was holding his shirt
in his hand, just standing there. He was covered with tattoos and he was glistening all over in
the lights as though he’d oiled himself.
He sounds like a snake-handler in the circus – if you didn’t just imagine him
He was too obscenely huge for anyone to imagine him. There was a funny jungle smell about
him too, I thought. (MacLennan, 1971: 36)
In the scene created here by MacLennan, Chantal appears to be very racially prejudiced, comparing a black
man to an animal in the jungle. It seems that Gabriel is in fact encouraging her and at times even comes out
as protective of her, telling her she shouldn’t walk through those neighborhoods by herself. Accordingly,
it seems that these hetero-images created by Chopin and MacLennan through their characters are deeply
bigoted, despite the century or society in which they live.
In conclusion, the hetero-image of the Creoles in 19th century Louisiana and that of the 20th century
French Canadians have a great deal in common. They both show either American or Canadian citizens
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of French descent who still strongly identify themselves with France. They are also depicted as at times
racist or xenophobic in relation to the different people that they have around. Ultimately it is clear that
they show signs of displacement as they seem to not be able to be assimilated, always trying to go back to
France, either culturally or physically.
References
MacLennan, Hugh, 1971. Return of the Sphinx. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada.
Chopin, Kate. “Désirée’s Baby”, URL: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/DesiBaby.shtml
(visited on 2009/06/08)
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Virginia Woolf’s London:
from islands of light to center
of disillusionment
S, tefania STRAT
The S, tefan cel Mare University, Suceava
MA student, 2nd year
o r Virginia Woolf, London is part of her life, both as an individual and as a writer. She constantly
wrote about her beloved city in novels, essays and diaries, hence it is of prime importance to perceive
London as related to Virginia Woolf’s spiritual and intellectual growth and, in order to achieve this, it
is important to examine some crucial events and experiences from the early years of her life.
F
The great cathedral space which was childhood. . .
Adeline Virginia Stephen was born in London and educated at home by her parents, Julia and Leslie
Stephen. The family owned two houses, one in London, at 22 Hyde Park Gate1 , Kensington, and another
one called Talland House in St Ives, Cornwall, where they spent every summer (Pippett, 1955: 15–18). Thus,
Woolf’s first thirteen years are divided in winters in London and summers in Cornwall. Winters in London
meant the Broad Walk and Kensington Gardens, sailing luggers in the pond, and summers at St Ives meant
the bay, the beach, walks along the cliffs and “the pure delight bred by the evanescent beauty of Cornish
coast” (Woolf quoted in Squier, 1985: 14). Without doubt, these two landscapes shaped the essential basis
for what the author would call moments of being, and for which, later, young Virginia Woolf developed a
great interest in her writings.
Little Virginia Stephen was very attached to her mother and every place in her childhood was teeming
with memories of Julia Stephen. As we always tend to associate people with places or events, it is perfectly
understandable why home means mother for Virginia Woolf: “[s]he was the whole thing; Talland House
was full of her; Hyde Park Gate was full of her” (Woolf quoted in Squier, 1985: 14). When her mother dies
in 1895 in London, it is only to be expected that she should connect the city with death and the country
with life and joy. The summers spent with her mother in St Ives have a major importance in capturing the
1
22 Hyde Park Gate was later to be the title of an autobiographical essay.
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spirit of the country as opposed to London. When Talland House is sold, Virginia feels trapped. She hates
London, for it took away her beloved mother.
Every end is a new beginning. . .
After Leslie Stephen’s death, things change for the woman writer and her London. If the city had seemed
hostile for a few years, after her father’s death, when she experiences the first exile from London2 , she feels
an intense frustration at being kept away from all the intellectual and physical work. This happens especially
because her father’s death brings her freedom and the London ahead would offer her the possibility of self
discovery. She longs for the city as a wild animal for its prey and its inaccessibility makes it more precious:
People say how lucky I am, and how glad I ought to be out of London. They don’t realise that
London means my own home, and books, and pictures, and music, from all of which I have
been parted since February now, - and I have never spent such a wretched 8 months in my life.
(Woolf quoted in Squier, 1985: 41)
In 1904 the four young Stephens, Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia and Adrian, leave the Kensington mansion in
Hyde Park Gate and set up house at 46 Gordon Square, in the northern corner of Bloomsbury (cf. Pippett,
1955: 35). 46 Gordon Square will embody a great emotional, social and intellectual change:
We were full of experiments and reforms. We were going to do without table napkins; we were
going to paint; to write; to have coffee after dinner instead of tea at nine o-clock. Everything was
2 After a severe mental breakdown in May 1904, Dr. George Savage forbidden her any mental or physical labour and this
resulted in an eight months period of enforced exile at the country, staying at some relatives and friends in Nottinghamshire and
Yorkshire (cf. Squier, 1985: 41).
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going to be new; everything was going to be different. Everything was on trial. (Woolf quoted in
Todd, 1999: 31)
The area brings back Woolf’s joy of walking, exploring and reinterpreting the city. Here she will join the
Bloomsbury group3 and she will meet her husband, Leonard Woolf; here, she will write her best novels and
feel the intense pleasure of exploring the streets in search of unique “moments of being”.
How beautiful a London street is then, with its islands of light. . .
The walks outside Talland House, 22 Hyde Park Gate, 46 Gordon Square, Monk’s House4 or 52 Tavistock
Square5 , admiring flowers, trees, cliffs, waves or streets, became considerable sources of “moments of being”.
In “A sketch of the past”, the beginning of her memoirs, she mentions for the first time “moments of being”
(cf. Urquhart) as consisting in strong, personal feelings or experiences, contrasting them with “moments of
non-being”:
Often when I have been writing one of my so-called novels I have been baffled by this same
problem; that is, how to describe what I call in my private shorthand – “non-being.” Every day
3
Name given to the literary group that made the Bloomsbury area of London the center of its activities from 1904 to World
War II. It included Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, E.M. Forster, Vita Sackville-West, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, and
John Maynard Keynes. The group began as a social clique: a few recent Cambridge graduates and their closest friends would
assemble on Thursday nights for drinks and conversation. Its members were committed to a rejection of what they felt were the
strictures and taboos of Victorianism on religious, artistic, social, and sexual matters (The Columbia Encyclopedia).
4 A small cottage in the little village of Rodmell, on the opposite bank of the river Ouse, which Virginia and Leonard Woolf
bought in 1919 (cf. Pippett, 1955: 60).
5 In 1924 the Woolfs return to Bloomsbury and rent 52 Tavistock Square especially because Hogarth Press, their family
business, developed and they need more space (cf. Pippett, 1955: 168).
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includes much more non-being than being. Yesterday for example, Tuesday the 18th of April,
was [as] it happened a good day; above the average in “being.” It was fine; I enjoyed writing
these first pages; my head was relieved of the pressure of writing about Roger; I walked over
Mount Misery and along the river; and save that the tide was out, the country, which I notice
very closely always, was coloured and shared as I like – there were the willows, I remember, all
plummy and soft green and purple against the blue. I also read Chaucer with pleasure; and
began a book – the memoirs of Madame de la Fayette – which interested me. These separate
moments of being were however embedded in many more moments of non-being. I have already
forgotten what Leonard and I talked about at lunch; and at tea; although it was a good day the
goodness was embedded in a kind of nondescript cotton wool. This is always so. A great part of
every day is not lived consciously. One walks, eats, sees things, deals with what has to be done;
the broken vacuum cleaner; ordering dinner; writing orders to Mabel; washing; cooking dinner;
bookbinding. When it is a bad day the proportion of non-being is much larger. I had a slight
temperature last week; almost the whole day was non-being. The real novelist can somehow
convey both sorts of being. (Woolf quoted in Urquhart).
If she does not seem to remember what she discussed with her husband over tea, calling this a non-being
moment, the writer is absolutely aware of another sequence of a day, the walk over Mount Misery. What
Woolf defines as “moments of being” is strongly interrelated with close description. The details are so
precise and vivid, that, if an artist wanted to paint the scene, he/she would easily do it. Everything is there:
the elements (the mount, the river and the willows), the colours (soft green, purple and blue). Once this
complex picture grasped, it is easier to penetrate Woolf’s world to a better understanding of how landscape
influenced her writing.
On the anniversary of her mother’s death, 5 May 1924, Virginia Woolf, recalling “impressions of that
day,” decided “enough of death—its life that matters,” and dedicated herself to the social side of London:
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“One of these days I will write about London, and how it takes up the private life and carries it on, without
any effort” (Woolf quoted in Squier, 1990: 172). In the same year she starts writing Mrs. Dalloway.
Mrs. Dalloway is set in London, in 1923, a time of incredible flux and change for the city, brought about
largely by the recently ended First World War. The novel concentrates on “one moment in June,” that is on a
single day, and Woolf captures the social and psychological changes in the mentioned period. Nevertheless,
the woman writer goes beyond the general crisis and postwar state of tension, successfully represented by
Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War who ends killing himself, and presents
London not only as a “privileged world of prewar and wartime” (Squier, 1990: 173) but also as a source of
equilibrium and sense of belonging.
One symbolic episode in the novel is the one opening it, that is Clarissa Dalloway’s walk from her house
near Dean’s Yard, Westminster, to the florist’s in Bond Street. It is the moment when we realize that Mrs.
Dalloway’s great power of perceptiveness is similar to Woolf’s in “A Sketch of the past”. When the woman
describes what she sees around her and what she feels, observing the city on a June morning, the active
reader is determined to compare the elements to those in the paragraph defining “moments of being”. Mrs.
Dalloway merges to the city and she becomes part of it, her thoughts interweave with everything happening
around her:
Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves
it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every
moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink
their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that
very reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and
the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging;
brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some
aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. (Woolf, 1925)
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Throughout the day, Clarissa is particularly aware of these threads of connection between herself and her
surroundings and therefore she grows receptive to moments of being. When the protagonist walks into
Miss Pym’s flower shop, she closes her eyes and smells the flowers. She opens her eyes, and in a single
remarkable sentence she thinks:
How fresh like frilled linen clean from a laundry laid in wicker trays the roses looked; and dark
and prim the red carnations, holding their heads up; and all the sweet peas spreading in their
bowls, tinged violet, snow white, pale–as if it were the evening and girls in muslin frocks came
out to pick sweet peas and roses after the superb summer’s day, with its almost blue-black sky,
its delphiniums, its carnations its arum lilies was over; and it was the moment between six and
seven when every flower–roses, carnations, irises, lilac–glows; white, violet, red, deep orange;
every flower seems to burn by itself, softly, purely in the misty beds. (Woolf, 1925)
The intensity captured in this single line is breathtaking. One image leads to another in an unstoppable
unique experience and once again the description has a pictorial quality.
The “astonishing ... progress ... up Bond Street” is complicated, however, by uncomfortable references to
the darker, coarser side of Bond Street and what that represents. The devastation and grief caused by the
First World War, for example, is not lost in the shuffle (cf. Lamont, 2001: 161). Even if “the War was over”
(Woolf, 1925) officially, characters like Mrs. Foxcroft or Lady Bexborough still fight against its destructive
power: “The War was over, except for someone like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her
heart out because that nice boy was killed (. . . ) or Lady Bexborough they said, with the telegram in her
hand, John, her favourite, killed” (Woolf, 1925). The War also means the Americanization of London and
throughout the novel Woolf hints at this aspect too, as prominently, and often disturbingly, present in the
interwar years: shopkeepers are described as “fidgeting in their windows with their paste and diamonds,”
preparing their eclectic collections of jewelry “to tempt Americans” (Lamont, 2001: 161). The airplane
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circling above Bond Street and writing indecipherable advertising slogans in the air is also a reflection of
the abundant postwar commercialization.
The sound of an aeroplane bored ominously into the ears of the crowd. There it was coming
over the trees, letting out white smoke from behind, which curled and twisted, actually writing
something! making letters in the sky! Every one looked up.(. . . ) then suddenly, as a train comes
out of a tunnel, the aeroplane rushed out of the clouds again, the sound boring into the ears of
all people in the Mall, in the Green Park, in Piccadilly, in Regent Street, in Regent's Park, and the
bar of smoke curved behind and it dropped down, and it soared up and wrote one letter after
another–but what word was it writing? (Woolf, 1925)
Apparently, Mrs Dalloway was titled The Hours in an early draft (cf. Sim, 2005) and the recurrent appearance
of Big Ben is proof of that. The characters’ steps, actions and thoughts are permanently guided by the
majestic clock. It is imposing indeed, as it seems to do more than strike the hour, the characters being
continuously aware of time passing as a threat: “Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning,
musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air” (Woolf, 1925). Big Ben interrupts
obsessively the linear thoughts of the characters as if it were trying to reestablish reality. Furthermore, it
symbolizes the constant connection interwoven among the characters:
It was precisely twelve o’clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke was wafted over the northern
part of London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds
and wisps of smoke, and died up there among the seagulls – twelve o’clock struck as Clarissa
Dalloway laid her green dress on her bed, and the Warren Smiths walked down Harley Street.
Twelve was the hour of their appointment. Probably, Rezia thought, that was Sir William
Bradshaw's house with the grey motor car in front of it. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.
(Woolf, 1925)
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Undoubtedly, Clarissa Dalloway’s greatest quality and strong resemblance to its creator, Virginia Woolf, is
maybe her continued loyalty for London. They both remain faithful to the city and they trust its power
to adjust to changes in such a way that it does not harm but protect its inhabitants. It perpetually offers
moments of joy and when they seem to reach the end another one sprouts up from pseudo-monotony.
An excellent example of such a moment is offered also in the essay written in 1927, “Street haunting: A
London adventure”, where the simple action of buying a pencil is regarded as an opportunity for indulging
“in the greatest pleasure of town life in winter – rambling the streets of London” (Woolf, 1927). The essay
dictates that, for such a walk, “the hour should be the evening and the season winter, for in winter the
champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful” (ibid.). Outside, the writer feels
free not only to ramble, but to be herself. Even if the reason for going out is to buy a pencil – “One must, one
always must, do something or other; it is not allowed one simply to enjoy oneself” – the author easily leads
us into another action: to go in search of a person and to “see the whole breadth of the river Thames – wide,
mournful, peaceful (. . . ) through the eyes of somebody who is leaning over the Embankment on a summer
evening, without a care in the world” (ibid.). The opposition between close and open space is present in the
essay; only after one closes the door – “But when the door shuts on us” – does one become open to a greater
receptiveness and its “enormous eye” has the power to reveal things that inside are sinking into oblivion:
How beautiful a London street is then, with its islands of light, and its long groves of darkness,
and on one side of it perhaps some tree–sprinkled, grass–grown space where night is folding
herself to sleep naturally and, as one passes the iron railing, one hears those little cracklings and
stirrings of leaf and twig which seem to suppose the silence of fields all round them, an owl
hooting, and far away the rattle of a train in the valley. (Woolf, 1927)
If in the episode described in “A sketch of the past” as a definition for moments of being we have only visual
elements, in this one Virginia Woolf’s power of accurately describing determines us not only to imagine a
picture but also hear the stirring and hooting sounds.
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Throughout the essay the author allots to the eye a wide range of attributes and powers: it rests only
on beauty – “like a butterfly it seeks color and basks in warmth”, it is sportive and generous, it creates, it
adorns and it enhances. But “the thing it cannot do (one is speaking of the average unprofessional eye) is to
compose these trophies in such a way as to bring out the more obscure angles and relationships” (Woolf,
1927). Therefore, the eye, or the “central oyster of perceptiveness” as Woolf calls it, seems to be unable to
move beyond surfaces like simple squares or avenues but the person haunting the streets has the power
to manipulate and master it. And it does so in such a way that the landscape starts revealing symbolic
episodes of city life: a dwarf trying on shoes; the sudden encounter with a hungry, poverty-stricken man
and woman; the fantasies spawned by the goods displayed in Oxford Street; the innumerable tales contained
on the shelves of a secondhand bookshop; an overheard conversation; the sight of two lovers on a Thames
bridge; a quarrel in a stationer's shop in the Strand (cf. Squier, 1985: 46).
A perfunctory slaughter. . .
In September 1939, when the Germans’ bombs fall on London, they destroy both the Mecklenburg Square
House the Woolfs have just taken and the Tavistock Square house they have just vacated. “Living at Rodmell
between London and the Channel, under skies crossed by British and German bombers, the Woolfs black
out their windows (. . . ) put up friends, family, and Hogarth press staffs, stretch food rations with fruit and
honey from garden” (Froula, 2005: 288). The writer’s last diary captures the impact of the war on her life.
She feels completely disappointed and she is stunned when Britain declares war:
It seems completely meaningless – a perfunctory slaughter, like taking a jar in one hand, a
hammer in the other. Why must this be smashed? Nobody knows (. . . ).
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Lord this is the worst of all my life’s experience. . . Yes, it’s an empty meaningless world
now. . . I repeat. . . any idea is more real than any amount of war misery. (Woolf quoted in Froula,
2005: 289)
The Second World War did not manage in the least to destroy her trust in London’s healing power and the
same wartime diary reveals the persistence of this faith in the face of the destructive war: “I feel London
majestic (. . . ) How England consoles and warms one. . . There are moments. . . for living” (Woolf quoted in
Froula, 2005: 288). It is absolutely impressive how she manages in such a difficult period to preserve the
best part of London, to keep alive all the city experiences she’s been through and nurture them constantly
in writing.
However, did London help her conceal her deep pessimism? Was this on the surface something that
might almost be indifference? Maybe thinking of past London and its beautiful days and long walks was
her way of coping with reality, as the war continued – “for a day it entirely obsesses; then the feeling faculty
gives out; next day one is disembodied, in the air” (Woolf quoted in Pippett, 1955: 363). Her “majestic
London” was under heavy attack while she and Leonard tried to survive the pressure in the face of the
war’s horrors. And then came the day of March 28th ,
when her husband walked through the garden to her lodge to remind her it was lunchtime. She
was just finishing something, she said, and he went back to the house. Five, ten, minutes passed,
and she did not come. He went to see what was detaining her. On her table was what she had
just been writing: a letter to her sister and a letter to him. He ran through the orchard, across
the meadow, to the river. There on the bank he found her hat and her stick. (Pippett, 1955: 367)
“I have the feeling that I shall go mad,” she had written in her farewell letter to her husband. Many
critics have blamed her suicide on the wartime period and interpreted it as the single, possible way of not
placing on those who loved her and whom she loved the extra burden of caring for her. Despite Leonard’s
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encouragement and delight with her last novel, Between the Acts, she felt depressed about it. She felt that
every act was trivial in such a period; she considered the writer’s task, in general, as invalid during a war
(cf. Todd, 1999: 83).
Virginia Woolf’s life was not an easy one: she suffered many losses and death surrounded and followed
her everywhere. She chose to end her life by drowning in the river Ouse which was such a great inspiration
and which she had praised so much. In fact, all her life, Virginia Woolf enthused about everything
surrounding her; she paid a tribute to nature and rural landscapes, most of the times as opposed to London,
and by doing that she perpetually illustrated her fight against the darker parts of existence. She praised
“moments of being” in nature and put London on a pedestal among other places she had visited or lived
in. Above all, London did not embody just home but the perfect setting in her works and, for her, the
perfect scenery, while creating, offering every time new experiences, ready to be transformed into words of
perfection.
References
Bloom, Harold (ed.), 1990. Major Literary Characters: Clarissa Dalloway, New York: Chelsea House Publishers
Froula, Christine, 2005. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde: War, Civilization, Modernity, Columbia
University Press, New York
Lamont, Elizabteh Clea, 2001. “Moving Tropes: New Modernist Travels with Virginia Woolf”, Alif: Journal of
Comparative Poetics, American University in Cairo. URL: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=50024
34194 (visited on 2010/03/12)
Pippett, Aileen, 1955. The Moth and the Star: A Biography of Virginia Woolf, Boston: Little, Brown and
Company
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Sim, Lorraine, 2005. “No ‘ordinary Day’: The Hours, Virginia Woolf and Everyday Life”, in Hecate,
Vol. 1, Issue 1, Hecate Press. URL: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5037579349 (visited on
2010/03/12)
Squier, Susan Merrill, 1985. Virginia Woolf and London. The Sexual Politics of the City, The University of North
Carolina Press
Squier, Susan Merrill, 1990. “Carnival and funeral”, in Bloom (171-182)
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008, “Bloomsbury group” URL: http://www.encyclopedia.com/
doc/1E1-Bloomsbury.html (visited on 2010/04/16)
Todd, Pamela, 1999. Bloomsbury at Home, New York: Harry N. Abrams
Urquhart, Nicole L., “Moments of Being in Virginia Woolf's Fiction”, URL: http://writing.colostate.edu/gal
lery/matrix/urquhart.htm (visited on 2010/04/17)
Woolf, Virginia, 1925. Mrs. Dalloway, A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook, URL: http://gutenberg.net.au/
ebooks02/0200991h.html (visited on 2010/04/17)
Woolf, Virginia, 1927. “Street Haunting: A London Adventure”, Woolf Essays, A Project Gutenberg of
Australia eBook, URL: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200771.txt (visited on 2010/04/18)
Zemgulys, Andrea P., 2000. “Night and Day Is Dead”: Virginia Woolf in London “Literary and Historic”, in
Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 46, Issue 1, Hofstra University
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Dissolution and
Reconstruction of the
Feminine Identity in
Margaret Atwood’s
Lucia-Alexandra TUDOR
Al. I. Cuza University, Ias, i
MA student, 2nd year
The Edible Woman
h i s paper traces the way in which the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood achieves the deconstruction
of gender identity, by exploring her novel, The Edible Woman, from both a cultural and a literary
perspective, with emphasis on the central metaphor of consuming and being consumed. It will also
refer to the manner in which the problem of identity and the issues related to it (loss of identity, alienation,
gender stereotypes, rebellion, the search for a feminine / female self) are tackled in the novel.
Towards the end of the novel, Marian, the main character, bakes a cake in the shape of a woman and
addresses it directly: “‘You look delicious,’ she told her. ‘Very appetizing. And that’s what will happen to
you; that’s what you get for being food’” (Atwood, 1987: 270), before serving it to her fiancé:
T
She knelt, setting the platter on the coffee-table in front of Peter.
“You’ve been trying to destroy me, haven’t you,” she said. “You’ve been trying to assimilate
me. But I’ve made you a substitute, something you’ll like much better. This is what you really
wanted all along, isn’t it? I’ll get you a fork,” she added somewhat prosaically. (Atwood, 1987:
271)
In the end, Marian eats the cake herself, to the rather humorous indignation of her flat-mate: “‘Marian!’ she
exclaimed at last, with horror. ‘You’re rejecting your femininity!’” (Atwood, 1987: 272).
The famous Canadian writer Margaret Atwood is well-known as a feminist. A poet, novelist, critic, and
editor, Atwood has been publishing novels and poetry for more than forty years, being an important figure
of Canadian literature. The Edible Woman was her first novel, initially written in 1965 and revised two years
afterwards, but finally published in 1969.
The plot follows Marian, her flatmate Ainsley, her boyfriend/fiancé Peter, her married (and pregnant)
friend Clara, and graduate English student Duncan along a period of about six months, during which
Marian finds herself unable to eat.
The background is of importance, as it is illustrative of the consumer society and of life at the time in
the city. Atwood captures all the details, offering careful descriptions of office interaction, style, fashionable
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products of the time, such as alka-seltzer, and, of particular importance in this novel about (non-)edible
things, food, such as canned rice pudding, which is present throughout the book and could be interpreted
as a hallmark of the modern consumer society.
The central metaphor is that of consuming and being consumed, as suggested by the title. Food and
what is or is not edible are referred to constantly throughout the story.
Another constant point of reference is the consumer society, as showcased by the author by using overt
depictions, as for instance the description of the supermarket – “she resented the music because she knew
why it was there: it was supposed to . . . lower your sales resistance. . . she remembered an article she
had read about cows who gave more milk when sweet music was played to them” (Atwood, 1987: 172)
– or of the office background, with its gossip and minor crises. In addition, Atwood also makes use of
metaphorical representation, the most powerful being the pages-long description of Marian preparing – or
rather, being prepared – for Peter’s party, in which she is presented as yet another instance of consumer
goods, an metaphor made even more explicit in the end by the symbol of the cake.
As we follow Marian through the story, we notice that the first trigger of her condition appears to be
the pension plan: having been forced to sign it, Marian finds herself feeling “suddenly quite depressed”
(Atwood, 1987: 21). Although she attempts to dismiss it as superstition, she is gripped by fear, as she
sees the pension plan as committing to a future – and this future she imagines to be “a bleak room with a
plug-in electric heater” (ibid.). It is at this point that Marian begins to realize that her path has already been
established and, at the same time, that she is, in effect, trapped. Marian’s thought process is interesting to
follow:
I told myself not to be silly, the world would probably blow up between now and then; I
reminded myself that I could walk out of there the next day and get a different job if I wanted to,
but that didn’t help. I thought of my signature going into a file and the file going into a cabinet
and the cabinet being shut away in a vault somewhere and locked. (Ibid.)
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Reasoning and irony appear not to work for Marian as she is faced with the visceral and intuitive fear of
having to follow a pre-established, even foreordained fate. Her counterpart in the book, Duncan, discusses
a similar topic, but in a much more bitter way; replying to Marian’s suggestion that he might be happier in
another line of business, he argues: “once you’ve gone this far you aren’t fit for anything else. Something
happens to your mind. You’re overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. . . . No, no. I’ll have
to be a slave in the paper-mines forever” (Atwood, 1987: 97).
This motif of being entrapped is linked with those of running away, escape, the hunt. We see Marian
longing for a personal identity; at one point, hiding under the bed, she declares her satisfaction at being the
only one to know where she is. Marian is in the process of becoming an object. All throughout the second
part she seems lost, passive; previously, we had a sense of her. Immediately following the engagement, she
starts submitting to Peter’s judgement: “. . . I heard a soft flannelly voice I barely recognized, saying, ‘I’d
rather have you decide that. . . ’” (Atwood, 1987: 90).
In the twelve chapters that make up Part I, the action takes place between Friday morning and Monday
(Labour Day); Marian is now engaged to Peter and, as the first part concludes, we see Marian apparently
planning. In fact, as she goes over her actions, Marian is making herself believe this was the right choice – a
sample sentence makes that evident: “Of course I was more involved with Peter all along than I wanted
to admit” (Atwood, 1987: 102), a direct contradiction of what has been inferred until this point. Despite
her arguments, Marian is in effect giving up her “true personality”. Her mental monologue ends with, “I
must get organized. I have a lot to do” (ibid.: 103), a statement belied by the previous paragraph, which
shows her sitting lazily and “drifting”. In concordance with this attitude, the next sentence, which opens
Part II, reads, “Marian was sitting listlessly at her desk” (ibid.: 107). Two months have passed (thus making
it November) and, during one dinner with Peter, Marian’s eating disorder appears. By January, when the
dinner party with Clara and her husband Len takes place, Marian is no longer able to eat any meat.
At Peter’s party, she decides to run; she escapes, finds Duncan and spends the night with him. The next
morning, he reveals the truth to her.
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Following that, Marian confronts Peter by means of the cake (an intentional, conscious test) and, after
Peter has refused the cake, Marian makes the symbolic gesture of eating it herself.
The third and final part consists of only one chapter and, while bringing some closure, it also raises
several questions. I believe the discussion remains open whether we are dealing here with “real” action
(which is to say, whether Marian has achieved liberation and is no longer the passive victim), or if it is just
the illusion of moving forward. As in the case of the broken mirror, with Duncan there is always more
than one explanation, more than one reality. In the final chapter especially, the character is used to create
a feeling of uncertainty, insecurity, which is stirred in Marian, and, at a different level, may be felt by the
reader as well:
“That’s ridiculous,” he said gravely. “Peter wasn’t trying to destroy you. That’s just something
you made up. Actually you were trying to destroy him.”
I had a sinking feeling. “Is that true?” I asked.
[. . . ]
He drank some coffee and paused to give me time, then added, “But the real truth is that it
wasn’t Peter at all. It was me. I was trying to destroy you.”
I gave a nervous laugh. “Don’t say that.”
“Okay,” he said, “ever eager to please. Maybe Peter was trying to destroy me, or maybe I
was trying to destroy him, or we were trying to destroy each other, how’s that?”
“But the real truth is that it wasn’t Peter at all. It was me. I was trying to destroy you.”
I gave a nervous laugh. “Don’t say that.”
“Okay,” he said, “ever eager to please. Maybe Peter was trying to destroy me, or maybe I
was trying to destroy him, or we were trying to destroy each other, how’s that? What does it
matter, you’re back to so-called reality, you’re a consumer.”
(Atwood, 1987: 280-1)
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Duncan’s contradictory explanations give rise to the idea that there are a multitude of perspectives. The
ambiguity of the ending is highlighted by the very last paragraphs, when the fate of the symbolic cake is
fully revealed:
“Incidentally,” I said, remembering, “would you like some cake?”
[. . . ]
It gave me a peculiar sense of satisfaction to see him eat as if the work hadn’t been wasted
after all . . .
[. . . ]
He scraped the last chocolate curl up with his fork and pushed away the plate. “Thank you,”
he said, licking his lips. “It was delicious.” (Atwood, 1987: 281)
One of the possible conclusions may be that we cannot equate Marian with the symbolic cake-woman, as
life neither is, nor could ever be, a neatly wrapped-up metaphor.
As the main character, Marian is different from the other women in the novel. In fact, she is presented
with each possible future – as it was at the time – and is unble to accept any of them.
In the twenty-third chapter, Marian questions herself and the other characters in turn about her normality,
wanting to find out whether she fits in. Nonetheless, the different answers she receives unite to form a
single image. Ainsley, the psychology graduate, says that “normal isn’t the same as average. . . Nobody is
normal” (Atwood, 1987: 204), while Clara characterizes her as “abnormally normal” (ibid.: 206), and Peter
as “marvellously normal” (ibid.: 205). The suggestion here is that Marian is “everywoman”, a representative
of the female sex.
The issue here is the conflict between two different worlds: the external social environment vs. the
internal life of the character, who is in a permanent search for a real and truly feminine “I” (cf. Prodan,
2007: 42).
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Ainsley, Marian’s flatmate, is a college graduate who works as a tester of defective electric toothbrushes.
In Ainsley’s own words, “What else do/can you do with a B.A. these days?”
The general appeal of the book has been explained in terms like the following: “The novel is about what
anyone – male or female, with or without a college degree – can do to maintain his sanity and humanity in
the plastic and over-packaged world that exists in the second half of this century” (Dawe, 1987: 2).
The themes posed in the novel include the problem of identity, and, conversely, its loss, alienation and
the search for a feminine / female self. Also present are various gender stereotypes, as well as the theme of
rebellion.
The novel has several autobiographical elements, including the background, as Atwood herself worked
for a market research company, the Canadian Facts Market, when she returned to Toronto in 1963 (cf. Stroe,
2008: 476), and the name of the main character, whose initials are also M.A. once the “Mc” particle is
removed. However, echoes of the author are to be found in the character of Duncan as well – also an English
graduate, who has never finished his thesis. Further speculation leads to the possibility that Marian and
Duncan “are in some elusive way the same character”, as Dawe points out (1987: 4), quoting Duncan himself
– the latter tells Marian “Hey, you look sort of like me in that” when she is wearing his dressing-gown
(Atwood, 1987: 144).
The food imagery is used consistently – and humourously – throughout the book, e.g. “[t]he company is
layered like an ice-cream sandwich, with three floors: the upper crust, the lower crust, and our department,
the gooey layer in the middle. . . ” (Atwood, 1987: 19). The novel itself is opened by a quote from a cooking
book, urging the baker to have “chilled” tools, ingredients, and fingers. The adjective most likely suggests
detachment.
The mind-set of the period is revealed by details such as a letter to the company – written by a woman –
which begins with “Dear Sir,” yet it is dealt with by female employees. Similarly, the beer commercial is
treated ironically by both the author and the main character.
Failure to communicate is often suggested in the novel:
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We walked in silence; I thought about mentioning the Pension Plan, but decided not to.
Ainsley wouldn’t understand why I found it disturbing: she’d see no reason why I couldn’t
leave my job and get another one, and why this wouldn’t be a final solution. Then I though
about Peter and what had happened to him; Ainsley, however, would only be amused if I told
her. Finally I asked her if she was feeling better.
“Don’t be so concerned, Marian,” she said, “you make me feel like an invalid.”
I was hurt and didn’t answer. (Atwood, 1987: 30)
Similar problems appear in Marian’s relationship to Clara, but the character with the least understanding
of Marian’s mind-set seems to be Peter. The failure to communicate is a characteristic of the interaction
between Marian and Duncan as well; however, the reason is not that Duncan cannot understand her
(they appear, in fact, to have numerous things in common), but that he deliberately twists things, always
having more than one explanation, giving succesive contradictory answers and – in plain words – lying.
Nevertheless, it is significant that the only other character present in the last chapter is actually Duncan,
whose words conclude the novel: “Thank you [. . . ] It was delicious” (Atwood, 1987: 281).
Distorted reflections appear often: Marian observes her image in objects such as spoons – “herself upside
down, with a huge torso narrowing to a pinhead at the handle end” (Atwood, 1987: 146), or taps, in which
she sees herself as a “curiously-sprawling pink thing”.
Perhaps also connected are the remarks about the windows. When Duncan arrives in the last chapter,
Marian is in the process of cleaning the apartment; she mentions them twice and comments, “they had
got quite silted over with dust, and I was thinking it was going to be curious to be able to see out of them
again” (Atwood, 1987: 278).
From a literary perspective, what stands out is the construction of the novel, with such literary means and
devices as comic situations, an apparently light tone, and the use of irony. Anticipation and foreshadowing
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devices are also used – in the first part of the novel, Marian dreams of dissolving and becoming transparent,
a condition echoed towards the end of the book, when she becomes afraid of dissolving in the bath water.
The cultural references of the novel concern not only the critique of the condition of women at the time,
but also that of the consumer society. Furthermore, the background against with the action is set – by
necessity a large city – is the easily identifiable as Toronto (cf. Dawe, 1987: 2). There are other references
to the Canadian environment as well, both at a cultural level, e.g. mentioning the West and the natives,
including stereotypes as well (“This wasn’t the first time something had gone wrong in the West” – Atwood,
1987: 110) on the subject of sending questionnaires to Indian reservations – and at a lexical level, with
constant use of the typical Canadian word “chesterfield” for couch, for instance, among other things.
References
Atwood, Margaret, 1987. The Edible Woman, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart
Ciobanu, Carmen (ed.), 2007. Canada anglofonă. Dicţionar de autori, Vol. I: A-B, Iaşi: Casa Editorială Demiurg
Dawe, Alan, 1987. “Introduction” in Atwood (2–8)
Pârvu, Sorin, 2008 (ed.). Dicţionar de scriitori nord-americani. A, Iaşi: Institutul European
Prodan, Irina, 2007. “Margaret Atwood”, in Ciobanu (41–5)
Stroe, Mihai, 2008. “Margaret Atwood” in Pârvu (476–502)
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Normal/Pathological
Perversity in Alice Walker’s
and Kara Walker’s Work
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
“Ovidius” University, Constant, a
MA student, 2nd year
n “Radical Sexuality: From Perverse to Queer”, Sigmund Freud mentions the existence of polymorphous perversity. Freud did not desire to eliminate sexual perversity entirely by claiming it was
something taboo, which should not be discussed under any circumstances. On the contrary, he wanted
to understand it better as he considered it “as an inevitable part of human experience, where the normal is
seen to be in a close and unstable relation with what it is supposed to surpass and exclude” (Freud, quoted
in Mansfield, 2000: 106). However, he concludes that there are two types of perversion: one that is normal
and perfectly human, and another type, which is pathological.
