IJALEL, Vol 9, No 1 (2020)

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature ISSN 2200-3592 (Print) ISSN 2200-3452 (Online) Pioneering in Language & Literature Discovery International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature All papers on which this is printed in this book meet the minimum requirements of "Australian International Academic Centre PTY. LTD.". All papers published in this book are accessible online. Editors-in-Chief  John I. Liontas, University of South Florida, United States  Jayakaran Mukundan, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia  Zosia Golebiowski, Deakin University, Australia Managing Editor  Seyed Ali Rezvani Kalajahi, Turkish-German University, Turkey Journal Information ISSN Print: 2200-3592 ISSN Online: 2200-3452 ISBN: 978 -600-5361-84-1 Website: www.journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/IJALEL E-mail: [email protected] Publisher Australian International Academic Centre PTY. LTD. Unit 1/7 Highview Dr, Doncaster VIC 3108, Australia Phone: +61 3 9028 6880 Website: www.aiac.org.au Imprint 1. LuLu Press Inc. 3101 Hillsborough Street Raleigh, NC 27607 United States 2. Digital Print Australia 135 Gilles Street, Adelaide South Australia 5000 Australia Website: www.lulu.com/spotlight/AIAC Website: www.digitalprintaustralia.com t rs t t rt r-CC-BY- IJALEL ii IALEL Editorial Team Editor(s)-in-Chief John I. Liontas, University of South Florida, United States Zosia Golebiowski, Deakin University, Australia Jayakaran Mukundan, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia Managing Editor Seyed Ali Rezvani Kalajahi, Maltepe University, Turkey Senior Associate Editors Ahmad M. Al-Hassan, Bremen University, Germany Ali Al-Issa, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman Ali Miremadi, California State University, United States Arshad Abd Samad, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia Biook Behnam, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran Christina Alm-Arvius, Stockholm University, Sweden Claudia Monacelli, UNINT University, Italy Eugenio Cianflone, University of Messina, Italy Haifa Al-Buainain, Qatar University, Qatar Hossein Farhady, University of Southern California, United States John W. Schwieter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada Juliane House, University of Hamburg, Germany Kazem Lotfipour-Saedi, Ottawa University, Canada Kimberley Brown, Portland State University, United States María-Isabel González-Cruz, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), Spain Mats Oscarson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Meixia Li, Beijing International Studies University, China Roger Barnard, The University of Waikato, New Zealand Ruth Roux, El Colegio de Tamaulipas & Universidad Autonoma de Tamaulipas, Mexico Sebnem Toplu, EGE University, Turkey Seyyed Ali Ostovar-Namaghi, Shahrood University of Technology, Iran Shameem Rafik-Galea, UCSI University, Malaysia Simin Karimi, University of Arizona, United States Taher Badinjki, Al-Zaytounah University, Jordan Xitao Fu, Zhanjiang Normal University, China Yolanda Gamboa, Florida Atlantic University, United States Yuko Goto Butler, University of Pennsylvania, United States Zdenka Gadusova, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia Zia Tajeddin, Allameh Tabatabai University,Tehran, Iran iii Associate Editors Ahmed Gumaa Siddiek, Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia Anne Dragemark Oscarson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Asghar Salimi Amirghayeb, Maragheh University, Iran Bahman Amani, University of Malayer, Iran Bilge Öztürk, Kocaeli University, Turkey Christopher Conlan, Curtin University, Australia Efstathios (Stathis) Selimis, Technological Education Institute of Kalamata, Greece Fan-Wei Kung, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan Ferit Kilickaya, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Turkey Javanshir Shibliyev, Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus Maryam Azarnoosh, IAU, Semnan, Iran Naser Nayif AlBzour, Al AlBayt University, Jordan Natasha Pourdana, Gyeongju University, South Korea Obaid Hamid, The University Of Queensland, Australia Rachel Adams Goertel, Roberts Wesleyan College, United States Reza Kafipour, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran Shaofeng Li, University of Auckland, New Zealand Vahid Nimehchisalem, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia Distinguished Advisors Brian Tomlinson, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK Charles Goodwin, University of California, Los Angeles, United States Claire Kramsch, University of California, United States Dan Douglas, Dan Douglas , Iowa State University, United States Hossein Nassaji, University of Victoria, Canada Jalal Sokhanvar, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran Roger Nunn, The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE Susan Gass, Michigan State University, United States Advisors Ian Bruce, The University of Waikato, New Zealand Kristina Smith, Pearson Education, Turkey Oytun Sozudogru, University of York, UK Steve Neufeld, Middle East Technical University, Cyprus Editorial Panel Abdolvahed Zarifi, Yasouj University, Iran Ali Albashir Mohammed Al-Ha, Jazan University, Saudi Arabia Ali Asghar Yousefi Azarfam, IAU-Tabriz, Iran Arif Ahmed Al-Ahdal, Qassim University, Saudi Arabia Aseel Zibin, University of Jordan, Jordan Bakhtiar Naghdipour, Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus Bora DEMIR, Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey iv Cecilia Chu, Hong Kong Baptist University, China Dawn Rogier, Embassy of the United States of America, Philippines Erdem AKBAS, University of York, UK Farah Ghaderi, Urmia University, Iran Gerry Loftus, University of Buckingham, UK Isa SPAHIU, International Balkan University, Macedonia Jiaoyue Chen, University of Southampton, United Kingdom Mahdi Alizadeh Ziaei, The University of Edinburgh, UK Naemeh Nahavandi, IAU-Tabriz, Iran Neslihan Önder Ozdemir, The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom Noelia Malla García, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain Omid Akhavan, University of Texas at Dallas, United States Orkun CANBAY, Qatar University, Qatar Reza Vaseghi, Shomal University, Iran Ruzbeh Babaee, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia Seyyed Ali Kazemi, Islamic Azad University, Iran Shannon Kelly Hillman, University of Hawaii, Hawaii Tin T. Dang, Vietnam National University, Vietnam Yasemin Aksoyalp, Turkish-German University, Turkey Book Reviews Editor Marilyn Lewis, University of Auckland, New Zealand Deceased Editor Cem Alptekin, Bo aziçi University, Turkey v Vol. 9 No. 1; 2020 Table of Contents Articles Examining ESL Learners’ Knowledge of Collocations Rafidah Kamarudin, Shazila Abdullah, Roslina Abdul Aziz Personal and Collective Identity Codes and Challenges for Minorities, Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer: A Case Study Mohammadreza Ghanbarinajjar Internationalization vs. Globalization: What Can the Arab EFL Teachers Do to Assure Quality in Education? Jihan Zayed Sunil Gangopaddhaya’s ‘An Unsent Letter’: A Harrowing Outburst of Long Smothered Wail of a Lacerated Psyche Mohammad Mozammel Haque Into the Darkest Corner: The Importance of Addressing Factor-Based Particularity in Relation to Domestic Violence Experiences in Post-Modern Literary Theory Reem Atiyat Nigerian Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadiscourse and its Relationship with their Persuasive Writing Quality Muhammad Mukhtar Aliyu, Shehu Muhammad Korau Literature as Activism - From Entertainment to Challenging Social Norms: Michael Nava’s Goldenboy (1988) Angelos Bollas COVID 19-The Foreign Virus: Media Bias, Ideology and Dominance in Chinese and American Newspaper Articles Mohammad Awad AlAfnan African Prose Fiction and the Depiction of Corruption in Islamic Society and Religion: A Critical Study of Abubakar Gimba’s Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apples Oluchi Chris Okeugo, - Obioha, Jane Onyinye 1-6 7-13 14-23 24-29 30-39 40-49 50-55 56-60 61-66 Self-mythology Through Trauma Studies in Paul Auster’s Invention of Solitude Mohammad Amin Shirkhani 67-72 vi International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Examining ESL Learners’ Knowledge of Collocations Rafidah Kamarudin1*, Shazila Abdullah2, Roslina Abdul Aziz3 1 Academy of Language Studies, UiTM Negeri Sembilan, 72000 Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia Academy of Language Studies, UiTM Perak, 23610 Bandar Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia 3 Academy of Language Studies, UiTM Pahang, 26400 Bandar Jengka, Pahang, Malaysia 2 Corresponding Author: Rafidah Kamarudin, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 11, 2019 Accepted: December 20, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 It is generally agreed that collocational knowledge is an important language form for language learners in order for them to be proficient and fluent in the target language. However, previous studies have reported that second language (L2) learners lack collocational competence and they encounter difficulties in learning and using collocations. The present study not only investigates the overall collocational knowledge of Malaysian ESL learners, but more specifically, their productive and receptive knowledge of lexical and grammatical, which so far have not been further explored. Additionally, the ESL learners’ performance on three different types of collocations: verb-noun, adjective-noun, and verb-preposition is also investigated. Results of the study reveals a few interesting findings with respect to the Malaysian ESL learners’ overall knowledge of collocations, in particular their productive and receptive knowledge of collocations in relation to the three different types of collocations (verb-noun, adjective-noun, and verb-preposition). Pedagogical implications with regard to collocations and recommendations for future research are also put forward. investigated both the receptive and productive aspects of collocational. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Collocations, Receptive Knowledge, Productive Knowledge INTRODUCTION Having an extensive choice of vocabulary items is seen as a prominent element in the use of a language. Nevertheless, it is not sufficient for learners just to know the words without knowing how to use them (Phythian-Sence and Wagner, 2007). Effective use of a large repertoire of vocabulary would undeniably help learners to improve all the language skills, namely, speaking, listening, reading and writing. According to Lewis (1997), although words have always been the pillars of a language, it is the use of collocations which will assist learners to achieve communicative competence. A ‘collocation’ is commonly described as a string of two or more words that have the tendency to co-occur (Cruse, 1986). According to Gledhill (2000), collocation has been defined in various depending on the specific aim of the observer. McCarthy (1990,) for instance, simply sees collocation as “a marriage contract between words,” (p. 12), while Lewis (2000) defines it as “the way in which words co-occur in natural text in statistically significant ways” (p. 132). Despite various definitions of collocations by different scholars, collocations, generally, can either be lexical or grammatical (Shammas, 2013; Ebrahimi-Bazzazz, Arshad, Ismi, and Nooreen, 2014). The use of a large quantity of word combinations like collocations is also believed to speed up language processing and hence create native-like fluency (Aston, 1995). As a matter of fact, having language knowledge is perceived to include having collocational knowledge as well (Nation, 2001). Altenberg (1998) emphasizes on the need for learners to have collocational competence or collocational knowledge as he asserts that a natural language could consist of as high as 80% of word combinations. Nevertheless, Bahns and Eldaw (1993) claimed that learners’ knowledge of collocational competence is far below their general vocabulary knowledge. In fact, numerous studies in L2 acquisition research have shown that lack of knowledge and use of collocations at different levels of proficiency could affect learners’ communicative competence and language performance in a negative way (Bahns and Eldaw 1993; Stubbs 2004; Wray 2002; Nasselhauf 2005; Ozaki 2011). Therefore, the aim of this paper is to further investigate the collocational knowledge of Malaysian ESL learners, by focusing on their receptive and productive knowledge of both lexical and grammatical collocations, which to date have not been explored. To be more specific, this paper intends to answer the following questions: 1) Is there a significant difference between the participants’ productive and receptive knowledge of collocations? 2) Is there a significant difference between the participants’ performance on the verb-noun, adjective-noun, and verb- preposition collocation tests? Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.1 IJALEL 9(1):1-6 2 3) What type of collocations in the receptive and productive test that learners found difficult to understand and produce? LITERATURE REVIEW What is Collocation? The term collocation was first introduced by Firth (1957) in his theory of meaning in which he mentions “you know a word by the company it keeps”. Cruse (1986) distinguishes collocation as ‘syntagmatically simple’ and ‘semantically simple’; the former refers to an expression composed of one word in its normal sense to another restricted word (e.g. table a bill, save time), while the latter refers to “a single choice of meaning with an unpredictable or non-compositional sequence of words (e.g. let the cat out of a bag, spill the beans)” (in Gledhill, 2000, p.9). Halliday (1961) provides what is considered the most all comprehensive definition of collocation, framing the term as below: ‘Collocation is the syntagmatic association of lexical items, quantifiable, textually, as the probability that there will occur at n removes (a distance of n lexical items) from an item x, the items a, b, c …Any given item thus enters into a range of collocation, the items with which it is collocated being ranged from more to less probable’ (p.276) In simpler terms, collocation refers to a language-specific phenomenon whereby two or more words co-occur. It is composed of a node (i.e. head word) and a collocate or the word that occur with the node (Shin & Nation, 2008), for example, ‘table a bill’ in which ‘table’ is the node and ‘bill’ is the collocate. Collocations can comprise both lexical and grammatical words: verb + noun (break a leg), adjective + noun (dark horse), preposition + noun (after life) and adjective + preposition (popular with). Benson, Benson and Ilson (1986) further categorize collocation under lexical and grammatical collocations. Both the node and collocate of lexical collocations are content words (i.e. noun, verb, adjective and adverb), while grammatical collocations are made of a content word and a function word (e.g. infinitive to, preposition as shown below: Lexical collocations Verb + Noun take action; make appointment Adjective + Noun heavy meal; white lie Noun + Noun a round of applause; head judge Grammatical collocations Preposition + Noun Adjective + Preposition Verb +Preposition on point, at anchor angry at; happy for work for, graduated from Collocational Competence Among ESL learners in Malaysia In 1992, Nattinger and DeCarrico introduced the term ‘collocational competence’ to refer to the ability native speakers have to process language fluently and idiomatically (Pawley & Syder, 1983 in Henriksen, 2013) and fulfil basic communicative needs, thus, enabling them to communicate effectively in the social setting (Wray, 2002). The same competency is argued to be equally important for L2 learners. Nevertheless, according to Henriksen (2013), collocational competence is “acquired late and often not mastered very well by even fairly competent L2 language learners” (p. 29). He also states that collocational competence has received increasing attention in the last decade, and more focus has been invested on the area in SLA research and in second and foreign language teaching publications (e.g. Granger & Meunier, 2008; Lewis, 2000; Laufer & Waldan, 2011; Nesselhauf, 2003; Schmitt, Dörnyei, Adolphs & Durow, 2004; Siyanova & Schmitt, 2007). In the Malaysian context, collocational competence has also gradually gained more attention. Earlier studies on collocational competence focused mainly on learners’ competency of specific types of collocations. Among those studies were by Ang, Hajar, Tan and Khazriyati (2011), Abdullah and Noor (2013), Joharry (2013), Kamarudin (2013; 2018), Zarifi and Mukundan (2014); and Yunus and Awab (2011). Ang et al. (2011) and Abdullah and Noor (2013) investigated the use of verb-noun (VN) collocations among the Malay ESL learners in Malaysia. Both studies reported problematic use of VN collocations among the learners. Abdullah and Noor (2013) concluded that even though more advanced ESL learners tended to use almost equal percentage of collocation of several lexical verbs as the native speakers, the usage was observed to deviate from the norms of the native speakers. Another grammatical aspect researched was phrasal verbs (Kamarudin, 2013; Zarifi & Mukundan, 2014). Kamarudin (2013) in her investigation on the use of six phrasal verbs with particle UP in the EMAS corpus compared the Malaysian learners’ use of phrasal verbs to that of the native speakers from Bank of English (BoE) corpus. The findings revealed that wrong usage of common phrasal verbs (e.g. pick up, wake up, get up) has strong association with the learners’ lexical knowledge, their awareness of common collocates, familiarity with the context of use and most important their mother tongue. The appropriateness in the use of phrasal verbs was also found to improve over time, suggesting that learners had benefited from longer exposure to the target language. Zarifi and Mukundan (2014) conducted a corpus-based analysis of the creativity and unnaturalness in the use of phrasal verbs among Malaysian ESL learners. Learners were found to use phrasal verbs quite sparingly, but some of the phrasal verbs created were unnatural. Yunus and Awab (2011) in their investigation on collocational competence among law undergraduates focused specifically on prepositional colligations. The study investigated learners’ competency on prepositional colligations that were most frequently used in law documents. The findings provide evidence that colligations of preposition, which is crucially required in the study of Law, still present a major challenge to the law undergraduates. Another collocation study by Joharry (2013) focused specifically on the collocation and semantic prosody of the lemma CAUSE. The study aimed to shed lights on Malaysian learners’ awareness of the negative prosodic feature of CAUSE. The research concluded that the Examining ESL Learners’ Knowledge of Collocations collocational behaviour of the lemma CAUSE by Malaysian ESL learners was more inclined to negative evaluation. More recently collocational research in Malaysia has expanded to include investigation on the influence of individual differences on the acquisition of formulaic language. Halim and Kuiper (2018) adopted the semantic plausibility metric to measure Malaysian ESL’s acquisition of restricted Verb-Noun collocations in written English. The majority of the learners managed to only score average points in the cloze tests conducted, confirming that ESL learners in general experience difficulties in acquiring formulaic language. Empirical studies conducted thus far on the knowledge of collocations among different groups of ESL learners in this country have revealed producing and using appropriate multi-word units is challenging to the learners regardless of their level of English. The challenge is attributed to mainly to learners’ lack of collocational knowledge (Howard, 1998). According to Ang et al. (2017), collocation is difficult to ESL learners as it contains “combination restrictions that ensure the collocability of the component words” (p. 116); this feature contributes to the difficulty of producing appropriate word combinations among these ESL learners. There also exist differences in the use of collocation between ESL learners and native speakers (Abdullah & Noor, 2013; Halim & Kuiper, 2018; Joharry, 2013; Kamarudin, 2013). Even though more advanced learners tended to produce collocation in the aggregate similar to that of the native speakers, their use was considered unnatural (Abdullah & Noor, 2013; Halim & Kuiper, 2018; Zarifi & Mukundan, 2014) and often times erroneous (Ang et al. 2011; Yunus & Awab, 2011; Kamarudin, 2013). The studies reviewed nonetheless have shed some lights in the current state of collocational competence among ESL learners in this country; however, none have investigated both the receptive and productive aspects of collocational competence. The present study aims to fill this gap by examining these aspects further and provide the much-needed empirical evidence with respect to collocational knowledge among the Malaysian ESL learners. To be more specific, the present study mainly focusses on the learners’ receptive and productive knowledge in relation to lexical and grammatical collocations. METHODOLOGY Participants A total of 21 students from a selected public university in Malaysia participated in the study. They consist of 10 male and 11 female students undertaking a Diploma in Food Technology program, and their English language proficiency is generally at the intermediate level. Instruments There are 2 instruments used in the present study – the Receptive Collocation Test and the Productive Collocation Test. The same 48 target collocations are used in both tests. In order to assess the participants’ receptive knowledge of 3 collocation, a receptive test of English lexical collocations is employed. The receptive test is adopted from Alsakran (2011), and the reliability index of the test is very high r =.92. The test is comprised of 75 items (48 target collocations, 27 items of mismatched collocations that act as distractors). The test items consist of different types of lexical collocations such as noun+ noun and verb+ noun. The participants have to evaluate whether the underlined part of each sentence is acceptable or not. Then they have to circle the number corresponding to the unacceptable sentence (see Appendix I). The second instrument is a productive English collocation test (Haqiqi, 2007) which is to measure the participants’ productive collocational proficiency. The productive test is highly reliable with a reliability index of r=.89. The test consists of gap-filling items, which include the 48 target collocations that examine three different types of collocations: verb-noun collocations (16 items), adjective-noun collocations (16 items), and verb preposition collocations (16 items). The initial letters of collocations are provided as clues to the right answer. Each item allows only one correct answer. In the verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations items, the initial letters of the target collocations are given as a clue, and in the verb-preposition items, the meanings of the phrasal verbs are provided. This is to ensure that the participants choose only the target word and to prevent guessing (see Appendix II). Data Collection Procedures The data collection starts by administering the Productive Test, which takes about 30 minutes for the participants to complete. Following this, the Receptive Test is given to the participants, and they are given another 25 minutes to do the test. In order to ensure all participants take both tests, thus, each of them is given a number and both instruments (Productive Test and Receptive Test) are also numbered. During the tests, participants are not allowed to use dictionaries and to leave blank any item that they are not sure of. This is to prevent them from guessing. Data Analysis All items in both tests (Receptive Test and Productive Test) are manually checked and marked as correct or incorrect since all items only allow one possible answer. The total score for each instrument was 48 for the productive test and 48 for the receptive test (the 27 items that act as distractors are not counted). Items that are not answered are considered as incorrect. Apart from that, errors such as incorrect use of verb tenses (e.g. It usually take) and spelling errors (e.g. narow escape), were not considered. To analyze the collected data, a statistical tool (SPSS) is used for statistical analysis including descriptive statistics. