American Research Journal of English and Literature

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.

EA Gamini Fonseka, BA, MA,Phd, FRSA

This is a literary study of the short story “Professional Mourners” by Alagu Subramaniam (1964). The introduction focuses on the sociological aspect of the practice of hiring professional mourners at funerals in certain parts of Sri Lanka. It is conducted in six sections, in accordance with the trajectory the story follows: 1) Exciting Element in Death; 2) Uncle’s Self-Importance as Master of Ceremonies; 3) Uncle’s Hunt for Mourners; 4) Service in Full Swing; 5) Mission Impossible; and 6) A Cacophony to Mock the Perpetrator. As the narrator is a child, all these sections attempt to establish a child’s perspective of the entire procedure the so-called “Master of Ceremonies” follows in fulfilling the requirement of hiring some mourners at the funeral of his grandmother. So, section 1) captures how a group of adults and children responds to death in the family; section 2) demonstrates how the schoolmaster turns the occasion into an opportunity for slave driving in his assumed capacity as Master of Ceremonies; section 3) narrates how oppressively the schoolmaster treats the professional mourners; section 4) depicts how the professional mourners engage in their duty; section 5) satirises the schoolmaster’s disappointment in front of dissidents of his violation of the professional mourners’ obligation to mourn their mother; section 6) ironically presents the negative impact the mourners’ howling has on the schoolmaster. Thus, the study treats the story as a series of incidents exposing a harmful aspect of class consciousness that promotes slavery to the extent of depriving the victims of their right to satisfy their personal priorities.

Yan Liu1, Xiao Ma1*, Yong Zhong2

Metadiscourse markers are highly multifunctional, and because of their syntactic optionality, they are often overlooked in translation, especially in literary translation where translators’ subjectivity plays an active role. Huashuo (as the story says) is a recurring metadiscourse marker in Chinese classic vernacular fictions, and despite its seeming redundancy, it functions as an important textual connective as well as an interactional marker to engage the readers. This paper focuses on the English translation of huashuo in Chinese vernacular short stories Erpai (Pai’an Jingqi and Erke Pai’an Jingqi). By comparing the functions of huashuo in the source text with those of its translations in the target text, we find that huashuo is often treated in the translated versions in three ways: omission, retention and functional mismatch. Although huashuo in Chinese classic vernacular fictions may not pose a great challenge to translators, the unawareness of its functions will cause misinterpretation and affect the continuity of the narration in the target text. It is suggested that translators should first consciously recognize the functions of huashuo according to the source context before translating and then can ensure an appropriate translation of it.