Alice Walker and Kara Walker as well deal with various forms of sexuality which are not deemed as
“normal”. Alice Walker focuses more on homosexuality, while Kara Walker’s fascination lies with interracial
relations which are still not entirely accepted, as miscegenation is severely judged. Nonetheless, both Alice
and Kara are interested in the aggressive aspect when it comes to sexual relations and the impact physical
abuse has not only on women’s but on men’s psyche as well.
I
1. Women’s Comfort in Other Women
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens is a collection of essays and reviews that were written by Alice Walker
between 1966 and 1982, which was published in 1983. This collection of articles begins with a definition of
a womanist, stemming from womanish. A womanist is:
a black feminist or a feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female
children, ‘you acting womanish’, i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious,
courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered
‘good’ for one. (Walker, 1984: xi)
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Thus, a womanist is a girl or a woman that is trying to appear something that she is not, i.e. “responsible.
In Charge. Serious”. More precisely, it is a girlish person who pretends to be a grown-up.
Moreover, there is a second meaning added which describes a womanist as “a woman who loves other
women, sexually and/or nonsexually”. Being a womanist means appreciating women’s culture, strength,
and emotional flexibility. Alice Walker actually responds to the criticism brought to the Black lesbian
literature:
We are all lesbians. For surely it is better to be thought a lesbian, and to say and write your life
exactly as you experience it, than to be a token “pet” black woman for those whose contempt for
our autonomous existence makes them a menace to human life. (Walker, quoted in Butler-Evans,
1989: 168)
Alice Walker also wrote an essay regarding her novel The Color Purple and the reason why she started
working on it, reason originating in a relationship between women. In “Writing The Color Purple”, the writer
confessed that what brought about the idea for the novel was a conversation she was having with her sister,
Ruth, about a love triangle, “about two women who felt married to the same man” (Walker, 1984: 355). She
announced that she would write a historical novel, which created a chuckle among male critics because
womanlike (he would say), my ‘history’ starts not with the taking of lands, or the births, battles,
and deaths of Great Men, but with one woman asking another for her underwear. (Walker, 1984:
356).
That is, unlike in the rest of the historical novels, she would focus on women most of all and on the
relationships between women specifically. Consequently, it might not be taken as seriously as those novels
which focus on the lives of men and their accomplishments or it might not be seen as important at all in
having radically changed history in any noticeable way.
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In Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Adrienne Rich states that women do not have one
sexual orientation, as men do, but two: “sexual toward men and reproductive toward their young” (Rich,
1986: 1764). However, this is just one of the reasons why women might have lesbian tendencies. In The Color
Purple, Celie is raped by her stepfather and ends up giving birth to two children, Olive and Adam. In the
movie directed by Steven Spielberg, the scene of birth is taken to a new level as Celie finds herself in an
enclosed space but with the door wide open, while being in labor at the time. Her father stands in the door
waiting to take her child and give it away in order to hide this sin. This only proves
men’s ability to deny women sexuality or to force it upon them; to command or exploit their labor
to control their produce; to control or rob them of their children; to confine them physically and
prevent their movements; to use them as objects in male transactions; to cramp their creativeness;
or to withhold them large areas of the society’s knowledge and cultural attainments. (Rich, 1986:
1765).
Celie eventually finds relief in Shug Avery, who is like a second wife to Albert. It becomes obvious from
the beginning that Celie’s feelings for Shug are beyond friendship and they tend to break the limits of
fascination as well:
All the men got they eyes glued to Shug’s bosom. I got my eyes glued there too. I feel my
nipples harden under my dress. My little button sort of perk up too. Shug, I say to her hi my
mind, Girl, you looks like a real good time, the Good Lord knows you do. (Walker, 1982: 26)
Kara Walker manages to create an image similar to the one constructed in Alice Walker’s novel. In her
The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, there are four cut-paper silhouettes
symbolizing four women placed in an interesting pyramid. It is as if they are passing a legacy from one to
another in a beautifully symbolized matriarchal line. Nonetheless, just as Rich said, this structure may have
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a double meaning. The women could be seen in the position of either mother or daughter, but at the same
time the image has sexual connotations. In “Shame, Disgust and Idealization in Kara Walker’s Gone: A
Historical Romance of a Civil War As It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs Of One Young Negress and Her Heart
(1994)”, Amna Malik refers to Frederick Douglas’s interpretation of such scenes that indicate this eruption of
libidinal interest. He noted that “Walker’s work renders sexual pleasure an erotic surplus beyond utilitarian
needs” (Douglas, quoted in Malik, 2008: 185). In this scene in particular with the four women, he believed
there was this “implication of non-reproductive lesbian sexual pleasure that suggests similarities with a
Bataillean or rather Sadean view of sexuality as a form of transgression” (Douglas, quoted in Malik, 2008:
185).
However, it is in By the Light of My Father’s Smile, another one of Alice Walker’s novels, that two women,
Susannah and Pauline, are obviously involved with one another. In the first chapter, “Angels”, though a
bit ambiguously at first, two women are described in detail having sexual intercourse. What is relatively
disturbing is that this scene is described by Susannah’s father, who appears to be watching the entire process
from a spiritual place. Susannah comes to the conclusion that sex can be more than a chore, as Celie saw it:
Women all over the world have been brainwashed to think sex is not meant to be pleasurable to
them, only to the men fucking them. You’re supposed to sort of steal your pleasure from theirs.
Fucked, isn’t it? (Walker, 1998: 130).
Consequently, she begins to experiment with both women and men and thus embarks on a journey of
self-exploration.
She describes previous relations she had with women to Pauline, emphasizing that it was actually
more than sex. She strongly rejects the ideas promoted by Playboy, in which women come together for the
sake of physical pleasure only and, above all, to entertain men. The relationships she is describing has an
“incredible nurturing quality; it was the kind of affectionate sex that seemed designed to reconnect me to
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myself, to keep me alive” (Walker, 1998: 132). Moreover, she draws a parallel between the freedom slaves
have obtained and the orgasmic freedom that used to be considered a male prerogative and has only been
recently achieved by women.
Furthermore, their relationship appears to follow a heterosexual pattern more or less. In her essay, “The
Straight Mind”, Monique Wittig argues that homosexual relationships are similar to the heterosexual ones
when it comes to the existence of a passive partner and an active one. There are parodies that actually
undermine these relationships by exaggerating the masculinity of one of the women or the femininity of
one of the men. Lesbian women in general were considered manlier because of either their apparel or their
display of independence and strength. These parodies have usually been accompanied by insulting terms
such as “dyke”, “fag” and “queer”.
What follows in the novel is a trip down memory lane which actually brings back the first moment
of Pauline and Susannah’s meeting, when this dichotomy passive/active became apparent. At that time
Susannah was married and decided with her husband to eat out one night in a restaurant that happened
to be Pauline’s. Petro, the husband, instantly disliked Pauline and explained this sudden change in his
mood to his lovely feminine wife: “Dykes, [. . . ] Their boldness takes my appetite away” (Walker, 1998: 136).
Wittig believes that in order to avoid such classification, gays and lesbians should stop thinking in terms of
female and male and stop modeling themselves after what has been decided as normal.
In other words, for us, this means there cannot any longer be women and men, and that as
classes and categories of thought or language they have to disappear, politically, economically,
ideologically. If we, as lesbians and gay men continue to speak of ourselves and to conceive of
ourselves as women and men, we are instrumental in explaining heterosexuality. (Wittig, 1992:
113)
As Karen Schechner put it, unlike Walker’s other novels, By the Light of my Father’s Smile celebrates sex and
reinforces the notion that any love is good love: straight, bisexual, or gay. It becomes “a parable for the
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importance of a happy sexuality that is not oppressed by one’s father, religion, or culture”. For Magdalena,
Susannah’s sister, all three were embodied in her father’s image. She even went as far as piercing her labia
and having a crucifix dangling in order to show that her sexuality and, perhaps, female sexuality in general,
had been oppressed by the church, by the patriarchal figure.
A similar situation to Magdalena’s piercing of the labia, in order to make a statement about women’s
repressed desires, comes back even stronger in Possessing the Secret of Joy. In this case, women are more than
abused as the parts of their bodies that give them pleasure are completely cut off under most unhygienic
circumstances, this process often leading to death. The writer tries to explain how painful this is by drawing
a small parallel:
If every man in this courtroom had had his penis removed, what then? Would they understand
better that that condition is similar to that of all the women in this room? That, even as we sit
here, the women are suffering from the unnatural constrictions of flesh their bodies have been
whittled and refashioned into? (Walker, 1992: 162)
Kara Walker does not tackle the topic of homosexuality as often as Alice Walker does, but she makes
it clear that gender is not a limit or some sort of obstacle. For instance, in her short motion picture, 8
Possible Beginnings: The Creation of an African America, she creates a scene in which a burlesque black figure
impregnates a young white master who eventually gives birth through his anus. A process that has always
been reserved to women has now been transferred to a man with all its pain and suffering. Furthermore,
Kara tends to create at times silhouettes that are a bit more ambiguous when it comes to gender, especially
in the case of children who engage in sexual relations. One such example is Gone, An Historical Romance of a
Civil War As It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart.
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2. Interracial Relations
Hybridity has lately enforced the idea that racial identities are more political and symbolic rather than real
and natural. Considering the entire process of migration from continent to continent in the past centuries,
one might find it difficult to assume races are as pure as they were before traveling and globalization. This
heterophilia or “love of the other” can be seen as both encouraging, because of a global understanding and
love between cultures, and as a threat to one’s own identity.
Kara Walker tackles the idea of interracial relationships in her cut paper silhouettes while Alice Walker
focuses on African American relations only, barely ever introducing Caucasian men or women. However,
both approaches are worth being taken into consideration as Kara Walker is interested in heterophilia while
Alice appears to further herself away from it as much as possible.
Kara Walker has very often been criticized for her use of stereotype, as African Americans still believe
they are viewed as sambos, pickaninnies or minstrels, which is quite hurtful. Kara Walker herself confessed
that “[a]ll Black people in America want to be slaves just a little bit, because it entitles them to heaping
teaspoons full of dignity and self-awareness” (Malik, 2008: 181).
In his article, “Shock and Awe: Kara Walker at the Whitney”, Leo O’Donovan tries to explain the roots
of Kara Walker’s potential racism and reaches the conclusion that it all has to do with her biography. She
was born in Stockton, California in 1969 and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she was first met with
racism. When she started pursuing an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design, Kara begins unraveling
the origins of racial prejudice and oppression. However, the fact that she was surrounded by racism as a
teenager that does not necessarily mean that she has internalized it and that she is now trying to reproduce
it. The artist might have simply wanted to show to a larger audience what she had observed throughout
her life.
Janice S. Lieberman also takes a deeper look into her life and believes to have found explanations for
her choices in her art in “Kara Walker’s Nightmares: A Psychoanalytic Perspective.” At a certain point
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she states that “for black children, the primal scene is not seeing their parents having sex, but seeing them
diminished by white condescension” (Lieberman, 2007: 2). That is what very much hurt Kara after having
moved to Atlanta. Her father, who was an artist with a respected position, was being patronized by his
superior, who was white. A further incident that had an impact on her and which might also explain her
fascination with interracial relations, occurred when she found a certain note in her white boyfriend’s car, a
note from the KKK that advised him to stop dating her because she was a symbol of disease and moral
decay.
In Amna Malick’s article, “Shame, disgust and idealization in Kara Walker’s Gone: A Historical Romance
of a Civil War As It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs Of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994)”, one can
discover Kara Walker’s perspective on interracial relations:
There are times when you’re friends with somebody or you’re having a relationship, and you’re
not thinking about race for a brief moment. Then suddenly the entire history of the whole
United States of America or the American South or post-reconstruction comes crashing down on
you and you say to yourself ‘Hmmm, this reminds me of something. I’m not sure what it is, but
it’s vaguely familiar. (Kara Walker, quoted in Malik, 2008: 182)
Though Kara Walker’s men and women are simple black shapes on a white background, one could easily
realize there is a race difference. Yasmil Raymond noticed the clothes and shoes as indicators of race. There
is the hoop skirt, “symbol of morality and the quintessential fashion statement of Southern women before
the Civil War” (Yasmil, 2009: 349). This is one recurrent motif, possibly symbolizing repressed desires or
virtues, which comes into an interesting contrast with the overwhelming sexuality. An interesting example
is that of Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young
Negress and Her Heart. The title is a bit ambiguous as it refers to a romance such as that of Scarlet O’Hara
and Rhett Butler’s, a thought easily supported by the wonderful scene on the shore, in which a beautiful girl
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in a hoop skirt is about to kiss what appears to be a Confederate soldier. However, this historical romance is
supposed to be about a Negress. That Negress, though, is not foregrounded. On the contrary, she appears
to be hiding behind the wannabe Scarlet O’Hara.
The physical differences are also emphasized up to the point where they become satirical and even
humorous. It is these differences that have contributed to a stir in emotions, as they suggest ridiculous
versions of the African Americans. The latter are portrayed as savages and associated with Africa in a
condescending way. The black woman is the voluptuous, oversexed, naked woman tempting men because
of the mystery surrounding her. The black men abide the myth regarding their being very well endowed.
They both have very thick lips and kinky hair. The only thing that brings about a conflict is gender. In An
Historical Romance, there is this scene on a hill in which a black person is performing oral sex on a white boy.
They both seem to be children in fact, or teenagers at most, but the African American character has been
interpreted as either a girl or a boy, which in turn would lead to other interpretations. Nonetheless, there is
an emphasis placed on this civilized versus brutish dichotomy.
3. Aggressive Love
Hernton observed that there is a replica of the slavery system in The Color Purple. The white people have
disappeared only to leave their form of organization behind. The black men have become the oppressors
and the black women have become the oppressed. The novel actually begins with a detailed description of
Celie’s unfortunate sexual experience, i.e. her father making a habit out of raping her. This could also be a
reminder of the times when white men raped their slaves without caring about their feelings and actually
thinking that they were entitled to do whatever they wanted with their slaves.
He never had a kine word to say to me. Just say you gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t.
First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grab hold my
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titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me,
saying You better shut up and git used to it. (Walker, 1982: 1)
In Race, Gender, and Desire, Elliott Butler-Evans finds that Walker uses a defamiliarizing strategy by presenting
the family as a place where such violent episodes take place. Later on in the novel, Celie goes through the
same experience with her marriage. Her husband is nothing more than a double of her stepfather:
My mama die, I tell Shug. My sister Nettie run away. Mr.??? come git me to take care his rotten
children. He never ast me nothing bout myself. He clam on top of me and fuck and fuck, even
when my head bandaged. Nobody ever love me, I say. (Walker, 1982: 35)
Butler-Evans goes on to specify that the detailed description of these sexual scenes contribute to an antierotic
novel as they are the signs of pornography. “Rape, within or outside marriage, is totally demystified and
seen as an instrument of oppression.” (Butler-Evans, 1989: 167) The language used in the novel helps
emphasize “the dehumanizing aspects of the act” (ibid.). There is no romance, no passionate intense feelings,
and no exchange of lustful looks. There are barely any relationships in which both people get involved
voluntarily, without being pressured into it; instead, they are threatened and forced to participate.
Shug Avery reminds Celie that men’s rape is not only physical but intellectual and spiritual as well and
that it should be done away with.
Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio.
He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God.
But he ain’t. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him
to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock. (Walker, 1982: 62)
This comes to explain Celie’s behavior towards Sophia, who is stronger and more independent than she is.
She refuses to be controlled by any man, including her husband, which stirs quite a commotion around the
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house where she arrives. When Sophia’s husband asks Celie for advice that could help him control his wife
better, because she was making a fool of him by being more manly, Celie simply tells him to beat her up
like any other man would do, which he actually ends up doing. Celie proved, thus, to have successfully
internalized the patriarchal ideas regarding how a woman should behave and what should be done in order
to educate her.
Furthermore, Celie makes it clear that she finds any sexual contact with her husband a chore and derives
no pleasure from the act:
Naw, I say. Mr.??? can tell’you, I don’t like it at all. What is it like? He git up on you, heist your
nightgown round your waist, plunge in. Most times I pretend I ain’t there. He never know the
difference. Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep. (Walker,
1982: 24)
This failure in the heterosexual relationships is not only characteristic of Celie. Sophia, the woman who
married Harpo, Albert’s son, refers to this sudden disgust in sexual relationships later on in her marriage
when she confesses:
I don’t like to go to bed with him no more, she say. Used to be when he touch me I’d go all out
my head. Now when he touch me I just don’t want to be bothered. Once he git on top of me I
think bout how that’s where he always want to be. She sip her lemonade. (Walker, 1982: 21)
In both cases, women have stopped connecting to men in a normal way after having been physically and
sexually abused. Sophia enjoyed being with Harpo, but after he was taught by his father and Celie that
men and women are not equal and that wives should be beaten in order to remember their place in the
house, Harpo drained all the energy out of Sophia and killed her desire of becoming intimate.
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Physical abuse takes a different shape in Africa under the eyes of Nettie. Women there have to go
through clitoridectomy, which is the peak of the act of rape, as they are deprived of any sexual pleasure
in a most aggressive way. This process and its effects are better described in Possessing the Secret of Joy in
which the protagonist, Tashi, has experienced it directly. At a frail age, the girls were gathered in a tent or
simply somewhere on the ground, while an older woman would cut their labia and clitoris. They would be
let there to bleed and suffer and, at times, only some of them would survive. This horrid process would
further on damage their chances of surviving giving birth, as they would subsequently be sewn.
In her cut paper silhouettes, Kara Walker presents men as being victims of rape as well. However, this
portrayal is not related to their strength and body size. It is very hard to believe that the frail and weak
white women could have raped the muscular black men who worked all day long in the field. Most of the
times, the mistresses would just threaten their slaves, telling them that their masters would be told that they
had raped their wives. Consequently, the penalty for such a deed being death, the African American would
abide and satisfy the women hoping that the mistresses would eventually keep quiet. Even if physical
violence was not used, they were still forced to do something they did not want, which is still a form of
abuse.
In one of her drawings from 2005, Untitled, an African American young boy offers his penis to a woman
as if it were a flower. The rapport of power here is made evident starting from their height; the boy has to
look up to his mistress as she disdainfully throws him a glance. The fact that the black man is weak and
frail is emphasized by his puny body. The cherry on top, though, is this obvious castration that the slave
goes through. If the penis is everything that makes a man be a man, gives him authority and places him in
a superior position, then in this case, the man gives up his symbolic power, willingly apparently, therefore
placing the white woman in the superior position. In conclusion, the woman no longer has reasons to be
envious, as Freud would have put it, as his symbol of power is as frail as a flower.
In a different Untitled from 2005, an African American woman is sitting on top of the skeleton of a white
man, most probably a confederate soldier. Kara Walker is now facing the audience with a different rapport
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of power. Not only do black men rape black women, white men rape black women, white women rape
black men, but also black women themselves get involved in aggressive sexual acts. As the confederate
soldier is dead and, as a natural effect, impotent, the woman masturbates herself on what comes to be seen
as a symbol of the white oppression in the South. She is on top, obviously, and in control, winning against
her ex-oppressor.
Last but not least, Kara Walker touches upon a different form of sexuality: bestiality. In her collection
entitled Negress Notes, there is a painting of two little girls, one African American slave and one white
mistress. The black young girl is holding some type of bird whose neck is stretched out in a very phallic
manner and ends up in the white girl’s mouth. One clear conclusion that can be drawn is that of the girl
performing oral sex while engaging in bestiality.
As can be seen, Kara Walker and Alice Walker have another feature in common. In the novels and the
cut paper silhouettes, there is an insight into different forms of sexuality that are not completely accepted
within the mainstream. What both artists focus on more than anything is various kinds of physical abuse,
especially rape. Considering the examples mentioned above, one can conclude that anyone can easily
occupy the position of a rapist, no matter the gender or race. Moreover, victims of abuse can be animals as
well in the Kara Walker episodes of bestiality. Furthermore, the novelist brings forth lesbianism in several
of her books, which is also seen as something marginal. This type of sexual orientation was considered
insignificant compared to homosexuality and rarely taken seriously because it was seen as something
whimsical. In addition to this, it was tolerated more than homosexuality was because it was a manner of
entertaining men. Last but not least, Kara Walker depicts miscegenation, a fascinating topic which is still
not fully accepted by people. Nonetheless, when asked why African Americans are always smiling and
enjoying life, Tashi confesses that the secret of joy is resistance. They refuse to repress their own desires
simply because others have decided what is normal and what is not.
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References
Primary Sources:
Walker, Alice, 1998. By the Light of my Father’s Smile. New York: Random House
Walker, Alice, 1992. Possessing the Secret of Joy. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Walker, Alice, 1982. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch
Secondary Sources:
Butler-Evans, Elliott, 1989. “Rewriting and Revising in the 1980s: Tar Baby, The Color Purple, and The Salt
Eaters”. Race, Gender, and Desire – Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and
Alice Walker, Philadelphia: Temple University Press (151–87)
Hernton, Calvin C., 1987. “Who’s Afraid of Alice Walker? The Color Purple as Slave Narrative”. The Sexual
Mountain and Black Women Writers. Adventures in Sex, Literature, and Real Life, New York: Anchor Press
(1–36)
Kristeva, Julia, 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lieberman, Janice S., 2007. “Kara Walker’s Nightmares: A Psychoanalytic Perspective”. URL: http://intern
tionalpsychoanalysis.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/kara walker -pany.pdf (visited on 2010/04/
09)
Malik, Amna, 2008. “Shame, disgust and idealization in Kara Walker’s Gone: A Historical Romance of a Civil
War As It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs Of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994)”, in Pajaczkowska
(181–203)
Mansfield, Nick, 2000. “Radical Sexuality: From Perverse to Queer”. Subjectivity – Theories of the Self from
Freud to Haraway, Allen & Unwin (105–17)
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119
O’Donovan, Leo J., 2008. “Shock & Awe: Kara Walker at the Whitney”. URL: http://findart
icles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_1_135/ai_n27913552/ (visited on 2008/01/18)
Pajaczkowska, Claire (ed.), 2008. Shame and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture. New York: Routledge
Raymond, Yasmil, 2009. Maladies of Power: A Kara Walker Lexicon. URL: http://media.walkerart.org/pdf/K
Wlexicon.pdf (visited on 2009/11/03)
Rich, Adrienne, 1986. Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. URL: http://www.terry.uga.edu/˜d
awndba/4500compulsoryhet.htm (visited on 2009/09/06)
Walker, Alice, 1984. “Writing The Color Purple”. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Nevada: Mariner Books
(355–61)
Wittig, Monique, 1992. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, Boston: Beacon Press
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Cultural Studies
Proverbs as Representations
of Cultural Specificity
Ligia BRĂDEANU
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, PhD
student, 2nd year
ost researchers nowadays consider that the study of modern phraseology is unthinkable without
taking into account cultural aspects of language. (Piirainen, 2007: 208) The cultural foundation
of phraseology is now seen as having as important a role as aspects concerning its semantics and
syntax, since phraseological units tend to absorb and accumulate cultural elements. The interconnectedness
of culture and phraseology becomes evident especially when trying to establish the motivating links between
the literal and the figurative meaning of a phraseological unit (ibid.: 208, 217).
The study of proverbs has raised the interest of scholars since very ancient times. There are many
collections of proverbs, theoretical studies and they have also been used in quite many literary masterpieces.
It seems that there are literally thousands of proverbs in the multitude of cultures and languages around
the world. Erasmus of Rotterdam considered the study of proverbs (paroemiology) the oldest science of
humanity, in the sense of enclosing its wisdom (cited in Muntean, 1969: 36).
Although it is very difficult to trace proverbs to their origins back in time, their existence from times
immemorial is beyond any doubt. Many trace their origins as far as the beginnings of human society, being
one of the first fields of science of humanity, containing its wisdom, and having thus an ancient tradition
(ibid.: 36). The oldest proofs of the existence of proverbs have been found in some Asyro-Babylonian texts
from the 4th millennium BC, which contain entire collections of proverbs (Tabarcea, 1982: 120).
What a proverb is exactly or rather what constitutes a proverb has puzzled the scholars and critics of all
ages and there is a great variety of opinions relating to its definition. Some linguists go as far as to say that
“there is no generally accepted definition which covers all specifics of the proverbial genre” (Grzybek, 1994:
227). The definition offered by W. Mieder is quite comprehensive: “Proverbs are short, generally known
sentences of the folk that contain wisdom, truths, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed,
and memorizable form and that are handed down from generation to generation” (2004: 4). There are also
several proverbs about proverbs, representing some sort of folk definitions: “Proverbs are the children of
experience,” “Proverbs are the wisdom of the streets,” “Proverbs are true words.”
M
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Proverbs are complex units of language, which are formed over a long period of time, undergoing
long processes of polishing, until they become perfect, multilateral crystals, expressing a multiplicity of
meanings (cf. Muntean, 1969; Vianu, 1971). As in the case of idioms and other phraseological units, one of
their fundamental characteristics is that “universal” and “national-cultural” factors are interwoven in their
make-up. On the one hand, there are globally-disseminated proverbs, i.e. proverbs that are identical or very
similar in many European languages, and not only. And on the other hand, there are proverbs which are
specific to the culture of a community of people, which have different meanings, structures, vocabulary,
metaphors, etc.
Universal character
In the former case, proverbs can be seen as having a universal character. It is given by the fact that proverbs
are part of every community of people, since virtually each past or present culture is known to have
possessed its own stock of proverbs, maxims, sayings, etc. Moreover, many proverbs coincide in their
message in different cultures, reflecting the same kernel of wisdom. Some coincide only in their essence,
but are expressed in different formal ‘coating’, particular to each culture, and others even coincide in their
form.
In his study on proverbs, Gyula Paczolay (cited in Hernadi and Steen, 1999: 14) found 106 proverbs
that occurred in at least 28 of his 55 surveyed European languages and sometimes even had additional
equivalents in non-European tongues, such as Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese or Japanese. This has been
seen as a consequence of three phenomena.
First of all, many proverbs have a common origin. There have been identified three sources for the
distribution of European proverbs, which led to the corpus of common proverbs. A first source of proverbs
for the entire European continent and beyond is the biblical text, especially two of its books: Proverbs and
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Ecclesiastes. As a widely translated book, the Bible had a major influence on the distribution of common
proverbs since the various translators were dealing with the same texts (cf. Mieder, 2004: 11). Although
people might no longer realise their connection to the Bible, several dozen biblical proverbs are current in
identical wordings in many European languages, though in different percentages. The second source is the
Greek and Roman antiquity, the Greek culture being the first to have a tradition of proverbs and maxims in
Europe. Even the term proverb comes from the Greek word paroimia (cf. Muntean, 1969: 33). Their proverbial
wisdom found a broad geographical dissemination primarily through the Latin language, and later through
translations of the texts into the many developing European languages (Mieder, 2004: 10). Erasmus of
Rotterdam played a major role in spreading this classical and medieval wisdom by means of the many
editions of his Adagia, containing over four thousand explanatory notes and essays on classical proverbs
and proverbial expressions. The third source for common European proverbs reverses the historical move
of proverbs from Europe to the United States. This source is represented by modern texts that have been
disseminated since the middle of the 20th century throughout Europe by means of the mass media. (ibid.:
12, 13) Some examples are “A picture is worth a thousand words,” “It takes two to tango,” “Garbage in,
garbage out” (from the world of computers).
Secondly, proverbs often ‘migrated’ across linguistic borders or through many centuries, being borrowed
from different languages and cultures. A considerable corpus of common European proverbs was loan
translated from different sources, and so they exist in many languages in identical or very similar forms
(ibid.: 11).
Thirdly, most proverbs are the expression of similar experiences of life: in certain situations, regardless
of the period of time or the cultural and geographical space they live in, people reveal the same kind of
emotions: the same joy, sorrow, anxiety, etc. (Tabarcea, 1982: 23). Also, many activities are common to any
community of people, there are universal phenomena, such as birth, death, weather conditions, seasons,
etc. which are reflected in each culture, and hence, in its proverbs. Proverbs express the essence of human
experience, which is why they have been called “the mental language common to all nations”. (ibid: 23)
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This is how linguists explain the existence of similar or even identical proverbs in different parts of the
world, far apart from each other, where the idea of loans or influences is absurd.
Cultural specificity
However, proverbs are not only characterised by universality, but also by a quite antagonistic feature,
their diversity and cultural specificity. While many proverbs are identical in several languages, either
both in meaning and form, or just in one of them, there is also a great number of proverbs which are
partially or completely different. “The universality of fundamental truths is disseminated on the infinite
scale of the diversity of our being, either on the level of community, or of personality” (Eminescu, 1989: x;
translation mine). Language mirrors the culture of a nation, and, especially in the case of proverbs and
other phraseological units, the specific cultural elements are absorbed and accumulated in them. Many
proverbs have their origin in folklore, thus reflecting and being the result of social, cultural, political values
and traditions of a community of people.
Proverbs present life in its many facets, covering from social relations, emotions, the very nature of
the human being to the condition of mankind. They constitute “an encyclopaedia of the existence of a
society,” highlighting the specificity of a culture, their spirituality, sensitivity, particular way of structuring
reality (Muntean, 1969: 52, 53). Although many life experiences are similar, there are also many which are
specific to each community of people, which are mirrored in their proverbs (Tabarcea, 1982: 23, 36). As
Mihai Eminescu said: “the eternal truths are moulded by each people, as well as by each personality, in
their patterns of representation, sensitiveness and verbal communication” (1989: ix, x; translation mine).
Culture has been broadly defined as “the shared way of life of a group of people” (Sabban, 2007: 591).
It has been characterised in terms of shared modes of experiencing the world, modes of social behaviour
and interacting and of shared traditions, which are part of its collective memory. These modes have been
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accumulated historically and are shared by the members of a society in a specific living environment.
Although proverbs are the prototypical group revealing these cultural modes, all phraseological units can
be said to contain them to a higher or lesser degree (Piirainen, 2007: 216). The extension of the concept of
culture, i.e. the nation’s history, geographical conditions, economy, social system, religion and customs, can
also be reflected in its language, and obviously, in its proverbs.
Natural environment and everyday life
Human experiences, the specific living and work conditions, the geographical environment have an
enormous influence on the coinage of proverbs. Many proverbs make reference to a people’s “unique
cultural setting” or some type of typical everyday activity (Sabban, 2007: 592). Frequent examples include
references to characteristic plants, animals and other objects or to traditional rural or urban life. The
different living environments are often responsible for the cultural values embodied in the proverbs of
certain languages.
E.g.: “The good seaman is known in bad weather.” (English)
“Fish begin to stink at the head.” (English)
“De Aragón, ni buen vino ni buen varón.” (Spanish)
(“From Aragón, neither good wine, nor good man.”)
“Quien tiene olivares y viñas, bien casa a sus niñas.” (Spanish)
(“He who has olive groves and vineyards will successfully marry off his girls.”)
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Traditions
References to different national traditions may also be encountered in a number a proverbs. They may be as
diverse as national or religious holidays, sports, customs, etc. (ibid.: 593).
E.g.: “Rain before seven, shine before eleven.” (English)
“Muere el toro y en seguida, acábase la corrida.” (Spanish)
(“The bull dies and immediately the bullfight is over.”)
“Al torero que no hace la cruz, se lo lleva el diablo.” (Spanish)
(“The matador who does not make the sign of the cross goes to hell.”)
“A boda ni bautizado no vayas sin ser llamado.” (Spanish)
(“Even the baptised one cannot go to a wedding without invitation.”)
Literary Tradition
Every nation has its own national literary tradition, including their literary masterpieces and popular
writings, like legends, myths, fables. Many proverbs have been created from these works, either derived
directly, or at least influenced by them.
For example, in English there are many proverbs taken from the works of Shakespeare and other writers,
that entered the language, being used in daily conversation, and may now be regarded as proverbs of the
English language. The same happened in the Spanish culture with Cervantes’ masterpiece, Don Quijote de la
Mancha, which abounds in proverbs.
E.g.: “The course of true love never did run smooth.” (A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream) “For want
of a nail the shoe was lost.” (British folklore)
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“Virtue is her own reward.” (John Dryden)
“Un asno cargado de oro sube ligero por una montaña.” (Don Quijote)
(“A donkey loaded with gold easily climbs a mountain.”)
“No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano.” (Don Quijote)
(“By getting up very early it does not dawn sooner.”)
Patterns of Thought and Cultural Values
Cultural differences can also be noted on the level of patterns of thought and cultural values. Usually,
different peoples have quite different or even opposite opinions, worldviews, values, etc., which are
undoubtedly reflected in their proverbs. Even in the cases when proverbs from different cultures have
similar meanings, the images used to convey the meaning may vary greatly.
E.g.: “A hedge between keeps friendship green.” (English)
“Time is money.” (English)
“Punctuality is the politeness of kings.” (English)
“Qué bueno es no hacer nada, y luego descansar.” (Spanish)
(“How beautiful it is to do nothing, and rest afterwards.”)
“Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado.” (Spanish)
(“I would rather die on my feet than live always on my knees.”)
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Religious Beliefs
Religion is a very important component of almost every community of people, and their religious beliefs are
usually reflected in many proverbs. Although the greatest differences can be observed between Christianity
and Mohammedanism, even the proverbs of peoples with closer denominations – like Orthodox, Catholic,
Protestant – may be quite distinct. Such proverbs are formed using different religious or biblical figures, for
example that of “God”, “devil”, “heaven”, “cross” etc. These proverbs normally mirror the popular beliefs
on religion and differ from those which have been taken directly from the Bible, and which are generally
the same in all Christian cultures.
E.g.: “God helps those who help themselves.” (English)
“The devil lurks (or sits) behind the cross.” (English)
“Dios aprieta, pero no ahoga.” (Spanish)
(“God afflicts, but does not oppress.”)
Two important considerations can be drawn from the above analysis of proverbs which contain or are based on
culturally specific elements. First of all, in most cases, such proverbs pose translation problems, and sometimes
even their understanding is a challenge for someone not entirely familiar with that culture. Possible equivalents
are often missing from dictionaries that tend to include only the more common proverbs, and many times
the only resource available is a literal translation, which is not always very helpful (Mieder, 2004: 10). So,
the natural question which appears is how to make such dense and culturally specific proverbs available to
someone unfamiliar with the culture, without destroying the cultural images on which they are based.
Secondly, proverbs have been collected and studied for centuries as “informative and useful linguistic
signs of cultural values and thoughts” (ibid.: xii). Like riddles, jokes, or fairy tales, proverbs do not “fall out
of the sky” and neither are they products of a mythical soul of the folk. Instead they are always coined by an
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individual either intentionally or unintentionally, as expressed in Lord John Russell’s well-known one-line
proverb definition that has taken on a proverbial status of sorts: “A proverb is the wit of one, and the
wisdom of many” (cited in ibid.: 9). But Archer Taylor (1994: 3) mentions the fact that the elements should
actually be in reversed order, since a proverb is, first of all, wisdom, and the element of individual invention
has subordinate importance. As such, proverbs can be interpreted as reflecting, at least to a certain degree,
the attitudes, mentality, the social and moral value system, accumulated wisdom of various social classes
at different periods of time. As the proverb goes, “If you want to know a people, know their proverbs.”