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION This section will present and discuss results of the data analysis in relation to the three research objectives stated earlier. IJALEL 9(1):1-6 4 Is there is any Significant Difference between the Participants’ Productive and Receptive Knowledge of collocations? Table 1 above compares mean scores of the receptive and productive collocation tests. Results indicate that the mean score for the receptive test is very much higher (M=46.14) than that of the productive test (M=28.90). In order to further confirm that the difference in the mean score is significant, a paired sample t-test was carried out and results are presented in Table 2. Results of the paired sample t-test above confirm that there is a significant difference between the respondents’ receptive and productive knowledge of collocations (p<.05). This indicates that even though the respondents show a much higher level of understanding with respect to collocations, the production of this language form is still a great concern. Is there any Difference in the Learners’ Performance in the 3 different types of Collocations? Results presented in Table 3 shows that the mean score for the 3 types of collocations: Verb+Noun (V+N), Adjective+ Noun (Adj+N) and Verb+Preposition (V+Prp) collocations. Findings indicate that V+Prp collocations has the lowest mean score (M=8.48) while the highest mean score is for Table 1. Mean score of receptive and productive test Test N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. (M) Deviation Productive 21 19.00 37.00 28.90 5.402 Receptive 21 40.00 48.00 46.14 2.151 the V+N collocations (M=10.9). This indicates that there is a difference in the learners’ performance in relation to the 3 different types of collocations tested. In other words, of the 3 types of collocations investigated, the respondents have more difficulties in producing the V+Prp collocations in comparison to the other two types of collocations. What type of Collocations in the Receptive and Productive Test that Learners Found Difficult to Understand and Produce? As for the receptive test, further analysis was conducted to find out if there are any specific collocational items in the test that show low mean score. Results in Table 4 below present items with mean score less than M=0.90. Results indicate all the 6/16 items with the mean score <.90 are V+Prp collocational items, which include held up, set off, came to, pick on, takes after and talked out. Linguistically, this type of collocations is called idiomatic phrasal verbs in which meanings are not transparent and cannot be understood simply by combining the meaning of each element in the combination. Hence, it is not surprising that the learners scored lower in this type of collocations indicating that V+Prp collocations are difficult for the learners to understand. Finally, an analysis was conducted to find out whether learners also have difficulties in producing the V+Prp collocations. As expected, results indicate that there is a higher number of V+Prp collocations (12/16 items) in the productive test with the mean score <.90 as shown in Table 5. This finding clearly explains that the V+Prp collocations are not only difficult for L2 learners to understand, but they are even Table 2. Results of paired sample t-test between receptive and productive tests t df Sig. (2-tailed) 16.732 20 .000 Paired Differences Std. Deviation Mean Receptive– Productive test 17.238 Std. Error Mean 4.721 1.030 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper 15.089 19.387 Table 3. Mean score for the different sections of productive test N Minimum Maximum Mean (M) Std. Deviation Q1-16 (V+N) 21 5 15 10.90 2.663 Q17-32 (Adj+N) 21 5 13 9.05 2.040 Q33-48 (V+Prp) 21 5 12 8.48 1.987 Table 4. Collocational items in the receptive test with mean score <.90 N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation Q18 (V+Prp) 21 0 1 .81 .402 Q24 (V+Prp) 21 0 1 .62 .498 Q48 (V+Prp) 21 0 1 .81 .402 Q65 (V+Prp) 21 0 1 .86 .359 Q68 (V+Prp) 21 0 1 .86 .359 Q71 (V+Prp) 21 0 1 .86 .359 Examining ESL Learners’ Knowledge of Collocations 5 Table 5. Collocational items (V+Prp) in the productive test with mean score <.90 N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation Q17A (came to) 21 0 1 .10 .301 Q19A (drop off) 21 0 1 .52 .512 Q20A (get over) 21 0 1 .48 .512 Q22A (held off) 21 0 1 .24 .436 Q23A (come out) 21 0 1 .71 .463 Q24A (give up) 21 0 1 .81 .402 Q25A (broke up) 21 0 1 .81 .402 Q26A (killed off) 21 0 1 .52 .512 Q28A (picked up) 21 0 1 .67 .483 Q29A (pick on) 21 0 1 .62 .498 Q30A (takes after) 21 0 1 .10 .301 Q31A (talked out) 21 0 1 .57 .507 more difficult to be produced by the learners. This finding is consistent with previous studies which reported that V+Prp collocation is a challenging language form to ESL learners (Kamarudin 2013, Zarifi & Mukundan, 2014). to detect their own collocational errors. This awareness is indeed necessary in increasing learners’ receptive as well as productive knowledge of collocations and would further help them in enhancing their communicative competence as a whole. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION As mentioned in the Literature Review section, previous studies on the use of collocations have often revealed a lack of collocational competence among the ESL learners. The present study has further investigated and confirmed the problems with respect to Malaysian ESL learner’ collocational knowledge, in particular their receptive and productive knowledge of collocations. Although the results show that generally they are able to understand collocations (receptive knowledge), they still face difficulties in producing the correct forms of collocations (productive knowledge). The verb-preposition collocations which is a grammatical collocation, is found to be the most difficult one for the learners to understand and produce, as compared to the other two lexical collocations. The considerable difference between learners’ receptive knowledge and productive knowledge, and between grammatical collocations and lexical collocations, suggests a need in tackling this issue by giving more emphasis in the teaching of grammatical collocations such as phrasal verbs in language classrooms. The above findings also indicate a need for language teachers to think of ways to enable learners to learn, understand and produce appropriate collocations in suitable contexts. One of the ways to do this is by encouraging the use of dictionaries on collocations that provide examples of lexical items with different collocates and context of use. This can foster the learners’ development of collocational knowledge and competence. Language teachers may also use concordances that are used in corpus-based studies, or which can be extracted from concordance tools, such as WordSmith Tools and Antconc to design concordance-based exercises that would induce learners to notice the use of both lexical and grammatical collocations in contexts. By observing the language patterns in concordances, learners would be able REFERENCES Abdullah, S. & Noor, N.M. (2013). Contrastive analysis of the use of lexical verbs and verb-noun collocations in two learner corpora: WECMEL vs LOCNESS. In S. Ishikawa (Ed.). Learner corpus studies in Asia and the world Vol 1: 139-160. Alsakran, R.A. (2011). 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The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 20(3): 51-62. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Personal and Collective Identity Codes and Challenges for Minorities, Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer: A Case Study Mohammadreza Ghanbarinajjar* English Department, Jouybar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Jouybar, Iran, Henric Edoyan, Philology Department, Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia Corresponding Author: Mohammadreza Ghanbarinajjar, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 07, 2019 Accepted: December 22, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 People naturally live in a community and identity plays an essential role in their life. Codes and elements that construct their identity can be personal or collective, such as gender, name, religion, ethnicity, and language. In order to enjoy more privileges, minority people and those who are discriminated because of their identity, try to change their identity to be similar to the center or in other words, assimilate with it. At the same time, the hegemonic power tries to single out and highlight the identity codes which make one different from the center in order to discriminate them. The major character of the novel, Yakov Bok, changes his identity, name and appearance, as a Jew and enters into the district forbidden to Jews. During the course of the novel, he was arrested and accused of murdering a Christian boy, because he was the only Jew in the neighborhood. The state officials try to change his appearance to make him look like a Jew again and single out. Identity can be changed willingly in order to assimilate and use the advantages of being recognized as a certain person or part of a community, or by force due to the social and political condition of time to be condemned or to face the worst condition. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Identity, Bernard Malamud, The Fixer, Jewishness INTRODUCTION The word ‘identity’ which came out to be a crucial issue in cultural, political, and literary studies is taken from Latin ‘idem,’ meaning ‘the same.’ Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu argue that identity “has been interpreted in two ways: as singleness over time and as sameness amid difference” (Bunnin and Yu 2004)(325). Based on this interpretation, every person can remain within himself in spite of many alterations; however, it is very difficult to explain how such a thing can happen. Likewise, (Longman dictionary of contemporary English: [for advanced learners], 2014) defines someone’s identity as “their name or who they are or the qualities and attitudes that a person or group of people have, that make them different from other people.” Regarding this definition identity is both personal and intrapersonal. For example, name is a personal identity code but being from a certain ethnicity is considered as a group identity code. Race and religion can be clear examples of quality and attitude. Accordingly, every individual can be composed of multiple identities which locate their role in family, society, class, religion, and even in a wider scale in the world. Both aforementioned definitions focus on “sameness and difference.” Indeed, identity as ‘sameness amid diversity’ raises two questions: the sameness which is shared by living at home; and questions concerning individual identity, it means the identity by which a person is himself and can be distinguished from other people of the same kind. In some cases, ‘home’ might give man the opportunity of an equivalence relation; i.e. at home two things are identical if every property belonging to one belongs to the other. However, identity might be considered as a relation rather than as a property and as a relation between names or signs of objects and so on.(Baradaran Jamil 2013) But for Jews ‘home’ as collective identity code means differently compared to other religious or ethnic group. Jews are scattered in different parts of the world forming minorities beside the hegemonic center. An identity is, according to Roy F. Baumeister “a definition, an interpretation of the self” (4). He also believes that, “[s]elf-awareness is a superimposed awareness”; however, the sense of identity is not just based on “the physical self but depends on meaning” since the “meaning occurs only within a contextual network of relationships”. (Baumeister 1986) (12, 15) Rattansi believes that self-identification is not just restricted to an individual or group identity. Since identities are constructed by the political or civic institutions or assigned by others. They might categorize people as “white, black, ‘mixed’, Christian, Muslim, and so forth are a powerful source of such identificatory labels.” (Rattansi 2007)(114) Therefore, drawing boundaries around characteristics of ‘sameness’, and thus belonging, necessarily involves practices of exclusion and the creation of identities of non-belonging for others. (114) Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.7 8 Being a social creature, human being’s identity is the essence of his personality and plays an important role in their existence. There are a number of important elements that form one’s identity. The homeland, race, ethnicity, religion, and culture are some of these elements. There are also a number of signifiers that can represent these identity elements. “identity is the name of historical, ethnical, social and cultural reality about individual’s personality, and is the expression of subjective totality and consistency. At some point it is the answer of the question ‘who am I?”(Recep Taş and Erol 2014) Some people are proud of being identified as, for example, being from a certain country, race or religion but this might change in times. History together with the current political situation of the world can play an important role here (my emphasis). Just like the “truth” which according to Foucault is not “universal,” superiority of one race or religion over the others is not universal and ever lasting, too. It means that sometimes one has to change identity and to be someone else. An individual’s identity is shaped according to their biological differences, gender, race and age, and psychological differences such as, job and social statute, beliefs and ideals, value judgment, relics and the legacy of ancestry. It is also shaped with what the individual feels and regards within his life as a total in addition to the historical legacy such as language, religion, art and civilization. In this respect, the quest for identity makes sense for the individual as one of the main aspects of development. Accordingly, identity is an irremovable part of anyone’s existence. Who we are, what we think, what we do, how we are treated and what we want to be make our identity. Since the world is not paradise the part of the identity which comes to the core of the debates and investigation is the quality of it makes one different from others. This turned out to be problematic and the cause of wars and injustices in our time. Although the fundamental categories of identity are gender and territory, they have minor attribute in this study but the major focus of this study is on religious and other collective identity codes. The question of identity, however, is much more than how we define ourselves. Identity is never just a matter for the individual but constitutes a dynamic relationship between individual and outer environment, between self and others. ‘Cultural identity’ can be regarded as a historically constructed set of shared or common experiences that ought to be recovered to fulfill the desire to become one nation or one people. Said objects to the homology between pairings such as us/them, or inside/out. And yet, at the same time, he faces the problem that identity is constituted through a process of othering. All cultures and societies construct identity ‘out of a dialectic of self and other, the subject “I” who is native, authentic, at home, and the object “it” or “you”, who is foreign, perhaps threatening, different, out there’ (Said and Mohr 1986)(40) Immigration is a phenomenon causing an identity crisis. Those who migrate willingly or unwillingly to settle in a new region based on how much the two places are different, the IJALEL 9(1):7-13 people might face problems with their identities. Another factor which is more complicated and catastrophic is invasion. Forced conversion to the religion of the invaders and changing their collective identity was common in the past. It seems that in either cases people of the country cannot be called a nation according to the following definition. A nation can be defined as “a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members”.(Smith 1991) A nation is expected to provide social ties between classes and individuals by presenting shared values, traditions and symbols. Smith states “it is through a shared, unique culture that we are enabled to know ‘who we are’ in the contemporary world” (17). When one does not have the codes of national identity they might be in danger as we will see in the discussion. Another important part of identity is ethnicity. Considering ethnicity as a socio-biological concept gives the chance to have control over a part of it. “Belonging to an ethnic group is a matter of attitudes, perceptions, and sentiments that are necessarily fleeting and mutable varying with the particular situation of the subject” (20). An ethnic is a group of people who share a common historical and cultural heritage and frequently has a sense of group identity and ethnicity reveals cultural differences. It may or may not overlap with race. “Other factors that influenced identity construction were kinship connections, principles of descent, occupation, and religion”.(Harrison 1998) The following are the factors, which are important in identity formation arranged from the most important: “language, race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status and gender”. (Goldschmidt 2003) Here are the six attributes of the ethnic community according to Smith in his National Identity: 1. A collective proper name 2. A myth of common ancestry 3. Shared historical memories 4. One or more differentiating elements of common culture 5. An association with a specific homeland 6. A sense of solidarity for significant sectors of the population (21) Of course, for the Jews some of these attributes might be different especially when the notion of homeland is concerned. Smith believes that “an ethnie may persist, even when long divorced from its homeland, through an intense nostalgia and spiritual attachment. This is very much the fate of diaspora communities like Jews and Americans (23). It is after all not uncommon to hear the view that Jews have been particularly prone to victimization because of their own attempts to retain a distinct identity and their refusal to assimilate (one version of the so-called ‘Jewish problem’). (Rattansi 2007)(5) There are many factors that might cause changes in cultural content of identity among events such as war, exile, enslavement, religious conversion, conquest, and immigration. In the next section noting the notion of identity, its Personal and Collective Identity Codes and Challenges for Minorities, Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer: A Case Study formation, transformation and other factors that the major character of The Fixer goes through will be discussed. In general, an important conclusion from psychoanalytic, and the other conceptions of identity discussed above, is that individual identities are always subject to unconscious anxieties, fears, and continuous, vague, or more focused insecurities, which can be exacerbated in times of rapid change or in encounters with strangers. This has obvious implications for the exacerbation of racism against immigrants and ethnic minorities in times of intense globalization and the rapid transformation of communities and locales.