American Research Journal of English and Literature

Hajer Khalid AlShishani

This study compares and contrasts a stage-to-film adaptation which is Sidney Lumet’s movie adaption of Eugene O’Neill’s Play Long Day’s Journey into Night, while focusing on Linda Hutcheon’s adaptation theory discussed in her book Theory of Adaptation. This study also addresses the manner in which an adaptor changed or did not change the original work for a different medium. It further focuses on the way Sidney Lumet made a reference to Eugene O’Neill’s play, while still allowing and urging himself to come up with something of his own and maintaining the unique characteristics of the original text.

Qiuping Lu

This article explores misogyny perpetrated by women represented in the novel, a fictional biography, Silver Sister by Chinese Australian author Lillian Ng. It demonstrates that misogyny is not only perpetuated by men, but also by women who internalise patriarchal ideology and carry out misogynistic practices. These women are what Ueno calls “transvestite patriarchy”. They exploit and oppress other women who are in disadvantaged positions. These women collude with men to maintain the patriarchal system that perpetrates and perpetuates misogyny from the past to the present.

Yousef Alhomouz

This paper deals with the notion of Diaspora regarding the short story of the land of Sad Oranges by Ghassan Kanafani. The orange in this work represents and remains metaphorical; a faded memory instead of a symbol of the happy existence the family lived before its children becoming exiles. The orange represents a psychological, familial, and social catastrophe in the tale. It represents the political asylum, pessimism, and acceptance of the reality of loss.The sorrowful country portrays the several multiple aspects of the Palestinian catastrophe in many shapes and it is a collection of several bends against sensation and memories, as well as a group of many bends at the front of the human agony contained in this mirror. Kanafani latest attempt to construct his rise to the concept of the Palestinian perspective, which he wants to depict with words, is The Land of the Sad Oranges. Kanafani here explains the sorrow and the bitterness of being an expatriate and expelled from the motherland by force.  

Shi Long

Toni Morrison’s black urban writing focuses on American blacks inequality in urban survival and mental situation, Morrison’s novels is characterized with sharp contrast of black personal experiences in city and different urban landscape, as well as the reaching of the spiritual appeal of urban blacks through art, in order to highlight the reconstruction of the spiritual home after the black mental and physical double injury in the city.

Pragya Dhiman

This paper attempts to explore the criticism brought forth against the art of writing by Plato via the use of Socrates in Phaedrus, acting as a mouthpiece, in order to better understand Plato’s philosophical discourses through the lens of a reader trying to question, understand, critique or agree with him in the 21st century. In this essay, I shall be attempting to use a modified version of the dialectical method itself to arrive at a conclusion. 

Acheoah John Emike, PhD1, Shittu Fatai1, Okonkwo Linus Lebechi2, Garba Arzika Jega2

Lorries are among the vehicles that convey goods across Nigeria. Many of such lorries have fascinating captions expressed in Nigerian Pidgin. This paper attempts a sociolinguistic overview of selected captions on lorries. In using written language, the writer is expected to convey relevant information in terms of making the message such that can be processed easily via encoder-decoder shared knowledge. Indeed, language is the medium or vehicle for conveying ideas. The use of Nigerian Pidgin on lorries is informed by its communicative potentials, being a language that conveys the users’ socio-cultural nuances at individual and collective levels. Hinging on Stance and Engagement Theory, this study concludes that Nigerian Pidgin is used as captions in lorries to transmit knowledge, lampoon societal vices, and awaken the readers’ consciousness on states-of-affairs. 

Milorad Ivankovic

There is an old wise saying coming to us from remote antiquity, viz. ‘Better is one’s own water than other man’s wine”. Most people, however, do not adhere to it but rather follow another diametrically opposed maxim “Better is other man’s water than one’s own wine”. Modern Westerners seem to be unaware of the hidden spiritual treasure they dwell upon, while incessantly seek to obtain treasure from some other side, mostly from Asian and Far Eastern traditions. Fortunately, there was a man of great insight named Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who recorded and preserved some precious Western treasure for posterity and eternity.

Acheoah John Emike, PhD1, Margaret Nonyerem Agu2

Research on language use in the advertisement of herbal medicines is quite uncommon. Presently, we do not know of any. This study investigates language use in selected samples of the advertisement of certain herbal medicines. The focus of the study is the functions of speech acts when selected (in terms of categories and frequency) and deployed to achieve intended communicative effects. Hinging on a two-fold theoretical framework (Acheoah’s [1] typology of locutionary strategies and Bach and Harnish’s [2] speech act taxonomy), this study finds out that: the advertiser’s illocutionary goals align with speech acts selection and sequencing; the language is captivating and persuasive; in conveying his message, the advertiser exploits natural human tendencies (aspirations, desires and aversions); and the message is situated in varied social, pragmatic and psychological contexts.

Dr. AMAL. M. A. IBRAHIM 

The purpose of this study is to examine Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” (1842) from a psychosocial point of view. It intends to analyze the poem using some concepts such as the rule of jealousy and possession pride, arrogance, and murder. The reason why the study chooses to use these particular concepts is that the psychosocial phenomena they represent play a major role in this poem. The main character in the poem can be considered to belong to these concepts. It led him to jealousy, which led to the commission of the murder. The researcher recommended that the psychological state of the psychopathic must be understood in order to avoid their violent behavior because they suffer from psychopathy due to social family problems and eventually led them to commit murder.

Md. Mahbubul Alam

In Chinua Achebe’s magnum opus Things Fall Apart we see an authentic and objective presentation of the Igbo society. The ethnographic depiction of the Igbo life in the novel indicates that Achebe has tried to maintain his objective standpoint in dealing with various socio-cultural issues of the Igbo society. He has depicted these issues from the perspective of both an unbiased observer as well as an unprejudiced critic. The present study has shown to what extent and in which aspects has Achebe maintained his objective stance in depicting the pre-colonial Ibo society in respect of various socio-cultural mechanisms in the novel. To do so, firstly, this paper has presented the socio-cultural aspects like social administration, justice, respect for the elders, social status, rituals, communal harmony and unity etc. of the Igbo people in their real life already put forward by various researchers and anthropologists without considering the presence of their related contents in Things Fall Apart. Then, these real issues and their parallel presence in the novel have been presented side by side to see to what extent the scholars’ claims about various socio-cultural sides of the Igbo life are either agreed or refuted in the novel. Finally, these issues are thoroughly dealt with to discuss Achebe’s objectivity. The results show that the scholars’ claim about the socio-cultural realities of the Igbo possesses close proximity with those of the novel. The core idea of the findings is that Achebe maintains objectivity in presenting various socio-cultural sides of the pre-colonial Igbo society in Things Fall Apart without spoiling any literary grandeur of the novel.