This would be especially true for those proverbs that are used with high frequency by most citizens from a
region. However, researchers warn that care must be taken when drawing generalised conclusions about the
national or ethnic character of a people by simply amassing their proverbs (Mieder, 2007: 205). This might
lead to a distorted view of the national character, leading to stereotypical conclusions. As shown above,
there are many popular proverbs from biblical, classical, and medieval times current in various cultures,
so it would be foolish to think of them as reflecting some imagined national character. Nevertheless, the
frequent use of certain proverbs in a particular culture could be used together with other social and cultural
indicators to formulate valid generalisations (idem, 2004: 137).
Proverbs have been considered the flowers of popular wit and the treasures of popular wisdom. Mihai
Eminescu (1989: vi, viii) called them “exquisite flowers of human reason”, “jewels of thought” (translation
mine), and George Muntean (1969: 44) spoke about them as being the “wealth and wisdom of mankind”
(translation mine). Proverbs are deeply rooted in a wide variety of cultures worldwide and, like other
phraseological units, they are a combination of “universal” and “national-cultural” factors, which are
interwoven. There are globally-disseminated proverbs, which are identical or very similar in many languages,
but there are also proverbs which are specific to the culture of a community of people. The cultural
elements have been acknowledged as being extremely important for the study of phraseological units,
and in particular of proverbs. Most researchers agree that there can be no adequate description of the
phraseological phenomenon without taking cultural specificity into consideration.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my coordinator, prof. univ. dr. Rodica Dimitriu, for her direction, assistance and
constant guidance, which have been invaluable.
This work was supported by the European Social Fund in Romania, under the responsibility of the
Managing Authority for the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013
[grant POSDRU/88/1.5/S/47646].
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Flonţa, Teodor, 1992. Dicţionar englez–spaniol–portughez–român de proverbe echivalente, Bucureşti: Teora
Grzybek, Peter, 1994. ”Proverb”, in Simple Forms: An Encyclopaedia of Simple Text-Types in Lore and Literature,
ed. Walter Koch, Bochum: Brockmeyer (227-241)
Hernadi, Paul; Steen, Francis, 1999. ”The Tropical Landscapes of Proverbia: A Crossdisciplinary Travelogue”,
in Style 33.1, Northern Illinois University (1-20)
Manser, Martin, 2007. The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs, New York: Facts on File, Inc.
Mieder, Wolfgang, 2004. Proverbs: A Handbook, Westport, London: Greenwood Press.
Mieder, Wolfgang, 2007. “Yankee Wisdom: American Proverbs and the Worldview of New England,” in
Skandera (205-234)
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Mieder, Wolfgang; Dundes, Alan (eds.), 1994. The Wisdom of Many: Essays on the Proverb, New York: Garland
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Muntean, George, 1969. Cercetări literare, Bucureşti: Editura pentru Literatură
Piirainen, Elisabeth. 2007. “Phrasemes from a Cultural Semiotic Perspective,” in Burger, H. et al. (pp.
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Sabban, Annette, 2007. “Culture-boundness and Problems of Cross-cultural Phraseology,” in Burger, H. et
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Skandera, Paul (ed.), 2007. Phraseology and Culture in English, Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter
Tabarcea, Cezar, 1982. Poetica proverbului, Bucureşti: Editura Minerva
Taylor, Archer, 1994. “The Wisdom of Many and the Wit of One,” in Mieder; Dundes (pp. 3-9)
Vianu, Tudor, 1971. Dicţionar de maxime comentat, ediţia a II-a, Bucureşti: Editura Ştiinţifică
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Subversion through Imitation:
The Women’s Emancipation
Movements in 19th Century
United States and Romania
Ilinca-Miruna DIACONU
University of Bucharest
MA student, 2nd year
n y discussion surrounding a social movement concerned with achieving de jure and de facto
equality between a particular group of individuals sharing a common race, ethnicity, social class,
gender, sexual orientation, etc. and the mainstream, cannot conceive of that movement in a historical
vacuum. Evidently, a struggle for civil and political rights by a minority is based on the awareness of existing
inequalities within society, of a situation which is created and perpetuated by historical contingencies.
Moreover, some movements originate because they are inspired by others which are already in progress
at a certain moment in time (just as, in the United States, the advent of the Rights Revolution in the
1960s and 1970s was a consequence of the immediately preceding Civil Rights Movement). Finally, these
movements often result in the attainment of equal rights for the groups of people that had initiated them,
thus effecting a profound change in the overall fabric of society. Specifically, apart from the common group
that is represented, i.e. women, a comparison between women's emancipation movements in 19th century
United States and Romania, must take into account as a striking similitude between the two the relationship
between their rise and development, and the historical context of that period. This essay, however, is not
limited to merely presenting the sequence of events that pertain to this issue. Rather, it views these two
movements as based on a paradox between their political aims, which are inherently subversive of deeply
entrenched prejudices regarding women's role in society, on the one hand, and their imitation of methods
of protest (conventions, petitions, declarations, parades) which are typical of the mainstream and which
reflect the inextricable link between feminism and the context in which it appeared, on the other hand. This
paradox is thus grounded in an interplay between difference and identity, the former stemming from the
recognition of social and political inequalities between men and women, and the latter consisting of the
imitative character of these emancipation movements.
As far as the origins of feminism are concerned, there are different historical circumstances for each
of the two territories under discussion. The authors of the Outline of U.S. History situate the appearance
of women's activism in the United States as part of a series of reforms characterizing the first half of
the nineteenth century, such as “labor organization;” the advent of “universal suffrage” accompanied by
A
Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu
135
legislation “enacted to provide for [...] free instruction” within a “public school system;” the “temperance
movement” opposing “the sale and use of alcohol,” which it criticized for religious reasons, for its “effect
on the workforce” and for causing violence against women and children; and the improvement of prisons
and insane asylums. The same authors argue that women (especially unmarried women), who were
“not permitted to vote,” who enjoyed far fewer legal rights than men, and “whose education in the 17th
and 18th centuries was limited largely to reading, writing, music, dancing and needlework”, came to
realize, due to these reforms, “their own unequal position in society,” a fact which determined them to
organize themselves into a coherent movement (2005:121-122). Sarah Evans, however, sees an irreducible
link between feminists (more exactly, suffragists) and the abolitionist movement that typified the north of
the United States (1989:108). This connection can be conceived as a two-tiered one: firstly, participation
in the abolitionist movement, with its goal of extending citizenship to African-Americans, entailed the
awareness that “freedom and liberty for some groups essentially means freedom and liberty for all groups,”
including women (“A Woman’s Right to Vote”, 2006: 14); secondly, women faced the prejudice of their
male counterparts within the abolitionist movement, which was amply demonstrated by the attitude of
some men in the American Anti-Slavery Society (founded in 1833), who, “fearing that any association with
feminism would undermine abolitionism, wanted women's societies kept separate from the organizations
of men.” When, at the London Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, female abolitionists were not allowed to
speak, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott decided on organizing a “woman’s rights convention”
upon returning to the United States, which was held at Seneca Falls, New York on the 19th and 20th of July
1848 (cf. Banner, 1991: 217–8; Evans, 1989: 94–5).
The origin and development of a feminist movement on the Romanian territory are related by Ştefania
Mihăilescu to the modern age, specifically to the “beginning of the bourgeois democratic revolutions,”1
1
In the original: “declanşarea revoluţiilor democratice burgheze”.
Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu
136
industrialization, the “generalization of new capitalist structures,”2 the growth in population accompanied
by urbanization, and the formation of the nation-state throughout the 19th century. Thus, Mihăilescu
states that “woman’s emancipation,” i.e. her escape from the “narrow domain” of “strictly domestic
preoccupations”, was “conditioned” by the reduction of the gap between Romanian provinces and the
Western world, “through the elimination of great landed property,” through the technical development
of industry and agriculture, and “through the consolidation of the institutions” typical of any democratic
state, “in the modern sense of the word”3 (2002: 11–4; my translation). Although she recognizes the
impossibility to locate in time the origin of women’s emancipation movement due to the insufficient
research done in the area (ibid.: 11), besides modernization, which she views as essential to women’s
political and social advancement, Mihăilescu identifies two main issues that are closely associated with what
she calls “the maturing” of Romanian feminism. The first one pertains to women’s continuous involvement
in historical events which have shaped Romania as a nation (the revolutions of 1848, the movement towards
the unification of Moldova and Muntenia between 1855 and 1859, the War of Independence of 1877-1878,
the First World War and the Great Union in 1918), an activity motivated in part by their awareness that the
creation of the Romanian modern state allowed by these events would pave the way for their attainment of
civil and political rights. Indeed, after these highly important goals in the nation's history were achieved,
women’s militancy shifted its focus from these patriotic causes to feminist demands towards the Romanian
government. The second issue linked to women's emancipation movement is the appearance, internal
organization, and eventual unification of associations, each dealing with feminist concerns from a charitable,
cultural, educational or political point of view (2002: passim).
2
In the original: “generaliz[area] noilor structuri capitaliste”.
In the original: “emanciparea femeii, ieşirea ei din cadrul îngust şi fără orizont al preocupărilor strict casnice erau
condiţionate, înainte de toate, de reducerea decalajului faţă de nivelul atins de ţările occidentale, prin înlăturarea proprietăţii
latifundiare, prin înzestrarea corespunzătoare din punct de vedere tehnic a industriei şi a agriculturii, prin crearea şi consolidarea
instituţiilor statului de drept în sensul modern al cuvântului.”
3
Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu
137
Both women’s emancipation movement in the United States and the one in what is now the territory of
Romania were articulated, albeit with different degrees of coherence, through the creation of institutions
meant to represent their civil and political demands. Thus, the period following the Seneca Falls Convention
of 1848 would be informed by the advent of two major organizations, Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone's
American Woman Suffrage Association, which endorsed voting rights for African-Americans as embodied
by the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s
National Woman Suffrage Association, which opposed the Fifteenth Amendment for its representing
citizens “explicitly defined as male” and which supported a “national Constitutional Amendment for
woman suffrage” (Johnson Lewis). In 1890, these two organizations would form the National American
Suffrage Association under the leadership of Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt and would
promote such social causes as “health reform, prison reform, and child labor law reform” (ibid.). In Romania,
the feminist movement gained visibility through the establishment, in 1850, of the Romanian Women’s
Assembly in Brasov4 , on the model of which many other organizations (in other Romanian provinces) were
created, and which, although initially intended for the support of poor orphan girls, directed its activities in
the service of the national interest (Mihăilescu, 2002: 23). Other examples include the Romanian Women’s
League in Iaşi5 (1894), which advocated, among other things, a change in the legal status of the married
woman (who could not administer her own fortune) and an enforcement of legal regulations obliging fathers
to recognize their illegitimate children, and whose existence is deemed to have supported the reformist
movement burgeoning at the beginning of the 20th century (ibid.: 28); as well as the Society of Romanian
Ladies in Bucovina6 (1891) which combined “the struggle for women's emancipation with the struggle
for national liberation”7 (ibid.: 24). The activity of all these Romanian and American organizations was
4
5
6
7
Reuniunea Femeilor Române din Braşov.
Liga Femeilor Române de la Iaşi.
Societatea Doamenlor Române din Bucovina
In the original: “lupta pentru emanciparea femeii cu lupta pentru eliberare naţională.
Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu
138
articulated through a series of political actions such as petitions meant to redress the gender inequalities
existing in society (e.g. the one sent by the aforementioned League to the Deputies Assembly in 1896),
parades and marches, like the ones directed towards the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, which ensured voting rights for women, and, in general, the proposal and support of
legislation intended for the elimination of the discrepancy in status between men and women.
From a second-wave feminist perspective, this appropriation of methods of political protest and, in
general, of means of effecting social change, which are typical of the mainstream, can be conceived in
different ways through the three orientations that Toril Moi, in citing Julia Kristeva, identify as pertaining to
the feminist struggle in the 20th century:
(1) Women demand equal access to the symbolic order. Liberal feminism. Equality.
(2) Women reject the male symbolic order in the name difference. Radical feminism. Femininity
extolled.
(3) Women reject the dichotomy between masculine and feminine as metaphysical [...]. (1989:128)
Evidently, women’s emancipation movements in 19th century United States and Romania cannot be
considered in terms of the second category, which, as represented by such feminists as Hélène Cixous,
Antoinette Fouque and Luce Irigaray, was based on extolling femininity as a realm that is socially and
politically separate from the patriarchal order. Suffragists’ employment of mainstream means for advancing
their cause is incompatible with such a stance, which rejected a presumed equality between men and
women and emphasized the specificity of feminine identity as defined by her biological nature. However,
the movements that make the topic of this essay can be related to a combination between the first and third
categories which Kristeva conceptualizes, in the sense that, while the stated aim of these movements is to
achieve political and social equality between men and women, to gain “equal access to the symbolic order”
(Moi, 1989:128), (an aim which Simone de Beauvoir presents in her Second Sex), the methods employed in
Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu
139
this regard demonstrate that the prerequisite distinction between men and women which was used as the
pretext for social and political inequality is in fact metaphysical: if a minority can utilize elements that are
engendered by the mainstream in its oppression of that particular group, then the entire order that is based
on that distinction is destabilized.
Through their employment of methods of political protest typical of the patriarchal order (conventions,
petitions, declarations, parades), proponents of women’s rights in 19th century United States and Romania
subverted this order from within, thus exposing its constructedness. In other words, instead of attempting
to completely separate themselves from the system that initially prevented them from voicing their political
opinions, to reject politics altogether (an attitude of which Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel Herland would
be a fitting example), women sought to work within this system in order to gain their rights, thus implicitly
deconstructing its normativity. What this essay ultimately suggests is an interplay between the notions of
difference and identity in two ways. Women’s attempt at achieving identity with the mainstream through
their political integration in it could only be based on the recognition of a difference in status between
themselves and men. At the same time, maintaining an identity between their own means of political protest
and those of the mainstream is associated with a “parodic” subversion (Butler, 1990: 137) of an oppressive
system, i.e. with the affirmation of women’s distinctive position, rather than with a submissive copying of
that system.
This essay has been concerned with analyzing the feminist movements of the 19th century United States
and Romania as representing the subversive potential of imitation. Specifically, by using Julia Kristeva’s
classification of the three orientations characterizing the feminist struggle in the 20th century as a framework
for the discussion of the suffragist movements, this paper has conceptualized the strategy of employing
methods of protest typical of the mainstream for the advancement of civil and political rights for a minority
as simultaneously and paradoxically imitative and subversive.
Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu
140
References
“A Woman’s Right to Vote”, 2006. Women of Influence. U.S. Department of State. URL: http://www.america.
gov/st/peopleplace-english/2008/April/20080427113403eaifas0.5485891.html (visited on 2010/03/12)
Banner, Lois W., 1991. “Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Early Marriage and Feminist Rebellion”, in Kerber; de Hart
(217–27)
Belsey, Catherine; Jane Moore (eds.), 1989. The Feminist Reader. Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary
Criticism, Cambridge, MA and Oxford UK: Blackwell
Butler, Judith, 1990. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge
Evans, Sara M., 1989. “A Time of Division. 1845-1865”, Born for Liberty. A History of Women in America, New
York: The Free Press, a Division of Macmillan Inc. (21–44)
Johnson Lewis, Jone. “The Long Road to Suffrage. From Seneca Falls to the 1920s: an overview of the woman
suffrage movement”, About.com. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa022299.htm
(visited on 2009/ 03/26)
Kerber, Linda K.; de Hart, Jane Sherron, (eds.), 1991. Women’s America. Refocusing the Past, New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Mihăilescu, Ştefania, 2002. Din istoria feminismului românesc. Antologie de texte (1838-1929), Iaşi: Polirom
Moi, Toril, 1989. “Feminist, Female, Feminine”, in Belsey; Moore (117–32)
“Westward Expansion and Regional Differences”, 2005. Outline of U.S. History. Bureau of International
Information Programs. U.S. Department of State (111–28). URL: http://www.america.gov/st/educenglish/2008/April/20080407113634eaifas0.4282495.html (visited on 2010/03/12)
Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu
141
Success and Failure
in Forum Theatre
Alexandra MIHAI
University of Bucharest
Faculty of Mathematics
and Computer Science, 3rd year
o rum Theatre, or Theatre of the Oppressed, is a type of social interactive theatre initiated by Augusto
Boal in which the play presents a problem of social oppression and the audience is invited to find
its solution and then act it out on stage, replacing the actors, one at a time, to reach a fortunate
outcome. Casting an academic perspective upon it, one quickly finds it to be a very empiric experience,
constantly negotiating between the aesthetic and the utilitarian. Which aspect is favored may depend on
individual performances, though it is generally recognized for its social valences in the first place. This
dual nature of Forum Theatre – as it defines itself as a form of theatre, but also as a tool for social change –
gives rise to numerous questions in regard to its success and effectiveness, setting it apart from other forms
of non-interactive theatre. Indeed, it is its dual scope that triggers different expectations for an event of
forum theatre It must both meet the entertainment requirements and develop activism by raising awareness,
opening debate, and discussing solutions to cases of oppression. All this is done by engaging the audience
and drawing them into the universe of the play, surrendering the play to them, albeit not easily or willingly,
but certainly letting the audience change something, in a way which is meant to be socially cathartic, healing
and empowering for individuals. Failure can occur at any step in the production of a Forum Theatre play,
but interestingly, failure too takes as many guises and has as many roles as the medium itself, and not all of
them are entirely negative. But in order to analyze all these aspects, one must first detail forum theatre in
itself.
This paper’s structure flows from a detailed definition of forum theatre as it is presented in theoretical
literature on the matter. Each aspect of it is relevant to the ultimate question of success and failure, but I
shall be grouping its various traits by defining forum theatre with respect to other forms of theatre (thus
by focusing on its structure and aesthetics, the various roles the actor, audience, and “joker” takes, etc.),
and by placing forum theatre upon a background of different forms of events and activities that promote
social reform (for it is here that we can discuss the mission of such an event, its goal, its impact, in a word
its social purpose). Now, taking all of the defined elements, I shall explore the value of artistic and social
success, and possible consequences of failure to meet the demands of any of the components of social
F
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theatre. In order to exemplify these situations, I shall be looking at some practical examples from studies on
the development of Theatre of the Oppressed in the United States, and at two performances at a local and
recent event from Sibiu, Romania, where two forum theatre plays were staged, one at the Gong Theatre and
another at Café Art.
The range of these examples seems to serve only to showcase a defining trait of Forum Theatre. In its
focus and involvement with one case of oppression, it negates the development of other details which may
arguably otherwise give rise to a comparison on national or cultural background. This has been noted by
Fisher:
I was concerned about whether TO could deal with differences within oppressed groups—for
example, race and class differences among women. Where the approach failed to take such differences into account, TO seemed to reproduce rather than represent the problems of oppression.
(1994: 186)
Thus, in this paper, I shall be utilizing examples of both local and English performances and as we shall see,
they essentially describe the same universe of a medium, the same range of success and failure.
A Forum Theatre play’s purpose is certainly to raise awareness about oppression. To this end, they
make use of techniques which are present in social activism, and ultimately do refer to themselves as part
of a larger initiative of “Social Theatre” or “Activist Theatre” (Boal, 2008: 186). Using sexism as the example,
he notes:
There is not an oppression by the masculine sex in general of the feminine sex in general: what
exists is the concrete oppression that men (individuals) direct against women (individuals).
The technique of breaking repression consists in asking a participant to remember a particular
moment when he felt especially repressed, accepted that repression, and began to act in a manner
contrary to his own desires. (Ibid.: 154)
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And with this in mind, a play begins long before it’s performed, because each Forum Theatre experience is
conceived as a result of a social focus group of actors or volunteers. One role is set apart from the very
start however – the “Joker”, essentially a cultural animator, who often directs the play, from conception
to performance. The actors who join a forum theatre staging are members of the community themselves,
and may be professional or not. They participate in an improvisation workshop (which includes warm-up
games, team-building, coaching, as well as a training in the techniques of Forum Theatre if the group is
new to the medium), in which they identify a problem which is relevant to the community or to their own
lives, and then try to shape that problem into a short sketch displaying some manner of social oppression.
The structural cast roles in Forum Theatre do not change. There is always a protagonist – the Oppressed –,
and an Oppressor – the antagonist. Other characters around these two generally fall in as allies of one or
the other party, but neutral characters are also possible. The structural plot of a sketch is also fixed: The
Oppressed feels compelled by the Oppressed to do something that is in some way harmful to him (to his
identity, his happiness, his freedom, his rights). Throughout the play the tension grows, his allies failing
to help him, and his Oppressor’s allies putting still more pressure on him, and ultimately he acquiesces
to the oppression, despite himself. A sketch is always provided with an unhappy ending. A sketch is
meant to be brief (rarely taking longer than 15 minutes to be performed), clear, realistic, relevant and to
elicit an emotional response from the audience. This format may appear theatrically bland, but, ultimately,
in its simplicity, it has great power and range of interpretation. When discussing the realism of such
segmentations between characters in the play, he notes: “All our relations in daily life are patterned. These
patterns are our ‘masks’, as are also the ‘masks’ of the characters” (Boal, 2008: 170), explaining thus that
the inspiration source is still reality. Indeed, realism seems to be a specific goal to be met, even though the
structure of the play clearly favors simplicity.
Once composed, defined and rehearsed, the sketch is taken to the wider community. A Forum Theatre
performance has three stages: the performance, the forum, and the replay of the play, with interventions
from the audience. To begin with, the joker steps on stage, explains what Forum Theatre is and animates
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the audience. The specific techniques of doing so differ, but they generally include chatting, joking and
giving them the task of observing the play for the problem that shall be presented, and the roles they should
recognize – the Oppressor and the Oppressed. In doing so, the Joker already sets the stage for a different
sort of performance than found in other types of theatre, breaking down the fourth wall between audience
and actors by reaching out to them from the stage. Then, the play is performed for the audience. This
section follows the same aesthetic principles and goals as other forms of theatre, but what truly sets the
Theatre of the Oppressed aside is the forum that follows. The forum is a segment of time in which the
audience, moderated by the joker, discusses what has happened in the play. They share their thoughts
on the rational (the problem identified, the roles identified), but also on the emotional (they are asked
such questions as “Could you identify with the protagonist?” “Do you have anybody in your life like the
oppressor?”). They are then asked to consider if the plot could not have gone some other way, through
some change in one character’s attitude, and are invited to brainstorm possible solutions and implications.
There is only one rule – they cannot ask to change the Oppressor, and if the audience asks for it, the Joker
reminds them that in real life one cannot change the oppressor, that one must find ways to stand up to
his influence. Once this section is done, the Joker tells the audience that the play shall now restart, but
that any one audience member may intervene at any time, with any suggestion, to change any actor on
the stage, and thus becoming a spectactor1 . The actors are instructed to resist audience interventions, but
they must of course adapt to any changes suggested by a member of the audience. These changes are then
analyzed and accepted or rejected by the forum. After the reenactment of the play, regardless of whether or
not the audience, working together, has managed to better the situation of the Oppressed, the forum draws
1
Forum Theatre passes very negative judgement on passivity. In his study of forms of social theatre and popular theatre,
Boal concludes that “spectator is a bad word” (2008: 155), and more so, that it is not something people long for. Thus, he studies
popular theatre, as opposed to classical one, to draw certain conclusions about the relationship between the universe of the stage
and the universe of the audience: “Contrary to the bourgeois code of manners, the people’s code allows and encourages the
spectator to ask questions, to dialogue, to participate” (ibid. :150).
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its conclusions, and the performance effectively ends. This is the structure of all Forum Theatre events,
and most of the aspects presented here are assumed to work together in the manner described to produce
an interesting performance. Of course, each of the player types (the joker, the actors, the spectactors) and
each of the plot aspects (the problem identified, the roles assigned and the story itself), and even additional
details relating to staging and choice of venue, can greatly impact the success of a play. But before delving
into that, let us look at some of the least formal aspects of such a performance, at exactly what makes it a
tool for social change.
Theatre as activism in cases of social oppression often focuses on raising community awareness on the
problem at hand and its possible solutions, and to that end, the forum is the most important social tool of a
forum theatre performance. While a joker is a moderator, a joker will never give the audience solutions they
are not generating themselves. The particular questions he asks steer the discussions into a value debate,
where the audience must decide whether or not it is right for this to happen. The reasons for this structure
are manifold, one being that it is the simplest of debate structures, and that certainly facilitates its taking
place in a public forum. The other is that it is meant to raise the question of social justice even to members
of the community who may be biased.
Ultimately, forum theatre, like most tools for social change and education, capitalizes on the community,
seeing it as a value in itself, bettering members for the bettering of society (as per the Social Capital Theory2 ),
assuming a propagation of understanding and values from inter-individual, to intra-group, to inter-group
activity. This is essentially the purpose of “team-building” a group to put on a forum theatre play, who are
then expected to take their sketches to a larger audience. The audience is then not merely shown the effect
of the group that has worked on the play, but is openly invited into it, enlarging the initial group in a sense
2
“The central thesis of social capital theory is that ‘relationships matter’. The central idea is that ‘social networks are a
valuable asset’. Interaction enables people to build communities, to commit themselves to each other, and to knit the social fabric.
A sense of belonging and the concrete experience of social networks (and the relationships of trust and tolerance that can be
involved) can, it is argued, bring great benefits to people.)” (http://www.infed.org/biblio/socialcapital.htm)
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(a social phenomenon symbolized visually very strongly by the appearance on the stage, at the end of the
play, of both actors and spectactors, who bow before a much lesser audience, truly manifesting solidarity).
Of course, the audience is then likely to share the experience if they have been pleasantly impressed, thus
propagating the ideas and values they were presented, but these positive reverberations of influence are
already outside of the easily gaugeable factors of an event.
It is the social valences of Forum theatre that grant it its purpose, and though its structure cannot be
separated clearly from its use as a tool, the distinction between the forum discussions and the universe
of the play seems inherent to everyone. The legitimization of Forum Theatre as a tool for social change
therefore lies in its ability to have an impact and amass influence, granting itself credibility and relevance.
Its purpose is to captivate, educate and perhaps to a lesser extent, free, heal and stir towards further action.
But one merely comes to understand how the various factors act together when we begin discussing the
relative success and failure of these elements. It’s really when studying how they impact the show when
they are underperformed that we begin to understand their full-scale influence.
Most notably, as concerns the players, a poor joker will consistently make for a poor performance. Too
much of the structure of the play relies on his ability to grasp the principles of forum theatre, and mediate
between the other parties and other factors of the play. It is a role that requires charisma, teaching skills,
directing skills, public speaking and debriefing skills. The joker is the most difficult role to fill. As a joker
often doubles as the director, a poor joker can mark a poor performance. With a bad joker there will likely
be little communication during the open forum, which often translates into fewer interventions from the
audience. The comfort level of the audience heavily depends on the Joker’s style and approach.
The actors can allow themselves a less spectacular demand on their personal performance, as much of
the pressure of acting excellence is taken over by the interactivity of the play and the relatable plot. The
main characteristic these players should have then is rather good improvisation skills, because they need to
be able to adapt to the audience’s intervention. Certainly, a poor performance may not immediately arise
the interest of the public, but it is much less likely to be a barrier in the development of a play, because
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the pre-production of it already offers a lot of hooks for its audience. Even poor improvisation can be
repaired by the audience taking an active role during the reenactment. They may question how an actor
chose to improvise next to a spectactor’s change, and can be told how to take the situation – provided it
stays realistic – or be replaced with another spectactor if no consensus can be reached. This is perhaps what
allows for comparable success in a forum theatre performance when selecting professional and amateur,
volunteer actors. While the former may put on a more artistic performance, they are likely to be more
familiar with classical theatre, and feel uncomfortable with the level of improvisation demanded by the
Theatre of the Oppressed. Similarly, amateur actors may put the audience at ease, and relate to them with
more ease, having less pressure of formal achievement looming.
When discussing success and failure in regard to the audience, it must be noted that while the community
is the ultimate target of the event, placing blame with the public is rarely done. A non-responsive audience
may exhibit a lack of interaction, a lack of discussion and an apparent lack of implication. It may be the
Joker’s fault, a case we have already addressed. The play may be wrongly composed for them, something
I shall detail more presently. But if indeed the audience is unresponsive due to a simple problem of
atmosphere, the joker may elicit their attention and implication via a number of energizers and other
joker-centered techniques to animate opinions. There are also strategies to Joker discourse to summon up
debate, or lead it towards a conclusion. For example, a joker may choose to ask the audience about personal
experiences, and if none are presented, he may choose to volunteer one himself, thus trying to balance it off.
As far as the play structure and text are concerned, the main tenets of Forum Theatre are “do it clearly”,
“be realistic”, “identify the protagonist”, and “question the audience” (“Forum Theatre Demo”). It may then
be surmised that the potential traps in the construction of the sketch are to make it unclear – an unclear
separation of roles (Forum Theatre is not meant for gray areas, not before audience intervention), an unclear
message (a problem formulated poorly, or social pressure not conveyed well in the text or plot of the play),
or, of course, the scope of the problem may be irrelevant for a specific audience. An unrealistic play (and
the permission for unrealistic solutions via forum) may be harmful because the audience may not relate to
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or feel drawn in by the situation. It may damage the engaging quality of the play. However, if it is accepted
by the forum, an unrealistic solution may simply cast an unrealistic and mocking light on the event, and is
thus avoided. Indeed, the aesthetic quality of a play seems secondary to its grasp of the audience: “The
poetics of the oppressed is essentially the poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to
the characters either to think or to act in his place” (Boal, 2008: 160).
Picking a protagonist with regard to your audience is also very important, especially when discussing
an issue of social justice which has become a bit trite. Such was the case with the performance at the Gong
Theatre in Sibiu, where a male protagonist was chosen just so as raise awareness on the negative impact of
gender roles apart from female empowerment. The situation presented there had a young couple in which
the girl becomes pregnant, and they were suddenly faced with having to grow up and provide for the child.
In the initial scenario, he quit the rock band he was in to work at the bank, at a job he disliked. Originally,
the director explained, they had looked at his girlfriend as the protagonist, but knowing that a vast amount
of the audience would be in high school, they decided the rocker attitude and mentality would be more
easy to relate to, and still relevant to the issues they were trying to present – the pressure of conforming to
gender roles. The regard to the issue and the taking into account of their audience did help the atmosphere
of the play considerably, especially during reenactment.
The final thing to consider in relation to plot is that a subject matter too bland to invite debate (whether
that is by selecting the wrong scope for one social community, or by phrasing the problem too vaguely,
or too obviously), may lead to an audience that feels unengaged, rather than one that is challenged and
brainstorming and debating and generating solutions. Thus an accurate study of the audience and, more
exactly, of the community, is necessary for engaging in Forum Theatre successfully.
Details such as the stage and venue have their importance, but failure occurs only if the space does not
truly give the spectators mobility or if the stage is entirely cut off. However, there may be pros and cons of
different staging. In the examples referenced, the venues were a theater, a classroom, a café, and a dance hall.
Comparing the two Romanian performances, the one at the Gong Theatre benefited from better effects to
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mark the stages of the production (turning off the lights in the hall during the first acting of the sketch, then
turning them back on to mark the opening of the forum, which put even the events on stage under bright
scrutiny rather than keeping them in a far off bubble), but the position of the audience did inhibit reactions
somewhat, and it slowed down the pace of interventions. It must have been hard for the public to stand up
and walk on stage. The forum was however very coherent and engaging. At the performance at Cafe Art,
where the venue was considerably smaller, but also more familiar, and a lot less conventional, the audience
more quickly related to the Joker, and to each other, and though the noise levels made the forum quite
chaotic, the event was all in all seen as more engaging and intriguing. Different venues provide a different
experience. For example, a classroom (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLQUwxJcGG4&NR=1) set-up
offers a wide and manageable space, but it does carry a pragmatics of obligation, while a dance hall
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0JD1IoQKrY) offers a great deal of motion space, but almost some
discomfort towards those standing down, unless chairs are arranged for at the location. As mentioned,
venue may provide color and details worth considering in the staging of Forum Theatre. But it may also
determine the plot to a certain extent. The Café Art play, for example, centered the plot in a club, making it
quite efficient for performance in the small bar, quite effectively including the audience as standbyers to a
scene, in a style reminiscent of Invisible Theatre3 .
So far we’ve discussed Forum Theatre’s performance-related factors. Of course, beyond this level,
one might evaluate success and failure at a social level too, really looking at it as a sociological object,
by analyzing the interaction between various groups. Beyond the issue of the script, Forum Theatre
faces a careful negotiation of credibility, finding a balance between the real and the hypothetical (and the
entertaining). An event must keep a situation “abstract” enough to lend itself easily to discussion and to
provide catharsis, and real enough to be intriguing and for debate to be taken seriously.
3
Invisible Theatre is theatre in which the audience is not aware that they are watching staged theatre. The actors pose as
regular people and blend in with the audience.
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The establishment of its social relevance depends heavily upon its performative potency, outlined by
the development of the play and the atmosphere of the forum. From a sociological perspective, relevance
can be lost in the poor preparation of the event for the larger community. While indeed, a forum theatre
performance is meant to be prepared in a smaller group and reflect their thoughts and experiences in
relation to the problem of oppression, it is not always so. However, it is arguable whether a performance
is more effective when it implicates the actors to help stage it as much as it does the audience who is to
become spectactor, as that best supports the social mechanism and theory that first generated forum theatre.
A second issue that may concern relevance is the transition from the intra-group performance to the larger
audience; at times, a play might become too focused and lose the ability to transition well into the larger
setting. Forum Theatre is not meant to be difficult to understand; it is a playground of debate, coherent and
self-contained.
As a tool for social change, Theatre of the Oppressed firstly answers the need to give a certain sense of
the concrete to a case of social pressure which is often accepted passively. From a more scholarly perspective,
it answers the concern outlined by Fisher, in her article “Feminist Acts”:
The connections between experience and theory remained problematic. The process of sharing experiences and exploring theory did not necessarily lead to political action. Classroom
relationships did not always reflect the collective spirit of feminism. (1994: 185)
This is a concern that may be expanded to other forms of activism dealing with the same power relations
and styles of analysis. Forum Theatre then provides a playground of debate which is immediately relevant
and which ties dramatized but realistic experience to social action and questioning directly.
As a form of activist theatre, Forum Theatre could be an effort at freeing and healing a community
of a particular case of oppression, but what primarily sets it apart from similar efforts4 is that it mainly
4
From therapy theatre, for example, which specializes in counseling trauma patients, via discussion and performance that
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raises awareness. Discussion in the forum and involvement in the play are both goals for this form of
theatre, which make the plot’s ultimate ending, as shaped by the audience’s intervention, somewhat
irrelevant. Certainly, the audience has a greater sense of power over a situation when it does manage
to lead the plot to a fortunate outcome, but, as the Joker explains in one video, “there is no end” (see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbYx01re-ec&feature=related). The purpose is not found, as in regular
theatre, in the plot development and outcome, or in its aesthetic values, but in the social implications of the
performance. It is exactly for that purpose that, at times, a failure to change the outcome of the play on the
part of the audience can be just as intriguing, if not more so, as it leaves them mulling over the issue in
light of their letdown. Thus, paradoxically, on this point, satisfying the audience may be less effective than
seeing them cope with failure, which explains why the format indicates that actors are to resist spectator
intervention.