(Rattansi 2007) (118) METHODOLOGY Regarding variety of definitions of identity concerning the role of an individual as self and as part of the society and the element of constructing an identity code based on biological identity codes and social and cultural codes this study investigates its significance in the life of the major character, Yakov Bok, in the novel The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, as an individual in a society and as a Jew representing his ethnicity. The study goes on focusing on how an individual might react and deal with his identity in critical circumstances. DISCUSSION Since the colonization and invading any unknown (to European) lands European countries tried to dictate their own language, culture, religion and literature to the colonized people either by force or in gradual process of teaching and preaching. The reaction of the colonized subject could be summed up as either assimilation or rejection. In either cases, the colonizer undermined whatever held by the colonized as identity icon. Religion as one of the most important parts of one’s identity is not an exception. In many nations, people with major differences in race or religion were segregated and forced to settle in ghettos and Harlems. Having been settled in these places they faced limitations and segregation. The main reason for the state as the hegemony and center to keep the people of the minority in margin is to have the highest control and monitoring on their activities. The Jews had to live in special areas - Pales or shtetls. They were not allowed to move to different places. Moreover, it was impossible for them to own a piece of land. They could not work in agriculture. As a result, they mainly lived in urban areas. Furthermore, another limitation was imposed on the Jewish people in this area. They were not allowed to enter certain schools. All these restrictions together with organized pogroms led to a huge immigration at the beginning of the century.(Takaki 1993) When people find themselves in a different culture or nation they try to assimilate in order to have the least problem and enjoy the most opportunities. These people most often try to hide their identity codes especially when they could cause problem. In The Fixer the case is so, Yakov Bok as a Jew by birth is living with other coreligionists in a shtetl where life is 9 monotonous and the condition is drastic. Yakov began changing his identity with shaving his short beard of reddish cast not to look like a Jew. His father-in-law warned him for cutting that “Cut off your beard and you no longer resemble your creator,” Shmuel had warned. “Since then he had been admonished by more than one Jew that he looked like a goy but it had caused him neither to mourn nor rejoice”. (Malamud 1967) The next thing he did in order not to be recognized as Jew was letting his praying shawl be drawn in the river while he was crossing for the fear of the boatman. As the time passes in any circumstances he tried to act as if he was not a Jew but a Russian villager. He even gave a false name when he was asked to introduce himself because he knew that his real name can reveal his identity as a Jew. Malamud used Jewishness as an identity icon not as a religious faith regarding Yakov Bok since he says that he is “a free thinker.” In many occasions Yakov says that he is “Jew born” or “a Jew by birth and nationality” not a religious Jew. Bok in addition to his miseries since he stepped into this world and all his bad lucks as he states “opportunity here is born dead” finds himself in the most humiliating and painful experience of all. After five and a half years of fruitless life with his wife, Raisl, he neglected her bed and stopped sleeping with her; so she ran off with a stranger. Out of his pessimistic thought, Bok believed that she ran away “with a goy I’m positive.” (10) This event doubled his pain and put him in the center of the attention wherever he stepped in the village. In addition to all his bad lucks and miseries, he could not tolerate the meaningful gaze and murmur of people after Raisl eloped, so he decides to leave the village to find his luck somewhere else. Of course, it was not the only reason for him to leave, similar to other Malamudian characters the more they learn the more they understand about their miseries and current situation. “Yakov only neglects for some time the lesson which many of his fellow Jews can teach him; he does not look to them and learn from them the law or the philosophy which sustains them in their wretched existence.” By “leaving there (shtetl), he is fully prepared to give up his identity as a Jew” (Teranishi 1994). When Malamud introduces Bok, he intentionally mentions that “[H]is nose was sometimes Jewish, sometimes not.” “This description implies that he cannot completely give up his identity as a Jew nor accept it as his fundamental personality.” (185) Now that he finds himself in such a condition that he cannot stay there anymore he tries to remove or get rid of any sign or symbol that can signify him as a Jew. By stepping out of the inner world of shtetl to the world beyond Bok will face “a tension between the belief in a primordial, inherited and fixed identity, on the one hand, and a constructed, voluntary identity, on the other hand”.(Buelens and Lievens 2010) Indirectly it indicates that Jews and nonJews are not treated equally or are the same. One might receive advantages and the other one just gets troubles. Since he made his mind to leave the shtetl, he was fully prepared to leave everything beyond and never look back, because he had nothing to miss in that community and among 10 those people except for misery and misfortune. He grew up as an orphan with all those unfulfilled dreams. His marriage, too, brought him more pain and shame than joy and pleasure. So, he had little belonging in the terrible condition of shtetl to miss. “The other way, across the glassy brown river - the way he had come on a dying horse - the steppe stretched out into the vast green distance. Only thirty versts and the shtetl was invisible, gone - poof! - lost, maybe expired. Though he felt homesick he knew he would never return, yet what would it come to?”(Malamud 1967) Finally he went to Kiev. And as it was mentioned in the novel as a historical record Podol, Kiev, and Plossky and other cities of that time had neighborhoods forbidden to Jews to settle or work. But Yakov “lived in the heart of Jewish quarter in the Podol District.” (33) Since he could not get a good job there he stepped out of the ghetto. He was glad that he has not been recognized. “In the snow he felt anonymous, in a sense unseen in his Russian cap and coat - any unemployed worker. Russians passed him without looking at him and he passed them. Having been told he did not look Jewish he now believed it.” (34) The event which can be considered the most important one in the novel and the beginning of temporary good luck and permanent bad luck and misfortune for Yakov happened one evening when he was walking in a snow covered street of Plossky when he found a drunken man face down lying in the snow. Yakov’s reaction apart from its artistic value carries Malamud’s point of view about man. His immediate hesitation to help the man was the act of his logic. He was a stranger in that neighborhood and worse than that he was a Jew; moreover, he did not know if the man was dead or alive, so he wanted to avoid the possible consequences. But his moral common sense as a human moved him forward to help the man and save him, if he did not die already. Yakov turned the man over and found out that “[H]e was breathing and reeked of drink. The fixer at once noticed the black and white button pinned to his coat, the two-headed eagle of the Black Hundreds.” (34) Meticulously, the button pinned to his coat reviled the man’s identity. Yakov left the man and went to a corner, thinking of letting him die, the anti-Semitic. Being in the territory of the enemy and finding the enemy in such a condition, only the highest humanistic and Godly forces could make him return to the scene and save his deadliest enemy. With the help of the man’s daughter, they took the man into his bed. Bok immediately left the house but the girl asked him to return the next day when her father was in a better state of the mind to thank him. In this scene the other party wants to return Yakov’s favor. But there is a big difference between what Yakov did and what they wanted to do in return. That is, Bok saved the man’s life knowing that he is his enemy, a self-advertised Jew hater and also he knew that he was not allowed to enter that district. But what the man and his daughter wanted to do was an ordinary and expected behavior; moreover, they did not know that the man who acted as a savior was a Jew. The next day Yakov was dubious whether to accept a reward from an anti-Semitic or not. Finally, he convinced himself to go, since their possible cash reward could save a Jew. “Why not a rouble or two if it kept a Jew alive?” (36). IJALEL 9(1):7-13 He went to the man’s house; the man introduced himself as “Nikolai Maximovitch Lebedev” and in return felling ashamed and sweaty Yakov gave his false name as he had planned “Yakov Ivanovitch Dologushev.” And the girl’s name was Zinaida Nikolaevna. Yakov is another step away from his real identity but not from his humanity. Lebedev talked about his drinking habit and said that once he was saved by a woman. Interestingly, he added that “[N]owadays people are far less concerned about their fellow humans than in times past. Religious feeling has shrunk in the world and kindness is rare. Very rare indeed” (38). But later on we find out that it is paradoxical. I mean it is not fellow human concern what Lebedev meant but fellow co-religioner. Yakov accepted a painting work as his reward. Now he thinks that they might be good people and he might have misjudged them. “They’re not bad people. The girl’s direct and honest in her way, though she makes me uneasy, and as for the old man, maybe I misjudged him. How many goyim have I known in my life? Maybe someone stuck that Black Hundreds pin on his coat when he was drunk in the tavern” (41). Misunderstanding, misjudgment, and lack of knowledge about people who are different from us regarding religion or race are what lead us to the verge of hatred and exterminating feeling toward them. This is what Malamud tries to convey. In order to arouse our logic and passionate feeling, Malamud poses a question to make us think how we are treating other people. Yakov considered asking him directly, “Nikolai Maximovitch, will you please explain how you can cry for a dead dog (as he himself mentioned) yet belong to a society of fanatics that urges death on human beings who happen to be Jews? Explain to me the logic of it.” (41). Similar to anything tested or experienced, sexual relationship plays an important role in human’s life, because it has both physical and psychological effects. The physical effect is not that long lasting but the psychological effect is permanent. Having sex with people from other race or religious group is influenced by what one have heard or what the religion said either to have or not to have relation with them for any reason. For people in general, the influence is accelerated by the superstition. In other words, people of different race or religion can be treated differently in sexual relation as “Other” for what can be regarded as their sexual identity. Malamud used this notion is his other novels, too. In this novel both Yakov and Zina are lonely, Yakov for leaving his marriage bed and Zina for her crippled leg. Her leg made her different from other girls and at the same time an “Other” to the eyes of men and as a result she is with no man. They both want to quench their sexual desire now that an intimacy grew between them. The night that Zina invited Yakov to her room, the way she dressed up, set the table and observed any possible precaution to be alone with Yakov indicated that something important was going to happen. “On the kitchen table Zina had laid out a feast, even some food he had never seen before.….Zina, open and happy, and looking more attractive than he had ever seen, …When she cleared the table Zina’s breath was heavy. She brought out a guitar, plucked it, and in a high thin voice sang” (48). Thinking of that, Yakov wondered what it would be, since he had never been with Personal and Collective Identity Codes and Challenges for Minorities, Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer: A Case Study a Russian woman. Then he remembered what a friend told him about his experience with a Russian girl, so there will not be any problem about that since he said “it was the same as with any Jewess” (45). But Yakov’s self-conscious about his condition made him worried. “And if I said “Jew” aloud she’d run in six directions” (44). As they approached the end of the party Yakov became more self-conscious and worried because …he was strange to himself. …Excitement and foreboding flowed into one feeling. No, he thought, it’s a Russian woman. If she slept with me and found out who I was she’d cut her throat. Then he thought, it’s not always so, there are some who wouldn’t mind. For himself he was willing to experience what there was to experience. But let her lead. (48) One of the problems with people who are different from other people might lead to mental and physical loss and is their self-conscious about what makes them different. It means that they come to the point that feels the difference and this knowledge makes them act as self-police or even makes them accept to treat differently. Malamud mentions that Yakov is getting ready to have Zina but his knowledge of being different hinders him. “Although he tried to think of her as possibly a friend she remained strange to him.” (48) Now he is more conscious than ever, because the most private part of his body, his circumcised penis, will act as a signifier to signify that he is different and reveal his identity as a Jew and this might lead to any possible consequence. Of course, what makes one to be more self-conscious about the “Othering” signifiers is the fear of being recognized and the treatment after this recognition. Yet, if Yakov had not been circumcised and there was no fear of being identified, he has two more concerns regarding Zina, her being a Russian girl and her crippled leg. Based on his knowledge from a friend who experienced a Russian girl he knows that there is nothing to be worried and about her leg he said that he would not mind. So, the only problem was his own condition. Even with this knowledge he wants to risk. Everything went on as they were arranged to give the feast of the two lonely characters a memorable finality. But Yakov’s entering Zina’s room a few minutes earlier that he was expected revealed that she was having her monthly bleeding. Zina’s condition, too, made her different in the eye of Yakov. According to his religious background, women are unclean in this period and men should not have sex with them. Yakov refused to have sex with her, though she said that “it was the safest time” and she was “a lonely girl.” Yakov’s morality and modesty overcome his lust and desire. He put on his cloths and he was still sure that he was not unmasked because he was “taught that a Russian woman would never knowingly accept advances from a Jew”.(Teranishi 1994) After finishing the painting, Yakov accepted the job as an overseer in the brickyard offered by Lebedev and accepted to stay in a room there. He insisted on renting a flat somewhere in the neighborhood because he know that the brickyard was located in a district forbidden to Jews to live or even work. But Lebedev said that there is no transportation to work the time that he must be present at work. He was not at ease neither during the day while working nor at night in his dreams. His self-conscious about the condition intensified the feeling 11 of being an “Other” in the factory. By catching the foreman and the drivers cheating he knew that his job will be harder. “What worried him most – to be unmasked as a hidden Jew.” One cold evening when Yakov was returning to his room, he saw that some boys were attacking an old man. He scattered them and went closer and saw that “the old man was a Jew, a Hasid” who lost his way to a friend’s house. Similar to the incident at the beginning of the novel, he helped the old man. Since his forehead was bleeding Yakov took him to his room for treatment. His humanistic and moral behavior was the trigger for his misfortune. Yakov felt the danger and noticed that someone had entered his room while he was out. He decided to pack his few things and bag of tools and leave the factory but it was a little late. He was arrested on the stairs by a group of armed soldiers. The impact of deforming hatred and the inhumane abuse of the Jew is almost unbelievable. Yet, the details of the life of just one Jew, Yakov Bok, is enough to convince the reader of the reality of people who hate and think and act as the Russian boatman (at the beginning of the novel) does. Mien the twelve-year-old son of Zhenia Golov is murdered, the murderer can only be a Jew, so the city of Kiev is flooded with hundreds of leaflets screaming, “WE ACCUSE THE JEWS”.(Malamud 1967) The next day Yakov is singled out as the most likely man to commit such a malicious deed. After Yakov’s arrest, inhumanity is piled upon inhumanity by the Russian official’s imprisonment, beatings, insufficient clothing and food, debasing searches and treatment, refusal of legal counsel. Even the one ray of hope, Investigating Magistrate Bibikov, is spitefully removed by the men who are determined to convict Yakov of a ritual murder. In time of political turmoil when the Russian Tsar is desperately clinging to his dwindling power and authority, he and his officials grasp frantically at anything which might distract the attention of the Russian people from their own problems. Julius Ostrovsky recognizes the situation and tells Yakov “to distract popular attention from the breaches of the Russian Constitution they incite nationalism against non-Orthodox Russians. They persecute every minority - Poles, Finns, Germans, us - but especially us.” (276) Thus, the Jew is chosen; the Jew is already despised by the Russian people because he eats different food, follows different customs and worships in a different church. He is a ready-made scapegoat which has been used before; all the Tsar, or any man, must do is bring the Jew out of storage, brush away the thin layer of dust, and remind the world of all the evils which the Jew has caused. He thought that his conviction will be residing in a district forbidden to Jews but he was too positive. He caught in a trap that he had never thought of. Russians were looking for a scapegoat and now they found it. Yakov was accused of the most horrible crime. He was convicted of murdering the Christian boy. The investigation started and Investigation Magistrate started asking different kinds of questions, which seemed irrelevant to Yakov. The Investigative Magistrate told him the he might be imprisoned at most for one month for entering the district forbidden to Jews. But little by little Yakov IJALEL 9(1):7-13 12 noticed that they brought force more and more indictments one from Lebedev for giving him a false name and identity “I believe he knew full well, when he accepted my unwitting offer, that the Lukianovsky District is sacred territory and forbidden to Jews for residence,” (77) he called himself a generous and lenient man but he emphasized that “I would never have tolerated a Jew in my employ.” the other indictment came from Lebedev’s daughter for sexual assault. She said that she was sure he wanted to rape her and when “I saw he was cut in the manner of Jewish males. I screamed loudly and he left the room” (84). The most dreadful of all was that they gathered witnesses to give clues that he murdered the Christian boy to get the blood for ritual purposes. Now Yakov found out that he was trapped, not as an individual person but as anybody as a Jew, because of the political situation of Russia. They tried any possible trick and false evidence to make a murderer out of him and make him confess the crime he had not committed in order to start their pogrom against Jews. In his papers Yakov stated that he is a “Jew by birth and nationality”. He was asked to clarify what he exactly meant by that. Yakov said that “what I meant by that is I’m not a religious man. I was when I was young but lost my belief” (80). But the Investigative Magistrate told him: Legally you are a Jew. The Imperial Government considers you one even though you twist and squirm. You are so recorded on your passport. Our laws concerning Jews apply to you. However, if you are ashamed of your people, why don’t you leave the faith officially?” “I’m not ashamed, your honor. Maybe I don’t always like what I see-there are Jews of all sorts, as the saying goes, but if I’m going to be ashamed of anyone, it might as well be myself.” As he said this his color heightened. (81) Yakov tried to be realistic and said there are all sorts of Jews, good and bad it is in human nature not just in Jews. He asked Bibikov if he should wear prison cloth, he answered that “you will be treated as the other prisoners.” But at the time of sending him into the prison he was asked to sit down for the haircut. Then the sergeant checked the paper and stopped the barber “Never mind that. The orders say let him keep his head of hair.” “It’s always like that,” said the barber, incensed. “These pricks are born with privileges” (132). By letting him keep his hair they wanted him to be different from the other prisoners. They made him be an “Other” among them. Since having hair for prisoners could be considered as a privilege, other prisoners would think that he was a spy and