American Research Journal of English and Literature

Acheoah John Emike1, Balogun Bamitale Janet2

This paper examines the use of non-verbal communication. To perform face acts (FAs). Non-verbal communication includes laughter, gestures, body movements, etc. The literature of face acts is replete with the use of language in the performance of face threatening acts (FTAs) and face saving acts (FSAs). Presently, we do not know of any study that examines the use of verbal communication in the performance of face acts, even though language philosophers unanimously agree that illocutionary acts can be performed via non-performative formula (extralinguistic means). This study hinges on two theoretical frameworks: the Face Management View and the Pragma-crafting Theory. One of the findings of the study is that non-verbal communication conveys face acts that are determined by different variables including the relationship between the participants and psychological underpinnings.

Dr. Richa Tewari

Since the closing decades of the eighteenth century, ‘Nature’ has been one of the most recurrent themes of English and American Poetry. The chief exponent of this subject, William Wordsworth, explored its utmost philosophical limits and in doing so, set a trap of convention for the succeeding generations of poets. From him down to the Victorian poets in England and through them to Bryant and Emerson in America, every poet, faithfully and at times exasperatingly echoed some of the notable aspects of his attitude towards nature. From Wordsworth up to Hardy, each poet spiritualized or personified Nature. To them, nature spoke a significant language and stirred within them, profound philosophical reflections. In this group, can also be placed writers like Poe, Melville and Henry James. But the American poet Robert Frost’s (1874 - 1963) approach to nature was a fusion of all these. Sometimes he simply observed and recorded beauties of nature, at times he found spiritual echoes in it, and still at some other times he found nature to be a mirror of human soul. But he never saw nature away from nature. Frost’s treatment of nature better can be assessed by comparing his stance with that of another nature poet. In this paper Robert Frost’s realistic approach to ‘Nature’ has been compared with another American nature poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).She was “the most perfect flower of New England Transcendentalism”, an anticipator of metaphysical poetry, a smeller of modernity, and an upholder of romanticism. A religious poet with keen sensibilities and a Puritan’s thorough knowledge of the Bible, she could not help being intensely aware of Nature’s glory.

Ahmed Ben Amara

Within Virginia Woolf’s body of short fiction, “The Mark on the Wall” stands out as a unique but also intriguing story. The story’s early neglect and subsequent recognition mirror the difficulties that readers and commentators have had with its unusual form and content. This essay proposes to explain the changes that have recently occurred in critical appreciations of “The Mark on the Wall” by linking these to a major feature of the story, namely the ways in which it anticipates not only developments in Woolf’s career as a writer of fiction, but also post-modern theories of knowledge and truth. Woolf’s story, it will be argued, marked the beginning of Woolf’s career as a writer of short fiction, shaped the direction that her longer novels would later take, and confirmed the intersections between her personal experience, in this case the experience of illness, and her artistic endeavor. This essay will rely on a close reading of “The Mark on the Wall” to explore these and other facets of the story that make of it, indeed, a work of multiple thresholds for its author.

Wenjie Han

As a well-known writer of American postmodernism, Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 have received extensive attention and multi-dimensions interpretations from the critics. This paper will focus the various paranoid behaviors that Oedipa displayed in the quest of the mysterious mail system Trystero through the trace of the origin of “paranoia”. It will explore the alienation of individuals and even American society hidden beneath Oedipa’s quest from the perspective of alienation proposed by Fromm.

EA Gamini Fonseka, BA, MA, PhD, FRSA

The paper presents a critical reading of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story ‘A Temporary Matter’. The analysis is conducted in line with the trajectory Lahiri has developed for the short story. Accordingly, it continues under fifteen sub-topics respectively: 1) Introduction; 2) Images of a Frozen Personal Relationship; 3) Frustration Precipitated by a Stillbirth; 4) Avoidance as a Defence Mechanism; 5) Defensive Isolation in Individual Behaviours; 6) Nostalgia about Domestic Harmony; 7) Alliance Forced by Darkness; 8) A Totally New Start; 9) Breaking the Ice; 10) The Luxury of Darkness; 11) Catharsis Invited by Daily Confession; 12) Disappointment without Power Cut; 13) End to the Pleasure; 14) A Mystery Revealed; and 15) Darkness Ushering Illumination. Each section foregrounds a significant development in the behaviours of the two protagonists concerned who are frustrated by the stillbirth of their baby on whose conception there was no consensus between the two and are not confident to face each other because of their initial differences about bearing and rearing babies. There is an effort to assess the efficacy of Lahiri’s creative use of imagery and symbolism to portray the developments and conditions within the narrative space in a critical light so that the reader will be able to perceive how an Indian couple psychologically withstand a stillbirth in the family in an American alien cultural environment. The paper reflects on the paradox in the power cut that helps repair the shattered personal relationship between the two as a unique device in narrating the situation in question.

Acheoah John Emike1, Tokunbo Olopade2, Linda Jummai Mustafa3

It is fascinating to appraise linguistic theories through the analysis of literary texts. This paper is an appraisal of Brown and Levinson’s Face Management View (cited in Bossan Rita [1]) through the analysis of corpora selected from Charles Chinedu Ochendu’s [2] novel, Fools’ Paradise. Language theories or postulations provide useful insights on language use across genres, including the novel genre. The Face Management View captures not only the sociocultural and psychological of face threatening acts, but also their communicative potentials in written and spoken texts. The selected conversational turns were subjected to analysis to reveal whether or not face threatening acts (FTAs) and face saving acts (FSAs) were performed, the pragmatic motivations for performing FTAs and FSAs and the implications on the message of a text. The study concludes that even though the theory is bereaved of the dynamics of non-verbal communication, it is suitable for explaining the psychological context of language use in human interactions.

Dr. Sarita Jain1, Dr. Rashmi Bhatnagar2

Eastern Kire, born in Kohima is an Angami Naga writer. Her works are an insight into the Naga culture, history and also the customs and traditions of the Angami society. Kire’s A Terrible Matriarchy is a Buildungs roman; meaning it is about the protagonist coming of age. The protagonist, Dielieno is the youngest daughter of Visa and Nino. From an early age she is put under the tutelage of her grandmother Vibano who’s very conservative woman and whose sole purpose is to groom Dielieno to be a good Naga wife and mother. Dielieno suffers from double oppression; first her grandmother’s dictates and her Patriarchial subjugation and secondly the socio-economic discrimination evident in the Naga society. But Dielieno does not feel dejected and lost because of her conditions. She bravely struggles against all odds. The one thing remarkable about her character is her fearlessness. The proposed paper traces the growth of Dielieno from a young, innocent girl to a mature woman; her struggles at myriad junctions in her life and her victory at the end of the novel.

Acheoah John Emike1, Balogun Bamitale Janet2, Zulfaa Yushau Waziri3

Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Party became the President-elect after Nigeria’s Presidential Election which took place in March 2023. The central goal of an election victory speech such as that of Bola Tinubu is to persuade, unify and mobilize the audience. The speech analyzed in this study is the election victory speech delivered by the President-elect. Selected utterances from the speech are analyzed to find out how the speaker skillfully deployed speech acts that are germane to the psychological context of the speech, occasioned by the opponents’ claim that the election was rigged. Hinging on two theoretical frameworks (Bach and Harnish’s Speech Act Theory as well as Stance and Engagement theory), the study concludes that speech acts have intentional contents which are products of speaker-hearer shared knowledge, and persuasive use of language in political speeches presupposes the use of different communicative strategies: skillful selection and sequencing of speech acts, personal pronouns, emotional appeals, exploring speaker-hearer shared knowledge, establishing speaker hearer bond, among other strategies.