Interestingly, through its structure, Forum Theatre may also ground groups of activists and volunteers
which are already implicated in the social struggle. A study of forum theatre’s impact on the stage of US
feminist activism remarked upon benefits of this medium for the actors: “feminists also emphasized the
double potential of Theatre of the Oppressed: to help activists transform themselves and to reach out to
other women” (Fisher, 1994: 190).
Finally, in terms of stirring further action, the aim of the Theatre of the Oppressed is rather to empower
individuals via social awareness and give them choices, making them feel grounded in their numerous
options rather than led along by peer pressure and oppression. Applying the rules of strategy debate rather
than discussing value motions during the forum, once we identify the problem, we also long to find a
solution and construct a plan to that end; this leads to “Legislative theatre”, which takes the construction
of a solution one step further. It is similar in structure to Theatre of the Oppressed, but rather than turn
a spectator into a “spect-actor”, it turns a citizen into a legislator, thus brainstorming on actual social
metaphorically reenact the event of their aggression.
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solutions, to a greater extent than Forum Theatre, which relies on expanding social capital to meet its end.
To conclude, Forum Theatre, though often aesthetic and entertaining, is unquestionably, a form of
activism. Its success and failure go far beyond the universe of the play, and yet stay contained with it.
For while it raises awareness to social action, its usefulness as a tool for change ends with the end of the
performance, with the closing of the forum. But when the purpose is to raise awareness and visibility and
question social injustice, we may even find that Forum Theatre succeeds simply by conforming to its format.
Its initiator states: “Perhaps the theatre is not revolutionary in itself; but have no doubts, it is a rehearsal of
revolution!” (Boal, 2008: 160). While this may sound overly enthusiastic, it certainly stirs the audience and
those involved in its production, and manages to not only bring up, but also find reasonable solutions to
social issues which are usually acquiesced passively and never critically questioned. In light of that, it can
indeed be said that forum theatre is revolutionary, not as a new medium of expression, but as a medium
of expression that stirs to action, that implicates the mind and the body, that tears down the obstacles of
conventional theatre, that indicts injustice and empowers the oppressed.
References
“An Example of Forum Theatre”, YouTube.
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbYx01re-ec&feature=related (visited on 2010/ 04/ 20)
Boal, Augusto. 2008. Theatre of the Oppressed (Get Political). London: Pluto Press
Boal, Augusto. 2006. Aesthetics of the Oppressed, New York: Routledge
Boal, Augusto. 1998. Legislative Theatre: Using Performance to Make Politics, New York: Routledge
Cohen-Cruz, Jan. 1994. “Mainstream or Margin? US Activist Performance and Theatre of the Oppressed”,
in Cohen-Cruz; Schutzman (110–23)
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154
Cohen-Cruz, Jan; Mady Schutzman (eds.) 1994. Playing Boal: Theatre of the Oppressed Anthology,. New York:
Routledge
Fisher, Berenice. 1994. “Feminist Acts: Women, Pedagogy, and Theatre of the Oppressed”, in Cohen-Cruz;
Schutzman (185–97)
“Forum Theatre Demo”, YouTube. URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLQUwxJcGG4&NR=1 (visited
on 2010/ 04/ 21)
“Forum Theatre Session”, YouTube. URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0JD1IoQKrY (visited on
2010/ 04/ 21)
Roluri din via[21B?]ă – teatru forum. Dir. Roxana Marin. Perf. Laurenţiu Vlad, Doriana Tăut. Gong Theatre,
Sibiu, Romania. 12 Feb. 2010
Roluri din via[21B?]ă – teatru forum. Dir. Roxana Marin. Perf. Laurenţiu Vlad, Doriana Tăut. Art Cafe, Sibiu,
Romania. 14 Feb. 2010
“Social Capital: Civic Community and Education”, The Informal Education URL: http://www.infed.org/biblio/
socialcapital.htm (visited on 2010/ 04/ 23)
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Taming The Three-Headed
Beast
Or, Be careful what you call
“multicultural”!
László SZABOLCS
University of Bucharest
MA student, 1st year
“Besides the fact that the way it started was almost miraclelike, Echinox was a rare, three-headed “beast,” the kind
that could spit fire out of three mouths, in three tongues.
And none of its heads dozed off or slept, on the contrary. . .
they were constantly teasing and jostling each other. Thus
by such entanglement and competition we discovered each
other’s true nature.”
(Aurel Şorobetea)
t is not difficult to see that, since its early development in cultural policies in Canada and the United
States, the term “multiculturalism” has become a most fashionable, but at the same time, extremely
hollow concept of political philosophy. In this sense, “multiculturalism” is one of the many “ideoscapes”
Appadurai was writing about in his famous study on the processes involved in globalization (Appadurai,
2008). It is now not only a keyword that no researcher or politician can ignore when dealing with the
question of cultural diversity, but also one that divides academic fields and brings conflict to political
debates. Appadurai’s explanation is most helpful in this regard:
I
As a result of the different diaspora of these keywords, the political narratives that govern
communication between elites and followings in different parts of the world involve problems
of both a semantic and a pragmatic nature: semantic to the extent that words (and their lexical
equivalents) require careful translation from context to context in their global movements; and
pragmatic to the extent that the use of these words by political actors and their audiences may be
subject to very different sets of contextual conventions that mediate their translation into public
policies. (Appadurai, 2008: 104)
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157
So, it is this necessity of “translation” that one has to keep in mind when approaching the term. In an
introductory article to an anthology dealing with the various theories concerned with the term, Margaret
Feischmidt makes an important semantic difference between two wide-spread uses and definitions of
“multiculturality” (Feischmidt, 1997). Firstly, the most common use of the term is a “descriptive” one,
viewing and discovering “multiculturality” as an already given and closed phenomenon, a result of historical
migration, globalization, free global market. In this sense, it is defined as the presence of multiple cultural
items/instances/customs, etc. in the same space at the same time, in whole, equaling it somehow to
eclecticism. Secondly, we have the “normative” use, encountered in formal contexts, and referring to a
policy or program for the coexistence and cohabitation of ethnically and/or culturally different groups.
Thus, “normative multiculturalism” manifests itself in government jurisdiction and the structures and
conceptions of different institutions, especially the educational and cultural ones.
What Feischmitd’s study does not signal is the “pragmatic” difference between the two uses. The fact
that these two uses and definitions of “multiculturality” can imply opposing ideological positions and
become the rhetorical instruments in a conflict of power relations between minority and majority groups.
Considering that the “descriptive” use of the term refers to an already given, unproblematic situation
and power-balance in a diverse society, such a definition of “multiculturalism” becomes a tool in the
discourse of the majority, driving towards the stabilization and perpetuation of the present status quo, which
generally is presented as positive, and even “successful”.
In contrast, the “normative” definition of the term refers to an ideal and theoretical situation where
different ethnic and/or cultural groups can coexist in the conditions of social justice. And, although
“normative multiculturalism” is already said to be the basis of certain governmental structures (as in the
case of Canada), in most cases, especially in Eastern Europe, it is still mostly the goal towards which many
minorities are driving in their “politics of recognition”. In this sense, the “normative” definition, used by
the minorities, is in contrast and political competition with the “descriptive” definition, which is profitable
for the majority purposes.
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In my study, I will present the case of the trilingual student periodical Echinox in Cluj-Napoca, in order
to exemplify the possible conflict between the different uses of the term “multiculturality”. With the help
of a short historical account about the foundation of the periodical and the creation of its trilingual form, I
will show that the retrospective definitions of Echinox as a manifestation of “multiculturalism” are a clear
example of the superior, imposing discourse of the majority. The application of a “descriptive” approach to the
problematic and ambiguous circumstances of the plurilingual structure of Echinox has the purpose of stabilizing
the cultural hegemony of the majority. It is also intended to discredit a possible process towards a critical
re-evaluation of diversity in the past and present Transylvania, and towards “normative multiculturalism”.
The case of Echinox is also useful in relation to other culturally diverse institutions, like the “Babeş-Bolyai”
University of Cluj-Napoca, exemplifying a common discursive conflict concerning questions of plurality.
“Multiculturality” and Echinox
Echinox was and, although in a different sense and form, still is the cultural/literary periodical of the
students at the “Babeş-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca. It was founded at the end of 1968 by the students
of the Faculty of Philology, and it functioned as a highly respected and successful trilingual student review
until 1989, after which both its prestige and plurilingual form diminished in the radically changed political
and cultural context of the post-communist era. (Today, in lack of significant financial support, the periodical
unfortunately has a poor distribution and, as a consequence, it is seriously under-represented in the
contemporary public culture of Romania. This in spite of the fact that it produces texts of both literary
and academic relevance, and that it represents (as it always did for four decades) a unique phenomenon
in the field of Romanian culture: on the one hand, due to being the genuine vehicle of the contributions
of students and, on the other hand, due to its plurilingual aspect (formerly publishing texts in Romanian,
Hungarian and German, now only in the first two) and the creative possibilities lying within it.
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But, interestingly, in contrast with the respected (and almost legendary) existence and functioning of
Echinox along the years, the circumstances of its founding are somewhat problematical, and (as with every
historical investigation) it is difficult to clarify the story and the initial concept of its beginnings. Without
trying to minimize the inherent ambiguities, I can summarize in the following way: in 1968, in the context of
the relative or pseudo-liberalization of the totalitarian regime in the initial part of Ceau[219?]escu’s reign, the
Ministry of Youth issued a decree according to which universities could start their own student periodicals.
Being a truly important opportunity for students in the Romania of that time, in Cluj two distinct groups
of students planned to act upon it. Firstly, a Romanian group of students, who already created a popular
literary circle called “Echinox” (led by such individuals as Marian Papahagi, Eugen Uricaru, Dinu Flămând,
Petru Poantă, Ion Mircea), wanted to start a student periodical having the same name, with the obvious
purpose of providing a site for the members of the circle to publish their work. Secondly, in the same
manner and with the same goal, a group of Hungarian students (Csáky Zoltán, Molnár Gusztáv, Ágoston
Vilmos, Bíró Béla) wanted to start their own periodical called New Branch (Új Hajtás). But eventually both
projects failed in their original purpose, because the leadership of the University (most probably the rector,
Ştefan Pascu), representing the authoritative position of the Party, did not allow the creation of two separate
periodicals. Instead, it forcibly proposed the joining of the two projects, and the founding of a trilingual
periodical (although, ironically, German students did not initiate a plan for their own periodical).
Reactions towards the decision of the authorities among the groups of students varied. For the Romanian
students, it had little significance, if any – in their interpretation this new configuration did not represent
an obstruction in their goal of publishing their texts. From the perspective of the first editor-in-chief, Eugen
Uricaru1 , the plurilingual periodical was admittedly a “nonsense” from a pragmatic point of view, being
an unsuccessful strategy towards building readership, but it did not represent any kind of problem in an
ideological or moral sense. The “unproblematic” nature of the birth of the trilingual form is clearly signaled
1
According to fellow editor Rostás Zoltán, in an interview about Echinox: Echinox-alakzatok, Korunk, Cluj-Napoca, 1980/65.
László Szabolcs
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by the overall ‘silence” concerning the rector’s decision in the many recollections of Romanian former
Echinox editors and authors dealing with the founding of the “legendary” periodical.
Conversely, the reactions of the Hungarian students facing the totalitarian decision were close to outrage,
and resulted in the complete abandoning of their project. In their interpretation the authoritative, unifying
gesture of the University was a clear case of aggressive assimilation addressed against the Hungarian
minority and Hungarian culture in general.
In order to understand why a decision resulting in the joining of student projects was interpreted
from a pragmatic perspective and given little significance on the part of Romanian students, and, almost
paradoxically, seen as an abusive gesture of a nationalist totalitarian regime on the part of Hungarian
students – one has to take into consideration the larger political context of the age. More to the point,
one has to see this decision, and the reaction to it, in relation to the general assimilative strategies of
the Romanian state manifested in similar, but much more impactful gestures, like: the out-ruling of the
Hungarian Autonomous County (encompassing the later counties of Mures and Harghita), the unification
of the “János Bolyai” University and the “Victor Babeş” University, as well as the joining of several historical
Hungarian high-schools to Romanian ones. So, (hopefully) one can see and understand that the joint project
of Echinox periodical was not perceived positively, as a possibility of interaction and collaboration, but
rather suspiciously, as the elimination of a potentially autonomous Hungarian cultural presence.
Although this defensive perspective on things was commonly shared by the Hungarian students, not all
of them gave up on the project of Echinox. By focusing on what they could actually gain from this given
situation, Zoltán Rostás, for example, agreed to become the editor of the Hungarian part, but managed to
reserve only 3 pages from the total of 24 – the German editor, Peter Motzan, getting just one. It is important
to notice the shift of focus in dealing with this forced situation, because it is typical of the behavior and
attitude of minorities: shifting from the standards of an ideal and abstract social/cultural justice (what I will
call “normative” further on) to the adaptive and “realistic” requirements of ‘survival” under dictatorship.
According to this latter interpretation, those 3 pages were definitely more than nothing, and in the context
László Szabolcs
161
of a totalitarian regime even such small possibilities of cultural presence had to be cherished. And the
consequent history of the periodical and also the literary appreciation of the Hungarian pages showed that
this adaptive interpretation prevailed and proved fruitful. That is, fruitful in comparison with nothing, but
scarcely so in comparison with an autonomous Hungarian student periodical.
During the two decades of existence before 1989, the trilingual form of Echinox rarely received attention
and self-reflexive definitions – understandably, because on the one hand, in the public culture of that era
the periodical, with its 20 Romanian pages, primarily existed as a purely Romanian literary and academic
product, and on the other hand, because in the aggressively nationalist official discourse of the age cultural
or linguistic diversity was not only ignored, but also prohibited. Also typically, the possible evaluation of
diversity and the conceptual, explicit affirmation of the trilingual form did not become a goal in the activities
of the Hungarian editors either – probably as a last result of the reaction to the totalitarian founding gesture:
resistance against assimilation brought a certain separatism and closeness.
The instances of explicit attention that the trilingual form did receive were examples of the empty and
clichéd official discourse on questions concerning the “harmonious coexistence of different nationalities in
Romania” (a “truly socialist” country where, according to its leaders, the “question of nationalities was
solved!”) – texts that were ordered and prescribed by the Party to be published at the anniversary editions of
Echinox, in 1978 and 1988. Such an article written by Ion Pop speaks about “the unity of the three languages
on these brotherly pages”2 , and another one, written by Mircea Zaciu about: “poets, critics, philosophers,
essayists, Romanians, Hungarians, Germans forming such a beautiful gathering, which could truly function
as a spiritual unity”3 . As a rule, in such articles the question of the trilingual form had to be presented as
a positive aspect, being a success of the ‘socialist plan”. And gradually, the artificial, self-congratulatory
2
3
Ion Pop, „Începutul trecutului”. Echinox, 1974/11-12., 13.
Mircea Zaciu, „Solsti[21B?]iu către Echinox”. Echinox, 1976/6-7., 16.
László Szabolcs
162
discourse got to the point (in Ion Mircea’s article4 ) where even the idea of the plurilingual structure is
appropriated, as being the brainchild of the founding Romanian editors.
In the 1990s, as the Romanian society and the Romanian universities opened up to the West, and the
synchronization with international academic standards started, the social sciences were infused by the
paradigm of “political correctness”. Among other fashionable terms, the concept of “multiculturality” was
imported from the fields of American and Canadian political philosophy, and used for various academic
and political reasons (as Radu Neculau’s article shows5 ). Most prominently, this shift of perspective and
rhetoric influenced the educational reform, especially the reform regarding higher education in Transylvania
– and as a result, thanks to the activity of the rector Andrei Marga, “multiculturality” became one of the
basic concepts of the 1995 Charta of the “Babeş-Bolyai” University.
In such a new epistemological context, it is of no surprise that the unique structure of Echinox was reevaluated and re-interpreted according to the international rhetoric on cultural diversity. So, in consequence,
Echinox was now defined as inherently and originally “multicultural” in its nature. In one of the most
prominent books on the periodical and the literary scene that surrounded it, Petru Poantă, one of the original
founders of Echinox, affirms with a certain pride that the periodical was characterized by “multiculturalism
(possibly a European premier) and cosmopolite diversity” (Poantă, 2004: 25). The same Ion Pop, former
editor-in-chief, makes a similar statement in the introduction to the anthology of the poets that published in
Echinox: “The concept of “multiculturality” – being very popular today – had one of its first realizations in
the periodical Echinox” (Pop, 2004: 6).
4
5
Ion Mircea, „O pasăre crescută din azur”. Echinox, 1978/10-11-12., 13.
Radu Neculau, „Multiculturalism, anticomunism, na[21B?]ionalism”. Altera, 2000/13, , 42.
László Szabolcs
163
The irresolvable conflict of definitions
Having now a relatively clear perspective on the circumstances surrounding the founding of Echinox, and the
totalitarian, assimilative gesture that created the trilingual form, one can and has to see that the definition of
the periodical as “multicultural” is definitely problematical. The central problem of this kind of definition
comes from the diachronic or analeptic use of the term: the concept of “multiculturality” is taken from
the (present) paradigm of liberal discourse, and used to describe and define a cultural product of the
totalitarian regime. That is, applying a concept developed in the context of liberal democracy (in America
and Canada) for a cultural institution that was created by totalitarian coercion, as the manifestation of the
state’s aggressive strategy for assimilation.
Such a use shows that the concept of “multiculturality” in relation with Echinox is understood as a
“descriptive” term, as an unambiguous and simple definition of the three languages and literary cultures
that met on the pages of the periodical. This uncritical description, lacking any reflexivity, manages to
show the surface of cultural diversity, and at the same time to hide the true and problematical nature of
it, eclipsing historical circumstances and the power-relations involved in any minority-majority debate.
And, as a result, it legitimizes the ‘status quo” of the majority-minority relations as normal and positive –
strangely echoing in essence the official rhetoric of the Party. Quoting from an article by István Horváth on
the same issue: ‘so instead of having a role in the politics of recognition (Charles Taylor), multiculturalism –
in the distinct sense it acquired in Romania – is used to control the nationalism of the minorities; instead of
guiding the ideology of orientation, it became an ideological weapon” (Horváth, 1999: 9).
By defining Echinox as “multicultural,” the speaker borrows the authority and symbolic power the
term confers in the paradigm of “political correctness”. He makes use of the respect and authority given
to those that explicitly accept cultural diversity, in order to be “rhetorically immune” to the attacks and
contestations of minority groups (how can they argue against a position that openly accepts and adopts
“multiculturality”?) – but he does this without accepting and applying the liberal standards that actually
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164
define the term in its original context. Or, without at least being open to negotiate the standards of
multiculturalism with the “other” party, the one that is actually and essentially affected by the nature of a
multicultural society.
Minority positions, on the other hand, see the constantly unequal power-relations involved in such
debates over cultural diversity, and their drive is towards an ideal and theoretical situation where different
ethnic and/or cultural groups can coexist in the conditions of social justice. In their rhetoric, multiculturalism
is not a closed and unambiguous reality, but a plan in process to become normative. In this sense, the
“normative” use of the term questions the ‘status quo” of the present situation, referring and adhering
to other, international or supraterritorial standards regarding cultural diversity (of the EU or the UN, for
example) – by which standards the realities of Romanian society (e.g. its educational system and cultural
production) are not “multicultural”.
More specifically, Gabriel Andreescu defines “normative multiculturalism” as a negotiated equilibrium
between the simultaneous processes of the social integration of minorities and the granting of a certain
level of autonomy (Andreescu, 2002: 27). Such a normative plan is amply presented and discussed for
example in Levente Salat’s book on ethno-politics, following the theory of Will Kymlicka on the concept of
“multicultural citizenship” (Salat, 2001).
From such a “normative” perspective, one can argue that the unbalanced structure of Echinox –having
only 3 Hungarian pages and just 1 German out of 24 – was in a sense culturally unjust, and thus diminishes
the ideological claim and imposed myth of “multiculturalism” in connection with the periodical. This
structure clearly defined the Hungarian and German parts as being a sort of annexes to the main body
of the periodical – it was not only a reduction of publishing space, but a symbolic marginalization which
reflected on and reproduced the similar position of the Hungarian students in the University as a whole.
Of course, one can also argue that the structure of the trilingual periodical can be justified exactly by
invoking the demographic structure of the University – in which, naturally, Hungarians and Germans
represented the less than half minority. But, approaching the problem from the “normative” perspective,
László Szabolcs
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one has to ask: should all forms of cultural presence be judged from a statistic point of view? A certain
population or group can obviously be considered a minority in comparison with the dominant group of
the majority. But does this relation apply to matters of culture and the symbolic space it represented? Can
the cultural – that is creative/artistic – potential of Hungarian and German students, and their potential
readership, be marginalized in such a manner, and still call it “multicultural”? For one should not forget
the precedent of the failed Hungarian project: those shrunken 3 pages only came to forcibly replace the
autonomous cultural energy that wanted to create a separate periodical.
A similar rhetorical move towards the descriptive use of “multiculturalism” was applied to the problems
concerning the founding of a distinct university in Cluj-Napoca for the minorities (the project of the
“Petőfi-Shiller” University). This claim, coming in the form of a Hungarian proposition, is justified in their
perspective by the fact that in 1959 the autonomous “János Bolyai” University was forcibly unified with
the “Victor Babeş” University, and met serious losses regarding infrastructure and resources, as part of
the general, assimilative strategy of the Party. But these tendencies towards the re-establishment of a once
independent institution were interpreted on the part of Romanian politicians and intellectuals as a drive
towards a nationalist type of separatism and segregation – and were eventually defeated exactly by way of
using the rhetoric of “descriptive multiculturalism”. This use of the term, as mentioned before, stabilized
the present ‘status quo” without even taking into consideration the claims and opinions of the minority,
and at the same time, unambiguously bracketed/eliminated the historical background of the whole issue.
Marta Petreu, in her letter to the periodical Revista 22 commenting on this issue, even made the
connection between the University and Echinox: “In the same way I was enchanted in my student years by
the fact that Echinox was a trilingual periodical, so I am pleased now that such a trilingual university can
exist. Honestly speaking, in the structure of the “Babeş-Bolyai” University of I see the triumph of reason, of
tolerance and of the hope for dialogue.”6
6
“Universitatea ‘Babeş-Bolyai’ în criză”, Revista 22, 8/03/2006.
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From these examples one can see that there is and always will be an irresolvable conflict between the
“normative” and “descriptive” definitions of “multiculturality,” and the implicit drives and ideologies of
the minority-majority polarity that characterize them. Such conflicts and debates are as a rule terminated
by the inherent power-balance, that is, by the hegemony of the majority, imposing its own paradigm and
definitions concerning social realities.
Of course, one could ask, how can such conflicts be resolved in the postmodern condition? In an
interesting study, Alpár Losoncz warns us: it is a folly to approach the basically pragmatic question of
coexistence and communication with abstract theories and categories (like the theories of “multiculturalism”)
(Losoncz, 2007: 23). Because who is to decide if the negotiations and the communications are successful or
not? If they are just, fair, honest or not – in the present heterotopias of postmodernism? Where would one
find an unbiased and truthful judge that can guide and settle disputes/competitions between cultural/ethnic,
majority/minority groups? Where are those international or local standards by which such a debate as in
the case of the “Babeş-Bolyai” University or Echinox can be settled justly?
So, the ultimate question is, do minorities and majorities live in different “imagined worlds,” as Appadurai puts it following Benedict Anderson, having different perspectives, cultural landscapes, tendencies,
ideologies and goals – and as a conclusion, will they never arrive at a perfect or even sufficient understanding
or agreement between them?
References
Andreescu, Gabriel, 2002. “Multiculturalismul normativ”, in Poledna et al. (22-31)
Appadurai, Arjun, 2008. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in Lechner; Boli
(101-120)
Culic, I., I. Horváth, Ch. Stan (eds.), 1999. Reflecţii asupra diferenţei, Cluj-Napoca: Editura Limes
László Szabolcs
167
Feischmidt M. (ed.), 1997. Multikulturalizmus, Budapest: Osiris
Feischmidt Margit, 1997. “Multikulturalizmus: kultúra, identitás és politika új diskurzusa,” in Feischmidt
(5-20)
Horváth, István (1999) “Multiculturalismul în România: alternativă sau eschivă?”, in Culic et al. (6-23)
Lechner, Frank J.; John Boli (eds.), The Globalization Reader, USA: Blackwell Publishing
Losoncz, Alpár, 2007. “Többkultúrájúság a kultúrák között”, in Szigeti (18 – 24)
Poantă, Petru, 2003. Efectul “Echinox” sau despre echilibru, Cluj-Napoca: Biblioteca Apostrof
Poledna, R., Ruegg, Fr., Rus, C. (coord.), Interculturalitate: cercetări şi perspective româneşti, Cluj-Napoca:
Presa Universitară Clujeană
Pop, I. (ed.), 2004. Poeţii revistei Echinox. Antologie, vol. I, (1968-2003), Cluj-Napoca: Editura Dacia
Pop, Ion, 2004. “Prefaţă”, in Pop (5-21)
Salat Levente, 2001. Etnopolitika, a konfliktustól a méltányosságig, Târgu-Mureş: Mentor
Szigeti Attila (ed.), 2007. Az interkulturalitás filozófiai problémái, Cluj-Napoca: Egyetemi Műhely Kiadó
László Szabolcs
168
Language and Translation Studies
Expletive Subjects in
Varieties of English: A Case
Study in Microvariation
Sebastian BICAN-MICLESCU
University of Bucharest
MA student, 1st year
1 The issue and the principles
1.1
Introductory remarks
am approaching this paper as a welcome opportunity to investigate several instances of English subject
expletives (as presented in section 1.2) which have recently come to my attention. Although I have
previously worked on the cross-linguistic variation of subject expletives, I feel that definitive statements
about the essential properties of the expletive subject there could only come from instances of variation
within the language, or more precisely, in the varieties that will be presented below. To some extent,
diachronic surveys also provide this kind of data, but the question remains: could there be variation in the
use of expletive subjects in a variety that is only minimally different from contemporary Standard English?
One definite instance of such a variety is the dialect spoken on Smith Island (the USA), as presented in
several papers by Jeffrey Parrott (2001, 2006). African American vernacular English is also in the scope
of this survey, since sentences like “it is a god. . . ” (vs. “there is a god”) are among its most often quoted
particularities, though usually not in contexts where the expletive subject is a topic in itself. Another case of
variation in the use of expletive subjects is that of Belfast English, where the expletive there is unchanged,
though the syntax allows for certain constructions that do not appear in Standard English. In the case of
Welsh English, it can be said that a completely different there can appear at the beginning of a sentence,
thus providing insight into the extensive possibilities of lexical items acquiring new uses in syntax.
Before delving deeper into the subject, I need to emphasize the fact that what I mean by “opportunity”
is not that the CONSENSUS conference is a suitable occasion for presenting this paper but that it is above all
an ideal conceptual environment for my present intentions. The phrase “Words and Worlds of Difference”
could not have been more appropriately associated with this paper, since the subject matter is the use
of certain words (there and it) in several English “local linguistic worlds”. Proving any linguistic point
will hinge on the differences between related systems. It is also quite fitting to write such a paper for a
I
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conference that does not deal primarily with linguistics, since interdisciplinarity is increasingly important
for our field of study. Essentially, I intend to find out what can be said about the English subject expletive
there on the basis of data coming from microvariation, especially in what concerns the importance of its
morphological form in expletive constructions.
1.2
Expletive subjects in Standard English
The term expletive refers to linguistic elements that do not bear semantic weight. For instance, when a word
is used as default filler in the canonical position of subjects although it does not contribute the meaning
of a logical subject, the respective word will be treated as an expletive subject. Crucially, these behave like
functional elements in the sense that any one language will use a very limited set of such fillers (in fact, I
am not aware of any cases of languages which have more than two expletive subjects).
English has two expletive subjects, there and it, which have a complementary distribution. Essentially,
they front sentences and seem to function as structural subjects. There co-occurs with a logical subject, while
it either stands for an abstract “natural” subject or is anticipatory for a clausal subject. Crucially, these
“dummy” subjects are required by the fact that English does not allow pro-drop, or the absence of an overt
subject (irrespective of how we represent this technically). The following examples illustrate the use of it:
(1) It is raining. (atmospheric)
(2) It is five o’clock. (temporal)
(3) It is good [that you arrived].
Sentences selecting the expletive subject there can be grouped into several categories, according to the verbs
used. I will be using the examples in Parrott (2001 and 2006), along with his division of the categories:
(4) There are a lot of crabs in the pot today. (Copular existentials)
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(5) There seem to be a lot of crabs in the pot today. (Raising predicates w/non finite complements)
(6) Every weekend, there arrive at the inn a lot of unruly researchers. (Unaccusatives)
(7) There were a lot of crabs caught in the Bay this year. (Passives)
However, I take the core distinction to be between the uses of the expletive with the copula (to be) and those
with (other) unaccusative verbs (usually verbs of motion like arrive). A reason for this will be apparent
when I present data from African-American Vernacular English. So far it has been shown that it and there
are similar, yet very different, distributionally (which of course entails some differences in their core syntax).
There is one more contrast that is suggestive to the nature of expletive there. Compare the uses of the word
in the following examples:
(8) There is much suffering there.
(9) There, there is much suffering.
(10) Here, there is much suffering.
In (8) and (9) there is, obviously, an adverb. It is not blocked by its co-occurence with the expletive since
only one of them, as would be assumed, has a deictic locative interpretation. What is more, expletive
there can also appear alongside the proximal locative adverb. This empirical evidence hints to an entirely
different nature for the expletive as opposed to the locative.
This section has highlighted a key question for understanding the English there expletive: since it is
more abstract than the adverb, is it as abstract as the other expletive, it?
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2 It as there – lexical variation
2.1 Smith Island English (SIE) and the “weak expletive it” (WEIT)
Parrott (2001, 2006) presents the case of expletive subjects in Smith Island English. Basically, the it expletive
subject takes over the distributional properties of there. Sentences that could be represented as “(*It)/There. . . ”
in Standard English are correct in Smith Island English, resulting in an inventory of examples such as the
following:
(11) In winter, it’s nothing to do. (2000 - Copular existentials)
(12) It just happened to be a EMT on this part of the island. . . . (1983 - Raising predicates w/non
finite complements)
(13) Then you go straight on down, and it comes this white house here. . . . (1983 - Unaccusatives)
(14) And it was sharks seen down there that day. (1983 - Passives.)
The fact that Standard English blocks such formulations altogether (suggesting that there and it are at least
minimally different in syntax) makes these examples striking. It should be noted that there is also used
in SIE, but that the use of it seems to have been increasing in the course of the last century. Parrott talks
about a “weak expletive it” or WEIT, which means to emphasize the fact that its distribution is that of
“weak expletive there”, which in turn refers to weak agreement patterns, i.e. the fact that although it induces
singular agreement (“it is/*are. . . ”), there does not (“there is/are. . . ”). I will further address this point in
section 2.3, though I must make it clear that WEIT does in no way suppose weak agreement, but rather
strong singular agreement in contexts where a weak there would appear.1
1 In
a previous paper I referred to there as a default expletive, since it is used in all contexts except for the few idiosyncratic
ones which require it. Then, we might talk of a default it being used instead of a default there in SIE.
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2.2 The cleft expletive paradigm of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)
For African-American Vernacular English, the next transcription of recorded speech is an ideal illustration
of the situation of subject expletives:
But i’s—i’s a lot of girls... it seem like, when I be driving, it seem like every corner I drive around, there
go somebody you know pushing a baby.... Me and Teresa and them be like, “Tha’s a shame, huh?”... I be
like, “Dang, Teresa, she in the same grade with me and she have three kids! (Rickford 2000, 110)
Foxy Boston, the African-American informant from East Palo Alto, uses it (reduced to i) as an expletive
subject with the copula; however, with the unaccusative go, there is used. This can be taken to indicate an
expletive paradigm that is cleft into two complementarily distributed forms. A tentative suggestion would
be that this is a result of expletive subjects having independent historical evolutions in the syntactic contexts
they appear in. For AAVE, the matter of historical evolution can be complicated by the fact that there is
evidence for its having a Creole origin and, of course, later influences from local “white” dialects (this
historical issue is however debated). The Creole connection suggests a gap in the acquisition/interpretation
of the language which may in turn lead to radically reconfigured syntax.
2.3 Strongly agreeing
In SIE the verb agrees with the WEIT (3sg) but with there agreement is variable (3sg/pl) – these are two
parallel realizations of the expletive, each with its own agreement possibilities. In AAVE, it and there form
an expletive paradigm – one for copular existentials/locatives, the other for other cases. It could be said
that the agreement pattern is “strong” (3sg), but since AAVE lacks any agreement markers (and even the
is/are paradigm is reduced to the singular form) perhaps this distinction is not truly appropriate. At any
rate, there is no question of the verb agreeing with the associate noun phrase (NP).
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McCloskey (1991) (qtd. in Kirby & Becker, 2007) provides a couple of highly relevant examples in what
concerns it inducing singular agreement.
(15) [That Sarah will finish her dissertation] and [that she will drop out of school] are equally
likely.
(16) It is/*are equally likely [that Sarah will finish her dissertation and that she will drop out of
school.]
I believe that (15) can be related to instances of plural agreement in expletive there contexts and (16) to
instances of “flat” singular agreement (when the NP associate is plural). Therefore, though tentatively,
one can postulate the existence of a complex agreement pattern between the expletive, the verb and the
post-verbal NP, in which the post-verbal NP can be represented as a plurality or a singular unit, irrespective
of its “natural” number. it will always force a “unit” reading of the NP, while there will either allow
transparent agreement or behave like it and force a “unit” reading (“there’s many. . . ”).2 Notably, forced
singular agreement (with expletive there) is a solid tendency both in Standard English, but also in other
varieties. I would go as far as saying that this tendency becomes a norm as one gets closer to the periphery
of the dialectal continuum: both within Standard English in the case of familiar varieties and in other
geographically “marginal” dialects. To my knowledge, New Zealand English is considered to have singular
agreement in there-sentences (as a stable feature of the grammar).
In this respect, my proposal is that there is changing from a weak-agreement expletive that only functions
as a flag for null topics (perhaps) to a strong-agreement expletive that, like it in some varieties, is a fullfledged subject. I would also propose that we should not group there-sg. with there-sg./pl. and view this
alternation as a matter of optionality, but rather group there-sg. with it-sg. as essentially the same syntactic
entity (with a different lexical evolution), while there-sg/pl. would be an intermediate step in the evolution
2
See Parrott (2006) and other recent work for technical (minimalistic) accounts of these agreement patterns.
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of the expletive along the “locative” path. When the two cases of there appear alternatively it should be a
matter of change in progress3 .