treat him differently or attack him violently. “Why isn’t your head shaved like the rest of us?” “I don’t know,” Yakov whispered. “I told the barber to go ahead and do it.” “Are you a stool pigeon or squealer? The men are suspicious of you.” “No, no, tell them I’m not” (135). Once again Yakov’s self-conscious made him act as a stranger, because he thought other prisoners know who he is, he did not mix with them. One of the prisoners asked him “Then why do you sit apart from us? Who the hell do you think you are?” According to the questions that Grubeshov, the Prosecuting Attorney, asked and all his and the gourds attempt to make him confess by using force, humiliation, dehumanization and sometimes by persuading him to admit the crime that they would let him flee from the country. The interesting thing is that Grubeshov told him Your role in this murder was known to us before you were arrested. You were the only Jew living in the district, with the exceptions of Mandelbaum and Litvinov, Merchants of the First Guild, who weren’t in Russia during the time of the commission of the crime, perhaps on purpose. We suspected a Jew at once because a Russian couldn’t possibly commit that kind of crime. (128) Yakov was convinced more than ever that he was there because he was a Jew and available at the time of the murder. Bok was still in his solitary confinement. He was not allowed to cut his hair or shave his beard, this time the reason was not that to make him different from other prisoners it was something else, now that he had been arrested for being a Jew they wanted him to look like a Jew, too. While he shaved his beard in order not to resemble a Jew at the time of leaving the shtetl, now he is forced to look like a Jew. Up to this stage Yakov’s major concern and struggle was with identity, either to hide or change it. But the next stage begins with any possible attempt by the police and the judiciary system to make him seem more Jewish than ever. In the prison “Yakov’s hair was still not cropped but once was clipped a little by the prison barber; he was not permitted to shave, and his beard was growing long. One of the guards said ‘ that’s to keep you looking more like a Jew….they say the warden is going to make you wear a Zhid caftan and a rabbi’s round hat, and they are going to twist earlock out of your hair over your ears so you’ll look kosher” (174). In the final stage, he finds out that it is a plot against the Jew not him as a single person, so he plays the role of a scapegoat to face his destiny. He came to the point that could not tolerate the torture and suffering and humiliation any more, sometimes he thought of killing himself. But he changed his mind. It seems that the time that he spent in prison made him know himself, his religion and what other people think about Jews. It seems that this realization made him more consistent and gave him hope to tolerate. He took the role of Christ symbolically for his nation as a scapegoat to suffer the pain and even died in order not to let another pogrom start against Jews. The barber one morning came to trim his hair and comb his beard in Jewish manner. “…the barber, glancing stealthily at a yellowed photograph in his tunic pocket, combed out curls over his ears” (253). When his wife met him in the prison she told him “how strange you look in earlocks and long beard.” Bok replied “that’s their evidence against me” (255). CONCLUSION There are many factors and codes that construct anyone’s identity such as name, gender, homeland, religion, and ethnicity. Since in the world we are living in, people and nations are not treated and valued based on humanistic qualities and Personal and Collective Identity Codes and Challenges for Minorities, Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer: A Case Study moral codes, those who are different (in any aspect) from the hegemony are marginalized and discriminated. In order to make the injustice the least, people of minority do their best to assimilate or undergo certain changes to be identified more like the center. In so doing, they change their identity signifiers such as name, appearance, religion, etc. to resemble the center. When the case becomes political and more complicated, minority people try to assimilate and attach to the center. At the same time the center as the controlling power tries to single out the minority in order to marginalize and mistreat it or apply any other political force over them. Regarding the novel which has been discussed here the major character Yakov Bok as a Jew by birth and a free thinker as he considers himself, tries to change his identity codes such as his name, appearance, and other religious icons in order to hide his real identity. With his new identity and look he is positive to cross the border lines of margin and step to the realm of the center which is forbidden to Jews for a better opportunity and luck. But he finds himself entangled in the worst situation and bad luck. Though he could just be accused of entering into the district forbidden to Jews, he was accused of murdering a Christian boy, since he was the only hidden Jew in the district. The prison keepers and state officials did they best to make him look like a Jew, even more than he used to. It can be said that what we do, who we are, and the way we are treated construct our identity and at the same time are affected by our identity. REFERENCES Mayor, M. (Ed.). (2009). Longman dictionary of contemporary English. Pearson Education India. 13 Baradaran Jamil, L. (2013). Reconstructing Identity through Remapping Dublin: James Joyce’s Heimat. International Journal of Language and Literature, 1(2), 10-20. Baumeister, R. F. (1986). Identity: cultural change and the struggle for self. New York, Oxford University Press. Buelens, G., and B. Lievens (2010). Confounding Closed Systems”: Transforming the Boundaries of Jewish Identity in Rebecca Goldstein’s Novel Mazel. English Studies 91(8), 907-919. Bunnin, N. and Yu, J. (2004). The Blackwell dictionary of Western philosophy. Malden, MA, Blackwell Pub. Goldschmidt, M. M. (2003). Identifying Labels among University Students in the New South Africa: A Retrospective Study.” Journal of Black Studies 34(2), 204-221. Harrison, F. V. (1998). “Introduction: Expanding the Discourse on “Race”.” American Anthropologist 100(3): 609-631. Malamud, B. (1967). The fixer. Harmondsworth. Middlesex, England, Penguin Books. Rattansi, A. (2007). Racism: a very short introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Recep Taş, M., and Erol, K. (2014). The Quest For Identity And The State of Belonging In The Stories Of William Saroyan Who Is Of Bitlis Origin. International Journal of Languages and Literatures 2(1), 18-30. Said, E. W. and Mohr, J. (1986). After the last sky: Palestinian lives. New York, Pantheon Books. Smith, A. D. (1991). National identity. Reno, University of Nevada Press. Takaki, R. T. (1993). A different mirror a history of multicultural America. Boston; New York, Little-Brown. Teranishi, M. (1994). The Identity Problem in Malamud’s The Fixer. Journal of Chugoku Junior College, 25, 6-13. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Internationalization vs. Globalization: What Can the Arab EFL Teachers Do to Assure Quality in Education? Jihan Zayed* English Department, College of Administration and Humanities, Mustaqbal University, Buraidah 51411, KSA Corresponding Author: Jihan Zayed, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 18, 2019 Accepted: December 28, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 Internationalization of higher education appeared as a counterattack to mitigate the impact of globalization on education. In a sense, it has entered higher education as a means for ensuring that graduates are a competitive workforce worldwide. Meanwhile, TEFL has been emphasized as the medium of instruction. The current paper investigated the roles of EFL teachers could perform at schools to prepare their students before joining internationalized higher education whether at home or abroad. Adopting a descriptive design, a quantitative data-gathering instrument, an opinionnaire, was designed to determine if EFL teachers in the Arab countries undertake their roles required for education quality assurance. The Arab EFL teachers were intentionally chosen as a community for this research due to possible curriculum-embedment of ideologies different from their national values. 86 EFL teachers from most of the Arab countries responded to the opinionnaire. Qualitative data were generated through analysis and interpretation of the numerical data of this opinionnaire to find out the extent to which those EFL teachers were aware of the internationalization process, and the challenges they face. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Globalization, Internationalization, Higher Education, Quality Assurance, English-Medium Instruction, Arab EFL Teachers, Thematic Analysis INTRODUCTION Globalization gained prominence during the second half of the 20th century for its enormous influences economically, technologically, politically, socially, and educationally. It has turned the world into a connected global society where ideas, goods, and services flow smoothly within and across borders. Consequently, today’s world has turned to be increasingly “flat” (Beck, 2012; Cornelius, 2012; Burdzinski, 2014), which Hendriks and Kloppenburg (2016) describe this status saying, “the local is global, and the global is local” p. 30. In response to this increasing global interconnectedness, education has become the means of maintaining flexibility, adaptability and innovation – characteristics not common to a traditional school (Molina & Lattimer, 2013) – it mainly aims at educating students to be global citizens (Ramos García & Pavón Vázquez, 2018). In this context of global citizenship, international education emerged to be a form of investment for enhancing the workforce competitiveness where students should be aware of the economic, political, social, and environmental issues. In addition, they should have deep understanding of languages, cultures, and histories to engage with people from other countries around the world (Beck, 2012; Cornelius, 2012; Leask, 2012; Burdzinski, 2014; Hendriks & Kloppenburg, 2016; Wan, 2018). As institutions started to internationalize their educational systems to prepare students for a labor market that is beyond national geographic boundaries, there appeared the concept of internationalization of higher education which refers to a process focusing on the programming of higher education activities in the areas of teaching, research, and service. That is through the recruitment of international students, cooperation or partnerships with foreign universities, and the establishment of branch campuses in countries around the world. In sum, while globalization refers to the process of blurring or dissolving borders, internationalization refers to an increase of transnational and transborder activities (Leutwyler, Popov & Wolhuter, 2017). In response to the professional demands of globalization, several worldwide initiatives have been such as Déclaration de Bologne (1999), UNESCO Declaration (2003), UNESCO Strategy 2002-2007, just to name a few. These initiatives focused upon internationalization of higher education as a means to leverage the impact of globalization on education. For Cornelius, (2012), internationalizing a college or university consists of integrating international, intercultural, and global dimensions into institutional rationales (e.g., policies, activities, and quality assessments). Correspondingly, internationalization of higher education has become part of “the raison d’être for universities Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.14 Internationalization vs. Globalization: What Can the Arab EFL Teachers Do to Assure Quality in Education? worldwide” (Shimauchi, 2018). Then, certain indicators for internationalization have entered higher education rankings as indicators of quality (Abdouli, 2008). Amashukeli (2018) mentions that “internationalization of higher education has a strong positive undercurrent, as it is expected to serve … quality enhancement” p. 3. For her, internationalization cannot be an end but mainly a means to attain quality assurance in higher education. In this context of mutual relevance between internationalization of higher education and quality assurance, the introduction of English-medium instruction (EMI) has emerged as a growing phenomenon in non-English speaking countries to such an extent that Shimauchi (2018) mentions that internationalization equals higher education to be offered in English. Consequently, TEFL is emphasized as a benchmarking of quality assurance in higher education. Therefore, English is presented as the first foreign language and the academic lingua franca in multicultural environments. Finardi and Porcino (2014) assert that the informed use of technologies allied with TEFL are passports to information access and social capital formation. Thus, the advent of Web 2.0 with social media have produced more learning autonomy and expression channels. Besides, the current use of massive online open courses (MOOCs) enables EFL learners to access contents online, interact with native and non-native speakers of English, attend virtual classes, obtain academic support services, conduct research, and earn a degree without leaving the confines their own homes. Even, as textbooks go to print, new knowledge is created with immediate access at students’ fingertips. Therefore, the educational delivery of knowledge production and dissemination is shifting to a pattern of technological transfer of knowledge (Cornelius, 2012; Wan, 2018). All these premises have imposed several challenges for the EFL teachers at schools, who have to adapt to the increasing imperative to internationalized education embedding other countries’ ideologies while being controlled by their social, cultural, and religious constraints. In addition, they are responsible for educating EFL students, who are unable to study abroad, to receive an EMI education “at home”, which Wan (2018) calls this “internationalization-at-home”. That is, they have to empower these students to be “global human resources” so that they could compete with their foreign counterparts while disseminating the values and attractiveness of their cultures throughout the world (Ramos García & Pavón Vázquez, 2018; Shimauchi, 2018). Nevertheless, EFL teachers do not have resources for internationalization other than their textbooks. This is in case they have sufficient EFL skills and conviction to participate in the process. For this, EFL teachers should receive more attention due to the roles they play in the internationalization of education until their students reach the postsecondary stages. Background of the Problem Beck (2012) goes to denounce the business of international education proposing a post-internationalization era which would move away from commodification to educational and academic goals and values. In this respect, Shimauchi (2018) 15 has pointed to the inclusion of outsider ideologies within internationalized education. He considers using English in the internationalized curriculum as a tool of “academic imperialism”. In many ways, English language colonialism has been revitalized, not by imperial invasion, but by such means as the global university ranking system, for which one of the indicators is the citation index based predominantly on publications appearing in English language journals. It is as he puts, to “Publish in English or Perish” p. 82. Yet, all Arab educational institutions have included internationalization in their vision and mission statements explicitly or implicitly. For example, the Saudi Crown Prince (2016) announced Vision 2030 with several ambitious plans for the development of the education sector. Among the goals were to have at least five Saudi universities – instead of two in the present – ranked among the top 200 universities internationally, and to encourage students to attain higher than average performance in line with international standards. Taleb (2016) mentions some areas highlighted in Saudi’s Vision 2030, which represent its orientation for the internationalization of education such as: • Continuation of sponsoring 138,000 Saudi students to further their tertiary education abroad, • Training 500,000 public sector employees through distance learning by 2020, • Training 1,000 teachers and education leaders overseas annually, • Increasing the number of Saudi universities to at least five in the top 200 world rankings by 2030 from the current only two universities, and • Encouraging collaborations and partnerships between Saudi and foreign universities. In addition, there are several initiatives for internationalization in other Arab countries like Egypt, UAE, Jordan,… etc. such as “Study in Egypt” to recruit additional international students. Nevertheless, there is little information on the extent to which the Arab institutions have been able to implement the international dimension in their curriculum successfully. In a sense, the internationalization of education is less self-evident than it may first appear, especially in the stages before high education. In fact, there is a gap between what students actually learn in schools and what universities require as students after graduating from high school spend from one to four semesters learning and enhancing their English language. As mentioned above, it is to focus on EFL teachers to see if they are ready for or even aware of it and to overcome the challenges which they face to take part in education internationalization. Objectives of the Study The main objectives of this research were to: 1) Determine the main concepts in the field taking up the growing evidence on the disparity of concepts, aims, and notions, 2) Determine the awareness and readiness of the Arab EFL teachers towards internationalization, 3) Identify a number of challenges for the Arab EFL teachers, which hinder their participation in internationalization, IJALEL 9(1):14-23 16 4) Stimulate the exchange of the Arab EFL teachers’ experiences in internationalizing education, and 5) Initiate a discussion on how education internationalization in the Arab countries could be improved. 3) How can EFL teachers participate in internationalization within the confines of their schools? Significance of the Study Previous Studies This study attempted to: 1) Fulfill the need for more research surrounding the roles of EFL teachers in internationalizing the EFL curriculum in the Arab setting keeping their national values as the focus in this kind of researches is always on sustaining economic competitiveness in an increasingly global marketplace, 2) Attract the attention to the importance of EFL teachers’ awareness of the religious, social values side by side with the global elements in the EFL curriculum, 3) Help EFL teachers reflect on their own ideological motives and aspirations as internationalization is an ideological endeavour, 4) Help EFL teachers determine the challenges they face while participating in internationalization and 5) Help the Arab educational institutes formulate their professional mission as follows: • Developing and promoting excellence in TEFL, • Creating and maintaining a dynamic community of EFL teachers • Supporting and facilitating participation in mutual exchanges of information and expertise • Practicing TEFL at the international level via research and global scholarships To have a bird’s-eye view of the literature, it can be found that it is mainly based on investigating internationalization in higher education and its policies (e.g., Briguglio & Smith, 2012; Cornelius, 2012; Burdzinski, 2014; Hendriks, & Kloppenburg, 2016; Krechetnikov, Pestereva, & Rajovic, 2016; Fabricius, Mortensen, & Haberland, 2017; Leutwyler & Wolhuter, 2017; Ramos García & Pavón Vázquez, 2018) in contrast to the other respective stages of education. Ardakani, Yarmohammadian, Abari and Fathi (2011) relate this to the fact that strengthening the international aspect of higher education leads to consolidating the international profile of a country. However, this concern for internationalization is mainly for student and teacher mobility while little attention is paid to the curriculum, and almost none related to pedagogy. As the focus in this paper is not on the internationalization of higher education, this section sheds some light on a few papers related to aspects of teaching, especially TEFL. The first of these papers is Briguglio and Smith (2012) which examined the needs of Chinese students in an Australian university. In this university, the English language question and academic literacy issues have been of major concern both within academe, and more broadly, amongst employer groups. The support provided by universities has moved through a series of different philosophical approaches. It began with a focus on English language support, at first perhaps conceived in a remedial light, and gradually developed to include consideration of a number of related socio-cultural factors and moving towards an inclusive curriculum approach in teaching and learning. More recent thinking promotes the embedding of academic literacy skills and supports through all disciplines across the curriculum. The study of Molina and Lattimer (2013) was carried out as part of a larger international education project undertaken with support from the Longview Foundation. It examined the understandings of international education held by teachers, administrators and students in the Southern California region. This foundation’s mission is twofold: (1) to increase the number of schools that integrate international knowledge and skills throughout the curriculum so that students are internationally competent and college-ready, and (2) to raise awareness about the importance of international education through policy and provide resources about the world. The researchers recommended that more research needs to be done for a better understanding of the long-term impact of international education on students’ knowledge, skills, beliefs and dispositions. This information could help to strengthen and shape learning within both the K-12 and teacher education communities. Using the knowledge which they gained teaching English abroad, Teixeira and Pozzi (2014) organized a World Englishes course around the discussion of the concentric Statement of the Problem There is a gap between what the Arab students acquire while learning EFL in schools and what universities require. Based upon this, students spend from one to four semesters learning and enhancing their English after graduating from high school. For example, the largest portion of the 2019 Saudi budget has been allocated for the education sector. However, Saudi Arabia ranks very low on English Proficiency Index (EPI). It ranks 83rd out of 88 countries and the 8th in the Middle East (English First, 2018). Al-Ghamdi (2019) asserts that Saudi educational system is not aligned with Vision 2030. This might be because EFL teachers in government schools, which represent 85.7 percent of the schools in Saudi Arabia, do not perform their roles in preparing their students for internationalization in the postsecondary stages. The Saudi position can be generalized to many other Arab countries. Therefore, the present research attempted to answer the following main question: • What can the Arab EFL teachers do to assure quality in education? For achieving this, this study attempted to answer the following sub-questions: 1) To what extent are the Arab EFL teachers aware of the process of education internationalization? 