3 There and other contexts of variation – Belfast English and Welsh
English
Unlike the previously discussed varieties, Belfast English would seem to comply to the standard expletive
paradigm. However, any corpus of sentences would show a stunning deviation from Standard English
syntax. Thus, TECs (transitive expletive constructions) make Belfast English more like Dutch, Icelandic or
German (cf. Mohr, 2002). Henry and Cottell (2007) discuss this aspect more extensively, though it would
suffice to say that even other constructions exhibit some behaviour that would be impossible in Standard
English, and this syntactic variation has been analysed with the most recent of minimalist mechanisms,
yielding the result that this is a case of a grammar that is at its core perhaps more “deviant” from the
English than even that of a different language, like Swedish or another Mainland Scandinavian one.
Empirically, a dialectal variety that we take to be quite similar to the standard can exhibit an essentially
different syntax. What this shows is at least that lexical variation and syntactic variation can be independent,
although both can sometimes impose requirements on the other. Of course, this is felicitous in the
background of semantic compositionality assumed in most modern linguistic frameworks. At any rate,
these examples contribute to the assumption that we should not assume there (the same lexical item as the
locative adverb) has any bearing on interpretation, but rather that the morphological “husk” can lend itself
to increasingly abstract functional roles that will fit the larger syntax of the language (or local variety).
3
Parrott (2006) relates change in progress to “Labovian variation”, which is exactly what we are dealing with in this
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Among the numerous grammatical peculiarities of Welsh English, Martin (2005) also identifies the
expletive there and offers the following commentary: “the expletive there as in there’s tall you are! or there’s
strange it was! can be correlated directly to the Welsh dyna, an adverb equivalent to the English there, as
in dyna dal wyt ti (lit. “There’s tall are you”) and dyna od oedd ef (lit. “There’s strange was it”). Here the
Welsh-equivalent there simply replaces the expletive how in a straightforward case of preserved grammatical
structure.” This seems to be a case in which the local variety has adapted the already available subject
expletive for its specific intensifier expletive needs. Of course, an in-depth analysis requires a syntactic
comparison with Welsh and also a wealth of historical data. Nonetheless, this enforces my belief that there
is not intrinsically linked with the expletive subject construction: it can be absent from it and also appear in
altogether different contexts.
4 So what have we learned?
For one thing it has been shown that a completely different expletive form can appear in the place of there,
which says a lot about its minimal semantic contribution in expletive constructions (Smith Island English
and African-American Vernacular English). Also, this particular morphological item can lend itself to other
functional uses (Welsh English), thus proving the fact that it is not inextricably linked to the expletive
context and also hinting to the ease with which a locative adverb there could have evolved into an expletive.
What is more, even when there retains its role as an expletive, there is no guarantee the syntax of the
construction (in a certain variety) will copy that of Standard English. A possible proposal for the future is
that of describing the properties of a strong expletive subject (like it) and analysing what seems to be the
evolution of there into such an expletive. Such an ambitious project crucially relies on a careful investigation
of fine-grained variation, as I hope this paper illustrates.
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References
Henry, Alison & Cottell, Siobhan, 2007. “A new approach to transitive expletives: evidence from Belfast
English” in English Language and Linguistics, 11(2) (279–99)
Kirby, Susannah & Becker, Misha, 2007. “Which It Is It? The acquisition of referential and expletive it” in
Journal of Child Language (2007), 34 (571–99)
Martin, Jeremy, 2005. English in Wales, Univ. of Toronto Website. (URL: www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/cou
rses/6362-martin.htm) (Visited on 2010/03/03)
Mohr, Sabine, 2002. “Dutch, German, Icelandic”, presented at Klausurtagung des Graduiertenkollegs
Kleinwalsertal, June 2002.
(Available at www.ilg.uni-stuttgart.de/gk/aktivitaeten/dokumente/2002/mohr.pdf) (Visited on 2010/03/03)
Parrott, Jeffrey, 2001. “Dialect death and morpho-syntactic change: Smith Island weak expletive it”, presented
at NWAVE 30, Raleigh, North Carolina Georgetown University, October 12. URL: www.punksinscience.
org/jeffrey/(2001) NWAVE 30 handout.pdf (Visited on 2010/03/03)
Parrott, Jeffrey, 2006. “WEIT on Smith Island (Another Vexing Expletive)”, presented at InterPhases
Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus, May 18-20
URL: www.punksinscience.org/jeffrey/docs/Parrott (2006) InterPhases poster.pdf (Visited on 2010/03/03)
Sebastian Bican-Miclescu
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Negotiating Meanings in
Media Translation
Cătălina COMĂNECI
The “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of
Ias, i
PhD Student, 1st year
lthough translation facilitates the flow of information into the world, its outstanding role tends
to be neglected or minimized by the mass-media worldwide. This can be partly explained by the
fact that inside news agencies translation is resumed within the journalistic tasks of writing and
editing, and the majority of those engaged in news translation consider themselves journalists rather than
translators (Bielsa; Bassnett, 2009). As a matter of fact, there is the belief that a good news translator has to
be in the first place a good journalist. In the context of globalisation, which seems “to promote both the
lingua franca and the demand for translation” (Pym, 2003: 3), the translator plays an intercultural role in
his (her) attempt of facilitating the meaning among languages, cultures and ideologies sometimes totally
different from one another with the ultimate goal of developing awareness and achieving understanding.
According to Mary Snell-Hornby, the translators’ (and implicitly the interpreters’) area of expertise must
rely not only on interlingual but also on intercultural communication, and, of course, on technological skills
(Snell-Hornby, 1999: 117). Translation becomes a tool for representing and redefining cultures against one
another, their “otherness” being precisely what distinguishes them from other cultures.
But what happens when source information is partially or completely reshaped by news translators
in order to meet the expectations of the target audience? When access to this information only belongs
to newspaper reporters, we rely on their objectivity and faithfulness in presenting the original story, but
cultural gaps can occur almost unintentionally. Bielsa and Bassnett warn us that unlike the literary translator,
the news translator “does not owe respect and faithfulness to the source text but is able to engage in a
significantly different relationship with an often unsigned piece of news, the main purpose of which is
to provide information of an event in a concise and clear way” (Bielsa; Bassnett, 2009: 65). Translations
are capable of bestowing authority on language, “either by expanding the resources of an already widely
circulated language” (articles belonging to a “minor” language being translated into an “important” one) or
“by providing the equally suggestive resources of less circulated languages” (translations of texts belonging
to cultures “of authority” into these languages) (Dimitriu, 2006: 75). When describing the prevailing practice,
we consequently have in view the problem of authorship and the translator’s invisibility. Ronald Christ
A
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considers that “many newspapers, such as The Los Angeles Times, do not even list the translators in headnotes
to reviews, reviewers often fail to mention that a book is a translation (while quoting from the text as though
it were written in English), and publishers almost uniformly exclude translators from book covers and
advertisements” (Christ, quoted in Venuti, 1995: 8). But, on the other hand, translations have to be unsigned
because “invisibility guarantees the good quality of the translation which, like edition, has to respect the
work and vision of the original producer of the news” (Bielsa; Bassnett, 2009: 92). This also entails legal
and economic copyright issues, failure to comply with these obligations leading to economic sanctions. It
seems that excellent news sense and good writing skills sometimes override translation, which is seen as
a failure to replicate a source text exactly, whether it comes down to losing certain features in the target
text or adding them. In Italy, articles are always signed. In England, some articles, editorials for example,
are not generally signed by a single journalist but are meant to represent an editorial board position. The
presence or absence of the signature also depends on the internal policies of one single newspaper (articles
in The Economist are never signed). There are newspapers made up of both translated and untranslated
articles, and some of the newspapers consist almost exclusively of translations taken from the same source
– in Italy, for instance, Le Monde Diplomatique and The National Geographic are translated – but also from
different sources, such as Le Courier International in France, Internazionale in Italy (Bani, 2006: 36).
According to the skopos theory developed in the 1980s by Katharina Reiss and Hans Vermeer, the
objective of the target text determines the way in which the source text is translated. On a linguistic level,
these scholars support the idea of equivalent effect rather than of binary equivalence as any transfer of
meaning from source text to target text inevitably involves a certain degree of translation loss because the
target text will always lack certain culturally relevant features that are present in the source text. In the
case of news translation, we realise not only that there are different conventions operating in different
countries, but even within the same country, and generally speaking, receivers do not like to make an
additional effort of coping with texts full of lexical and stylistic features that run contrariwise to what is
considered to be canonical in the target language (Aixelá, 2009). In her article “Globalisation as Translation:
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182
An Approximation to the Key but Invisible Role of Translation in Globalisation,” Esperança Bielsa considers
that “homogenising tendencies and the imposition of categories developed by the centre need to be examined
alongside domesticating strategies aimed at a fluid communication with target readers and exoticising
devices through which the discourse of the Other is staged in the media” (Bielsa, 2005: 12). In this respect,
she gives as an example the English translations of Osama Bin Laden’s tapes or Saddam Hussein’s speeches,
showing how translation transcends language and cultural barriers by tackling the problem of homogeneity
and diversity inside news agencies from all over the world.
In consequence, if we agree that there are no two identical languages and that the translator has to
interfere and reshape the original text to better suit the needs of a particular audience, we should also assume
a certain degree of translation loss. Chris Salzberg (2008) makes a pertinent remark when acknowledging
that background knowledge, the subject of the article and the way in which it is presented may be analyzed
as indicators of a certain “loss of context” - “Articles assume that readers have background knowledge
in areas that non-English audiences may not be familiar with”. He gives the example of an article about
the practice of genital excision in Mauritania which raised some translation difficulties for the Malagasy
translator since the concept is foreign to audiences in Madagascar. Also, the writing style and presentation
of articles may evoke an unintended response among a different linguistic audience. For instance, the
American “let’s unite to make this right”, a slogan used for motivating a U.S. audience, may appear, in his
opinion, overly optimistic if translated without adaptation into French or African.
When analysing English-Finnish news translation, Hursti (2001) claims that news translation inevitably
implies reorganizations, additions, deletions, and substitutions. As he notes, “most reorganizations are not
only due to differences in language, but they are also motivated by conscious decisions to refocus the target
text to fit the needs of the receiving audience”. More recently, Bielsa has shown that modifications such as
change of the title or lead according to the requirements of the target publication, elimination of information
redundant to a particular audience or which is too specific or detailed for a reader who is geographically
and culturally removed from the reality described thereby, and addition of background information turn
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183
out to be productive in reformulating source texts, and are justified by the readers’ background knowledge,
which is the main cause of lost context. Bielsa states that the effect of modifications make the translation
“more like an original, new text, specifically suited to the needs of the publication in which it appears and
the readers to which it is targeted” (Bielsa, quoted in Salzberg: 2008). The news translator is thus seen as a
re-creator, a writer.
In most instances, national newspapers have no alternative but to reorganise some of the international
news published abroad because of their editorial policies, preserving nevertheless the essential information
for their target audience. In order to exemplify this translation strategy, we shall proceed to a parallel
analysis of the source text, a BBC article, and its translated version in one of Romania’s most important
newspapers, Evenimentul Zilei:
Fire forces Australia jet to land
An Australian passenger plane with 203 people on board has
been forced to make an emergency landing after a fire broke out
in the cockpit.
(1) The Airbus A330-200 operated by Jetstar was flying
from Japan to Australia when the fire started beside a
window.
(2) The pilots managed to extinguish it before landing in
Guam. Jetstar said all of those on board were unharmed.
(3) Last week, an Air France A330-200 on a flight from
Brazil to France crashed, killing all 228 people on board.
(4) Also on Thursday, a Russian Airbus A320 was forced to
make an emergency landing after its windscreen cracked.
(5) The Aeroflot plane was flying between Irkutsk and
Moscow when it had to divert to the western Siberian city
of Novosibirsk.
Cătălina Comăneci
Incidente aviatice cu două aeronave Airbus
Un avion australian cu 203 de persoane la bord a fost forţat
să aterizeze de urgenţă, după ce un incendiu a cuprins cabina
piloţilor, scrie BBC.
(1) Aeronava Airbus 330, aparţinând companiei Jetstar,
efectua o cursă între Japonia şi Australia, când piloţii au
observat foc şi fum în cabină. Piloţii au reuşit să stingă
flăcările înainte de a ateriza în Guam. Niciun pasager nu
a fost rănit în urma incidentului.
(2) Cauzele incendiului nu au fost încă descoperite.
Avionul zbura de patru ore, când cabina piloţilor a fost
cuprinsă de fum şi flăcări.
(3) Un aparat de zbor similar al companiei Air France s-a
prăbuşit, săptămâna trecută, în timpul unui zbor între Rio
de Janeiro şi Paris. Toţi cei 228 de pasageri au murit în
accident.
184
(6) None of the 116 passengers and six crew was injured,
a security official was quoted by Russian news agency
Ria-Novosti as saying.
(7) Smoke
(8) The Jetstar plane was four hours into its flight to the
Gold Coast in Queensland when the fire broke out.
(9) “Smoke became evident in the cockpit and one of
our pilots was required to use an extinguisher”, Jetstar
spokesman Simon Westaway told Australia’s ABC News.
(10) “We conducted an emergency diversion to Guam
international airport where the aircraft landed without
incident.”
(11) David Epstein, an official from Jetstar’s parent Qantas
Airways, said an electrical connector for the heating system had gone wrong, but the situation had quickly been
brought under control.
(12) Such incidents are not uncommon, he said, adding
that it did not raise new safety concerns about the A330200 model.
(13) Most of the passengers were reported to be Japanese
nationals.
(14) Jetstar is owned by Qantas. (BBC News, June 11, 2009)
(4) Tot astăzi, un Airbus A320 aparţinând companiei
ruseşti Aeroflot, cu 122 de pasageri la bord, a aterizat
de urgenţă la Novossibirsk (în Siberia Occidentală), din
cauza unei fisuri la parbrizul său. Aeronava zbura pe ruta
Irkuţk-Moscova.
(5) Un oficial al forţelor locale de ordine a precizat că nu
s-au înregistrat răniţi. (Evenimentul Zilei, June 11, 2009)
Before recurring to reorganisation, translators must ask themselves certain questions – “Is the ST structure
transferrable as such?”, “Should I refocus the information in the lead paragraph?”, “Could some of the
details be presented elsewhere in the story?” (Hursti, 2001). While some of the decisions to reorganise the
source text are no doubt due to differences between the Romanian and English languages, most of them
are motivated by conscious decisions to refocus the target text to better serve the needs of the receiving
audience.
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185
I have chosen to number each paragraph for an easier-to-follow analysis, and this option clearly reveals
that the original is twice as long as the translation, so the translator (or the journalist) decided to recur to a
considerable reorganisation of the source text. If the lead is preserved in translation, this is not the case
of the headline, a justified choice, I would say, as the Romanian stylistic conventions do not particularly
encourage repetitions, and a faithful translation of the original headline would have only repeated the
information immediately offered in the lead.
The translator decides to change the paragraph order: (1) and (2) are merged, followed by (8), then by
(3), (4), (5), and (6), while the last paragraphs are contracted into a single line according to which none
of the passengers was injured. Evenimentul Zilei chooses not to reproduce the exact words of the official
spokesmen, but only the conclusion, thus saving space and time. What the British offer in addition is
a photo of a Jetstar airplane (taken from AFP), and a 01.24 minute audio recording of passenger Dean
Mahoney’s description of the incident – “We could smell the burning”, which was certainly used in the
English context in view of dramatizing the situation and adding more credibility to the story.
Even if both articles were published on the same day, the original “Thursday” from the English version
becomes “astăzi” (“today”) into Romanian, personalizing the event; the only inaccurate piece of information
consists in the number of passengers that were flying with the Russian Airbus A320 – 116 in the original,
and 122 in the translated version, which, then again, reminds us of the problem of truthfulness in relating
the events.
Drawing on her own experience as a news translator in a television news room in Taiwan, Claire Tsai
(2005) sheds some light over the constraints within which news reporters have to work. The issues she
discusses regard the freedom of the translator to shape the news, the demands of the target audience, and
the time pressures under which translators work. The conclusion she draws is that, in some contexts, news
translators have a relatively low status, as opposed to our preconception of the central importance of the role
they play. Back in Europe, the Italian context news is tailored for the so-called sub-local audiences, that is
for groups with particular political and ideological affiliations. Nevertheless, for regulating certain specific
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cases and situations involving translation, there exist agency style manuals providing useful codes that cover
the most important operations for the production of news, various remarks on the correct use of language,
genres with a heightened level of semantic specialization (such as sports), etc (Bielsa; Bassnett, 2009: 70).
According to Gambier, in order to make the event accessible to the public, the media provides frames of
reference, or highly stereotypical scenarios, routines, and beliefs based on expectations in a given social
situation. Focusing on what is discussed, and how it is (or not) discussed, news frames are embodied in
the keywords, metaphors, concepts, symbols, and visual images used in a news narrative: “News frames
make certain facts meaningful, provide a context in which to understand issues, shape the inferences made,
reinforce stereotypes, determine judgements and decisions, draw attention to some aspects of reality while
obscuring other elements” (Gambier, 2006: 11). The example provided in this sense consists of the CNN
news reports on the disaster of the space shuttle (Columbia) on February 1st , 2003. In order to increase
the audience’s level of empathy with the news items, broadcasters used as a “heroic” frame the cultural
archetype of the hero, the frame of a national tragedy, and the political frame as “Repetition, parallel
structures, emotive and hyperbolic language are often used to stir emotions and evoke empathy in the
audience (with reference to pain, suffering, death, loss, mourning, etc.” (Gambier, 2006: 12).
After the news translator contextualises the processes, (s)he must operate a story and a detail selection
of the material which will subsequently determine the textual and linguistic selection decisions. The process
of editing practically consists in transforming the structure of the original message by deleting, adding,
substituting or reorganizing the source information. Bielsa and Bassnett (2009: 68) agree that this type
of rewriting depends on the genre of the journalistic texts which require different translation rules and
strategies. Those belonging to the informative genre are the typical and frequent news reports containing
factual description of events which allow the most generous space intervention and alteration of the original,
unlike the argumentative ones (such as opinion articles, columns) which are more close to the literary
translation and the author’s style has to be respected, while the interpretative genres (such as the reportages)
sit somewhere in between and are based on the selection and interpretation of the journalist.
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187
Style also plays an equally important part in the process of news translation. Yves Agnès (2002: 168)
wonders whether there exists a personal journalistic style as the one usually found in literature. Although
the former is not so codified as the latter, the journalist may always choose an elaborate tone of writing,
especially if the article is a critique or a chronicle, genres which favour irony and polemics (generally a
subjective point of view). Nevertheless, according to the newspaper’s orientation, the journalistic styles
may vary from the oral style and the administrative slang to types of poetry and scientific reviews. The
editor’s relationship with the audience and the amount of space (usually a short one) conceded to the article
could be factors in choosing a particular style of writing. The editor may also recur to some techniques as
selecting the proper vocabulary, using the appropriate images, comparisons and oppositions, changing the
rhythm when necessary etc.
The available space for modification is nowhere more evident than in the work of news translators who
adapt source texts for a very different, geographically distant readership, having to take into account a series
of spatial (which include word length, position on a given page and location of that page in the newspaper
as a whole) and temporal constraints, as well as the availability or desirability of photographic images,
determined by the ideological position of the newspaper and by the context in which that newspaper is
produced. Let’s exemplify with three article titles: “Deadly new flu breaks out in Mexico, U.S.” (Reuters,
April 24, 2009), “Barack Obama ‘met man who died of suspected flu’ in Mexico” (The Telegraph, April 28,
2009), and “Romania confirms first swine flu case” (The Sofia Echo, May 27, 2009). The titles (and implicitly
the articles) mentioned illustrate what Dorin Popa calls “the affective proximity” (2002: 52), which means
that readers respond to an article depending on the geographical factors involved in the process. In the first
case, the Romanian audience, for instance, does not empathize too much with the Mexican or American
victims of swine flu as these two countries are geographically situated far away from Europe, across the
Atlantic, and the danger of getting infected with this disease seems less likely to happen here. This is
not however the case of the Mexican audience, directly affected by this issue, and suffering a great loss of
population, followed by the Americans, with a rising number of cases. In the second case the situation
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188
dramatically changes, the United States fearing for their president’s health, who visited Mexico City four
days after the outbreak and even got into contact with a man “who died of suspected flu”. Once again, the
Romanian audience may be interested in the subject, but cannot be too much affected by something which
does not represent an issue at a national level. Only the third case, reporting the first case of swine flu on
the Romanian territory, raises fear among the Romanians who finally experience what seemed a foreign and
remote news item, which did not concern them directly. If the first two article sections had previously been
relegated to inside pages, the third section was deemed to be more newsworthy and became front-page
news.
Last but not least, can we say that the media somehow manipulates the public opinion? Should we
acculturate a text or should we preserve the elements that enhance its foreigness? Are translators “artisans
of compromise” constrained by “the times in which they live”, and “the literary traditions they try to
reconcile”, being able “to construct the image of one literature for consumption by the readers of another”
thanks to their knowledge of two languages and of two literatures? (Lefevre, quoted in Dimitriu: 66-67). In
her book, The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies, Rodica Dimitriu presents some of Lefevre’s concepts that
may be applied to news translation as well. Lefevre thinks that, from an ideological perspective, translations
are no longer transparent reflections of their originals, but distorted products for which equivalence no
longer seems to work. For example, refractions are obvious in authoritative political systems – the Nazi
period in Germany, former communist countries – and less obvious in democratic societies – Western
countries – “where ideology functions under more covert forms” (Dimitriu, 2006: 67). Articles about
feminism, abortion, adultery are sensible issues in the Islamic world, for example, where journalists may
recur to manipulation and reorganisation of content due to their religious, social and ideological norms.
Besides the translator himself/herself, the news interpreter also plays an important role in the process
of news translation, a role perhaps neglected and not debated sufficiently, although (s)he is part of the
place-bound local resources, his (her) task consisting of different local services, including drivers and
other media assistants needed by global journalists. Often exposed to danger, news interpreters are vital
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189
mediators in the cultural transfer, making possible the access of the global news organizations to their
countries’ otherwise unreachable reality.
What a pertinent criticism should do is to move towards a greater understanding and awareness of how
intercultural news material is created and transposed, and of how the foreign is domesticated in order to
provide a clear, concise and totally comprehensive message for all kinds of (target) cultural communities.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my coordinator, PhD Prof. Rodica Dimitriu, for her direction, assistance and constant
guidance, which have been invaluable.
This work was supported by the European Social Fund in Romania, under the responsibility of the
Managing Authority for the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013
[grant POSDRU/88/1.5/S/47646]
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(visited on 13/05/2009)
Bani, Sara, 2006. “An Analysis of Press Translation Process”, Proceedings of the Translation in Global News
Conference, University of Warwick (35–45)
BBC News, June 11, 2009. URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8094388.stm (visited on 15/06/2009)
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Bielsa, Esperança, 2005. Globalisation as Translation: An Approximation to the Key but Invisible Role of Translation
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Translating Political
Discourses in the European
Union
Diana IOSIF
The “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University,
Ias, i
PhD student, 1st year
h e European Union gradually developed into a complex entity, with representative bodies and
institutions, and plays nowadays a central role in our lives. Given its multinational character, it was
considered natural to find appropriate ways to express the new political, economic and socio-cultural
realities. Consequently, we witness the emergence of a new type of language called “Eurospeak”.
Obviously, there is a difference of opinions related to its use. This is confirmed by the compilation and
publication of several dictionaries and glossaries, such as IATE - The EU’s Multilingual Term Base, Europa
Glossary, Anne Ramsey’s Eurojargon: a dictionary of European Union acronyms, abbreviations and sobriquets,
Stephen Crampton’s Eurospeak Explained and Simon Coss’ E!Sharp Jargon Alert: Your Guide to Understanding
Eurospeak. Its very name carries negative connotations, being associated with what George Orwell called
“Newspeak” (Orwell, 1949: 10) to refer to language used deliberately obscurely in order to control thought.
In 2005, the British writer and philosopher Roger Scruton compares Eurospeak with Marxist Newspeak in
an article entitled “Enter Eurospeak. An Insidious Replacement for the Marxist Newspeak”: “For no sooner
had Marxist Newspeak evaporated than Eurospeak – the official language of the European Union – came in
place of it” (2005: 42).
Roger Goffin brings in a different perspective, arguing that a more appropriate term to describe “the
Community language” is “Eurolect”. In his opinion, criticism against Eurolect is not justified, given that the
particular construction of the European Union, characterised by multiculturalism and linguistic diversity,
calls for the use of this specialised language (Goffin, 1994: 636-642). Indeed, this may be considered
a convincing explanation for the necessity to use Eurolect. Still, although it was meant to bridge a
communication gap, it actually seems to have created one between European institutions and European
citizens. It is argued that, due to its restrictive nature, outsiders may encounter difficulties in understanding
it.
Eurospeak is reflected in EU institution texts drafted in all the official languages of Member States. Their
hybrid nature is discussed in Schäffner and Adab:
T
Diana Iosif
194
In the process of establishing political unity, linguistic expressions are leveled to a common,
(low) denominator. Eurotexts reflect a Eurojargon, i.e. a reduced vocabulary, meanings that tend
to be universal, reduced inventory of grammatical forms. (. . . ) EU texts (. . . ) function within the
Community within which they are created (e.g. for the staff, or for meetings of the respective
bodies). This means that there are clearly defined user needs. (1997: 327–8)
Given the large amount of texts to be translated and sometimes posted on the websites of the European
Union’s institutions, professional translators must have clear guidelines as to what the target text should be
like and what functions it needs to fulfill. The identification of the translation problems is obviously crucial,
taking into consideration that a wrong or inappropriate word choice in the context of politically sensitive
issues may lead to great misinterpretations.
Another aspect that requires insight is the function of Eurotexts: “The multinational EU institutions
as such are the target culture, hybrid texts are formative elements in creating a (truly) supranational
culture” (Schäffner and Adab, 1997: 327–8). The premise would thus be that the communicative functions
of texts are limited and that they are designed for internal use. However, since our concern here is the
translation of speeches delivered by Romanian MEPs and published on the website of the European
Parliament, we may argue that the situation is different, as they are made public once posted on the website.
The description of the translation activity implications in this paper is made in the light of contemporary
directions in Translation Studies. First, we contend that the utility of the functionalist approach is undoubtful.
Katharina Reiss, Hans J. Vermeer, Justa Holz-Mänttäri and Christiane Nord are the main contributors to
this translation theory. Katharina Reiss provides a certain background for the appearance of Skopostheorie,
while Hans Vermeer puts forward principles of the Skopostheorie and makes it “the foundation for a general
theory of translation able to embrace theories dealing with specific languages and cultures” (Vermeer,
quoted in Nord, 1997: 12). Christiane Nord (1997) makes a valuable contribution to the further development
and application of the theory. According to the functionalist approach, translation is not a mere transcoding
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195
of words from one language into another. The translator should be able to determine the intended text
function, to identify the target-text addressees and compare cultural phenomena. As Christina Schäffner
states, “‘functionalist approach’ is a kind of cover term for the research of scholars who argue that the
purpose of the target text (TT) is the most important criterion in any translation” (Schaffner, 2002: 78).
Secondly, in our discussion of translation difficulties, of strategies chosen by translators and of the
motivation of their use within the parameters of a specific task, context and situation, we resort to Andrew
Chesterman’s classification of translation strategies (Cf. Chesterman, 1997: 92–112).
And thirdly, as our concern here is the translation of EU political discourse, we stress the importance
of functionally-oriented discourse analysis and of critical reflection. An important contribution in the
fields of Political Discourse Analysis and Translations Studies has been made by Christina Schäffner (2004),
who argues that political aims call for a strategy in using political concepts and key-words in a discourse.
Consequently, a necessary stage in the translation process is the critical reflection on the strategic use of
key-words, as it may influence the translator’s choice of strategies.
Another interesting approach to discourse from the linguistic perspective of translation is put forward by
Basil Hatim and Ian Mason in Discourse and the Translator (1990). Presenting Discourse Analysis in accordance
with Halliday and Hassan’s ideas, with Searle’s Speech Acts Theory and with Grice’s Cooperative Principle,
the authors rightly note that text interpretation is a crucial stage in the translation process. As each text
comprises a set of rhetorical purposes tightly related to the context, the translator should not only spot the
predominant rhetorical purpose, but also other secondary functions because “the text official function can
be manipulated” (Hatim; Mason, 1990: 34).
Therefore, in our paper, translation will be approached from a functionalist perspective, taking into
account the complex interplay of sociolinguistic, pragmatic and cultural factors involved in the process. Our
analysis is based on relevant passages from the translations of four plenary speeches delivered by Romanian
MEPs. Mention must be also made of the fact that we have not operated a distinction between the terms
‘discourse’, ‘text’, and ‘speech’, which will be used interchangeably in this paper.
Diana Iosif
196
One first observation is that TTs follow closely the layout of the original texts. For instance, although
conventionally any speech opening is followed by a new paragraph, no changes occur in the translations:
ST: Domnule Preşedinte, stimaţi colegi, dezvoltarea pieţei interne (. . . ) (Creţu)
TT: Mr. President, dear colleagues, the development of the single market (. . . )
The preservation of the exact layout may indicate that translators are rather constrained by EU requirements
for standardisation and uniformity. It is well known that EU legal texts require special attention as there has
to be a match between articles, paragraphs, sentences, so that precise correspondence between documents is
ensured. As for these EU political texts the so-called “full-stop rule”, which requires “an equal number of
full stops in source texts and translations” (Trosborg, 1997: 152), does not necessarily apply, translators take
the liberty to merge or split sentences.
Since the primary mode of transmission of these speeches is oral delivery, this aspect has an influence
on the structure and style. Consequently, in some cases, speakers express themselves in short sentences, but
translators may choose not to preserve this textual feature in the TT:
ST: Această neomogenitate poate fi considerată un avantaj pentru anumite politici neoliberale.
Nu şi pentru toţi cetăţenii. (Creţu)
TT: This lack of homogeneity may be considered an advantage for certain neo-liberal policies,
but not for all citizens.
The decision to operate such unit shifts may be considered a proof that translators are aware of the TT’s
shift in function, namely to be published on the website and to be read.
A highly debated issue in Translation Studies is how to deal with implied information, which requires the
activation of background knowledge. Such instances are recurrent in political discourses, especially when
politicians approach sensitive issues. In a speech delivered in the European Parliament, MEP Gabriela Creţu,
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member of the Socialist Group, discusses a report on the internal market which suggests the following
actions: reducing burdens and placing the internal market policy in an international context. In her
comments, Gabriela Creţu does not explicitly reject the measures put forward by the rapporteur Jacques
Toubon, member of a different political group:
ST: Teoretic, noi susţinem strategia Lisabona (. . . ) (Creţu)
TT: Theoretically, we all support the Lisbon Strategy (. . . )
Still, a different point of view on the respective issue is revealed through the use of the term theoretically.
Moreover, the pronoun noi may have different referents: either the members of the European Parliament, or
the Socialist Group, since further reference is made by the speaker to her affiliation (as Socialists, we think that
(. . . )). By explicitating (we all), the translator infers that all the political groups in the European Parliament
support the Lisbon strategy.
A translator’s task is even more difficult if culture-bound terms are present in the text:
ST: În petiţia formulată cu ocazia demonstraţiei, mii de localnici secui au protestat împotriva
schimbării proporţiilor etnice în Ţara Secuilor (. . . ). În mod absurd, dl preşedinte Traian
Băsescu a acuzat secuii maghiari de epurare etnică. Paralel cu aceasta, (. . . ), foile volante ale
democraţilor instigau împotriva candidaţilor maghiari. (Tőkés)
TT: In the petition raised at the demonstration, thousands of local residents of the Szekély Land
region protested against the change in the ethnic proportions in the area (. . . ). President
Traian Băsescu has absurdly accused the Hungarians in this region of ethnic cleansing. At
the same time as this, (. . . ), the democrats’ flyers were inciting hatred against the Hungarian
candidates.
The translator explicitates the phrase localnici secui (local residents of the Szekély Land region), while also
operating a cohesion change by dropping the repetition of the region name and using instead the phrase
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198
in the area. In what follows, the translation of secuii maghiari by the Hungarians in this region provides the
TT reader with all the necessary information, since it is linked to the previous description of the ethnic
group. By contrast, there is no explanation of the term democraţi, when it could be specified that it refers to
members of the Romanian Democratic Liberal Party.
Therefore, explicitation is based on the assumption that target text readers do not share the same specific
background knowledge with source text readers. There are situations in which explaining an allusion or
a comment may be crucial to the understanding of the text. Still, in the case of EU political texts, such
instances are few due to space or time constraints:
ST: După alegerile din toamnă din România şi după formarea guvernului,(...) (Tőkés)
TT: After the autumn elections in Romania and the formation of the new government, (...)
In what follows, we find it necessary to discuss the issue of cohesion changes and whether translators of EU
political speeches operate such changes. As previously mentioned, according to Christina Schäffner (2004),
there is a correspondence between political aims and key-words in a discourse. This aspect is particularly
important as it may point out the existence of dominant lexical-semantic fields in the text. For example, the
Romanian MEP Daciana Octavia Sârbu, in a speech delivered and published on the EU website on February
18, 2009, discusses the EU’s external policy on children’s rights. The message the speaker wishes to get
across is that EU Member States should get involved in ensuring and observing the rights of children in all
developing countries. The manner the MEP structured her speech and the repeated use of certain terms
reveals the presence of two dominant lexical-semantic fields in the text: that of the future situation and of
the present state of affairs with regard to the EU external action in this issue:
ST: Este de datoria noastră, să ne asigurăm că noi suntem cei care construim un viitor mai bun,
nu doar pentru europeni, ci şi pentru cei din ţări în curs de dezvoltare. Copiii sunt cei
care reprezintă viitorul şi trebuie să ne asigurăm că drepturile lor sunt prezente şi respectate
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199
în ţări terţe care primesc finanţare europeană. Este prioritar ca în relaţiile cu [21B?]ări
terţe, Uniunea Europeană să se asigure că dreptul la educaţie şi accesul copiilor la servicii
medicale este asigurat. Este adevărat că traversăm o perioadă de criză financiară, dar nu
putem neglija faptul că la nivel mondial, la fiecare 3 secunde, un copil moare şi că, la fiecare
minut, o femeie îşi găseşte sfârşitul dând naştere. Având în vedere că jumătate din populaţia
mondială este reprezentată de copii, este necesar să considerăm că drepturile copiilor sunt
o prioritate a politicii de dezvoltare a Uniunii Europene. (Sârbu)
TT: It is our duty to ensure that we are the ones who build a better future, not only for Europeans,
but also for the developing countries. It is children who represent the future and we must
ensure that their rights are enforced and respected in third countries which receive European
funding. It is a matter of priority that in relations with third countries, the European Union
ensures that children’s rights to education and access to medical services are guaranteed. It
is true that we are going through a period of financial crisis, but we cannot overlook the fact
that somewhere in the world, a child dies every three seconds and every minute a woman
dies in childbirth. Given that children make up half of the world’s population, we must
consider that the rights of children are a priority in the European Union’s development
policy.
The two dominant lexical-semantic fields in this political speech and its translated version are:
a) ST:
TT:
b) ST:
TT:
Diana Iosif
construim, viitor, reprezintă viitorul, prioritar, prioritate, asigurăm
build, future, represent the future, matter of priority, priority, ensure
criză, moare, îşi găseşte sfârşitul
crisis, dies, dies
200
Since these fields are continuously linked in the text, certain repetitions may be motivated by the above
frames so that intra-textual cohesion is ensured. The speaker thus clearly pointed to the urgency to take
action in an attempt to attract support from all the political groups in the European Parliament. This entitles
us to argue that the preservation of repetitions in the translated version is highly motivated, as it is a means
to keep the rhetorical purpose of the ST in the TT. By contrast, translators of other texts opt for synonyms:
ST: Resping cu fermitate măsura luată de către guvernul italian de amprentare a populaţiei de
etnie rromă. Solicit Parlamentului European, Consiliului şi Comisiei Europene să adopte o
măsură clară de respingere a acestei măsuri cu caracter rasial şi să ceară anularea ei de către
guvernul italian. (Stolojan)
TT: I firmly reject the action that the Italian Government has taken, namely to fingerprint people
of Roma origin. I request the European Parliament, Council and the European Commission
to adopt a clear action to reject this measure of a racial nature and request its annulment by
the Italian Government.
The translator obviously chooses to avoid repeating the term measure in the TT. Still, even in this specific
situation, it can be argued that such an option may affect the cohesion of the political discourse if the
speaker’s intention was to stress a particular idea through repetition. Newmark claims that, since political
writings are likely to be “sacred”, translators cannot interfere with the text but “their aim may be as
transparent as a glass in the actual translation (. . . ) since one of their aims is to promote understanding
between nations” (Newmark, 1991: 161). Therefore, the translator should be aware that the political message
is in accord with the linguistic structure and that the rhetorical purpose of the ST should be preserved in the
TT. Consequently, we may argue that there are instances in which Political Discourse Analysis can reveal
the connection between linguistic choices and socio-political structures and processes.
Diana Iosif
201
We find it important to mention a recurring instance in two of the STs we analysed, namely that of using
commas in an inappropriate manner (e.g. between subject and predicate). Textual cohesion is restored in
the TTs as the translators made the right choice and dropped the commas:
ST: Costul inacţiunii (. . . ), devine tot mai vizibil. (Stolojan)
TT: The cost (. . . ) has become ever more obvious.
ST: Este de datoria noastră, să ne asigurăm (. . . ). (Sârbu)
TT: It is our duty to ensure (. . . ).
In the following example, the translator decided to preserve the same punctuation in the TT, disregarding
the fact that (s)he had two options: either drop the comma, or use two commas to isolate the phrase in
relations with third countries:
ST: Este prioritar ca în relaţiile cu ţări terţe, Uniunea Europeană (. . . ) (Sârbu)
TT: It is a matter of priority that in relations with third countries, the European (. . . )
This brings us to the issue of dealing with more or less obvious mistakes in a ST, which is discussed by
Christina Schäffner in “Strategies of Translating Political Texts” (1997). She argues that, from a functional
perspective, the question whether or not the translator is allowed to correct errors in the source text is but a
pseudo-problem as the target text is produced in order to fulfill a communicative function for target text
addressees. Accordingly, this functional aspect outweighs any loyalty to the source text. Newmark has a
similar opinion on this particular issue: “A translation has to be understood even if the original isn’t, or if
the original can only be guessed” (Newmark, quoted in Schäffner 1997: 135).
Besides (subjective) translation difficulties, related to a particular translator’s lack of socio-cultural
knowledge, it is also obvious that translation problems are, in their turn, not only of a purely lexical
Diana Iosif
202
character. In our analyses, we have tried to highlight that translators of EU political texts are constantly
aware of the importance to produce a functionally-oriented TT. Consequently, they do not hesitate, when
necessary, to operate changes (unit shifts, explicitations) in order to accommodate the shift in function from
the oral delivery of the speeches to the written statements, as the TTs are intended to be posted on the
website.
Another important aspect that we have touched upon in this paper is the manner in which translators
have dealt with implied information. As argued George Orwell, there are recurrent instances in political
speeches in which language is used obscurely. In the examples we have provided, it appears that translators
contended that some passages in the STs required disambiguation (such as the speeches of László Tőkés
and Gabriela Creţu), and decided to resort to explicitation (additions) in spite of the space constraints. This
proves that their decisions were informed by a preliminary critical reflection on the STs, and by a clear
identification of the TT addressees. On the other hand, our analysis of the translation of László Tőkés’
discourse (which contains several culture-bound terms) indicated that, whereas certain necessary cohesion
changes have been operated, the literal rendition of the term democra[21B?]i as democrats, probably due to
space constraints, may be confusing for the potential reader.
We have also found useful for our study Christina Schäffner’s considerations on the strategic use of
keywords as a reflection of the speaker’s political goals. Consequently, we have tried to highlight that the
translator of Daciana Octavia Sârbu’s political speech proved to be aware that the deliberate repetition of
key-terms may be considered a technique of persuasion, and rendered this particular aspect in the TTs,
thus managing to preserve the rhetorical purpose of the ST. As we have tried to demonstrate in this paper,
Political Discourse Analysis may indicate that certain omissions or repetitions in the STs were meant to
stress a particular aspect by the speaker, which points once again to the necessity of such an analysis in
producing functionally-appropriate TTs. Thus, the translator’s understanding of the political, cultural and
social context in which a political speech is produced and delivered is crucial to producing a meaningful
translation and the models of translation-oriented source text analyses suggested by Christiane Nord (1997)
Diana Iosif
203
and Christina Schäffner (1997) are intended to alert the translator to such factors of the ST.
In translating a political text, one should constantly keep cultural differences in mind. The translator may
have to take into account different options before deciding on the solution which appears most appropriate
in each specific case. Since political discourse is sometimes intended to be abstract or vague, it is for the
translator to decide whether it is necessary to provide explanations or whether the target-text reader will be
able to infer intended meanings. Still, we should not overlook the existence of constraints imposed by EU
requirements.
The translator should also be deeply immersed in the political realities and carefully examine that these
are mirrored even by the most insignificant layers of the textual level. As Christina Schäffner argues, a
more extensive study in the field of political discourse would result if concepts and methods of modern
Translation Studies and of Political Discourse Analysis are combined because, in the translation process,
there occur modern concepts and methods that involve socio-cultural and political practices, norms and
constraints relevant for the study of political discourse (Schaffner, 2004: 118). In translating a EU political
text there are several solutions and the translator will choose the one (s)he considers most suitable in
order to produce a text which is functionally appropriate and communicatively acceptable for the targeted
readership. Consequently, this is a decision-making process in the same way as political activity involves
making decisions.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Scholarship Project POSDRU/88/1.5/S/47646.
Diana Iosif
204
Source-texts and translations
Creţu, Gabriela, The Single Market Review (September 4, 2007) URL: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/
getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20070904+ITEM-003+DOC+XML+V0//EN (visited on 2009/04/
12)
Sârbu, Daciana Octavia, A special place for children in EU external action (February 18, 2009) URL: http://www.
europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20090218+ITEM-010+DOC+XML+V0
//EN (visited on 2009/03/02)
Stolojan, Theodor D., One-minute speech on matters of political importance (July 7, 2008) URL: http://www.euro
parl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=CRE&reference=20080707&secondRef=ITEM-018&language=EN
(visited on 2009/04/20)
Tőkés, László, One-minute speech on matters of political importance (February 18, 2009) URL: http://www.euro
parl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20090218+ITEM-021+DOC+XML+V0//
EN (visited on 2009/03/29)
References
Chesterman, Andrew, 1997. Memes of Translation, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Goffin, Roger, 1994. “L’eurolecte: oui, jargon communautaire: non,” Meta, Vol. 39, No. 4 (636–42)
Hatim, Basil; Mason, Ian, 1990. Discourse and the Translator. London: Longman
Newmark, Peter, 1991. About Translation, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
Orwell, George, 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Secker & Warburg
Nord, Christiane, 1997. Translating as a Purposeful Activity, Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing House
Schäffner, Christina; Adab, Beverly, 1995. “Translation as Intercultural Communication – Contact as
Conflict,” in Snell-Hornby, Jettmarova, Kaindl (325–39)
Diana Iosif
205
Schäffner, Christina, 1997. “Strategies to Translating Political Texts,” in Trosborg (119–43)
Schäffner, Christina, 2004. “Political Discourse Analysis from the point of view of Translation Studies,”
Journal of Language and Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1 (117–50)
Scruton, Roger, 2005. “Enter Eurospeak. An Insidious Replacement for the Marxist Newspeak,” National
Review, Vol. 57, June 20 (41–3)
Trosborg, Anna, 1997. Rhetorical Strategies in Legal Language. Discourse Analysis of Statutes and Contracts,
Tübingen: Gunter Narr
Diana Iosif
206
Cyberwordplay
S, erban D. IONESCU
University of Bucharest
MA student, 1st year
It’s all about the wordplay
The wonderful thing it does
Because, because
I am the wizard of ooh’s and ah’s and fa-la-la’s
Yeah The Mr. A to Z
They say I’m all about the wordplay
Well I built a bridge across the stream of consciousness
That always seems to be a flowin’
But I don’t know which way my brain is goin’
h i s paper means to be a foray into the intricacies of the linguistic, cultural and memetic constructions
originated by the Internet Culture and currently turned to viral propagation. To reach that goal, we
need to look into the underpinnings of the concept of cultural identity and examine the validity of
self-deterministic, deliberately constructed cultural elements used to strengthen and flaunt a perceived
belonging to a group.
Memes1 are units of transmitted cultural information spreading in a viral manner. Coined by Richard
Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, the term refers to ideas, behaviors and styles that spread from
one man to another within a given culture. Examples of such memes given by Dawkins include highly
popular catchphrases, songs and fashion.
Cultures are differentiated via shared systems of values and specific markers denoting the individuals
as members of a particular community or another. Historically, these markers can be said to have developed
T
1
http://input-image.com/A-Guide-To-Internet-Memes.html
S, erban D. Ionescu
208
naturally, unconsciously, in an evolutionary process factoring in ingenuity, immovable natural circumstance
and regional specifics.
In our globalized, postmodern world, there can be little talk of originality, and interconnectedness has
torn down many of the walls and boundaries between states and cultures. The evolution of a culture in
this connected world can no longer be considered spontaneous or unrelated to existing ones. As a result,
many cultural constructions developed today have become aware of their roots in pre-existing cultures,
acknowledged their influences, and flaunt this connection while spreading their various messages.
In this manner, individuals no longer follow values and belief systems inculcated in them at birth, but
rather choose a belief system they find appropriate, and mix and match snippets of various cultures to
fashion one customized to their inclinations. No longer are we slaves to the inertia of our societies. Instead
of accepting the default values one has forced unto oneself by birth, social status, race, sex, gender, and
political orientation, one chooses and embellishes one’s culture, enhancing it by borrowing from many
sources.
Naturally, even in a postmodern context, this was difficult to achieve, due to parameters hard to ignore.
And then came the dawn of virtual spaces, such as the Internet, wherein, by virtue of the only means of
direct communication being dialogically restricted to a text-only medium, one’s other characteristics were
unavailable, and, subsequently, were rendered irrelevant.
This new leveling of the playing field thus allowed users to tune their virtual personas to their liking,
and have as many aliases and avatars as they wished. Naturally, this led to a wide variety of colorful
personalities, since we can no longer speak of a person, but rather a character concept. These colorful
character concepts come into being due to a shift in personality viewed as a collage of acquired experiences
from a variety of sources rather than a monolithical identity, and the aforementioned customization and
embellishment. Thus, in a way, Internet-mediated social interaction becomes a form of roleplay, at times a
more powerful form than the one present in face-to-face conversation. While in face-to-face conversation
meaning can be transmitted through posturing, gestures, variations in tone, pitch, and volume, in online
S, erban D. Ionescu
209
interaction most communication is through text, with minimal non-lexical components. As a result, all
non-lexical content that must be transmitted needs to find new means of getting across.
Some non-essential content is simply ignored. For example, people online have only an avatar picture to
talk to (unless they are video-chatting) and that avatar picture may or may not represent the person at the
other end. It might be them, or someone else, or a heavily edited picture of them, or just an abstraction
with no relation to the person whatsoever. Little to no indication is provided of the speaker’s ethnicity, race,
age or aesthetic qualities. One might be talking to the prom queen or the class geek, a male or a female, an
African-American, Caucasian or Asian.
The main idea is that while online, one is hidden behind a wall of anonymity. This anonymity is
generated naturally from the text-only format of Internet communication and general discourse. As a result,
users are deprived of all other verbal and non-verbal cues, be they pragmatic or simply physical. One can
only guess at the veracity of affirmations and can merely guess at the true identity of the person at the other
end. Partially, this failure to communicate is borne of the intrinsic limitations of the medium, as previously
mentioned; however, it is also triggered by the exploitation of the same limitations in order to facilitate the
creation of online identities that differ by design from those in real life. Some become others to get a second
chance at life, others for mischief, and some just to keep others guessing.
While this wall of unverifiable data creates a veritable protective cocoon of informational No Man’s
Land, hiding the user from scrutiny, it can also serve as a delivery mechanism for a sizable amount of false
and/or irrelevant data.
As a result, the mere exchange of online information has turned into a cat-and-mouse game of intelligence
vs. counterintelligence not unlike that between Allied and Axis Secret Services in WWII.
Also, the netizens have become very creative with their identities and the cultural content they generate
and disseminate, and constructs have started to take on a life of their own by spreading all over the Web
like a virus, lightning fast.
S, erban D. Ionescu
210
Still, the main characteristic of this cultural content generation mechanism is its experimental and
random nature. While after a meme, language or icon is established, people adopt them by choice, the
actual development process of the cultural item is utterly random.
The major categories of Internet-based or Internet-generated such cultural items would be languages,
particular marking, viral imaging/text, and parody religions.
One of the most efficient ways of creating a unifying identitary symbol to bind a community and declare
one’s belonging to it would be the development of a language particular to said community, in a manner
not unlike nationalistic impulses of pertaining to an imagined community. But the languages formed by
netizens, instead of starting fresh with their own lexicon and grammar, simply take English and modify
it into a sort of variant-writing dialect. Also, there is added content to these variant-languages by their
agendas.
For example, techspeak would be the heavily jargon-laden lingo of system administrators, coders and
developers, the men behind the masks and strings, oiling the gears of the machine. Among its major
characteristics would be: morphological variation, by which speakers would take a root and utilize a
suffix/prefix equivalent to, but not associated with its normal set (e.g. the suffixes -ness and -itude added
to the root wrong to form wrongness and wrongitude)2 or even use a suffix associated with a certain word
class/grammatical category with another (e.g. winnage, lossage, or cruftitude3 ); grammatical recategorisation
(e.g. all nouns can be verbed); combining standard language with commands and parameters specific to a
2 Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending
a standard rule to non-uniform cases (or vice versa). For example, because porous → porosity and generous → generosity,
hackers happily generalize: mysterious → mysteriosity; ferrous → ferrosity; obvious → obviosity; dubious → dubiosity
(http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/overgeneralization.html).
3 Another class of common construction uses the suffix -itude to abstract a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usage arises especially in cases where mainstream English would perform the same abstraction through -iness or –ingness. Thus: win
→ winnitude; loss → lossitude; cruft → cruftitude; lame → lameitude (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/overgeneralization.html)
S, erban D. Ionescu
211
programming language, such as the use of the suffix –p to denote a question (e.g. Split-p soup? or Bye-p?) or
merely imbuing the use of uppercase over lowercase with significance (e.g. the CAPS LOCK = SCREAMING
convention4 ).
Then there is geekspeak, basically a more mundane version of the above, keeping some of its writing
conventions, grammatical peculiarities and terms, but reducing the incidence of strictly specialist-only
understandable references and terms. A version of this has permeated most communications on the Web to
the point where LOLs, CAPS-SHOUTING, ROFLMAO and verbing have become the norm even for people
with minimal or no exposure to the more hardcore geek community from which they originate.
Lolspeak is also an Internet forum-based lingo, ironically created with intended misspellings and
grammatical simplifications to better serve a humorous context. It uses common abbreviations such as LOL
(“laughing out loud”) or ROFL (“rolling on floor laughing”).
1337speak would be the most divergent of the dialects, purposefully using letter-number substitutions
to intimidate, obscure and discombobulate5 . The lingo is most often associated either with immature claims to
supremacy in gaming, or software of an arguably legal origin (e.g. U r t3h ub3r1337 h4xx0r). The posturing
it usually accompanies has led to its also being used ironically by some to construct sarcasm.
Particular stylings would include various descendants of the more widespread terms, expanding them:
from LOL to LOLerskates (soundalike juxtaposition of LOL and rollerskates) and ROFL to ROFLcopter,
distinctions between newbs and n00bs (the latter is a 1337 variant, given a pejorative connotation by
association), hacker (positive) > cracker (pejorative) > w4r3z d00d (highly pejorative), RTFM (Read the F...ing
Manual) prompts given to people asking questions with obvious answers, O RLY snarky comebacks, some
affixed to pictures of owls, tl;dr (too long, did not read, sometimes represented by a teal deer, by soundalike
4
Due to the limitations of a text-only medium, some conventions must be established to convey content that would be
otherwise transmitted via tone, speech volume or body language. One of these is that typing in all caps is considered shouting.
5 Usually, the substitution is at the level of vowels, such as: A-4; E-3; I-1; O-0 or consonants: T-7; S-5; Z-2. Sometimes words
are converted into other spelling variants, exploiting English phonetic flexibility: hacker- haxxor-h4xx0r; elite[‘li:t]-leet-1337.
S, erban D. Ionescu
212
derivation), pr0n (variant of porn permutated and alphanumerically shifted for specificity6 ), coredumping
(the cyberisation of human actions, as a counter force to the antropomorphisation7 ), etc.
Viral videos and memes are very popular creations of fiction and/or reality which, by their memetic
nature, come to the attention of a great audience and by making use of subtle techniques and manipulation,
boost their popularity and the number of people willing to spread them.
Memes are so widespread as a phenomenon on the Web that it is actually hard to find a person who has
not experienced it or, at least, who has not become aware of its existence. Also, their ability to propagate
seems to have no relationship and/or be reversely proportionate to their amount of actual (quality) content.
Viral videos are clips achieving notoriety by their humor, their catchiness, or merely by having a large
enough community linking people to them.
Lolcats would be an example of a combined meme involving a humorous picture of a cat in an odd,
hilarious or potentially anthropomorphic posture with an added caption, usually in lolspeak (supposed to
convey an innocently broken English usage typical of cats, who cannot or will not be bothered to learn it
properly) which may or may not be or become a meme after all (e.g. I can haz cheezburger?; randomcat is
random; this is relevant to my interests).
Typical examples of memes would include the ninja vs. pirate debate, trying to ascertain which of the two
professions would be more stealthy or lethal, or Chuck Norris facts, a list of highly exaggerated “facts” about
the actor trying to promote an ideal of masculinity, strength and vigor exacerbated to ridiculous levels, or
the practice of rickrolling, whereby a person seeking a certain audiovisual material would be tricked, via trip
links, into watching a part or all of Rick Astely’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”.
Other examples of memes would be catchphrases from various video games or films, particularly striking
ones (either by their potential for deeper meaning, or by their complete lack thereof.)
6
7
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/pr0n.html
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/anthropomorphization.html; http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/core-dump.html
S, erban D. Ionescu
213
Among the most famous examples of film catchphrases reaching a memetic status would be many lines
by Arnold Schwarzenegger, probably the most famous being “I'll be back”, or the mistranslation and general
broken English of the phrase “All your base are belong to us!!”/”They set us up the bomb!!”(from the 1991 game
Zero Wing), which has come to be associated with relentless pwnage and destruction so inevitable it boggles
the mind, and, more recently, the highly viral phrase “The cake is a lie” in the fourth-wall probing game
Portal which has come to embody the ultimate McGuffin.
Also, there are parody religions that have been developed on the Internet, and by Internet communities,
as a means of deploring the limitations of existing religions and certain incongruities in their world view.
Most of these parodic religions are made as jokes on Theistic/ Intelligent Design creationist theories being
taught alongside evolution in schools. Among them are the lolspeak/lolcat equivalents, ceiling cat is
God and basement cat is Satan, battling fiercely and eternally (there is even a translation of the Bible to
Lolspeak), or the confusing-by-definition discordianism, a worship centered around the greek goddess
Eris but stretched to include disclaimers and such, including typical commercial disclaimers such as “Your
mileage may vary” “Batteries not included” “Actual product unrelated to commercial” and being centered around
commandments such as “do not believe anything you read”. Also, as a direct snipe at Intelligent Design, there
are a couple of religions mocking the potential for an Intelligent creator to be represented by anything, with
such alternative images provided as, The Flying Spaghetti Monster (central figure of Pastafarianism) and
the Invisible Pink Unicorn, all constructed around a defining absurdity, such as the IPU's ability to be pink
and invisible simultaneously.
In conclusion, the cultural products of fragmented, heterogeneous Internet communities are as varied as
they are playful. They construct a form of wordplay as free from semantic constraints as that of Lewis Carroll's
Alice in Wonderland. By adoption into a common cultural baggage, they coalesce into a base for a more unified
image of the Web, driven by sharing and rapid propagation of intriguing, humorous or just plain shocking
snippets of information. Still, this conceptual experimentation may potentially provide our society with either
greater insight or a more flexible mindset allowing us to conceptualize a fresh perspective of the world.
S, erban D. Ionescu
214
Job Ads on Romanian Job
Websites:
A Case of Abnormal
Specialized Discourse
Paul MOVILEANU
Babes, -Bolyai University
PhD Student, 1st year
1 Introduction
h i s article looks at three Romanian job websites, www.ejobs.ro, www.bestjobs.ro, www.myjob.ro, and
attempts to provide an analysis of some of the job advertisements (called job ads from now on)
found on these websites. Although mostly done with linguistic tools, the analysis will focus on
pragmatic, contextual, and socio-cultural elements. The main point of the article is that many job ads on
these three websites, the three main general job websites on the Romanian market, present symptoms of a
linguistic disease which can be called abnormal specialized discourse and which is characterized by the use of
unclear, redundant, or even contextually meaningless specialized terms in English. In relation to the topic
of this conference, Words and Worlds of Difference, this article advances the idea that abnormal specialized
discourse does not just appear randomly, but that, like any other disease, has a specific cause which, in
this case, is connected to a phenomenon that bears a famous name – linguistic globalization. In this respect,
we follow Alina Maria Zaharia and Radu Lolescu who, in an article on “Globalization of English as a
Corporate Language”, state that “the world’s language situation is undergoing some significant changes”
(2009: abs.) and that “linguistic globalization is the result of a deliberate linguistic attitude” (2009: abs.). For
us, linguistic globalization is the process whereby words are used to level worlds.
This article was born out of personal experience. Having to look for a job for a certain period of time, I
regularly accessed these three websites and read the job ads hoping to find the perfect job. I didn’t find the
perfect job, but what I found instead were some job ads that were anything but perfect. Given that the focus
of my studies is, amongst others, specialized discourse and specialized translation, I realized that these
websites provide the researcher with enough material for an article.
T
Paul Movileanu
216
2 Specialized Discourse – The Theory
Before proceeding with the analysis of job ads, some things must be said about specialized discourse in
order to get a better view of the linguistic and cultural context of job ads.
In an article entitled “Translation at the Millennium: Prospects for The Evolution of a Profession”, the
American language scholar Gregory Shreve talks about the “explosion of terminology and specialized
linguistic usage” (2000: 4) in recent times, in connection to which he mentions that “the growth of science
and technology introduce new specialized words, phrases, and usages into the linguistic stock of the society”
(2000: 4). He also speaks of a “burgeoning variety of textual forms” (Shreve, 2000: 4). What we have today
is thus an ever increasing variety of oral and written texts in which there is an increasing proportion of
specialized language, the basis of which is terminology. Online job ads are certainly part of these new
textual forms that are based on specialized terminology. What really interests us here is what Shreve
describes as the introduction of “new specialized words, phrases, and usages into the linguistic stock of the
society” by science and technology growth. This is the exact description of the phenomenon that, arguably,
can be dangerous for language and society at large and which, through words, can lead to a systematic
leveling of worlds.
It must be stressed, however, that this article does not make a point against specialization and specialized
discourse as such, but only against that usage of specialized discourse that is found where it does not belong
and which is practiced by people who obviously do not have the means to practice it. Different degrees
of specialization can be found in discourse from the very start of human society and we know of various
specialized texts, such as documents required “in the practical demands of trade, military negotiations, and
diplomacy” (Shreve, 2000: 2) that go well back into history. In other words, the main idea of this study is
that we can differentiate between normal specialized discourse and abnormal specialized discourse, the
latter of which is, according to this article and in this particular instance, linked to the phenomenon of
globalization.
Paul Movileanu
217
3 Job Websites – A General View
When a Romanian aged between 15 and 50 starts the search for a job, unless he knows somebody in
the right place, he will most likely use the services of specialized websites where demand and offer of
work meet – what I shall call job websites – the three main websites being www.ejobs.ro, www.bestjobs.ro,
www.myjob.ro. With the economic situation being what it is, these websites draw a lot of traffic from
companies that are hiring and from the many Romanians that are looking for a job. Because of their
importance, one would expect a significant degree of control and review over what gets posted on these
websites, but this is not the case: anybody can post almost anything on these websites, as long as it looks
and sounds like a job ad.
How should a job ad look like then? Given that the purpose of a job ad is mainly to describe what a job
entails, what is required from candidates and what a company has to offer to its potential employees, job
ads make up a text genre that is mostly descriptive. However, job ads are also designed to persuade users to
apply for the respective positions, so they also have a strong persuasive nuance in their discursive structure.
As “specific classes of texts characteristic of a given scientific community or professional group” (Alcaraz
and Hughes, quoted in Pym), job ads have certain distinctive features that are “wholly function-specific and
conventional in nature” (Alcaraz and Hughes, quoted in Pym). The first thing one would expect from a job
ad is for it to be written in the language of the targeted audience, so, in our case, Romanian. These three
websites are made by Romanians, are designed for Romanians and most jobs are in Romania, hence the
expectation to have the ads written in Romanian. Contrary to this expectation, a large number of ads on
these websites are written in English.
The normal length of a job ad varies slightly, depending on which part of the macrostructure is
emphasized. A job ad is usually structured into four main parts: company description, job description/responsibilities, requirements, and benefits. This classic structure can however be molded into various
forms according to the advertiser’s particular needs.
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Given its purpose, a job ad should be concise, clear, and to the point. This is a problem for many
advertisers, who seem to prefer redundancy, fuzziness, and over-terminologization in their ads, a state
of things that is called abnormal specialized discourse in this article and which can be accounted for by two
categories of reasons: reasons having to do with plain ignorance and lack of basic knowledge, and reasons
dealing with compliance with the globalizing trend. Although the two categories of reasons often mingle
and may be hard to differentiate, in this article we shall try to focus on the second category of reasons.
Another important feature of the typical job ad is its list-shaped format. The responsibilities and
requirements sections are mainly given out as lists, which raises again the question of clarity: in order to be
effective, lists should be symmetrical, to the point, neither too short nor two long. Drawing up effective
lists requires a significant ability to synthesize and distinguish between what is important and what is not.
Some advertisers clearly lack these abilities, as they make up lists which are hard to read, fuzzy, and full of
unnecessary jargon.
On the lexical side, it is obvious that, as in any other functional genre, there have to be some recurrent
lexical items in job ads. These are mostly specialized terms from the fields of human resources and
marketing, together with terms belonging to the job domain. There is a threshold however, beyond which
specialization becomes unnatural and hinders effective communication, which happens quite often in some
of the ads.
4 Job Advertisements – Analysis
The average user who first accesses one of these job websites is struck by two things: the multitude of
ads written in English and the heavy terminological jargon that some of them employ. Anglicization and
specialization go hand in hand. Here are some examples of ad titles: Lead Messaging Software Engineer
(www.ejobs.ro), Subject Matter Expert Order Management (www.ejobs.ro), Area Sales Manager (www.ejobs.ro),
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MCU Senior Field Application Engineer (www.ejobs.ro), Lead SDET for RAD Studio (www.ejobs.ro), General
Advice Agent for Sykes (www.ejobs.ro), Consultant in Business Process Automatization (www.bestjobs.ro), (Junior)
SAP FI/CO (www.bestjobs.ro), SENIOR C#/Windows Programmer .NET 3.5 with WPF/WCF (www.bestjobs.ro),
Key Account Manager (www.bestjobs.ro), Relationship Manager Affluent (www.bestjobs.ro), Qualified Accountants with Fluent Portuguese (www.myjob.ro), Call Center Agent (www.myjob.ro), Senior Credit & Collection
Analyst (www.myjob.ro), Sales Support - Analog & Digital (FAE) Field Application Engineer (www.myjob.ro),
Merchandiser (www.myjob.ro). There are many other examples of this kind on these websites.
There are several things to be noted here. First, a rhetorical question: given the fact that these jobs are
in Romania and generally addressed to Romanians, why are they not written in Romanian, as it would
seem logical?! We do not pretend to be as protective of Romanian as the French are of French, so we do not
go as far as requiring that words like software, windows, manager be calqued into Romanian, but there is
obviously a problem when we say software engineer instead of inginer software or area sales manager instead of
director/manager zonal de vânzări or merchandiser instead of responsabil de marfă or call center agent instead of
agent centru telefoane. The fact that these ads are written directly in English is indicative of the degree of
indoctrination that many of the people responsible for these ads have suffered more or less consciously.
Notwithstanding the social and cultural consequences of this powerful wave of Anglicization, the advertisers
are first and foremost doing a big disservice to themselves, because, as unbelievable as it may seem to some,
speaking English is not necessarily a proof of intelligence. There are still clever people on the work market
who do not speak English and who are thus left out by these ads. And then there are the socio-cultural
consequences: these terms and usages are carried further by users, especially young people for whom using
an English word instead of a perfectly fine Romanian word is already an act of being cool and trendy, a
statement in itself, and are then gradually incorporated into the mainstream. We already have no reaction
when we hear words like job, trend, whatever, teacher being used in common Romanian conversations when
perfect Romanian equivalents are available. If this trend continues and nothing is done to prevent it, it
should come as no shock if in the future we shall all be speaking Romglish. Some may counter by saying
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that borrowing words from another language has always been a significant linguistic phenomenon which is
part of the continuous process of language change. This is true, but the point being is that the scope of the
present shift is much greater than any other previous phenomena of this kind. Another point to make is
the fact that previous linguistic borrowings had a logic, as they were done to fill linguistic gaps, which, as
showed before, is often times not the case here. People just seem to prefer using a foreign language over
their native language and they do so because they are more or less overtly pushed into doing so by the
globalizing trend.
Anglicization functions as a spearhead of linguistic globalization. By using the word job instead of
serviciu, slujbă, poziţie, lucru, Romanian reality is definitely altered and we say this based on what Walter
Benjamin, a famous language philosopher, said about different languages and their different modes of
intention in his essay “The Task of the Translator”. He used the Franco-German couple pain-Brot, to which
we shall substitute the Anglo-Romanian couple job-serviciu, to make the following statement: “they intend
the same object, but the modes of this intention are not the same” (Benjamin, 1992: 75). To us, this is akin to
saying that the use of an English word like job modifies the way we speak and think as Romanians, and
thus modifies our view of reality. When we use job instead of serviciu we lose something of what makes us
Romanians and absorb something foreign, Anglo-Saxon in this instance. A serviciu is or, at least, was much
more to a Romanian than what a job is to an American. To have a serviciu is to have a specific hierarchical
position in society and to be proud of it, to act as a member of a community, to serve and collaborate.
The etymology of the word supports this interpretation. All these connotations are weaker if not absent
at all from the semantic sphere of job. A job is just a job or a specific task undertaken to earn money. The
typical Anglo-Saxon utilitarian view of life is present here as well. It is true, however, that the semantics
of serviciu has been rapidly changing under the influence of the English job, which is precisely our point:
words change meanings, which, in turn, change our world.
Another thing that should be noted as striking about the job ad titles mentioned above is their extreme
specialization. Some are hilarious: Relationship Manager Affluent, if the adjective affluent is moved to a more
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natural initial position, literally translates into Romanian as Bogatul director de relaţii. Given that this position
is advertised by a bank, we might think that the complicated personal relationships of the bank’s personnel
need to be managed by someone who, by the nature of the job, is a very rich person. The title of this position
is nothing but hilarious until you take the pains of doing some research and find out that Affluent is a term
used by this bank for a special category of well-off clients and that the Relationship Manager is none other but
a combination of customer relations, public relations and sales experts. Some ad titles are close to ridiculous:
to imagine that someone other than who has already been employed as a Lead SDET for RAD Studio or as
a SAP FI/CO has a hint about what these jobs entail is sheer madness. It is hard to believe that there are
many Romanians who have held one of the above positions or who at least know what these jobs entail,
and so, if the target audience of these ads is so restricted, they are clearly out of place. If meant for experts,
these ads belong on a website addressed to experts. If meant for the general public, they should be written
accordingly. Something is just not right about them. First of all, there is the continuous trend to come up
with more and more abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms, a trend subordinated to the more general
trends of uniformization and standardization. If meant for a general audience, SDET should be explicitated
as Software Development Environment Throughput, RAD as Rapid Application Development, SAP FI/CO as SAP
Financial and Accounting Modules. But even if they are explicitated, these titles are too specialized and too
narrow in scope and thus do not reach an important goal of any ad, which is to be seen or read or heard by
as many competent people as possible. It would make more sense to change SAP FI/CO into Expert in
SAP modules and to specify in the requirements section of the ad that the company is specifically looking
for an expert in the Financial and Accounting Modules. Thus more people would be interested in the ad
and the company could attract more potential candidates. But again, the people responsible for these ads
are drafting them in this manner because they feel they need to bedazzle their audiences with their fancy
acronyms and specialized terms and because they feel this is the trend.
This leads us to a final question: are all these specialized terms really necessary? To answer this, we shall
take a look at the body of some of these ads and try to identify instances of abnormal specialized discourse.
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Example 1
The ad for General Advice Agent for Sykes begins with a typical marketing introduction where the company
boasts its great products and services:
MANPOWER ROMANIA is looking for you to become one of the employees of the global
leader in providing outsourced customer management solutions and services, SYKES.
For more than 70 years, Sykes’s client, Samsung has been at the forefront of innovation. Their
discoveries, inventions and breakthrough products have helped shape the history of the digital
revolution.
The SYKES-Samsung Partnership Team feels that our strength lies in the ideas of our people,
who are innovators in serving our Customers’ best interests with high Quality Standards. Our
people are an asset we take stock in.
The SYKES-Samsung Partnership Team takes an active role in the development of our team
members, helping us retain the most talented employees. Because we continue to grow, we’re
always looking for innovative people, all over the world. (www.ejobs.ro)
This whole passage may be appropriate in a company brochure, in a presentation, or in a commercial
advertisement, but it does not belong in a job ad mainly for reasons of quantity. On the other hand, the
typical marketing discourse (so normal for linguistic globalization) should be noted. Buzzwords like global
leader, solutions, innovation, breakthrough products, digital revolution, our strength lies in the ideas of our people, our
people are an asset, development, are clear marketing clichés with a distinct globalistic sound attached to them.