2) What are the challenges for EFL teachers to prepare their students for internationalized higher education? LITERATURE REVIEW Internationalization vs. Globalization: What Can the Arab EFL Teachers Do to Assure Quality in Education? circles of English (Kachru, 1985), moving from inner-, to outer-, to expanding-circle. In Spring Quarter 2013, the course was an elective for international seven students at California University. Throughout the course, they aimed to explore student perceptions of the native-speaker model and inner-circle privilege in which the internationalization of English teaching has only recently taken hold, by means of critical writing reflections, an exit questionnaire on English as an international language (EIL), and a pre- and posttest on accent recognition. Students concluded that the native speaker should be the “base” for comparison of nonnative accents because the more similar a foreign accent to a native speaker accent, the more understandable one’s speech. Likewise, the fact that the majority of the students indicated that the course influenced their opinion that inner-circle English is not better than other Englishes and that each country has the right to its own English. In the same mainstream, Kang, Thomson and Moran (2019) examined the effect of incorporating a variety of international English accents into a simulated TOEFL listening comprehension test. Therefore, the researchers adopted speakers from six English dialects to provide speech samples for a mock TOEFL iBT listening test. Listeners who spoke the same six English dialects were then asked to take these listening tests. Results showed that when the English accent is intelligible, listening test scores in response to outer-circle dialects of English are not significantly lower than they would be in response to inner-circle dialects of English. It is clear that most previous studies investigated the experiences of international students, restricted attention has been paid to national students and their adaptation to the internationalization of higher education. Yuan and Yu (2019) tried to fill this gap, examining a group of Chinese university students’ experiences in an internationalized curriculum in China. The findings showed that the participants tried to interpret, construct, and refine their individual, academic, and cultural identities on a daily basis. They specifically negotiated three identity paradoxes, (i.e. “dedicated learners” vs. “disoriented bees”, “global citizens” vs. “proud Chinese”, and between “team players” vs. “independent fighters”). The study has useful implications for university management, teachers, and students in response to the internationalization of higher education. Based on this analysis of previous studies, educational institutions are obliged to move beyond this concern for internationalization in higher education in order to provide access to multilingual and multicultural competences. Such kind of access can be provided inside the classroom; in case that these institutions empower efficient EFL teachers to perform their aspired roles in internationalization. 17 concerning certain issues related to internationalization. Such issues reflected their awareness of and challenges they have for carrying their roles for internationalization. Instruments An opinionnaire was designed to specify the challenges of EFL teachers to be in line with the internationalization process. Before, it intended to infer these teachers’ awareness of the whole process. It was administered online to EFL teachers around the Arab World on 14/11/2019. Its link was available for two weeks. On the 30th November, the responses were analyzed. Before administering the research opinionnaire (RO), the participants were informed that it was an inquiry to investigate the challenges they, as EFL teachers, face in the process of education internationalization as a response to the professional requirements of globalization, so that they should feel free to share them for the success of this investigation. The RO consisted of: Part I It consisted of 10 points. It aimed at identifying demographic information of the participants especially their age, nationality, qualification, experience and the stage they work in. Part II It consisted of 15 statements that aimed at identifying EFL teachers’ awareness of the internationalization process. The EFL teachers were asked to choose an answer either yes, no, or not sure. Part III It consisted of 15 statements that aimed at determining the challenges that EFL teachers face in the internationalization process at the stages before higher education. The participants were asked to choose an answer either yes, no, or not sure. It concluded with asking the participants to suggest other challenges. Part IV It asked the participants to determine which of Mobile apps, YouTube Channels, Websites for keypals, Language exchange partners, and Live classrooms via Skype they can use with their students for “internationalization at home”; to participate in the process within the confines of their schools. Validity and Reliability METHOD Setting During the second semester of the academic year 2019-2020, 45 EFL teachers at Egyptian and Saudi schools of all stages before university were asked to answer an opinionnaire For validating the RO, it was electronically designed to be administered online using Google Forms and its link was sent to an Egyptian EFL teacher, a Saudi EFL teacher, an assistant EFL professor and another associate professor. They approved its validity asking for minor modifications in its format, which were done correspondingly. IJALEL 9(1):14-23 18 Sharing the RO on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, EFL teachers were invited to participate in it. When the number of participants reached 30, 18 Egyptian EFL teachers and 12 Saudi ones, its reliability was measured using Coefficient of Cronbach Alpha in SPSS Statistics V25.0. The coefficients (Table 1) proved the internal consistency for its components as shown: It is only Part II whose coefficient was lower than above 0.7. Therefore, a calculation was carried if one of its items were deleted. The result was that if item 14, “The use of e-learning in the form of digital apps constitutes a basic requirement for internationalization” was to be deleted, then the reliability coefficient would be 0.704, which gave no high difference. It was decided that the application of the RO would be the same with its components. The total coefficient of the RO (0.842) gave a lot of confidence in its reliability. Setting The current study was carried out including administering the RO to 86 EFL teachers from some Arab countries. The link of the RO was shared on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin to EFL teachers to participate in. The RO was available for the students for 16 days starting from 14-112019 to 30-11-2019. Participants 86 EFL teachers (males=45 & females=41), from different Arab countries, completed the RO concerning their awareness and the challenges they have in the internationalization of education. Table 2 shows the distribution of their nationalities. These numbers of participants do not mean that they work in their countries. The Egyptian, for example, are of the greatest number may work in Oman, Kuwait, or any other countries. The same case for all the other nationalities. Their average age was 36 years old. Chart 1 exhibits their experience while Chart 2 does for the stage they work in. Design Using a qualitative data-gathering instrument, the RO, a descriptive design was adopted in the current study. Qualitative data were generated through analysis and interpretation of the numerical data from Part II to find out the extent to which EFL teachers were aware of the internationalization process Table 1. Intrareliability coefficients of the RO RO Parts Intrareliability Coefficient Part II: Awareness 0.676 Part III: Challenges 0.757 Total 0.842 in their schools, and from Part III to deduce the challenges these teachers face in this. Data Analysis A descriptive analysis of the quantitative data was conducted by computing mean scores and percentages. The answers to the two open questions in Part III and Part IV were analyzed for commonalities and differences and then interpreted in relation to the scores. Limitations For several constraints, only 86 EFL teachers accepted participated in the opinionnaire. It was hoped that more than 500 EFL teachers from all Arab countries would accept participating in it. For its limited number of its participants, the results cannot be generalized to all EFL teachers in the Arab World. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The results of investigating the problem of the present study can be shown in the following way: For Answering the First Question: To What Extent are EFL Teachers Aware of the Process of Education Internationalization? Part II of the RO consisted of 15 statements. These statements mainly focused on EFL teachers’ awareness of education internationalization. Giving their opinions, the participants should choose either yes, no, or not sure. Means of these responses were interpreted using Table 3 which specifies the intervals of 3-point Likert Scale. Table 4 gives the results for each statement which got high agreement (means) from the respondents. These results prove that the participants are highly aware of internationalization. It is obvious that they consider that internationalizing education should not only be concerned with teaching the language skills, but mainly with equipping students with adequate tools, so that they can be prepared to an increasingly pluralistic society preserving their national values. Therefore, these EFL teachers showed their inherent awareness of several internationalization dimensions like the importance of English in this process, its embedment in the vision and mission statements of their schools, the relevant aims and content of curriculum, exchange of views among EFL teachers around the world, and the role of e-learning and its use of, for example, mobile apps, and YouTube channels for improving students’ English. Regarding the dimension of vision and mission statements on internationalization often function as a framework for schools, but these statements on internationalization vary Table 2. Distribution of the participants’ nationalities Egypt 45 Saudi Arabia Algeria Jordan Sudan Tunisia Iraq Lebanon Libya Palestine Syria 22 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 Internationalization vs. Globalization: What Can the Arab EFL Teachers Do to Assure Quality in Education? in their degree of detail and the activities that they prescribe, and in some cases are lacking altogether. They are transformed into objectives and guidelines for the educational process as a whole, accreditation, financing and administration (Hendriks & Kloppenburg, 2016). Table 5 gives the result for the statements which got moderate agreement from EFL teachers. Krechetnikov et al. (2016) view that internationalization of education is characterized by facilitating individual mobility around the world (i.e. students and teachers), comparing qualifications acquired at various institutions, ensuring that these qualifications meet the needs in the labor market, and proving graduate competitiveness. Besides, there is a lot that is unique and unusual that internationalization has to offer. Ardakani et al. (2011) consider that its most culturally important goal is to extend the students’ values and principles of their national culture while respecting the rights and values of the nations. That is, it makes the students ready for the global market to take part in the international scenes and promotes effective communicative skills and a philosophical spirit which are required to make multi-cultural harmony. Statements in Table 5 got either disapproval or uncertainty more than consensus from EFL teachers regarding their students’ readiness of to be global citizens, who can be a 19 competitive workforce, and their ability to disseminate the values and attractiveness of their culture around the world. EFL teachers expressed the needed sensitivity to the curriculum-embedded ideologies of other cultures. In addition, they did not agree on the sufficiency of the specified hours for adequate learning of the language. Many educators (e.g., Cornelius, 2012; Wan, 2018) believe that internationalizing the curriculum contributes to qualitatively better future graduates “at home”. Overall, the respondents were dissatisfied with what has been achieved in terms of their schools’ international ambitions. For this reason, the level of internationalization achieved by their schools is unacceptable. For Answering the Second Question: What are the Challenges for EFL Teachers to Prepare their Students for Internationalized Higher Education? Part III of the RO consisted of issues relevant to EFL teachers’ different practices in internationalization, so that they can be considered challenges for them. Table 6 shows the RO statements that received agreement from the majority of the respondents. Rather, they confessed their ability to confront these challenges. This was deducted from the high means of these statements as interpreted using Table 3. Table 3. 3-Point likert scale Likert-Scale Intervals Difference Description Interpretation 1 1.66-1.00 .66 Not sure Low 2 2.33-1.67 .66 No Moderate 3 3.00-2.34 .66 Yes High Table 4. Results of RO statements of high means in Part II Statements Frequencies Yes No Not sure Mean Std. Deviation 1. Teaching English is essential in the process of education internationalization. Frequency 85 - 1 2.98 .216 Percentage 98.8 - 1.2 2. My English enables me to participate in the internationalization of education. Frequency 81 1 4 2.90 .435 Percentage 94.2 1.2 4.7 3. The exchange of views among English teachers around the world leads to the improvement in teaching and learning of English. Frequency 78 1 7 2.83 .557 Percentage 90.7 1.2 8.1 4. I am aware of “internationalization” embedment in the vision and mission statements of my school. Frequency 55 13 18 2.43 .819 Percentage 64.0 15.1 20.9 5. The aims of internationalizing the English curriculum are clear and relevant to the content and practice of language. Frequency 57 15 14 2.50 .763 Percentage 66.3 17.4 16.3 6. I am keen to equip my students with adequate tools so that Frequency they can be prepared to an increasingly pluralistic society Percentage preserving their values. 74 3 9 2.76 .631 86.0 3.5 10.5 2.86 .489 2.53 .822 2.90 .407 7. I am keen to help my students, who cannot study abroad, improve their English. Frequency 79 2 5 Percentage 91.9 2.3 5.8 8. The use of e-learning in the form of digital apps constitutes a basic requirement for internationalization. Frequency 64 4 18 Percentage 74.4 4.7 20.9 9. I always ask my students to practice English using, for example, mobile apps and YouTube channels with others of their age around the world. Frequency 80 3 3 Percentage 93.0 3.5 3.5 IJALEL 9(1):14-23 20 Table 6 shows EFL teachers’ efficient commitment to These statements could be considered to be the barrithe requisites of internationalization practices such as con- ers to internationalization, which can be summarized as tinuous improvement, open-mindedness, sociability, col- follows: laboration among EFL teachers around the world, effective • Incompetency of EFL teachers to help their colleagues utilization of social media in TEFL, acquaintance of the improve their teaching skills, needs of modern age, usage of social networking apps for • Disapproval of schools of allowing students to commueducational purposes, and highly motivated students to nicate with other classrooms around the world classimprove their English. In contrast, Table 7 displays the rooms using, for example, Skype, RO statements of Part III which did not get the same • Inefficiency to connect an EFL teachers’ classrooms approval from EFL teachers as their means of moderate with others around the world, and level. Table 5. Results of RO statements of moderate means in Part II Statements Frequencies Yes No Not sure Mean Std. Deviation 10. The level of internationalization achieved by my school is acceptable in relation to its ambitions. Frequency 30 31 25 2.06 .802 Percentage 34.9 36.0 29.1 Frequency 34 35 17 2.20 .749 Percentage 39.5 40.7 19.8 Frequency 36 27 23 2.15 .819 Percentage 2.13 .837 2.17 .785 2.29 .906 11. The weekly hours of learning English are sufficient for my students to learn the language adequately. 12. The development of the English language education in my country prepares students to be global citizens. 41.9 31.4 26.7 13. The current curriculum of English prepares students to be a competitive workforce. Frequency 36 25 25 Percentage 41.9 29.1 29.1 14. I am sensitive to curriculum-embedded ideologies not related to my country’s culture. Frequency 35 31 20 Percentage 40.7 36.0 23.3 15. I believe that my students are able to disseminate the values and attractiveness of their cultures throughout the world. Frequency 51 9 26 Percentage 59.3 10.5 30.2 Table 6. Results of RO statements of high means in Part III Statements Frequencies Yes No Not sure Mean Std. Deviation 16. I am determined to improve my English as best as I can to achieve maximum proficiency. Frequency 79 2 5 2.86 .489 Percentage 91.9 2.3 5.8 Frequency 78 2 6 2.84 .528 Percentage 2.47 .850 2.71 .648 2.76 .593 2.51 .715 2.55 .663 2.71 .666 2.49 .793 2.47 .698 2.44 .835 17. My English helps me to be an open-minded and sociable person. 90.7 2.3 7.0 18. EFL teachers have many experiences to share with other teachers in other countries around the world. Frequency 60 6 20 Percentage 69.8 7.0 23.3 19. My English enables me to participate freely in academic, social, and professional activities among other cultural groups. Frequency 70 7 9 Percentage 81.4 8.1 10.5 Frequency 72 7 7 Percentage 83.7 8.1 8.1 Frequency 55 20 11 Percentage 64.0 23.3 12.8 Frequency 55 23 8 Percentage 64.0 26.7 9.3 23. I use the social media to be in line with the latest approaches Frequency in teaching English. Percentage 71 5 10 82.6 5.8 11.6 24. The English language curriculum meets the needs of my students in this modern age. Frequency 58 12 16 Percentage 67.4 14.0 18.6 Frequency 50 26 10 Percentage 58.1 30.2 11.6 20. I use the social media to be in contact with other English teachers around the world. 21. I have the opportunity to read English language textbooks and curricula in other countries. 22. I have the opportunity to attend workshops and conferences to improve teaching English. 25. I use some apps of social networking for educational purposes (e.g., Classera, ClaaDojo, Edmodo, …) to be in touch with my students outside of classrooms. 