This is probably the reason why the author of this ad, in spite of the conventions for writing job ads, chose
to introduce this lengthy, stereotyped passage in his ad. It functions as a lure. Again, we have an example
of words used not for their actual meaning; the author of this ad chose to use these words in this passage
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because everybody else is doing so or is beginning to do so. He is immersing himself into the linguistic
trend. Language changes, meaning changes, reality has to change too.
Going further with the analysis of this ad, we find other instances of stereotyped specialized discourse in
the responsibilities section: “Provide a professional and efficient customer service function for client projects
in line with client contractual agreements; Respond to all customers enquires within given timescales, efficiently and effectively; Supply information in order to provide solutions for customers”. This management
lingo has a name in linguistics or perhaps more: redundancy, logorrhea. Are the adjectives professional
and efficient really necessary here? Do they really add meaning to the sentence? Does anyone expect that
there is a company who does not require their employees to provide a professional and efficient service to
their clients? The answer to all these question is, definitely, no. The same thing with the adverbial phrase
within given timescales and the manner adverbs efficiently and effectively: their use hardly brings anything
new to the meaning of the sentence. It goes without saying that, when you accept to do something in
an organized environment, you have to do it within some preset parameters of time and efficiency. They
are used because this is how we are taught to speak in management and marketing schools. The last
“responsibility” mentioned in this example is in itself nonsense. A customer turns to a company exactly
when he has a problem (or need) which the company is supposed to solve. Saying that an employee must
supply information in order to provide solutions for customers is like saying that birds fly. All these unclear,
redundant, and even nonsensical usages occur in this context because this is the way the author of this ad
was trained to think and speak, because these usages occur in most instances in similar contexts, because
this is the trend.
Example 2
Let us now go on to another ad which demands applications for the position of Subject Matter Expert Order
Management. The title of the position is, again, both hilarious and ridiculous. It is hilarious in that it crams
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in the tight space of one single noun phrase several notions which seem unrelated: subject matter, expert,
order, management. It is as if the ad’s author, uncertain of which notions are more important for this position,
decided to throw them all in the position title to make sure everybody understands what he wants. This
title is also ridiculous because it is not a job title in the first place. The head noun of the noun phrase – the
noun management – is a name for a knowledge domain and not for a position. A person cannot work as a
management, but only as a manager. Had the position title been Subject Matter Expert Order Manager or, at
least, Subject Matter Expert in Order Management, this ad might begin to be taken seriously. But again, we
can see right from the title of this ad how people who have no idea what they are talking about are hiding
their ignorance under the veil of fancy terms – specialized discourse is used to cover up and distort reality.
The body of the ad begins with a lengthy company presentation which, as said before, does not make
much sense in this text genre in this context. The author, a worthy global citizen, uses Romglish: the three
main ad sections are entitled Descrierea firmei, Descrierea postului, Cerinţe, which, for those who don’t know,
is Romanian. The content of these sections is, however, completely written in English. Why the mélange?
There is no possible logical explanation, except one: the trend to unification, to indifferentiation, to, simply
put, globalization. The author of this ad may or may not be aware of the trend he is part of (most likely he
is not), but his discourse shows it quite clearly.
The Descrierea postului section opens with some more unclear specialized gibberish:
Financial Health Check
• Planning
• Templates
• Follow up mechanism on open items (www.bestjobs.ro)
The first thing we can notice is the inarticulate form of what is supposed to be a job description, cloaked
as a fashionable bullet-point list. Instead of saying that this position requires that the employee check the
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financial health (of, presumably, the company responsible for the ad) by planning, by using templates, and
by following up mechanisms on open items, the author chooses not to employ full sentences, as it would
be normal, but to reduce the whole thing to a few non-predicative items that he thinks crucial for this
position and leaves the task of an initial assembling of meaning (which was his part) to the reader of the ad.
But, even if we suppose that this passage is articulate enough in order to be worthy of reading, we will
still have difficulties in making sense of it. Planning is a concept that is or, at least, should be implicitly
involved in any human activity or endeavor, so it should be more or less obvious that such a sophisticated
and complicated thing as a financial health check requires planning. If the mention of planning is more or
less useless here, then the second item in the list, templates, is downright enigmatic. Are we supposed to
use templates when we do the health check, or when we plan, or perhaps we are to create templates for
ourselves? Who knows?! For the author of this ad, knowing that templates are somehow involved in the
performing of this job is more than enough when it comes to potential candidates. No matter how unclear
the first two list items are, some sense can still be made of them. This is not the case, however, with the
third item, which is completely senseless: follow up mechanism on open items. What mechanism are we talking
about here, what exactly are these open items? Questions without answers, unless we ask the author himself
or we look them up in a bilingual “specialized mumbo jumbo” – English dictionary.
The rest of the job description goes on along the same lines. I present it below as further examples of
unclear, redundant specialized terminology:
Common Minimum Practices (CMP)
• CMP implementation status
• Follow up mechanism to complete the action resulting from gaps identified
Transformation opportunities
• Identify transformation opportunities following deep dives and drive implementation
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• Solution proposal
• Involve black belts/quality team in project resolution
Solutioning
• Complete transition toolkit training
• Participate in SOL ids
SOP audit
• Calendar for SOP audits
• Formalize and follow the SOP audit procedure (www.bestjobs.ro)
Minimum Practices probably takes after Best Practices, but in a very unconvincing manner. If we analyze
the notion of Common Minimum Practices, we realize that it is nothing but a level of standard performance
that everybody is supposed to uphold. Instead of saying that, the author of this ad felt it in his duty to
come up with another one of the unclear specialized terms (together with the corresponding abbreviation).
Then comes the issue of transformation, a phenomenon that presupposes that something (left unstated
in the ad) transforms into something else (also left unstated in the ad), with the usual cortege of fancy
(incomprehensible for most people) terms such as deep dives, drive implementation, black belts, and then two
other abbreviations (SOP, SOL). Terms, defined as “verbal designations of general concepts in specific subject
fields” (ISO 1087, quoted in Schmitz and Wright: 8), are supposed to facilitate and advance comprehension,
and yet we see in this case how, when used improperly and without a sense of responsibility, they obscure
text and meaning. To conclude the analysis of this ad, it is somewhat ironical that one of the requirements
from the future employee is that he or she possess excellent communication and presentation skills, namely,
exactly what the author of this ad is seriously lacking.
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Example 3
A third example of abnormal specialized discourse use is given by an ad on www.ejobs.com seeking
applications for the position of Technician Repairer Analyzer. The title is already a strong indication of the
kind of incoherence that we shall find in the ad, but a point that needs to be emphasized here is that
this ad was written by a specialized recruitment and HR consultancy company on behalf of its client,
a “multinational production company based in Cluj”. If specialized recruitment agencies can come up
with such incoherent position titles in their public ads, then we should have no expectations whatsoever
from companies advertising for themselves. Cramming the three nouns (which would make sense if used
separately) into one noun phrase that is supposed to be a single position title proves a lack of any logical
and coherent thinking. If there is such a person in any company (be that a multinational) who, as stipulated
in his work contract, holds the position of Technician Repairer Analyzer, then perhaps we shall soon hear of
jobs such as Teacher Supervisor Translator, or Economist Accountant Banker, or, even better, Footballer Handballer
Basketballer. The same problem that was already discussed comes up again: specialized terms are used to
cover up the ignorance of basic language and logic principles. If you put three nouns (that separately make
a lot of sense) together, you do not get a necessarily meaningful phrase. A+B+C in language is often not the
same thing as A and B and C and you don’t need a PhD in linguistics or philosophy in order to realize that.
A position title name should make it clear from the start what the job entails, but this does not seem to be
the case with Technician Repairer Analyzer.
In the body of the ad, we find the same Romglish mixture of Romanian section titles with English
content. The ideal candidate is supposed to have:
Technical background;
Basic electronic knowledge;
Know and identify electronic components: Integrated Circuits, Capacitors, Resistors, Diodes;
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Need to understand schematic, layouts and Datasheets;
Basic knowleadge of Windows OS and MS Office package. (www.ejobs.com)
Nothing much can be said here, except perhaps that the first three requirements are somewhat redundant,
because someone who knows and can identify Integrated Circuits, Capacitors, Resistors, Diodes obviously has
a technical background and basic electronic knowledge. But, as we do not wish to be accused of being too
picky, we shall go further to the Responsibilities section where we find the following items:
Decide repairactions;
Gives feedback to cells, maintenance, team leaders and other involved;
Repair engines, test them with testers, send modules for further actions to repair center;
Reduces failure rates in cells. (www.ejobs.com)
A repairaction is either a specialized term for a newly invented concept or just a plain error, typographical or
orthographical. Although there are ads with this kind of errors on the three job websites being analyzed,
this is not the focus of this article, so we shall go on to the next item, which states that the future employee
is supposed to give feedback to cells, maintenance, team leaders and others involved. We can comprehend how
one may give feedback to a team leader or to the others involved in whatever process they are talking about
(and which is not mentioned in the ad), but how it is possible to give feedback to cells and maintenance goes
beyond our capacity of comprehension. And then, the employee is required to repair engines. Without being
an expert in electronics or technical matters, one may think of at least three completely different types of
engines, such as mechanical engines, software engines, hydraulic engines, and there may be others more.
This is one instance where the author of the ad should have been more specific and should have used a
more specialized term, but no, a very general expression is chosen instead. The two other items in this
requirement are rather comical: testing engines with testers and sending modules for further actions to repair
center say almost as much to the average user as a Klingon sentence would say to Earthlings and are another
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example of specialized terminology used with no regard for context. The same observation applies to the
last requirement item, from which it can be inferred that the already mentioned cells somehow fail to do
what they are supposed to do, and that the future employee is required to reduce the failure rate of cells.
Although this item is not as meaningless as the previous items, it still is unclear.
This ad ends with the by now usual company marketing presentation, which, although not as long and
tedious as other presentations of the kind, begins with the sentence We believe that what we do, we do well. As
a marketing slogan, it fits well. It promotes the image of the successful, serious company. In this context,
however, it is rather ironic. We can only hope that they handle their business more effectively than they
write job ads.
5 Conclusions
As we have attempted to demonstrate throughout this article, abnormal specialized discourse is a reality
when it comes to online Romanian job ads. We have chosen the name abnormal specialized discourse to label
this phenomenon, although there may be other, more suitable, names that are already used or that could be
used. By looking at the specific genre of online job ads, we have presented and discussed instances of when
this phenomenon occurs. We can conclude that this phenomenon is characterized by the unnecessary use of
English, specialized terms and abbreviations, by redundancy, lack of clarity, or even meaninglessness. By
looking at these specific issues, one should be able to distinguish between normal and abnormal specialized
discourse. For us, normal specialized discourse should not give the impression of pompousness, should
not overwhelm the reader with never ending series of specialized terms and, most of all, it should only be
found in the right places, in which its presence makes sense. The real experts use specialized terms not
because they want to impress, but because they don’t have a choice. When experts talk among themselves,
they can do so in whatever way they like. But when there is the slightest chance that someone who may be
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less than expert will stumble upon their linguistic productions (and, in the case of job ads, the chances are
very high), the writing has to be modified accordingly.
Further, the issue of globalization comes into play. We need not look too hard to see other instances of
abnormal specialized discourse in public life, in Romania as well as in other countries. Abnormal specialized
discourse, just like its normal counterpart, spreads, because “the dismantling of cultural, disciplinary and
national barriers, especially in the context of co-operation and collaboration in international trade, has
accelerated moves towards the globalisation of socio-cultural, business and communication issues” (Gotti,
2004: 1). Some may think that this is an exaggeration and that most of the issues described here can be
accounted for in terms of ignorance. Besides, errare humanum est. Yes, some of the mistakes made in these
ads are due to ignorance and negligence, but the point is that there are occasional, normal mistakes and
there are recurrent mistakes which are part of a larger picture. The amount of issues found in these ads, of
which we only mentioned and analyzed a few, coupled with the international linguistic context, supports
the idea that people are not only lacking the linguistic, pragmatic and specialized knowledge necessary to
write professional documents addressed to public audiences, but that they are pushed into this awkward
linguistic behavior by the globalizing trend. As said before, the misuse of words leads to a gradual (but
definite) modification of our view of the world, and thus, in last instance, of our world.
References
Alcaraz, E.; B. Hughes, quoted in Anthony Pym. Text Genres in English. URL: http://isg.urv.es/sociolinguist
ics/genres/textandgenre.doc (visited on 2010/04/15)
Benjamin, Walter, 1992. “The Task of the Translator,” in Schulte, Biguenet (71–82).
Gotti, Maurizio, 2004. “Specialised Discourse in Multilingual and Multicultural Settings,” ASP, No. 45-46
(5-20). URL: http://asp.revues.org/839
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ISO 1087 (Standard for Terminology), quoted in Schmitz, Klaus-Dirk and Sue Ellen Wright, forthcoming.
Computer Assisted Terminology Management
Schmitt, Peter A., (ed.) 2000. Paradigmenwechsel in der Translation. Festschrift für Albrecht Neubert zum 70
Geburtstag, Tübingen: Stauffenburg
Schulte, Rainer; John Biguenet (eds.), 1992. Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to
Derrida, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press
Shreve, Gregory, 2000. “Translation at the millennium: Prospects for the evolution of a profession,” in
Schmitt (217–34)
Zaharia, Alina Maria; Radu Lolescu, 2009. “Globalization of English as a Corporate Language,” Annals of the
University of Petrosani, Economics, Vol. 9, No. 4 (abstract). URL: http://econpapers.repec.org/article/petan
nals/v_3a9_3ai_3a4_3ay_3a2009_3ap_3a329-334.htm
www.bestjobs.ro
www.ejobs.ro
www.myjob.ro
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Gendered Languages:
The Case of English and
Romanian
Costin–Valentin OANCEA
University of Bucharest
MA student, 1st year
Introduction
e are surrounded in our everyday lives by powerful commonsense ideas about speech which
tell us that men and women communicate and use language in different ways. Nowadays, the
field of language and gender is very active in sociolinguistics causing an explosion of research in
this domain. A milestone in the study of gender differences is Robin Lakoff’s book Language and Women’s
Place published in 1975 in which she distinguishes between “women’s language” and “men’s language”. The
aim of this paper is threefold: to discuss gender differences in English, present different opinions in the
linguistic literature and establish whether Romanian makes gender-based distinctions, based on the research
of Hornoiu (2002, 2008) and on a research project that I conducted among Romanian M.A. students at the
University of Bucharest.
W
1. Gender differences in English
Meyerhoff (2006: 201) states that in the 1980s, it was not at all unusual for a sociolinguist to describe
their interests as being “language and sex”. Nowadays, the term sex has largely been replaced by the
term gender. Before embarking on our discussion about gender and language, first a distinction must be
made between two terms: sex and gender. According to Eckert and McConnel-Ginet (2003: 10) sex is a
biological categorization based primarily on reproductive potential, whereas gender is the social elaboration
of biological sex. Gender builds on biological sex, it exaggerates biological difference and, indeed, it carries
biological difference into domains in which is completely irrelevant. For instance, there is no biological
reason why women should wear skirts and men not, or why women should have red toenails and men
should not. Trudgill (2000: 61) claims that “languages differ considerably in the extent to which sex
differences are lexicalized.” He provides an example from German where it is necessary to specify whether
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a friend is a male, Freund, or female, Freudin. In Romanian is exactly the same, prieten “male friend” and
prietenă “female friend”. In English there is no such distinction. Meyerhoff (2006: 201) explains that the
term sex is restricted in sociolinguistics and it refers to a biologically or physiologically based distinction
between males and females, as opposed to the social notion of gender. Gender is used in sociolinguistics to
indicate a social identity that emerges or is constructed through social actions. This distinction is important
because sex must be understood as something that we are born with and gender as something that defines
us, as a social variable.
In the linguistic literature one of the most important phonological differences between the speech of
men and women can be found in Gros Ventre, an Amerindian language spoken in the northeast of the
United States. In Gros Ventre women have palatalized velar stops whereas men have palatalized dental
stops (e.g. women say kjatsa “bread”, but men pronounce it djatsa). Any use of female pronunciations by
males is likely to be regarded as a sign of effeminacy (Wardhaugh, 2006: 318). In his analysis on lexical
differences in Gros Ventre, Harrison (2007) says that for “hello” men use the word wei and women say ao.
Haas (1944) was among the first who noticed that in the Amerindian language Koasati, a language of
the Muskogean family spoken in southwestern Louisiana, among other gender differences, men add [s] at
the end of verbs while women do not (e.g. male lakáws ‘he is lifting it’ in contrast with the female lakáw).1
What is interesting is that this kind of pronunciation was on the verge of extinction due to the fact that girls
and young women no longer used these forms. Trudgill (2000: 67) also discusses the differences between
women’s language and men’s language in Koasati and provides the following examples:
‘He is saying’
‘Don’t lift it!’
1
male
/ka:s/
/lakauči:s/
female
/kā/
/lakaučin/
Haas, as quoted in Wardhaugh. 2006. An introduction to Sociolinguistics, 5th edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Costin–Valentin Oancea
235
‘He is peeling it’
‘You are building a fire’
/mols/
/o:sc/
/mol/
/o:st/
What is striking is that, from the list, these differences appear to be rather haphazard, but they are in fact
entirely predictable according to a series of fairly complicated rules. Trudgill explains that there is also a
good reason to believe that the same kind of differentiation formerly existed in other Muskogean languages,
but that in these languages the women’s varieties have died out. This is confirmed by the fact that in Koasati
itself it was only the older women who preserved the distinction forms. Younger women and girls used
the male forms. Another important aspect in Koasati is that older speakers, especially men, tended to say,
when asked, that they thought the women’s variety was better than that used by men. (Trudgill, 2000: 69)
As already stated above, a milestone in the study of gender differences is Lakoff (1975) which marked a
turning point in sociolinguistics. Lakoff’s paper was severely criticized because her claims “are based on no
empirical evidence” (Coates 1993) and “Lakoff’s evidence is purely impressionistic” (Coates, 1993), Holmes
(2001), Cheshire (2004). It is true that Lakoff’s paper lacks empirical evidence and it is out-of-date, however,
it represents a good starting point in the analysis of gender differences.
From a morphological and lexical point of view, Lakoff (1975) asserts that women use colour words like:
beige, ecru, mauve, lavender, aquamarine, but most men do not. However, a remark is in order here. Although
most men do not use these words, they have them in their vocabulary. Also, they can certainly distinguish
these colours; it is just that they simply prefer not to use these terms. The American sociolinguist further
claims that adjectives such as adorable, charming, divine, lovely, sweet are also commonly used by women and
very rarely by men. She also conducts an experiment to identify lexical characteristics of women’s language
and men’s language in point of vocabulary, by presenting a pair of sentences to native speakers of standard
American English:
Costin–Valentin Oancea
236
(1) (a) Oh dear, you’ve put the peanut butter in the refrigerator again.
(b) Shit, you’ve put the peanut butter in the refrigerator again.
We can predict that the first sentence was uttered by a woman and the second one by a man. While this
was possible in the mid-seventies, nowadays this is no longer true. More and more women and teenagers
(namely girls) use the second sentence in the United States. Also, this may not be true for native speakers of
British English, because, the British usually do not use the word shit. Instead of shit they would probably
say bloody hell, blimey, ruddy, or damn it. From this point of view Lakoff’s work now seems out-dated and
out of tune with modern attitudes.
Language commentators have little trouble in identifying what they think to be women’s language, though
their lists usually have no validity. The view that women use certain words and have a special vocabulary
has been held over three centuries, as Hornoiu (2002: 117) puts it. She provides a list of words that have
been ascribed to women:
ah!, oh!, such, so, fine, flirtation, vast(ly), frightful (18th century)
implicit, splendid, pretty, horrible, unpleasant (19th century)
lovely, darling, sweet, too, awfully, sweetie, doll, all rightie, itsy bitsy, mauve, wonderful, divine, dreamy,
heavenly, cute, powder room, hanky, honey, poor thing, horrid, ecru (20th century)
One can notice that adjectives and adverbs are more predominant in women’s vocabulary. According to
Coates (2004:10), commentary on gender differences in vocabulary was quite widespread in eighteenthcentury writings, as demonstrated below. The following excerpt written by Richard Cambridge for The
World of 12 December 1754 provides some insight into how women’s language was perceived in those times:
I must beg leave. . . to doubt the property of joining to the fixed and permanent standard of
language a vocabulary of words which perish and are forgot within the compass of a year. That
Costin–Valentin Oancea
237
we are obliged to the ladies for most of these ornaments to our language, I readily acknowledge.
(as quoted in Coates, 2004: 10)
What Richard Cambridge is actually implying is that women’s vocabulary is ephemeral and what they say
is not important. On the other hand, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Danish linguist Otto
Jespersen analyzed the evolution of vocabulary, and how women and men use vocabulary. His research
pointed out that it is actually men who introduce “new and fresh expressions” and not women but men are
“the chief renovators of language”. (Jespersen, 1922: 247)
Coates (2004: 10) claims that women use excessive adverbial forms. Lord Chesterfield writing in The
World of 5 December 1754 also complains about women’s excessive use of certain adverbial forms: “A
woman is vastly obliged, or vastly offended, vastly glad, or vastly sorry.” (italics mine, C.O)
A seventeenth century writer comments on the differences between men’s speech and women’s speech.
According to him:
The men have a great many expressions peculiar to them, which the women understand but
never pronounce themselves. On the other hand the women have words and phrases which the
men never use, or they would be laughed to scorn. Thus it happens that in their conversations it
often seems as if the women had another language than the men. (as quoted in Trudgill (2000:
65))
From the evidence supplied by this seventeenth-century writer, it seems certain that, although there were
clear differences between men’s and women’s speech, only a relatively small number of vocabulary items
were involved.
All these seventeenth and eighteenth century writers define language in terms of male language; thus,
the way men talk was seen as the norm, while women’s language was seen as deviant. Women’s language
was also described as weak and unassertive, in other words, as deficient.
Costin–Valentin Oancea
238
In the 1980s, sociolinguists turned their attention to broader aspects: the conversational strategies
characteristic of female speakers. According to Coates (2007), Lakoff (1975), these strategies include:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)
h)
i)
j)
k)
l)
minimal responses (e.g. yeah, aha, mhm)
lexical hedges or fillers (e.g. I mean, you know, maybe, well, you see, sort of )
tag questions (e.g. She’s adorable, isn’t she?)
rising intonation in declaratives
empty adjectives (e.g. beautiful, adorable, divine, charming, lovely, cute)
colour terms (e.g. beige, mauve, ecru, aquamarine, magenta)
intensifiers such as: just, so (e.g. I’m so glad you’ve come)
‘super-polite’ forms ( indirect requests, euphemisms)
‘hypercorrect grammar’ (consistent use of standard verb forms)
emphatic stress (e.g. It was a BRILLIANT performance)
commands
directives
The English language, as we know, makes certain gender-based distinctions, for example: gentleman-lady;
actor-actress; duke-duchess; king-queen; waiter-waitress; widower-widow; bachelor-spinster, etc.
The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style (2002) has a rather peculiar entry about
the distinction between bachelor and spinster. A movie review said: “William Hurt plays Graham Holt, a
male spinster who shocks neighbours when he decides to adopt a 10-year-old.” (italics mine, C.O.)
“Male spinster” is a contradictory form just as “female bachelor” is. A spinster is a female by definition:
She is a woman beyond the usual age for marrying who has not been married. The actor described in
the movie review plays a bachelor. Numerous reliable dictionaries define bachelor as “an unmarried man”.
However, this definition is not complete. The word usually implied that the man (i) is of the usual age for
Costin–Valentin Oancea
239
marrying, or beyond, and (ii) has never been married. At least two dictionaries recognize bachelorette and
the synonymous bachelor girl. There is another interesting use of the word bachelor. All college graduates
irrespective of sex are bachelors of arts/science, or some special field, whereas only one male can be a plain
bachelor.
All the above arguments and examples clearly indicate that men and women do use language differently.
One can notice that these differences between men and women’s use of language are hardly something new.
They have been recorded and discussed since the seventeenth century. However, these differences tend to
change from one generation to the next one.
In Wodak’s (1997: 4) view “what it means to be a woman or to be a man [also] changes from one
generation to the next and. . . varies between different racialized, ethnic, and religious groups, as well as for
members of different social classes.” Women’s talk has evolved throughout the years, and it is no longer
seen as weak and unassertive, as it was seen in the eighteenth century for example. Also women’s social
status has changed.
2. Gender differences in Romanian
The first linguist to have ever studied gender-related stereotypes in Romanian was, to my knowledge,
Hornoiu (2002, 2008). In her PhD thesis (Hornoiu, 2008), she analyzes women’s speech and men’s speech,
focusing more on Romanian. Building on Hornoiu’s analysis, I conducted a survey among Romanian
M.A. students, studying at the University of Bucharest. The aim of this survey was to identify some
gender-related speech differences in Romanian. 30 graduate students (15 males and 15 females, aged 22-26)
were interviewed. I devised a set of sentences (given in 1 below) to incorporate the linguistic variables as
proposed by Lakoff (1975), to distinguish between men’s language and women’s language. The informants
were asked to choose between M (for those sentences they think are uttered by a man), F (for those sentences
Costin–Valentin Oancea
240
they think are uttered by a woman) and M/F (for the sentences they think are uttered by both a man and a
woman). All their answers have been reduced to percentages.
(1) The list of sentences devised for this survey is the following:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Aştept să mă suni mîine.
Mi-am cumpărat o pereche de pantofi negri şi o cămaşă albă.
Mi s-a stricat maşina şi am rămas în câmp.
Păpuşă, poţi să îmi aduci o scrumieră?
Este o persoană adorabilă, nu crezi?
Este o persoană drăguţă.
Aş vrea să plec în vacanţă vreo două săptămâni.
Ce dracu’ se întâmplă cu tine?
Sacoul tău verde-măr se asortează cu pantalonii ăia de velură.
Mă simt incredibil2 de bine.
Mă simt bine.
Îmi place modul tău de a acţiona.
Mă doare-n fund de ce zice.
Nu ţi se pare genială ideea lui?
Aoleu, am uitat să cumpăr ciocolată.
Este aşa de frumos!
The informants’ answers are given below in Table 1.
2
Shows emphatic stress.
Costin–Valentin Oancea
241
M
F
1. Aştept să mă suni mîine.
0%
60%
2. Mi-am cumpărat o pereche de pantofi negri şi o cămaşă albă.
20%
20%
3. Mi s-a stricat maşina şi am rămas în câmp.
6.6% 26,6%
4. Păpuşă, poţi să îmi aduci o scrumieră?
86.6% 6.6%
5. Este o persoană adorabilă, nu crezi?
6.6% 86.6%
6. Este o persoană drăguţă.
20% 26.6%
7. Aş vrea să plec în vacanţă vreo două săptămâni.
0%
13.3%
8. Ce dracu’ se întâmplă cu tine?
20% 26.6%
9. Sacoul tău verde-măr se asortează cu pantalonii ăia de velură. 6.6%
80%
10. Mă simt incredibil de bine.
0%
66.6%
11. Mă simt bine.
40%
0%
12. Îmi place modul tău de a acţiona.
20%
20%
13. Mă doare-n fund de ce zice.
6.6%
20%
14. Nu ţi se pare genială ideea lui?
0%
73.3%
15. Aoleu, am uitat să cumpăr ciocolată.
6.6% 73.3%
16. Este aşa de frumos!
0%
93.3%
Table 1: Men’s language versus Women’s language in Romanian
M/F
40%
60%
66.6%
6.6%
6.6%
53.3%
86.6%
53.3%
13.3%
33.3%
60%
60%
73.3%
26.6%
20%
6.6%
It can be noticed that there are gender differences in Romanian as well. For the first sentence 60% of the
respondents think that it was uttered by a woman, while 40% think it was uttered by a men and by a woman.
Women are also specialists in colours as illustrated by sentence number 9.80% of the persons questioned
believe that it was said by a woman, and only 6.6% think that it was uttered by a man. Regarding ‘empty
adjectives’ (adorabilă, ‘adorable’, genială ‘brilliant’), sentences number 5 and 14 prove that women have a
Costin–Valentin Oancea
242
preference for them. Women use tag questions (illustrated by sentence number 5), intensifiers (sentence
number 16) and emphatic stress (sentence number 10). Surprisingly, women also use swearing, shown by
the percentages for sentence 8 and 13. The use of swearing, however, is influenced by the social background
and the social environment in which women live.
In addition, as already mentioned, women’s language is no longer seen as weak, unassertive as it used to
be. It is also worth mentioning that the intonation patterns of men and women vary. Finally, women use
certain patterns associated with politeness, surprise, emotions more often than men.
According to Holmes (1995: 7) gender differences in patterns of language use can be explained by
the fact that girls and boys are socialized into different cultures. Each group learns appropriate ways of
interacting from their same sex peers – including ways of interacting verbally. Another explanation attributes
gender-based differences in linguistic behaviour to the differential distribution of power in society. Men’s
greater power allows them to define and control situations, and male norms predominate in interaction.
It is a fact that women are more polite then men. Chambers (1992: 199) claims that “over many years
women have demonstrated an advantage over men in tests of fluency, speaking, sentence complexity,
analogy, listening, comprehension of both written and spoken material, vocabulary and spelling.”
In her analysis of gender-related stereotypes in Romanian, Hornoiu (2008: 29) states that “Romanian
women are stereotyped as being sensitive, polite and emphatic in their use of language, as paying more
attention to detail”. This is also illustrated by the percentages in Table 1.
It was shown that in Romanian a distinction is being made between men’s language and women’s
language. There are certain structures used more frequently by women than by men in Romanian, as it
was shown above. An extremely important factor in this distinction is society and the social environment.
Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003: 50) are right when saying that “the force of gender categories in society
makes it impossible for us to move through our lives in a non-gendered way and impossible not to behave
in a way that brings out gendered behaviour in others.”
Costin–Valentin Oancea
243
3. Conclusion
In this paper different opinions concerning gender differences were presented. Obviously, men and women
do use language differently, not only in English but in Romanian as well. It was shown that Romanian
also makes gender-based distinctions. Swearing and taboo language are also used by women to a certain
extent. From a stylistic point of view, women appear to be more flexible than men, and more polite. It was
noticed that women’s tone is mild, shows solidarity while men’s tone is aggressive and they interact in ways
which maintain and increase their power. Gender is a key component of identity. Our social background
and the social environment in which we live also have a great influence on our vocabulary, in the way we
use language. These gender-based differences will always exist and they will evolve and change from one
generation to the other.
References
Chambers, J.K, 1992. “Linguistic correlates of gender and sex”, English World-Wide 13, 2: 173-218
Cheshire, Jenny, 2004. “Sex and gender in variationist research”, in J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N.
Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 423-443, Oxford: Blackwell
Coates, Jennifer, 1993. Women, men and language, second edition, London & New York
Coates, Jennifer, 2004. Women, Men and Language: a sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language, 3rd
edition, Edinburgh: Pearson
Coates, Jennifer, 2007, Gender. The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, edited by Carmen Llamas, Louise
Mullany and Peter Stockwell, New York: Routledge
Eckert, Penelope; McConnel-Ginet, Sally, 2003. Language and Gender, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
Costin–Valentin Oancea
244
Harrison, K. David, 2007. When languages die. The extinction of the world’s languages and the erosion of human
knowlwdge, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Holmes, Janet, 1995. Women, Men and Politeness, London and New York: Longman
Holmes, Janet, 2001. An introduction to sociolinguistics, London: Longman
Hornoiu, Diana, 2002. “Gendered Language”, Analele Universităţii Ovidius, seria filologie, XIII: 115-134
Hornoiu, Diana, 2008. Language and Gender. An Analysis of Conversational Discourse in English and Romanian,
Constanţa: Ovidius University Press
Jespersen, Otto, 1922. Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin, London: George Allen & Unwin
Lakoff, Robin, 1975. Language and Women’s Place, New York: Harper & Row
Meyerhoff, Miriam, 2006. Introducing sociolinguistics, London and New York: Routledge
The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style, 2002. New York: Penguin
Trudgill, Peter, 2000. Sociolinguistics: An introduction to language and society, 4th edition, London: Penguin
Wardhaugh, Ronald, 2006. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 5th edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Wodak, Ruth (ed), 1997. Gender and Discourse, London: Sage.
Costin–Valentin Oancea
245
Translational Norms and
their Echoes in the Romanian
Cultural Space
Andreea-Mihaela TAMBA
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Ias, i
PhD student, 3rd year
h e concept of translational norm can and should be considered against the Romanian cultural
context. The “should” regards the utmost important contribution of the Romanian linguist Eugenio
Coseriu to the development of the concept of norm in Translation Studies. This paper aims at
highlighting the necessary and not sufficiently debated upon link existing between Coseriu’s norm model,
brought forth by the scholar in the 1950s and the translational norm as suggested in the first place, back in
the 1970s, by the Israeli scholar Gideon Toury. The “can” refers to the possibility of tracing back translational
norms in a corpus of translations from Victorian literature that were undertaken during the communist
period in Romania.
T
Eugenio Coseriu’s Norm and the Translational Norm
Eugenio Coseriu’s outstanding contribution to the development of linguistics mainly concerns his tripartite
linguistic model system-norm-speech. The model was a necessary reaction to the previous linguistic discourse
that had been based on the binary distinction language / speech (langue / parole), first launched by the famous
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and subsequently adopted by the largest majority of 20th century linguists.
In his seminal paper Sistema, norma y habla, published for the first time in 1952 and re-published several
times ever since1 , the Romanian linguist places the concept of linguistic norm between the system of language,
i.e. the social dimension of the human faculty of language, what is necessary and sufficient (functional),
and speech, i.e. the individual dimension of language, what is accidental, unrepeatable and dispensable. The
three entities are to be actually considered hierarchically – it is the speech acts themselves that, via a process
1
The study was first published in ‘Revista de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias’, Montevideo, 1952, 113-177 and
subsequently integrated in Coseriu (1973) Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general. Cinco estudios, Tercera edición, Biblioteca
Románica Hispánica, Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 11-328. I have used for this paper the Romanian version of the study i.e. ‘Sistem,
normă şi vorbire’ from Teoria limbajului şi lingvistică generală. Cinci studii (2004).
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
247
of abstractization, result in the linguistic norm, while a further abstractization of the latter conceptual entity
would result in identifying the (functional) systemic structures themselves.
Thus, at a first speech act abstractization degree level, the linguistic norm leaves out individual spontaneous linguistic productions, i.e. the concrete individual speech acts, considering only those (linguistic)
elements that are traditionally used by all the members of a community – the pre-established models:
The norm concerns, in real terms, what is imposed upon an individual, limiting his/her freedom
of speech and condensing the possibilities offered by the system, within the framework set by
traditional productions. The norm is, indeed, a system of compulsory productions, of social and
cultural constraints, varying in accordance with the community of speakers. (Coseriu 2004: 100;
translation mine2 )
From this perspective, speech acts can be described as re-productions, i.e. productions based on extant
models that are established through use.
Going further with the abstractization process, the system consists of those factors that are indispensable
to the act of communicating through speech, thus excluding, from the norm level, all the elements that
are traditional, “facultative”, “combinatory” (ibid.: 98) and retaining only “a series of indispensable and
essential elements, of functional oppositions” (ibid.). In Coseriu’s theoretical approach, the system allows
for a wide spectrum of possibilities, just as long as functional conditions are fulfilled:
The system represents a system of possibilities, of coordinates indicating closed paths and
open paths; they could be considered a series of “constraints” and, nevertheless, perhaps even
better, a series of liberties, a place which allows for countless productions and only claims that
the functional conditions of the linguistic instrument should not be altered; its character is
consultative rather than “imperative”. (ibid.)
2
All translations mine, unless stated otherwise.
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
248
The scholar displays his sociologically prescriptive perspective and methodologically descriptive point of
view when he claims that the norm he theorizes is not “established or imposed according to criteria of
correctness and subjective evaluation of speech” (ibid.: 92), but is the collectively agreed upon type of
behaviour, i.e. “the norm that we necessarily conform to as members of a linguistic community” (ibid.). The
focus of Coseriu’s linguistic norm is on “how one speaks”, not on “how one should speak”, on the “normal”
– “abnormal” descriptive opposition, not on the “correct” – “incorrect” prescriptive conceptual pair (ibid.).
Eugenio Coseriu’s contribution to the development of contemporary linguistics is highly important. His
theoretical model was a stepping stone in the research undertaken on the dynamics of linguistic constructs
such as system, norm and speech. Just as valuable is the scholar’s synthetic and descriptive perspective
on language and it is from this point of view that his theoretical model is highly relevant to Translation
Studies, especially to the descriptivist branch of the (inter)discipline. The first theoretical scheme regarding
the translational norms was brought forth by Gideon Toury at the 1976 Leuven colloquium3 , twenty four
years after Eugenio Coseriu’s publication of his study on the linguistic norm. However, not many scholars
made an explicit connection between the two theoretical norm models. The Israeli scholar approaches the
translational norm from a descriptive perspective, his focus being on the analysis of the regularities in the
translator’s behaviour, when dealing with similar types of problems.
For Toury, the concept of norm is a basic means to provide explanatory hypotheses with regard to
the choices translators make when translating for a particular socio-cultural space. Translational norms
stand for guidelines regarding translational behaviour, which are traceable in corpora of translations, due
to regularities in the translators” choices. They are, in a nutshell, the DTS perspective on translation as a
3
As Mary Snell-Hornby states, in her The Turns of Translation Studies (2006), Toury’s findings were subsequently published in
‘The Nature and Role of Norms in Literary Translation’ in J.S. Holmes, J. Lambert and R. van den Broeck (eds) (1978) Literature
and Translation: New Perspectives in Literary Studies, Leuven: Acco, 83-100. Later on it was approached in the scholar’s In Search of a
Theory of Translation, Tel Aviv: Porter Institute, of which the seminal Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (1995), which is
dealt with in this paper, is a replacement.
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
249
decision-making process. His norm definitions and classifications are widely used today, even if, in time,
other scholars have completed his work with further taxonomies.
Gideon Toury considers that translation is a social activity that must conform to the norms valid in a
community. He adopts a sociological point of view when defining (translational) norms as:
the translation of general values or ideas shared by a community – as to what is right and wrong,
adequate and inadequate – into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to
particular situations, specifying what is prescribed and forbidden as well as what is tolerated
and permitted in a certain behavioural dimension (. . . ). Inasmuch as a norm is really active
and effective, one can therefore distinguish regularity of behaviour in recurrent situations of
the same type, which would render regularities a main source for any study of norms as well.
(Toury 1995: 54-55, the author’s bold type)
In his definition, Toury clearly emphasizes the fact that norms hold both a (sociologically) prescriptive
character and a (methodologically) descriptive aspect. And this is also Coseriu’s perspective. Toury
sociologically defines the translational norm as a prescriptive entity, i.e. as “the translation of general
values or ideas shared by a community – as to what is right and wrong, adequate and inadequate –
into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations, specifying what is
prescribed and forbidden as well as what is tolerated and permitted in a certain behavioural dimension”
(1995: 54-55). In the same definition, however, just like Coseriu, the Israeli scholar focuses on the description
of the so-called observables, i.e. “regularity of behaviour in recurrent situations of the same type” (ibid.),
which help in reconstructing norms.
Another aspect standing as a proof of the hypothetical echoes the Romanian linguist’s model had in the
field of Descriptive Translation Studies is the image of the system, bearing an immense creative potential, at
the linguists” / translators” disposal. A norm deviating behaviour – the speech spontaneity in Coseriu’s
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
250
model, the idiosyncrasies in the translation scholars” constraints scale – could always give rise to new
norms.
Eugenio Coseriu’s contribution to the development of norm theory not only in linguistics but also in
Translation Studies is undeniable. Few translation scholars have acknowledged it. It is Mary Snell-Hornby’s
merit to have highlighted in a firm manner the importance of the Romanian linguist’s norm model for
subsequent work in the field:
He challenged the then unquestioned Saussurean dichotomy of langue and parole, adding the
concept of norm between that of system on the one hand and that of text or discourse on the other.
As a linguist, Coseriu was referring strictly to a concept of language norm, but in a much broader
context, and with varying forms of usage, the notion of norm later became central for Translation
Studies: as had already been anticipated by Levý (. . . ), afterwards as social and cultural norms
in the functional approach of Vermeer and Nord (. . . ), and finally as was to become famous in
the form of translation norms in Descriptive Translation Studies (. . . )4 . (Snell-Hornby, 2006: 37)
Reconstructing Translational Norms – Translations from Charles
Dickens as Cases in Point
Charles Dickens was one of the Victorian novelists who were massively translated during the communist
period. The fact that David Copperfield was translated five times and that a whole series of editions of
4 Mary Snell-Hornby mentions Eugenio Coseriu’s model also in her book Translation Studies: an Integrated approach (1988/1995:
49). In his turn, Theo Hermans highlights the Romanian linguist’s important contribution in his book Translation in Systems (1999).
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
251
these translations were issued in no more than 14 years (1957–1971)5 is the outcome of the impressive
translation campaign undertaken by the communists. Given the huge material available in order to identify
translational norms, I have focused my attention on the regime of the explanatory input provided either
intratextually or extratextually in the following translated texts: two translations of David Copperfield (the
1957 Romanian version of the novel, signed by Ionel Jianu and the 1965 Romanian version of the novel,
provided by Ioan Comşa6 ), and also Teodora and Profira Sadoveanu’s 1957 translation of Oliver Twist –
Aventurile lui Oliver Twist7 and Vera Călin’s 1968 translation of Great Expectations, i.e. Marile speranţe8 .
If in his version of David Copperfield Ioan Comşa (1965) provides plenty of both intratextual and extratextual explanations regarding the British culture-specific terms, rendering, for instance, elements such as
Covent Garden and Adelphi as piaţa de pe Covent Garden and terasa Adelphi, respectively, Ionel Jianu (1957), for
a change, leaves, in his 1957 translation of the same novel, the culture-bound items as such, without helping
the target readers better grasp the local color peculiar to the novel. Not only does he fail to emphasize the
specificity of the culturemes in the novel, he also universalizes some of the latter. The following case is
relevant for this situation:
5
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, V. Demetrius (trans.), Bucureşti: Editura ‘Cultura românească’ (Romanian Culture
Publishing House).
Dickens, Charles, 1957. David Copperfield, Ionel Jianu (transl.), Bucureşti: Editura Tineretului.
Dickens, Charles, 1959. David Copperfield, Ionel Jianu (transl.), Bucureşti: Editura Tineretului.
Dickens, Charles, 1965. Viaţa lui David Copperfield, Ioan Comşa (transl.): Bucureşti: E.P.L.
Dickens, Charles, 1969. Viaţa lui David Copperfield, Ioan Comşa (transl.): Editura Tineretului.
Dickens, Charles, 1971. Viaţa lui David Copperfield, Ioan Comşa (transl.): Minerva.
6 Dickens, Charles, 1957. David Copperfield, Ionel Jianu (transl.), Bucureşti: Editura Tineretului, two volumes.
Dickens, Charles, 1965. Viaţa lui David Copperfield, Ioan Comşa (transl.), Bucureşti: Editura Tineretului, three volumes.
7 Dickens, Charles, 1957. Oliver Twist, Teodora and Profira Sadoveanu (transl.), Bucureşti: Editura Tineretului, one volume.
8 Dickens, Charles, 1968. Marile speranţe, Vera Călin (transl.), Bucureşti: Editura pentru Literatură, two volumes.
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
252
ST: (. . . ) we went out in a hackney-chariot, and saw a Panorama and some other sights, and
took a walk through the Museum (. . . ) (Dickens 1986: 285)
TT1: (. . . ) am luat o birjă, ne-am dus să vedem panorama şi alte spectacole şi ne-am plimbat
prin muzeu (. . . ) (Dickens / Jianu 1957, 1st volume: 391)
TT2: (. . . ) ne-am urcat într-o birjă, ne-am dus să vedem Panorama* [fn.: Adică un mare tablou
circular, expus într-o încăpere rotundă, luminată anume pentru a da spectatorului iluzia unei
imagini reale; la Londra primele tablouri panoramice au fost expuse în anul 1827.] şi alte
câteva curiozităţi şi am cutreierat muzeul* [fn.: Este vorba de Muzeul britanic (British Museum)
întemeiat în 1753, care deţinea, încă de pe atunci, foarte bogate şi variate colecţii de obiecte de
artă şi piese etnografice.](. . . ) (Dickens / Comşa 1965, 2nd volume: 33)
Teodora and Profira Sadoveanu’s translation strategies in their translation of Oliver Twist (the 1957 Romanian
version) resemble very much Ionel Jianu’s, since they tend to avoid disrupting the target audience from
their reading the novel by inserting explanatory footnotes. Instead, they provide literal translations of places
peculiar to the source sociocultural space: biserica Sfîntul Mîntuitor (Dickens / Sadoveanu 1957: 431), for
Saint Saviour’s Church, săgeata turnului Sfîntul Magnus (Dickens / Sadoveanu 1957: 431), for the spire of Saint
Magnus, clopotul cel mare de la Sfîntul Paul (Dickens / Sadoveanu 1957: 431) for the heavy bell of St. Paul’s, podul
Londrei (Dickens / Sadoveanu 1957: 430), for London Bridge. Just like in the case of Jianu’s translation, this
strategy puts a considerable distance between the target reader and the original writer’s initial intention.
Considerable glossing is provided also by Vera Călin, in her translation of Great Expectations (1968),
whenever places in Great Britain are referred to e.g. Hyde Park [fn.: Parc londonez, unul dintre cele mai
frecventate locuri din Londra.] (Dickens / Călin, 1968, 2nd volume: 27), Westminster Abbey [fn.: Cunoscută
biserică londoneză, care a aparţinut în trecut mănăstirii cu acelaşi nume; aici se află mormintele unor
oameni politici şi ale unora dintre cei mai de seamă scriitori englezi.] (Dickens / Călin, 1968, 1st volume:
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
253
244), Harrow and Cambridge [Universities]” [fn.: Cetăţi universitare engleze.] (Dickens / Călin, 1968, 1st
volume: 252) etc., or popular figures e.g. George III [fn.: Rege al Angliei (1683-1760), renumit pentru prostul
său gust.] (Dickens / Călin, 1968, 2nd volume: 200). The translator chooses not to take the target readers’
knowledge for granted, so she provides encyclopedic footnotes in order to render culturemes familiar to the
target audience.
The way explanatory glosses were provided in the four Romanian versions of the novels under investigation allowed us to trace a number of regularities of behaviour and to hypothesize with regard to the
initial norm that was observed in the cases taken into consideration. The following table illustrates the use
of footnotes in the two decades that have been focused upon:
Decade
Title of the Translated Novel
Translator(s)
Footnotes
Oliver Twist (1957)
Teodora and Profira Sadoveanu
1
1950s
David Copperfield (1957)
Ionel Jianu
21
Marile speranţe (1968)
Vera Călin
69
1960s
Viaţa lui David Copperfield (1965)
Ioan Comşa
236
Table 1: Comparative use of footnotes in Romanian translations from Charles Dickens
As the table shows, the 1960s translators seem to have been more careful about their target readers’
needs and provided supplementary informational input so that the latter should feel at ease with the source
culture-specific items and better place the action of the novels within the source sociocultural background.
The 1950s translators, for a change, provided less extratextual glosses, operating, for a change, through
intratextual glosses and adaptations. The operational norms and, implicitly, the initial norm, in the two
decades taken into consideration, consequently seem to have been different. However, the orientation of the
translated texts is not exclusive – the translators seem to have behaved loyally rather than faithfully when
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
254
orienting each text towards both the source culture (through cultural loans and literal translation) and the
target culture and public (through extratextual / intratextual glosses and adaptations).
This paper focused on tracing within the current discourse on norms in Translation Studies echoing
elements that are peculiar to Eugenio Coseriu’s theoretical framework. Because the concept of translational
norm indeed owes a lot to the theoretical model suggested by the Romanian linguist. If in the first section of
this paper I showed to what extent the norm in Translation Studies was echoed in by Coseriu’s norm model,
the second section of the paper highlighted the echoes the translational norms specific to the communist
period in Romania had in a mini-corpus of Romanian versions of Victorian novels.
References
Primary Sources
Dickens, Charles, 1986. David Copperfield, London, Glasgow, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Grafton Books
Dickens, Charles, The Adventures of Oliver Twist, London: Hazell, Watson &Viney, Ltd.
Dickens, Charles, 1967. Great Expectations, New York: Collier Books, London: Collier-Macmillan Ltd.
Dickens, Charles, 1965. Viaţa lui David Copperfield, transl. Ioan Comşa, Bucureşti: Editura pentru Literatură,
three volumes
Dickens, Charles, 1957. David Copperfield, transl. Ionel Jianu, Bucureşti: Editura Tineretului, two volumes
Dickens, Charles, 1957. Aventurile lui Oliver Twist, transl. Teodora and Profira Sadoveanu, Bucureşti: Editura
Tineretului, one volume
Dickens, Charles, 1968. Marile speranţe, transl. Vera Călin, Bucureşti: Editura pentru Literatură, two volumes
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
255
Secondary Sources
Coseriu, Eugenio, 2004. Teoria limbajului şi lingvistică generală. Cinci studii, Nicolae Saramandu (ed.),
Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică
Dimitriu, Rodica, 1999. Aldous Huxley in Romania, Iaşi: Timpul
Dimitriu, Rodica, 2000. “Translation Policies in Pre-Communist and Communist Romania” in Across
Languages and Cultures, no. 2, 179-193
Hermans, Theo (ed.), 1999. Translation in Systems, Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing
Snell-Hornby, Mary, 1988/1995. Translation Studies: an Integrated Approach, Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John
Benjamins
Snell-Hornby, Mary, 2006). The Turns of Translation Studies, Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Toury, Gideon, 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Andreea-Mihaela Tamba
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Striving to Cope with
Cross-cultural Diversity in
Translation
Laura Elena SUNĂ A Register-focused Approach
(MUNTEANU)
The “Al. I. Cuza” University, Ias, i
PhD student, 2nd year
Introduction
n an age when we witness conflicting tendencies of globalisation (and therefore of minimising differences and identities) on the one hand, and of firmly and proudly asserting ethnical identity on the
other, intercultural communication is still an interesting phenomenon to study from the perspective of
sameness vs. difference. If we go a little farther and think of cross-cultural communication by means of
translation, the same contradictory tendencies appear here, too.
Due to the process of globalisation, as an effect of economic and political changes, and of intercultural
exchanges, resulting, in most cases, in mutual advantages, differences are not as acute as 100 years ago.
We are all influenced by what is happening in the world at a certain time; we cannot be left immune to
the process of “difference levelling”. If we add the flourishing that the discipline of translation studies
has been subject to in the last 50 years, the conclusion would be that mediating between two cultures
through translation or interpreting shouldn”t raise serious problems. And still, it is precisely the recent
developments in the area of translation studies that have drawn attention to some problematic issues
concerning equivalence, which ask for more or less straightforward solutions. Theorists and practitioners
have become more and more aware that translation presupposes more than just transferring the semantic
value of the lexical units from one language to another. The ST is no longer perceived as a self-contained
linguistic product, it is projected against the background of a cultural and a situational context; the analysis
of its communicative intentions, of its function in the SC and of the social occasion that enhanced its
production, has resulted in an awareness of the existence of some specific features, function of these
variables. Many of such features are culture-bound and have to be taken into account in an attempt to
achieve functional equivalence. Seeing texts in context, considering them as instances of communication,
involving specific participants with different backgrounds, expectations and needs is a step forward in this
I
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
258
direction. The pragmatic approaches1 to translation studies have brought an important contribution to such
a comprehensive perspective on discourse.
1 Register analysis and translation
Texts are appropriate in a certain culture because they are constructed according to certain conventions,
depending on the situational context in which they appear. At register level, these conventions concern the
field, tenor, and mode of discourse. The simple transfer of these conventions to the TT will not ensure its
appropriacy in the TC situation. We believe that the study of such conventional use of language, with a
focus on the register variables, may grow the chances of obtaining functionally equivalent translations, on
condition that they should be matched by an equal awareness of the linguistic forms conventionally used in
the TL for the same social situation as the one that made the production of the ST necessary in the SL and C.
1.1
Register and register variables
Register “is the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns that are typically drawn upon
under the specific conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these
meanings” (Halliday, 1978: 23). Since it is considered to be the one that negotiates between language and
the situation, being a function of the use to which language is put (Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens –
1964: 83), the three situational variables deserve a special attention, keeping in mind the fact that they are
related, according to Halliday, to the three main language functions: field, the text-generating activity, is the
level on which the ideational function, regarding meaning as content is expressed; tenor, the relationship
between addresser and addressee, expresses the interpersonal function, which sees meaning as participation;
1
By pragmatic approaches I mean pragmatics, discourse analysis, text linguistics and functional orientations.
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
259
mode, the medium of language activity, is the level on which the textual function (according to which
meaning is seen as texture) is expressed. Attention should also be drawn to the fact that, although they are
presented and sometimes analysed separately, for the sake of accuracy, the three variables have to be seen
as overlapping, as being interdependent: a given level of formality (tenor) influences and is influenced by
a particular level of technicality (field) in an appropriate channel of communication (mode) (cf. Hatim &
Mason, 1990: 50).
1.1.1
Analysing field in view of translation
In simple words, the field of a text tells which domain of experience a text is about (family life, religious
observance, law enforcement, etc). It has been defined as referring “to the total event in which the text
is functioning, together with the purpositive activity of the speaker or writer, thus including the subject
matter as one element in it” (Trosborg, 2002: 11, my underlining). As Hatim and Mason (1990: 48) remark,
field is not the same with subject matter, as there are fields characterised by a variety of subject matters,
but they may however be closely linked, when the subject matter is highly predictable in a given situation
(e.g. a physics lecture) or when it is constitutive of a given social activity (e.g. a courtroom interaction).
Baker (1992: 16) remarks that “what is going on” is of high relevance to the speaker”s choice of linguistic
items. That accounts for the difference between one’s way of speaking of football versus one speaking
while participating in a match of football, or between making political speech and discussing politics. Field
can also be defined in terms of “institutional focus” or “social activity type” (Eggins, 1994: 103) and it
can be viewed on a technical (specialised) - commonsense (everyday) continuum. Each of the ends of the
continuum is characterised in terms of lexical and grammatical differences (technical terms vs. every day
terms, words only insiders understand vs. words we all understand, acronyms vs. full names, abbreviated
syntax vs. standard syntax, etc) (Eggins, 1994: 110). Měchura, (2005: 2) starts from the fact that lexical items,
especially nouns, are the ones that indicate the field and he states that by examining them, one can and
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
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should clarify some issues about the text such as: the semantic domain to which it belongs, the degree of
specialisation and the process and circumstance types. He suggests that this analysis can be done by using
intuition, dictionaries and corpus research.
From the above considerations it derives that field is a pretty neatly delimited and important category
when conceiving or analysing a text as an instance of goal-oriented social activity. If we add to this the fact
that each culture has a specific way of framing the field – by means of genre and generic constraints (Hatim
and Mason, 1990: 75), we can immediately infer the implications for translation: field equivalence can not
possibly be ignored, if the TT is to be functionally equivalent with the ST. The awareness of the need to
construct an equivalent field has to be matched with knowledge of the requirements for appropriateness in
each culture, concerning lexico-grammatical structures specific to a certain degree of technicality.
Therefore, in view of translation, not only does the “social activity type” have to be detected, but also
the more general generic framing has to be established before any attempt at transferring these in the TC
situation should start. Possible problems may appear when an equivalent field needs to be relayed in the
TL by the appropriate linguistic means. Hatim and Mason, for instance, consider that such problems may
arise when translating from a SL with a rich scientific and technical culture (such as English), into one that
has poorer resources. Translators have to face the challenge of “forging new expression in these fields –
an activity which transcends issues of bilingual terminologies and broaches wider questions of identity,
ideology, etc.” (1990: 48).
1.1.2
Analysing mode in view of translation
Mode is characterised by Halliday (1993: 25) as the wavelength channel selected, which includes the medium
(spoken or written), explained as a functional variable. Taking over Eggins’s model again (1994: 90–2), we
may envisage mode as characterised by means of two simultaneous continua, both referring to distance in
the relation between language and the situation:
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
261
1. The spatial/interpersonal distance, whose variables are the visual and aural contact, and the
kind of feedback possible, ranges from “casual conversation” to “novel” as the extreme
modes of discourse, having in between the telephone conversation (maybe the chat on the
messenger), the email, the fax, and the radio.
2. Experiential distance ranges situations of difference between language and the social process
for which it is necessary. At one pole there are examples such as playing a game of bridge,
in which language accompanies the social process (language as action), at the other the
representative is (non-)fiction literature in which case language constitutes the social process
itself (seen as reflection). In between there are modes such as calling a match (commentating)
and the report in the newspaper (recounting experience).
From the combination of these two dimensions, the contrast between the spoken and the written media
can appear more clearly. The two modes can be characterised contrastively, by linguistic means such as
spontaneity phenomena (false starters, interruptions, overlap, incomplete sentences) versus final draft
(i.e. polishing – the indications of earlier drafts are removed), everyday lexis (including dialect and slang)
versus “prestige” lexis, non-standard versus standard grammar, grammatical complexity versus grammatical
simplicity etc. The more formal, written mode is further individualised (Eggins, 1994: 95–7) by frequent
nominalization as a means of rhetorical organisation and high lexical density. Both spoken and written
mode can be subdivided. The spoken mode can be sub-classified into:
a) “speaking spontaneously” (conversing and monologuing) and
b) “speaking non-spontaneously” (the speaking of what is written and reciting);
The written one is sub-classified into:
a) “written to be spoken as if not written” (lectures and some sermons),
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262
b) “written to be spoken”, and
c) “written not necessarily to be spoken” (to be read) (Hatim & Mason, 1990: 49, Hatim &
Munday, 2009: 190).
Each of these sub-modes has, as Eggins (see above) and Hatim & Munday point out, lexical, (phonological)
and grammatical markers, most of the times culturally-specific, which unfortunately are not always seriously
taken into consideration by translators. This leads again to T texts that either do not reflect the content and
the communicative intention of the ST properly, or are not appropriate in the TC. The issue of an awareness
of the lexico-grammatical means of expression specific to each sub-mode in both languages arises here, too.
Taking into account the translation brief, or the more implicit translation function, the translator has
to analyse all the clues which indicate the mode in the ST analysis. If the translation is to have the same
function as the ST, an equivalent mode has to be attempted at; if the TT will function with a (slightly)
different function, the appropriate mode has to be defined. In any of the cases, the translator should base
his/her linguistic choices on experience and knowledge of the suitable linguistic means for each mode.
His/her actions should also take into account the third, and, in my opinion, the most problematic variable
(at least when it comes to the English-Romanian pair), tenor.
1.1.3
Analysing tenor in view of translation
Sometimes called also “style” of discourse, or “status” or “attitude”, the tenor of discourse refers to “the type
of role interactions, the set of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary among the participants
involved” (Trosborg, 2002: 11). In determining the kind of relation between the participants, status, age
and knowledge are found by some scholars (ibid..) to be the crucial factors leading to symmetrical (two
equal parties) or asymmetrical relations (one party has superior status: specialist–layman, child–teacher,
employer–employee etc.) Others define tenor in terms of continua such as power (equal- unequal, similar to
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263
status), contact (frequent–occasional), and affective involvement (high–low), each of the continua having with
specific lexico-grammatical features (Eggins, 1994: 99–103); these variables account for formality, politeness,
and reciprocity.
Mcgregor (in Hatim and Munday, 2009: 190) refers to tenor as resulting on the one hand from the
relationship the user of language has with his audience, and on the other hand from the relation between
this relationship and the language used. When this relationship is seen as a personal one, reflected by
different degrees of formality, one can speak about personal tenors of discourse. When the relation is
viewed functionally, concerned with what the user is trying to do with language to his audience (teaching
persuading, amusing, disciplining, exhorting, etc) we are dealing with functional tenors of discourse. From
this perspective, it seems logical to incorporate here, with functional tenors (as Trosborg, 2002: 20–2 did),
Searle’s illocutionary acts, called communicative functions (representatives, directives etc.), too, since they
refer to what we actually do with language.
Personal tenor contains different degrees of formality which can be distinguished like in Halliday’s
“casual”, “intimate” and “deferential” tenors – 1964: 93); Trosborg’s division, taken from Joos (the 1960’s),
seems however more helpful. It contains five levels of formality each of them expressed by specific
lexico-grammatical means:
a) The frozen style, marked by social distance between sender and receiver, is impersonal
(lexicon known only by experts; e.g. in contracts) (e.g. the farewell formula Good day, Sir! in
the spoken mode is specific to the frozen style);
b) The formal text is also marked for social distance. The syntax is impersonal (high frequency
of complex sentence structures and noun phrases, absence of contractions, absence of
qualifying modal verbs) (e.g. Good bye! as a farewell formula for the spoken mode);
c) The consultative text is written in neutral “normal” style. Receiver participation may be
elicited. The lexicon may contain everyday conversational expressions; direct speech may
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264
be present (e.g. the phrase So long!);
d) The casual style is marked by various degrees of implicitness because of intimacy between
sender and receiver. It is characterised by simple sentence and noun phrase structure, by
ellipsis, contraction and slang and interruptions are a frequent phenomenon (e.g. Bye-bye!);
e) The intimate style is used between people who are very close and have a maximum of
shared background information; intonation is more important than wording or grammar,
private vocabulary is also characteristic (e.g. Ta-ta!) (Trosborg, 2002: 22–3, examples taken
from Dimitriu, 2002: 82).
Tenor illustrates even better the fact that languages have specific ways of seeing and partitioning reality. In
my opinion, it is the most problematic variable when translation is concerned. This happens on the one
hand, because the three dimensions of (personal) tenor (status, age and knowledge) do not impose the
same kind of formality in all languages. Hatim and Munday (2009: 190) give the example of the different
ways Americans and Japanese express deference in family relationships (e.g. in the father–son relationship),
leading to the conclusion that different cultures have different perspectives on appropriacy with regard to
formality. This applies to a certain degree to the Romanian vs. American customs and cultural conventions,
especially if we add the factor of time (a less “respectful” way of addressing to one’s parents is seen as
normal by the new generation, while two centuries ago this would have not been accepted). On the other
hand, there are the culture-bound linguistic means of expressing formality: English has a much richer scale of
degrees of formality than Romanian for instance. The overlap between field, tenor and mode is proved again
by the fact that formality is expressed also as a function of mode: see the difference between “most obliged”
or “I’m extremely thankful” (formal, mainly spoken) and “Please convey our thanks to. . . ” or “Finally, I
should like to express my gratitude to. . . ” (formal, mainly written) or “how very kind” (casual, mainly
spoken) and “it was most kind of you to. . . (casual, mainly written). It is obvious from these examples that
such ways of expression vary also function of the text-generating activity (field).
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
265
1.2
Register-specific problems when translating from English into Romanian and
vice versa
As already made mention of, the English–Romanian pair does not make an exception with regards to
the lack of correlation between languages at the level of register. Accepting that mainly the same fields
of activity are present in both languages (even if in Romanian some of them do not benefit of the same
tradition and refinement of linguistic means) and that they are expressed in roughly the same modes, the
interpersonal or interactional dimension is clearly seen and materialised in different manners by the two
languages. Skilful translators have to compensate for this lack of parity by various techniques (e.g. For the
Romanian “Îi zise: Săru” mânuşiţele, Coniţă! şi îi sărută mâna respectuos”, possible ways of translating
(since both the greeting formula and the gesture are culture-bound and they would be meaningless if
translated literally) would be “He bent respectfully and said: Good morning/afternoon/evening, M’am!”).
In such cases we are also dealing with some pragmatic issues such as presupposition triggers, i.e. words/
phrases that refer to culturally specific realities and with social dialect.
2 Using the relevant insights for the acquisition of basic translation
skills by high school students
Although the findings of discourse analysis and of other pragmatic approaches to Translation Studies are
mostly applicable to translator education and training at university level, a number of insights coming from
this discipline could be profitably used with (senior) high-school students, in a necessary attempt to help
them develop their basic translation skills. Raising their awareness to some pragmatic aspects involved
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
266
in translating a text, especially from English into Romanian2 , by combining theoretical principles (briefly
presented and in a manner suitable to their age and level of knowledge) with many translation examples
are didactic approaches with high potential for positive long term outcomes. Beyond the acquisition of
strictly linguistic abilities, students will benefit from the translation experience in a much more complex
manner: such activities could enrich their background with elements specific to the Anglo-Saxon culture
(especially linguistic and cultural conventions, but not only), strengthening also the knowledge they have
about their own language and culture, with its specific patterns and conventions; moreover, this experience
could increase their self-confidence as language users, and, why not, pave their way for a future translation
career.
Although many of the theoretical considerations may be a little too abstract for their level, students are
familiar with such terms as slang, every day vs. technical language, maybe even with the formal/informal
distinction. Drawing on these facts, we may attempt, for instance, to raise their awareness to the way the
field of (linguistic) activity influences the lexico-grammatical choices one has to make in view of efficient
communication, together with the mode of expression (it is easy to perceive the fact that, in general, the
written mode is more elaborate, more “polished”, more formal), or to sensitise them to the difficulties that
arise because of the lack of correspondence between languages at the level of tenor.
For this purpose, short examples of texts from various social activity areas, either accompanied by model
translations, or contrasted with texts from the same field in the other language may be a stimulus for raising
their interest in cultural diversity. Also, to illustrate the way different fields – and implicitly different genres
– ask for different framings and linguistic means of expression, supplying a wide range of English texts
belonging to various fields may be helpful and interesting.
High school students may be, for instance, encouraged to notice particularities of such texts, function of
2
One of the undisputed, though (for practical reasons), rarely observed methodological principles in translator training is
that directionality in translation should be into the mother tongue.
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
267
various fields of activity: a cooking recipe, an instruction sheet and a shop-assistant–customer dialogue
for buying and selling stamps, a legislative text concerning the alimony and a letter of advertisement
announcing price reductions are possible examples of texts that can be exploited in various ways.
e.g. 1) Line a gas boiler with foil to protect it from aubergine juice. Turn flame to medium-low. Place
aubergine directly over the flame and let it get charred o one side. Keep turning the aubergine until
the entire skin looks burnt and the vegetable turns limp and soft. Peel away the charred skin under
cold, running water. Chop the aubergine pulp.
2) operate this device only on 3 V DC with 2 R6 batteries (size AA batteries). For AC operation use the
AC-E311/E314 power Adaptor. Do not use any other type.
For car battery operation, use the car battery cord recommended. Do not use any other type.
3) S1:
S2:
S1:
S1:
S1:
S1:
S2:
S1:
S2:
S1:
S2:
S1:
Yes, please.
Can I have these two like that?
yes.
One’s forty-five.
One’s twenty-five.
How many would you like?
Four, please.
Two of which?
What have you got?
Uh. . . There’s two different designs of the. . . (shows cover)
I’ll take two of each
uhum
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
268
S1: right. . . that’s a dollar seventy thank you
S1 here we are
S2 thank you
S1: dollar seventy that’s four and one’s five
S1: thank you very much
S2 thank you
S1 they’ll be right I’ll fix those up in a moment
S2 okay
4) Courts allocate alimony with the intention of permitting a spouse to maintain the standard of living
to which the spouse has become accustomed. Factors affecting whether the court awards alimony
include the marriage’s length, the length of separation before divorce, the parties’ ages, the parties’
respective incomes, the parties’ future financial prospects, the health of the parties, and the parties’
respective faults in causing the marriage’s demise.
If a couple had children together while married, a court may require one spouse to pay child support
to the spouse with custody, but one should note that alimony and child support differ.
5) Dear Ms. Cohen, This is my favourite kind of letter. How many letters have I had to write over the
years advising you of a price increase? Why, you ask, am I so happy? Read on. This is to advise
you that, for a limited period of time, we are reducing prices on certain items in our catalogue. Take
a moment to review the enclosed catalogue. I have circled in red ink the items that are temporarily
reduced. What an opportunity! Please take advantage of these prices. If you wish to order large
quantities, or stagger shipments, give me a call and we will try to work out mutually acceptable
terms and conditions. In any event, get your order in, as these prices are only in effect until 15th of
February. I do enjoy writing this type of letter. Thank you in advance for your order.
Laura Elena Sună (Munteanu)
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Mention should be made that the aims of raising students’ awareness of cultural differences and of
developing basic translations skills should be attained by respecting the principles of communicative and
post-communicative approaches to ELT. The translation activities should be integrated in a carefully
devised context. For instance the above texts can be analyzed first as instances of communication, in view
of detecting textual conventions - such as coherence patterns, verb mood, etc. – that can also be used
by students in their own compositions in the TL. This could be a sort of pre-translation stage, and the
translation proper can then be followed by some post-translation activities, meant to encourage students to
reflect upon the choices they made, and maybe to infer some general principles out of their experiences.
The students have to be given a purpose for their activity, in order to increase their motivation and interest
and focus their attention on relevant aspects; for example they may be asked to imagine that their father
has an electric device and the instructions manual has no translation for one chapter, so he needs help with
the translation (simulation). Work can be organized in pairs or groups for certain stages; learner autonomy
can be encouraged by means of tasks that have to be accomplished without teacher supervision, feedback
being expected only much later (e.g.: translation of the next sequence from a previously studied text, project
works such as making their own “cooking book” which should contain recipes taken from the internet
and translated into Romanian). The range of possibilities is quite vast, once we open our minds towards
the prospect welcoming translation as a necessary activity and even as a (rough) skill, perceiving it as a
communicative activity with all the effects that result from this perspective.
Conclusion
In an age of unparalleled dynamism and intense trans-linguistic contacts, cultural diversity is still a
reality that has to be taken into account if effective communication, including communication by means
of translation, is the aim. The ever more acute awareness of what differentiates us from others, as far as
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discourse norms are concerned, is one of the tools that help us overcome the difficulties raised by the lack
of correspondence between languages at register level. Knowledge of cultural and linguistic norms of both
S and T cultures (i.e. of what is appropriate on a specific occasion) is another necessary tool. The attempt to
sensitize (advanced) high-school students to some of these considerations, mostly by means of practical
activities of translation as a communicative activity, should bring them at least the advantage of a more
comprehensible view upon the phenomenon of cross-cultural diversity.
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