26. My students are highly motivated to improve their English. Frequency 57 10 19 Percentage 66.3 11.6 22.1 Internationalization vs. Globalization: What Can the Arab EFL Teachers Do to Assure Quality in Education? Unawareness of students’ parents of the importance of English as an international language. Furthermore, it could be assumed that schools’ principals are not only well-informed but also unconvinced of the importance of the international dimension of TEFL. Part III ended with an open question for EFL teachers to add other challenges they face but not mentioned in the RO. For this question, only 28 responses were collected. Thus, this limited number of responses allowed the researcher to carry out a thematic analysis manually to identify the recurring themes in them. Other challenges were identified in Table 8 These challenges can be classified under these major themes as follows: 1) Students • Low level of skills • Instable enthusiasm throughout the course • Learning English for getting a job not for the sake of self-development 2) Teachers • No training for professional improvement especially in public schools • No contact among EFL teachers either in the same country or outside it 3) Curriculum • Unsuitable courses either for teachers or for students • Insufficient time for practicing the language • Discouraging communication among students outside the classroom • Unavailability of contact among EFL students around the world 4) Infrastructure • No internet access in some areas especially in public schools • Lack of modern teaching aids • Out-of-date technology equipment • Crowded classrooms • Low funding/finances • 21 5) Family • Follow-up is limited • No interest in encouraging language practice at home 6) Administration • Bureaucracy • Absence of vision and mission statements in some schools • Principals’ Unawareness of internationalization goals • A gap between a school’s vision and its practices of education To better illustrate these challenges from the point of view of the participants, Figure 1 was employed. The challenges given from the point of view of the participants added the above-mentioned ones constitute the barriers for internationalization which EFL teachers have to overcome for achieving quality assurance in education. For Answering the Third Question: How can EFL Teachers Participate in Internationalization within the Confines of their Schools? The international dimension is mainly an integrated and mandatory part of the whole curriculum for all students. Having full awareness and overcoming the majority of challenges, the participants were asked in Part IV of the RO to choose among five options the methods through which they can encourage their students to fulfill the internationalized dimension of curriculum so that they would be ready before joining the university. The RO ended with the sentence “I can participate in the internationalization efforts within the confines of my school encouraging my students to use”: • Mobile apps • YouTube Channels • Websites for keypals • Language exchange partners • Live classrooms via Skype Table 7. Results of RO statements of moderate means in Part III Statements Frequencies Yes No Not sure Mean Std. Deviation 27. The academic competence of my colleague English teachers is sufficient to help me improve my teaching skills. Frequency 45 20 21 2.28 .835 Percentage 52.3 2.23 .680 2.10 .532 2.20 .892 23.3 24.4 28. My school approves using some apps in classrooms like Skype Frequency to communicate with other classrooms around the world. Percentage 32 42 12 37.2 48.8 14.0 29. I connect my classrooms with other classrooms around the world using, for example, Skype. Frequency 17 61 8 Percentage 19.8 70.9 9.3 30. My students’ parents are highly interested in English as an Frequency international language. Percentage 44 15 27 51.2 17.4 31.4 Table 8. Challenges as identified in the open-ended question of Part III Challenges Students Teachers Curriculum Infrastructure Family Administration Frequencies 8 3 6 6 1 4 Percentages 28% 10% 21% 21% 3% 14% IJALEL 9(1):14-23 22 Figure 1. Percentages of challenges as identified from the open-ended question Figure 2. Number of EFL teachers who chose methods to achieve internationalization at home EFL teachers were asked to add other methods like the above. The total numbers of the respondents who chose each method are illustrated in Figure 2. It is clear that EFL teachers added other methods such as having online English courses by native speakers, setting up software like Hot potatoes and Cambly. CONCLUSION Internationalization of higher education appeared to face the effects of globalization. The current study has shed light on the Arab EFL teachers’ roles in preparing their students for joining higher education. Despite the limited number of the Arab EFL teachers who responded to the opinionnaire, those teachers were chosen as a sample for two reasons: (a) internationalization is an indicator of quality assurance which cannot be achieved without English-medium-instruction, and (b) the Arab teachers have to keep their inherited values and be aware of other embedded-curriculum ideologies. Expressing their awareness of internationalization and ability to confront several challenges, the respondents suggested several methods they can use to help their students internationalize at home. It is recommended that further studies would compare some experiments of different Arab countries in the internationalization fields (e.g. individual mobility of students and staff, program and provider mobility, curriculum, and campus). Besides, awareness-raising of people is a key aspect of education internationalization so that parents, for example, should have a role too. 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Journal of International Education and Leadership, 6(1), 1-14. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Sunil Gangopaddhaya’s ‘An Unsent Letter’: A Harrowing Outburst of Long Smothered Wail of a Lacerated Psyche Mohammad Mozammel Haque* Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Corresponding Author: Mohammad Mozammel Haque, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 01, 2019 Accepted: December 10, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 The statement that the poets are born after their death is universally known. There is hardly any writer who writes the criticism of his writings. They are the critics who criticize their works. It can be said that the writer himself may have only a single idea or message when he produces his piece of writings, but the critics have different views on the same work. Even one critic sometimes innovates miscellaneous ideas and messages from the same poetry, play, novel, short story, fiction, non-fiction etc. Furthermore, a post- colonial critic always tries to find the message of his area of study even in the writers of Anglo Saxon, Middle English, Romantic or Victorian era. A romanticist finds his theme in the writings of other periods. Similarly, a fan of feminism attempts to discover the messages related to females in the writings he studies. In the same way, the author of this paper, because of his being a writer for those who find themselves trapped in the social four walls, and who have no control over the situations around them, focuses on how Sunil Gangopaddhaya, in his short lyric titled ‘An Unsent Letter’, has picturesquely delineated the indescribable plight, predicament and quandary of a sub-continental girl who has been sold to a brothel for six thousand rupees. The paper also, besides showing how the women are neglected, abandoned, deserted and ignored in the male-chauvinistic society, emphasizes to show the real backdrop of the women in the society the poet lives. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Discriminations, Feminism, Long-Smothered, Male-chauvinism, Outburst, Selling, Treatment, Wail INTRODUCTION The terms “feminism” or “feminist” first appeared in France and The Netherlands in 1872, Great Britain in the 1890s, and the United States in 1910. The Oxford English Dictionary lists 1894 for the first appearance of “feminist” and 1895 for “feminism”. The UK Daily News first introduced “feminist” to the English language, importing it from France and branding it as dangerous. “What our Paris Correspondent describes as a ‘Feminist’ group....... in the French Chamber of Deputies”. Prior to that time, “Woman’s Rights” was probably the term used most commonly, hence Queen Victoria’s description of this “mad, wicked folly of ‘Woman’s Rights’”. Defining feminism can be challenging, but a broad understanding of it includes the acting, speaking, writing, and advocating on behalf of women’s issues and rights and identifying injustice to females in the social status quo. (Contributors) Feminism actually began with the publication of Margaret Fuller’s ‘Women in the Nineteenth Century’ (1845), John Stuart Mill’s ‘The Subjection of Women’ (1869), Oliver Schreiner’s ‘Women and Labour’ (1911), Virginia Wolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929), Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’ (1972). (Barry 121) But many writers of different countries are seen to write about the rights of women before this certified starting. The condition of women in the society of the then Europe was so deplorable that only priests were allowed to preach religious doctrines and theories. This unambiguous history is written by Margaret Walters as he says: ‘Hildegard of Bingen, who was born at the end of the 11th century and became a nun, and later the abbess, of a small Rhineland convent, has long been as a remarkable and impressive writer; recently, her great musical talent has been rediscovered and celebrated. But she was sometimes plagued with doubts about her ‘unfeminine’ activities, and wrote to one of the leading churchmen of the time, Bernard of Clairvaux, asking if she–an uneducated woman—should continue with her writing and with composing. He encouraged her, and within a few years she was known and honoured all over Europe. When she was 60 years old, she embarked upon preaching tours all through the German empire, even though at that time only priests were allowed to preach.’ (Walters 6 & 7) STATEMENT OF A PROBLEM In the course of writing this research paper, it was quite difficult to find required writings related to the title on this Indian Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.24 Sunil Gangopaddhaya’s ‘An Unsent Letter’: A Harrowing Outburst of Long Smothered Wail of a Lacerated Psyche poet. Thousands of writings and criticisms are available about the poet, but only very few criticisms on feminist point of view are available. So, the writer of this paper had to study the critical works of the prominent feminists to come to the goals of the research which is to show how a sub-continental woman indescribably suffers in her family as well as in the society; how she is insulted, humiliated, sidelined, and persecuted. I hope this research article will open the paths for other researchers to study Sunil Gangopaddhaya from feministic point of view. LITERATURE REVIEW ‘The history of modern western feminist movements is divided into three waves. Each is described as dealing with different aspects of the same feminist issues. The first wave refers to the movement of the 19th through early 20th centuries, which dealt mainly with suffrage, working conditions and educational rights for women. The second wave (1960s-1980s) dealt with the inequality of laws, as well as cultural inequalities and the role of women in society. The third wave of feminism (late 1980s-early 2000s), is seen as both a continuation of the second wave and a response to the perceived failures.’ The first official wave of feministic movement started in the middle of 19th century and continued till the early period of 20th century. The exponents and writers of feminism of this period actually dealt with suffrage, working conditions, and educational rights for women. Often taken for granted, women in the late 19th to early 20th centuries realized that they must first gain political power (including the right to vote) to bring about change was how to fuel the fire. Their political agenda expanded to issues concerning sexual, reproductive and economic matters. The seed was planted that women have the potential to contribute just as much if not more than men. What is sometimes termed ‘second-wave’ feminism emerged, after the Second World War, in several countries. In 1947, a Commission on the Status of Women was established by the United Nations, and two years later it issued a Declaration of Human Rights, which both acknowledged that men and women had ‘equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution’, as well as women’s entitlement to ‘special care and assistance’ in their role as mothers. Between 1975 and 1985, the UN called three International Conference on women’s issues, in Mexico City, Copenhagen, and Nairobi, where it was acknowledged that feminism: “constitutes the political expression of the concerns and interests of women from different regions, classes, nationalities, and ethnic backgrounds… There is and must be a diversity of feminisms, responsive to the different needs and concerns of different women, and defined by them for themselves. (Walters 97) In 1949, French writer Simone de Beauvoir wrote her world-famous book The Second Sex where she argues, ‘All through history, woman has been denied full humanity, denied the human right to create, to invent, to go beyond mere living to find a meaning for life in projects of ever-widening scope. Man remodels the face of earth, he creates new 25 instruments, he invents, he shapes the future; woman, on the other hand, is always and archetypally other. She is seen by and for men, always the object and never the subject.’ (Walters 98) Today and unlike the former movements, the term ‘feminist’ is received less critically by the female population due to the varying feminist outlooks. There are the ego-cultural feminists, the radicals, the liberal/reforms, the electoral, academic, eco-feminists etc. The main issues we face today were prefaced by the work done by the previous waves of women. We are still working to vanquish the disparities in male and female pay and the reproductive rights of women. We are working to end violence against women in our nation as well as others. We are still fighting for acceptance and a true understanding of the term ‘feminism;’ it should be noted that we made tremendous progress since the first wave. It is a term that has been unfairly associated first, with ladies in hoop skirts and ringlet curls, then followed by butch, man-hating women. Due to the range of feminist issues today, it is much harder to put a label on what a feminist looks like. FEMINISTIC THEMES IN ‘AN UNSENT LETTER’ A Girl, a Burden in a Family That women in the sub-continental countries didn’t have any rights to enjoy or were neglected in the society becomes crystal clear to any reader when he goes to peruse the lyric ‘An Unsent Letter.’ The poetry is nothing but a harrowing outburst of long smothered wail of a lacerated psyche. To give birth a baby girl is a matter of indescribable disgrace for the parents in the society the poet lives. When a girl is born to a family, she is considered as an unbearable burden for the family. It seems that the parents will be able to sigh a relief as soon as they can get rid of this ‘burden’. Therefore, they bring about so many plans to hide the baby girls even before her birth. How pathetic, heart-touching, heart-rending, petrifying, pitiful, painful, terrifying the situation is in the Indian Sub-continent! A healthy brain of Adam’s son cannot help shedding tears after hearing this deplorable and disgraceful condition of women. That women are not considered as humans rather they are regarded as The Second Sex is clearly discerned from the study below. Anyway, a girl who has been sold to a brothel only for six thousand rupees writes a letter to her mother. Every word written by the girls bears a sarcasm and a direct threat to the social structure of her society. The girl reminisces her past memories that she had when she was in the house. Recollecting so many memories related to her life she asks her mother about how her pet is, where it sleeps at night, whether it goes to Ali Sahib’s garden or not. She reminds her mother that she has beaten Tuli (her sister) so many times, and she won’t beat her anymore. It seems that the girl is sobbing and talking to her mother. She won’t beat Tuli again because she cannot beat her now as she is no more in the house. How pitiful and deplorable the situation is here! The picture here seems to echo Nietzsche’s statement who says: ‘she is God’s second mistake’. (Gupta 6) 26 It means if God didn’t create her, she wouldn’t have to bear with such insult. Thus she is born to suffer. The girl, though sold to a brothel, asks her mother not be worried about her, rather she requests the mother to repair their cottage with new shack as it is raining a lot this year. She says: I am fine. Do not worry for me Mother, did you repair your house with new shack? How appalling the situation here is! The girl has been sold and she is far away from her parents; she is undoubtedly in unhappiness and discontent, but she is pretending to be happy. Rather she is worried about her parents and others who live in the worn out bungalow. A painful image is located here. The girl seems to be wiping out her eyes and writing the letter. Orthodoxy of Indian Society The girl reminds her mother that she used to go to Ali Sahib’s garden where she got few types of fruits. Ali’s brother Mizan adored her what her father didn’t like, and for this the father once beat her severely. She still has the spots on her back. But what could she do if anyone adored a child like her? Here the girl’s words remind us the orthodoxy of the society that doesn’t allow the boys and girls to enjoy their time together even though there is no claims of morality. The girl expresses herself by saying: Ali Sahib’s brother Mizan used to adore me very much. Once father beat me by a wooden stick, What’s wrong with me, how I can say no if someone cares? I still have the spots on my back. No more I did go to Ali Sahib’s garden. I did not go to any garden I remember my father when I put finger on that spot I get a lot of hardship when I think of my father I’m fine, very fine Let father not to be anxious about me. Here, the girl doesn’t have any accusation against her father. She is still worried about the father because she is his daughter. She is again found here to pretend to be happy though she is in unspeakable and tremendous hardships. Women are not Allowed to Think for the Family The family doesn’t show any love or affection for the wretched girl but the girl still has concern about the family. Her family lives from hand to mouth, and thus her brother was in need of a job to run the family. When she was in the house, she heard that Nokul Babu, a broker, would take him to Baharampur to get him a job. So, in the letter she is asking her mother the updates about that job. As she writes: Oh yes, good, brother got any job? Nokul babu said that he would take him to Baharampur? But the irony here is that the parents and the brother don’t want the girl to think for the betterment of the family. These lines seem to remind us what Kazi Nazrul wrote in his famous poem ‘Nari’, the women: IJALEL 9(1):24-29 The sword of males alone couldn’t bring victory to the world Rather, these are the females who inspired, enthused and gave mental strength to men. The Society even denies to ensure basic Human Rights to Women Sunil is then observed to criticize the social notions of the family about spending money for the food of the children. The girl has a brother named Kalu who loves cakes made of palms. But the family is hardly ready to prepare it as the oil is so expensive. Thus the girl requests the mother to prepare these palm cakes for Kalu though they have to pay a lot for the oil. She says: In the month of Vadra palm ripens, it falls from the tree with sound. Are the two palm trees in the house still there? Kalu loves fried palm, make one day please, I know oil is expensive now, but still make one day? The poet here attacks the mean-mindedness and misery of the social people who are not even ready to spend money to feed the boys let alone to feed the girls. Can a human being of cool head think that the parents sell their girl children to earn money and in fear of feeding them? The poet scornfully attacks these objectionable malpractices of his society by writing: You got six thousand rupees by selling me, Have you bought a cow with that? Does that cow give good milk? Cows are much better than a girl like me Selling cow’s milk is a good thing in the world Cows give birth to calves, so how much joy in it! If there is a girl in the house how much irritation! Give rice twice, give sari, manage to get married, Save the girl from the claws of Hablu, Mizan and Sridhar! Don’t I understand? All I understand I understand why I was sold, That’s why I do not have any anger, no boast. I’m fine, I have no problem of eating. Please repair your house with that money, if possible. Send Kalu-Bhulu to school Send Tuli to Dr. Brozen for treatment, please. You buy a sari, a dhoti for father with that money Dada’s watch is a love, is it possible to buy one with that money? The situation pictured here even defeats the picture of the girls during the historical Dark Age when the girl children were graved alive in fear of feeding and clothing them. It is known to all that during the Dark Age, it was a matter of great dishonor for the parents to give birth a baby girl. The parents felt shame to come to public place if they became father or mother of a girl. Therefore, they graved their girls alive. The condition of the Indian women drawn in the above stated lines is by no way less pathetic and heart-touching than that of the age when Mohammed (PBUH) stepped into this material universe. Here we can see that the parents have sold their child for six thousand rupees. Now the use of sarcasm and irony by the poet is remarkable here. The girl asks Sunil Gangopaddhaya’s ‘An Unsent Letter’: A Harrowing Outburst of Long Smothered Wail of a Lacerated Psyche whether her parents have bought a cow with that money or not. The statement ‘Cows are much better than a girl like me’ seems to sting to the social structure. The girl seems to laugh while saying this. She says cows give milk, give birth to calves by which a family can earn money. But if there are girls in a family, they have to be very much worried for them. They have to feed them, clothe them, arrange marriage for them, and also protect them from the clutches or claws of vulture-like human animals who also live in the same society. The girls don’t deserve to enjoy any basic human rights. So, it is quite better to have a cow rather than having a girl in the family! The girl also advises her mother to repair their house, send Tuli to doctor, buy a sari for her, a dhoti for father, and a watch for her dada (brother) with the money they got by selling her. How disgraceful, terrible, and appalling the condition of women in the society is! These lines are sharp enough to cut and bleed a society. The poet here is by no means less sarcastic, ironical and cynical than a professional feminist writer. That the girl is lacerated, torn and slashed with long smothered wail is understood here. She seems to express out her harrowing outburst in these lines. The condition of the girl here seems to be similar with that of Mary Astell, one of the true earliest feminists who was born in 1666, had to leave her house at the age of 12 as her father died then and nobody came to patronize her since she was a girl. Going to London with only a little money and the addresses of a few family contacts, she sought shelter to some of her distant relatives who didn’t pay any heed to her. Desperate and depressed, she was not able to get any livelihood; she wrote to William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, asking for help: ‘For since God has given Women as well as Men, the intelligent souls and how should they be forbidden to improve them? Since he has not denied us the faculty of thinking, why should we not (at least in gratitude to him) employ our thoughts on himself, their noblest object, and not unworthily bestow them on Trifles and Gaities and secular Affairs?’ (Walters 27) By 1694, she wrote her first book ‘A Serious Proposal to the Ladies” urging other women to take themselves seriously: they must learn to think for themselves, work to develop their own mind and skills, rather than always deferring to masculine judgment. One of her books was entitled ‘Thoughts on Education.’ Girls, she argued, must be taught to think for themselves, to judge clearly and sensibly, rather than waste all their time in acquiring graceful social skills and accomplishments.” She also writes, “We value them (men) too much and ourselves too little.’ (Walters 28) For centuries, and all over Europe, there were families who disposed of ‘unnecessary’ or unmarriageable daughters by shutting them away in convents. ‘The most widely read books for girls on the subject of moral instruction, Dr James Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women (1766) and Dr. John Gregory’s Father’s Legacy to His Daughters (1774), echoed what the luminaries (VIPs) of London’s literary world implied or directly advised – that the proper duty of the female was to make herself pleasing to men. Such skill was women by nature. She didn’t need to be dedicated to academic study 27 to play the role of a charming wife or loving mother satisfactorily.’ (Wollstonecraft xxxvii-xxxviii) Catherine Macaulay argued in 1790 that the apparent weakness of women was caused by their Miseducation. She also argued by saying, ‘Women were limited mentally and physically by their environment. She urged physical exercise and academic studies for women, equal to those of men, dismissing the concept of innate inferiority and claiming in a principle which Wollstonecraft would urge tirelessly, ‘there is but one rule of right for the conduct of all rational beings. But the issue of female emancipation was not a central concern for Macaulay. Macaulay is concerned equally with the management of infants and the education of princes. It was for Marry Wollstonecraft to take the argument of natural rights and make their application to women the subject of a sustained argument. It was for Wollstonecraft to isolate and emphasize the issue of education for women, taking Lady Mary’s ‘unmined gold’ and urging it to be used to enrich all of human society.’ (Haque 15-42). The society where this girl lives is undoubtedly a male-dominated one where men subjugate woman to his will. From the above stated lines of the poetry it won’t be, I think, an overstatement to opine that Sunil Gangopaddhaya is quite similar to Anita Desai who also wrote for the Second Sex of the society as she says: “There are those who can handle situations and those who can’t. And my stories are generally about those who can’t. They find themselves trapped in situations on which they have no control.” (Bheda 14) Women are Humiliated Everywhere by Everybody Anyway, though the girl was sold and her parents didn’t meddle about her, they had other ‘lucky’ and ‘fortunate’ boy children, but the girl had nobody except her parents. So she once decided to visit the house and give an earring to Tuli that she bought by the money she earned. She also wanted to give some money to her mother. Once she got down from train, she met her brother who scolded her by saying bastard, scoundrel etc. She told she didn’t come to stay at home rather she just wants to meet the parents. But then her brother’s friends shouted saying: ‘It is a prostitute, rogue.’ The girl expresses her grief-stricken heart by: I wished I could see the house only once When I was going through Rathtola, somebody shouted: Who goes? Who goes? I saw Dada playing cards with Habul-Sridhar He told me, “Bastard, scoundrel, why are you back?” I was afraid and said, “I did not come back, even not to stay”. Only to see once, Habul said, “It is a prostitute, rogue”. How did they know, is it written on my forehead? And a boy, I do not know him, said, “Fie! Fie! Fie! Disrepute of our village.” Throwing angry glance at Rickshaw puller, Habul told him to turn back I said, brother, I got some money for mother IJALEL 9(1):24-29 28 And for Tuli.............. Dada blew a slap on my cheek The money earned by selling me is pure money, And my earning money is dirty money, Dada would not touch the money of that sin, Sreedhar took it away And drove me away. Even Mothers Deprive their Daughters of Motherly Affection It seems that the girl is not a member of the galaxy of human beings; she doesn’t live under the sky where these ‘gentlemen’-her parents, brothers, and other relatives- live; they are specially created by God Himself. The God who feeds these privileged people doesn’t feed the girl. To quote William Shakespeare, the brightest star in the sky of English literature, ‘If you prickle these parents and brothers, they become sensitive. But the girl doesn’t feel any sensitivity if same behavior is done with her. If one cuts these special ‘creatures’, they will bleed. But if you cut the girl, there will be no blood.’ What a remarkable discrimination we see here between the creatures created by the same God! A reader cannot but shed tears when he or she goes through: I’m not your daughter, but you’re my mother You have more children, but where I can get mother? That’s why I’m writing this letter to you, mother, I have a very request to you Take care of Tuli, and she is very weak and helpless, Whatever the want you have, but you please. Tell my father, mother, I fall on your feet, Let not Tuli send to lead a comfortable life like me, By any means, let Tuli get married Let her have a family, a life-partner, I really fail to get how a mother can stay alone by selling her child to a brothel. It is the right of the girl to enjoy motherly love and affection, but the mother doesn’t hesitate to deny this right to her daughter. I doubt whether this lady (the mother) did really bore this girl or not. Even being driven out of the parental house, the girl doesn’t have any accusation against anybody. She only requests her mother not to deny that she is not her mother. She is found to be ironical when she writes that she is leading a ‘comfortable’ life and she urges mother not to send Tuli to the same ‘cozy’ life. Falling on her mother’s feet, she tells her to request father for managing a marriage for Tuli, and then she (Tuli) will find a life-partner. This indicates how much happy the girl is. It is now clear to everybody that one of the main reasons behind selling the girl to a brothel is the difficulty to arrange marriage for her. Furthermore, the family has to spend a lot of money for her marriage which is ‘an unprofitable sector’ in the society. The Girl has Nobody to Depend Upon In Indian Vedic age Manu, the law giver of Hindu Dharma Shastra, clearly assigns woman a subordinate position to man: During childhood, a female must depend upon her father, during youth, upon her husband, her husband being dead, upon her sons; if she has no sons, upon the near kinsmen of her husband; in default, upon those of her father, if she has no parental kinsmen, upon the sovereign; a woman must never govern herself as she likes. (Bader 55) But this girl seems to be living in a different galaxy. She has her parents, brothers and sisters, and also other relatives, but she has nobody to depend upon for which she has been sold like a commodity to a brothel. The Girl’s Plight is more Deplorable than even Mary Wollstonecraft Before the actual commencement of the feminist movement, women were treated like a fruit. It was accused that the men peeled the ‘fruit’ out and threw it away. Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of modern feminism and the writer of the first sustained argument for female emancipation, was directly deceived by her husband, Gilbert Imlay, who continued his illegal relationship with another woman while Mary was struggling frantically to keep afloat in the sea of plight with her child. This becomes clearer when we read Miriam Brody’s introduction to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman where she writes: ‘In London once again in 1795, Wollstonecraft could no longer delude herself about him (Imlay), for Imlay was living openly with another woman. Wollstonecraft had met the various crises in her struggle for economic independence with characteristic resilience and determination, but Imlay’s infidelity and all it implied of her misplaced trust left her desperate. Finally, too, travel weary, with no appetite to begin again, she was as far as she had ever been from her fantasies of a harmonious and stable home. Her response to all of this was suicide. She left instructions for the care of her child and walked out at night to look for a secluded spot along the Thames where, making sure her clothes were heavy with water, and assuming she was unobserved, she at last leapt from a bridge. But in spite of her precautions she had been noticed and was pulled unconscious from the water by a passer-by. Later she told William Godwin that the pain associated with the attempt on her own life was so great she was resolved never to try again. Perhaps the suicide attempt exhausted the worst of her despair for after a few embarrassing meetings with him she was able at long last to resolve to forget Gilbert Imlay, and began to make plans for her own and her daughter’s future, moving about within her London circle of reassuring friends.’ (Wollstonecraft xxiii-xxiv) Mary Wollstonecraft was deceived by her husband, but our girl was cuckolded by her parents. Thus the predicament of this girl is undoubtedly more petrifying than that of the mother of modern feminism. A husband may cheat his wife (though I also feel pity for it), and it is normal everywhere, but how the parents especially a mother who bears her child for more than ten months can betray the child, and more pathetically how they can sell their child. Is it not the duty of the parents to guarantee the basic needs of their children whether they are ‘lucky’ boys or ‘unlucky’ girls? Sunil Gangopaddhaya’s ‘An Unsent Letter’: A Harrowing Outburst of Long Smothered Wail of a Lacerated Psyche Being a Girl is a Matter of Great Sin At the end of the poem, the girl is seen to think that being a girl is a matter of great sin to this society where she is not treated as a human being. Here she seems to be a bit revolutionary. She asks God whether a girl has a place to live as a human in this world or not. Then she advises her parents saying that they can let Tuli go anywhere in the world where she can live as a human being, where nobody will insult or kick her because of her being a girl. Oh God! Doesn’t a daughter of poor family have right to live if she is not married? If she is not married, everyone will thump over her? If possible, let her go anywhere Crossing the ground, crossing the river, crossing the jungle Far away, further away, where the two eyes go, There is definitely a place, definitely a place Where human beings are like humans, Nobody there to pinch, to bite, to kick Where a girl, not just a girl, can live like a human. CONCLUSION Based on the discussion above, it can unquestionably be stated that the parents must have killed this girl when her mother was bearing her if they could know that the baby who was coming to this world was a girl. They would feel comparatively happy if they could do this. But they are really ‘unlucky’ because the science still did not reach that level. God created human beings, He didn’t create any ‘discriminations’. He says: ‘O Muhammad! Say I seek refuge in the Lord of Mankind. The King of Mankind. The God of Mankind.’ Here, it is clear that God doesn’t belong to any particular religious group, rather He is the Lord for human beings (poor, rich, white, black, Muslims, Hindoos, 29 Christians, Jews, and Buddhists). But we are the people who bring about discriminations among ourselves. Because of these man-created discriminations and differences, human beings are treated differently in the world. And in particular, women in the whole world are treated differently. They are not provided with what they actually deserve; rather they are neglected, insulted, and humiliated in every society. The girl who is seen here to be sold to a brothel is the representative of the women of the world. In the same way, most of the women in the world are bereft of basic human rights. The discussion above clearly clarifies the idea that the poem ‘An Unsent Letter’ is really an upsurge of a tortured girl who has been sold to a brothel as her parents took her as an unbearable burden for the family. REFERENCES Bader, Clarise. Women in Ancient India. Varanasi: The Chowkhambla Sanskrit Studies, 1964. Print. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Nwe Delhi: Viva Books Private Limited, 2010. Print. Bheda, P.D. Indian Women Novelists in English. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2005. Print. Contributors, Wikipedia. History of Feminism. 15th January 2020. Web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ feminism). 22nd September 2013. Gupta, R.K. The Novels of Anita Desai: A Feminist Perspective. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002. Print. Haque, Mohammad Mozammel. “Prophet and Philosopher Mohammed: A Precursor of Feminism.” International Journal of Linguistics and Literature (2018): 15-42. Web. Walters, Margaret. Feminism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. London: Penguin Books Limited, 2004. Print. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Into the Darkest Corner: The Importance of Addressing Factor-Based Particularity in Relation to Domestic Violence Experiences in Post-Modern Literary Theory Reem Atiyat* Al-Balqa Applied University , Jordan Corresponding Author: Reem Atiyat, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 26, 2019 Accepted: December 17, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 This paper investigates how a survivor of a violent marital relationship could awaken and take positive counteraction against her oppressive husband, rather than remaining entrapped in a state of ‘learned helplessness’. The central contribution of this paper lies in highlighting particularity rather than sameness when investigating how oppression and male domination could function as factors that trigger positive counteraction and lead to the liberation of the silenced protagonist in Elizabeth Haynes’ novel Into the Darkest Corner. The model highlighted for the purpose of examination is Catherine, the protagonist of Elizabeth Haynes’ novel Into the Darkest Corner. The paper mainly focuses on addressing two questions ‘What are the protagonist’s violence experiences?’ and ‘What are the factors that served to reinforce and prolong the protagonist’s oppressive marriage?’. The struggle of the protagonist to put an end to her abusive marriage, and how she managed to overpower her post-traumatic stress disorder experience constitute the focal point of this paper, and are explored from a feminist psychoanalytical perspective, a task that has not been addressed in the available literature on domestic violence in relation to feminist and psychoanalytic criticism up to date. In order to investigate these aspects in the novel, this paper draws on the views of post-modern feminist literary theory. This literary approach is crucial to highlighting the gender-based inequality imposed on the protagonist by her abusive husband throughout the novel. The analytical approach followed in this paper is that of thematic analysis. The paper mainly highlights the recurrent themes of physical violence and post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, the paper examines the content of the novel to support the argument about the association between post-traumatic stress disorder and liberation. Thus, three main issues are addressed: Domestic violence types and definitions, feminist theoretical views in relation to male domination, and notions of post-traumatic stress disorder in relation to liberation in feminist postmodern literary criticism. The main argument in this paper is that post-traumatic stress disorder is not an introductory psychological phase that paves the way for learned helplessness. Rather, it is a state imposed by male domination and control that could be challenged, controlled and directed to lead to liberation from male authority and oppression with the availability of proper assistance. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Domestic Violence, Feminist Criticism, Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS), Literary Trauma, PTSD. INTRODUCTION This paper aims to investigate the forms of domestic violence that the protagonist of Elizabeth Haynes’ novel Into the Darkest Corner (2012) experienced in the light of post-modern feminist literary theory. The ‘particular’ struggle of the protagonist to put an end to her abusive marriage, and how she managed to overcome her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) experience by reclaiming her inner strength constitute the focal point of this paper, and are explored from a feminist psychoanalytic perspective, a task that has not been addressed in the available literature on domestic violence in relation to feminist and psychoanalytic criticism up to date. Thus, the literature covered in this paper involves post-modern feminist views and criticism in relation to domestic violence against women (Marder, 2006; Allport, 2009; Mc-Cue, 2008; Finley, 2013), in addition to psychoanalytic views on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Marder, 2006; Allport, 2009), a medical condition from which the protagonist suffered as a result of her abusive marriage. Therefore, this paper is divided into eight sections. The initial section provides the abstract which is followed by an introduction to the content of the paper. In the third section, the methodological approach followed to investigate the domestic violence experience to which the protagonist was exposed will be discussed. In the fourth section, however, the paper provides a review of the literature, addressing the complexity of domestic violence, and showing the diversity of its patterns. Section five discusses the feminist Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.30 Into the Darkest Corner: The Importance of Addressing Factor-Based Particularity in Relation to Domestic Violence Experiences in Post-Modern Literary Theory literary theoretical context through which the analysis of the novel is conducted. Then, the sixth section provides a brief summary of the novel, followed by an investigation of the protagonist’s domestic violence experience in section seven. Finally, the eighth section concludes the paper presented. In the following section, the paper discusses the methodological approach followed to conduct this paper. METHODOLOGY This paper relies primarily on secondary data. The data drawn upon is mainly derived from books and scholarly articles centred on the identification of violence, and books and articles that discuss domestic violence in relation to feminist literary theory and psychoanalysis. The literary work analysed through the lens of post-modern feminist literary criticism is Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes. The choice of feminist literary criticism as the theoretical context is due to the importance of highlighting women’s challenge and rejection of men’s gender-based alleged right to dominate and control them. With regard to the analytical approach followed throughout this paper to discuss the aspects of oppression in Into the Darkest Corner, it is that of descriptive thematic analysis. Thematic analysis, as a method of qualitative analysis, is an approach through which the researcher gives ‘minimal attention to the structures selected by the narrator to tell her/his story, function or contextual details of the story’ (Frost, 2011, p. 108). Rather, a researcher employing thematic analysis starts the analysis by reading the raw data he or she has in order to familiarize himself or herself with the content of the data (Frost, 2011; Atiyat, 2018). Secondly, the researcher codes the data at hand (Frost, 2011; Atiyat, 2018). That is, the researcher pinpoints the main ideas or thoughts that are discussed in each sequence of content words. Thirdly, the researcher builds ‘a set of themes by looking for patterns and meaning produced in the data, labelling and grouping them in connection with the theoretical framework of the research’ (Frost, 2011, p. 108). Finally, the researcher gathers the different narratives under each highlighted theme and compares between the different narratives categorized under each theme (Frost, 2011; Atiyat, 2018). In this paper, the raw material from the novel has been read in order to highlight the forms of violence and oppression that the protagonist experiences and fights against. Physical violence and sexual violence are mainly highlighted. Then, this paper provides comments on those forms showing how they reinforced male domination, and pinpointing their impact on the protagonist’s journey towards liberation in the light of her ability to access power resources. After having explained the methodological approach, this paper will proceed to explore the literature on various forms of domestic violence. A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. Definitions and Patterns Domestic violence has become a recognizable issue in the West in the 1970s (Harne and Radford, 2008). Since then, 31 numerous attempts have been made by researchers and organizations to define the different types of domestic violence and investigate their impact on people’s lives (Harne and Radford, 2008). During the early 1970s, western research on domestic violence focused mainly on addressing physical violence: When violence between intimate partners emerged as a recognizable issue in our society in the mid-1970s., empirical knowledge of this social, psychological, and legal phenomenon was very limited. As advocates for women organized shelters across the nation to provide safety and assistance for abused women, clinical information emerged that described patterns of severe physical and emotional abuse. The victims were most notably described by Walker1 (1979) and others as ‘battered women,’ and the male perpetrators were labelled ‘batterers.’ (Kelly and Johnson 2008, p. 476) Yet, with time, other forms of domestic violence than battering were also explored in the literature on domestic violence. On the whole, domestic violence is a term that includes various forms of aggressive behaviour within the family such as wife abuse (Harne and Radford, 2008), child abuse2 (Harne and Radford, 2008) and elder abuse3 (Chalk and King, 1998). Wife abuse in particular might be carried out in a multitude of practices ranging from emotional, physical and sexual assault (Harne and Radford, 2008) to verbal (Harne and Radford, 2008) and financial aggression (Harne and Radford, 2008). Many attempts on the part of western and non-western scholars and researchers investigating domestic violence have been directed towards clarifying its patterns. With regard to physical abuse, western and non-western scholars and researchers have identified domestic physically abusive behaviour as The intentional use of physical force with the potential for causing death, disability, injury, or harm. Physical violence includes, but is not limited to: scratching, pushing, shoving, throwing, grabbing, biting, chocking, shaking, poking, hair-pulling, slapping, punching, hitting, burning, use of a weapon (gun, knife, or other object), and use of restraints or one’s body, size, or strength against another person. Physical violence also includes coercing other people to commit any of the above acts. (Saltzman, Fanslow, McMahon et al., 1999, p. 11-12) Verbal domestic violence may involve ‘insults, criticism, ridicule, name calling, discounting, and discrediting’ (Carlson, Worden, Van Ryn et al., 2003, p. 3). Emotional domestic violence has been defined as The use of verbal and nonverbal acts which symbolically hurt the other or the use of threats to hurt the other. behaviors that can be used to terrorize the victim...that do not involve the use of physical force... the direct infliction of mental harm and threats or limits to the victim’s well-being. and. an ongoing process in which one individual systematically diminishes and destroys the inner self of another. The essential ideas, feelings, perceptions, and personality characteristics of the victim are constantly belittled (Mouradian, 2000, p. n.p.). 32 The definition of emotional domestic violence stated above makes a clear distinction between verbal and emotional domestic violence. While behaviours included under these two patterns might intersect in terms of their ability to hurt a woman’s feelings, emotional domestic violence might be carried out in a non-verbal manner. Finally, financial domestic violence refers to a form of abuse that is directed towards exercising control over women by means of preventing them from accessing the financial resources they require in order to carry on with their daily lives (Pollet, 2011). In the remaining part of this section, the difference between various feminist views on domestic violence will be discussed. In literary studies, domestic violence against women in its diverse forms is a complex issue that has been addressed within the context of literary trauma (Marder, 2006; Allport, 2009; Balaev, 2012; Balaev, 2014; Azmi, 2018). It is a context which primarily investigates domestic violence against women in relation to patriarchal values and power relations (Goldman, 1999; Ismael and Ismael, 2000; Senn, 2002; Berberoglu, 2005; Hanser, 2007; Mc-Cue, 2008; Inglis and Thorpe, 2012; Finley, 2013), highlighting the importance of the particularity of women’s experiences (Goldman, 1999; Blakely, 2007). The particularity of abused women’s gendered, violence-based experiences of domination and control in association with the emotional consequences of domestic violence (Schuller and Vidmar,1992; Mangum, 1999; Goldman, 1999; Collins, 2000; Najavits, 2002; Briere and Jordan, 2004; Dressler, 2006; Erickson, 2007; Blakely, 2007; Kubany and Ralston, 2008; Ford, 2009; Allport, 2009; Froeschle, 2009; Dutton, Osthoff and Dichter, 2009; Wells, 2011; Zimbardo, Sword and Sword, 2012; Cunliffe, Johnson and Weiss, 2013) occupy a noteworthy segment of this paper. After having reviewed the literature on the various patterns of domestic violence that have been addressed in literary domestic violence studies, and after having reviewed the literature on the theoretical context through which these forms are explored in Into the Darkest Corner, the review of the literature on the literary theoretical context through which the forms of abuse addressed in the novel are discussed will be explored more thoroughly in the following section. Theoretical Context: Psychoanalytical and Feminist Views on Trauma in Domestic Violence Rare is the phenomenon that legitimately is an object of study not only in the three traditional branches of the university (the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities) but in medicine and law as well. Trauma4, it would seem, has something of a privileged and paradoxical relationship to interdisciplinary studies. Cutting-edge trauma research is currently being pursued in numerous fields across the university (including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, public health, history, and literature), yet none of these disciplines alone can explain or contain the phenomenon of trauma. (Marder, 2006, p. 1) Researchers in English literary theory have repeatedly adjusted systems of knowledge which were proposed largely IJALEL 9(1):30-39 outside the field of literary studies and imposed them ‘upon literary texts for the purpose of discovering and developing new and unique understandings of those texts that a traditional literary critic might not be intellectually equipped to recognize’ (Azmi, 2018, p. 58). Balaev (2014) traces the introduction of trauma studies into literary criticism, or, as labelled by Allport (2009) ‘literary trauma’ (Allport, 2009: 49), arguing that the ‘field of trauma studies in literary criticism gained significant attention in 1996 with the publication of Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History and Kali Tal’s Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma’ (Balaev, 2014, p. 1). In this paper, the investigation of trauma resulting from the protagonist’s domestic violence experience in Elizabeth Haynes’ Into the Darkest Corner, and her liberation through focusing on her inner strength are conducted through a feminist post-modern perspective, and the protagonist’s struggle is ‘voiced5’ within the context of power resources. With regard to feminist critics, they have centred their efforts on questioning and combating the sexist domination of men in the private as well as the public sphere (Allport, 2009). They mainly reject patriarchal6 cultural beliefs that support inferiorizing and marginalizing women (Allport, 2009). In the context of domestic violence, as an aspect of domination and control over women, feminist theory ‘provides the basis and justification for the existence of domestic violence throughout history. The theory posits that intimate partner violence grows out of inequality within marriage (and other intimate relationships modelled on marriage) and reinforces male power and female subordination within the home’ (Mc-Cue, 2008, p. 15). Yet, feminist theoretical views in relation to domestic violence are far from unified (Mc-Cue, 2008). Feminists investigating domestic violence against women have developed many theoretical perspectives, including radical feminist, Marxist feminist, and Arab feminist ones. During the second-wave of the feminist movement, extending from the 1960s to the 1980s, both radical feminists and Marxist feminists introduced theoretical frameworks through which they endeavoured to investigate the reasons behind women’s oppression. Radical feminists had a pioneering role in drawing public attention to the severity of domestic violence against women. Radical feminists’ focal point was to investigate this phenomenon in association with male-dominating patriarchal values (Hanser, 2007). Patriarchy is, from a radical feminist perspective, a social unit of power. The advocates of patriarchal values, radical feminists argue, utilize various forms of violence against women in order to reinforce men’s power and social control (Hanser, 2007, p. 326). According ‘to radical feminists, women, as women, regardless of class, race, ethnicity, and other differences, are vulnerable to rape, domestic violence, and homicide at the hands of their intimate partners’ (Berberoglu, 2005, pp. 143-144). However, radical feminist views in relation to domestic violence against women have been subjected to the criticism of feminist theoreticians such as liberal and Marxist feminists. The ‘flaws that critics of Radical feminism discerned are fairly obvious. Critics alleged that the central idea of patriarchy as the root and cause of all things was overstated’ Into the Darkest Corner: The Importance of Addressing Factor-Based Particularity in Relation to Domestic Violence Experiences in Post-Modern Literary Theory (Inglis and Thorpe, 2012, p. n.p.). Instead of restricting the causes of domestic violence against women to the power of patriarchal cultural ideologies, Marxist feminists proposed that ‘women’s subordination was the result of a system in which men held and controlled most private property in society’ (Hanser, 2007, pp. 323). For Marxist feminists, patriarchy is not the sole source of women’s oppression. Marxist feminists maintain that gender roles ‘are built around the economic system whereby men are perceived as the breadwinners. When they feel they cannot be successful as providers, the result might be violence against women as a means of reasserting feelings of power and control’ (Finley, 2013, p. 389). Finley elaborates saying that research ‘does bear out that women are at highest risk for lethal abuse when they are employed and their abuser is unemployed, suggesting this situation is perceived as a threat to the man’ (Finley, 2013, p. 389). Some researchers argue that concentrating on the individual per se has diverted the scope of the investigation of this phenomenon from the social interest in exploring and combating domestic violence against women to focusing on the individual, which in turn has resulted in an increase in the tendency to blame the victim instead of the perpetrator who has initiated the assault (Senn, 2002, p. 483). A third aspect amongst the numerous value divisions found within feminist literary theory is that of postmodern feminism. The reason behind my choice of this theoretical context to write this paper is that it focuses highly on the notion of ‘particularity’ in association to male gendered domination: ‘Even postmodern feminist scholars like Donna Haraway, who critique experience as a category of analysis, embrace the specifity of women’s lives’ (Goldman, 1999, p. 479). Despite the differences between radical, Marxist and postmodern feminist views, they all do not dismiss the impact of patriarchal ideology and male domination on women’s oppression especially when investigating domestic violence. With regard to the particularity of the gendered, violence-based experience of the protagonist, feminist researchers specializing in various fields of social sciences and literature have acknowledged the importance of addressing the psychological emotional aspect of any investigated phenomenon ‘challenging objectivity, rejecting detachment, accepting contradictory readings, and recognizing the presence of emotion within the research process’ (Blakely, 2007, p. 60). Therefore, being a feminist researcher, I acknowledged the importance of discussing the particular emotions experienced by the protagonist. Abused women, research suggests, experience psychological consequences such as feelings of anxiety (Allport, 2009) and hyper-arousal (Allport, 2009). Scholars investigating the psychological consequences of wife abuse in the context of literary trauma have associated the abused women’s anxiety, for instance, with the ‘repetitive, arbitrary nature of chronic domestic violence’ (Briere and Jordan, 2004, p. 1259) which makes these women feel constantly stressed as they anticipate possible attacks. They have also proposed that abused women’s anxiety might be triggered by their concern over their ‘economic future’ (Froeschle, 2009, p. 182). Such scholars have added that constant stress caused by the 33 recurrence of wife abuse might lead to distress (Erickson, 2007), depression (Schneider, 2007), or denial (Erickson, 2007). Victims might deny that they have experienced wife abuse due to their fear of the perpetrators’ potential reactions; for the latter might inflict harm on them and their children if the violence is exposed (Erickson, 2007). Walker (2009) investigates the behavioural and psychological characteristics of abused women under what she refers to as ‘the battered woman syndrome’. Walker presents an extensive list of the symptoms exhibited by abused women diagnosed with ‘the battered woman syndrome’ which include the following: 1. Intrusive recollections of the trauma event (s). 2. Hyperarousal [sic] and high levels of anxiety. 3. Avoidance behavior and emotional numbing usually expressed as depression, dissociation, minimization, repression and denial. 4. Disrupted interpersonal relationships from batterer’s power and control measures. 5. Body image distortion and/or somatic or physical complaints. 6. Sexual intimacy issues (Walker, 2009, p. 42). According to Walker, intrusive recollections of the traumatic event or events refer to how battered women re-live their past violent experiences after the abusive incident has come to an end (Walker, 2009, p. 58) ‘even after when they are safe from it actually recurring’ (Walker, 2009, p. 59). As a result, these women become very nervous and worried that the abuse might happen again. Some women might cope with the abusive situation in which they find themselves by pretending the aggression was not serious (Walker, 2009, p. 42). Other responses related to battered woman syndrome occur as a result of women’s being deprived of their freedom and forcing them to live in isolation (Walker, 2009, p. 65). In situations where a woman is ‘treated as a possession, controlling when and if she saw family and friends, accompanying her to and from her job, restricting her time if she was allowed to go out by herself’ (Walker, 2009, p. 65), such a woman becomes detached from the public realm, living entirely under the control of her abuser which renders her consistently vulnerable to the husband’s violence. In an effort to explore the psychological consequences of wife abuse, Walker (1978) proposed two theoretical frameworks: learned helplessness and the cycle of violence (Walker, 1978, pp. 129-130). According to Schuller and Vidmar (1992: 3), the theory of learned helplessness was first proposed by Seligman (1975) to clarify why laboratory animals that have been placed in shocking environments remain entrapped in them even when they are given the opportunity to escape. This theoretical outline was adapted by Walker (1978) to explain why so many battered women fail to leave their abusers (Wells, 2011, p. 3). Wells clarifies that women who have been exposed to wife abuse undergo a certain psychological experience that renders them attached to their abusers. This experience is referred to as ‘learned helplessness’. Learned helplessness, as a psychological state, Wells explains, does not imply that the victims are actually helpless, but rather that they develop and internalize feelings of doubt about whether whatever actions they take in order to stop their partners’ or husbands’ violence IJALEL 9(1):30-39 34 would work (Wells, 2011, p. 11). As for the second theoretical outline Walker utilized to rationalize women’s responses to wife abuse, namely ‘cycle of violence’, Collins (2000) maintains that the theory was introduced to explain how the husband or partner does not carry out his aggression in an extreme manner right from the beginning, but rather that he employs fluctuating degrees of severity (Collins, 2000, p. 1). As for the first stage of the cycle of violence, the husband or partner might be verbally abusive (Collins, 2000, p. 1). He might also be emotionally abusive or show physical violence (Collins, 2000, p. 1). In response to such attitudes, the abused wife begins to think of ways through which she can calm the abuser down and restore the supposed harmony of their relationship in an attempt to prevent the recurrence of violence (Dressler, 2006). The second phase of the cycle of violence is a phase of ‘tension-building’ accompanied with ‘attempts to calm the batterer in order to avoid repetition’ of the abusive incident (Dressler, 2006, p. 462). Cunliffe, Johnson and Weiss (2013) explain the ‘tension-building’ phase in Criminal Psychology as a period in which ‘the batterer engages in acts that cause increased friction in the relationship (i.e., name-calling or physical violence)’ (Cunliffe, Johnson and Weiss, 2013, p. 464). As for the third stage of the cycle of violence, Walker (2009) explains that abused women experience ‘the acute battering incident’. At this stage, the batterer projects explosive attitudes towards the victim. Some women who have been exposed to recurrent episodes of wife abuse, however, might develop the skill to sense when the husband is about to discharge his tension ahead of the actual attack. This gives the victim the opportunity to take whatever action is possible in order to reduce potential damage (Walker, 2009, p. 94). In the final stage of the violence cycle, the husband might express his regret, say he’s sorry and maybe even promise he will never batter his wife again. This ‘phase provides the positive reinforcement for remaining in the relationship, for the woman’ (Walker, 2009, p. 94). Yet, sometimes the violent incident does not pass through all the stages of the cycle of violence explained earlier. In such cases, the victim experiences continuous tension and anxiety in anticipation of potential attacks on the part of her husband. The importance of highlighting the cycle of violence lies in its ability to awaken the victim and assist her in taking positive counteraction against her oppressive husband (Walker, 2009, p. 85). However, Walker’s ‘battered woman syndrome’ was critiqued by scholars and particularly feminists from a number of angles. As for the first angle of criticism, the term ‘battered woman syndrome’ ‘is a term typically used to refer to women’s experiences that result from being battered’ (Dutton, Osthoff and Dichter, 2009. p. 1). Yet, this scope of the ‘battered woman syndrome’ fails to address the experiences of many women who were exposed to non-physical violence such as emotional or verbal violence for example. Secondly, the ‘battered woman syndrome’ was critiqued for its labelling abused women as passive victims since in many cases abused women counteract against their violent husbands’ or partners’ behaviour in order to escape their violence: Although Walker’s early observations portrayed battered women as suffering from learned helplessness, more recent work has documented that battered women actively engage in efforts to resist, avoid, escape, and stop the violence against them. Studies indicate that rather than passively remaining in an abusive relationship, battered women respond to violence in many ways, including reporting it to the police, telling family or friends, seeking shelter and assistance, filing for civil protective orders, separating and divorcing, complying with the batterer’s demands, and/or hiding from the batterer. Thus, it should not be assumed that a battered woman who has remained in a violent relationship is demonstrating learned helplessness (Mangum, 1999, p. 606). Instead of labelling abused women as demonstrating pathological signs of learned helplessness, Mangum (1999) proposes that an abused woman’s response must be investigated in connection to ‘numerous factors outside her control, including police response, economic resources, social services, court decisions regarding custody and visitation, and, most significantly, the danger she faces’ (Mangum, 1999, p. 607). Furthermore, an alternative conceptualization of BWS was introduced in the 1980s under the term PTSD, a term that was acknowledged in literary studies. As explained by Erickson (2007) in the field of literary studies, The PTSD theory as applied to battered women does not exclusively focus on battered women’s perceptions of helplessness or ineffective help sources to explain why battered women stay with their abusive partners. Instead, the theory focuses on the psychological disturbances that an individual suffers after exposure to a traumatic event. The diagnostic criteria for PTSD include a history of exposure to a traumatic event, as well as the following symptoms: intrusive recollection, avoidant/ numbing, and hyperarousal (Erickson, 2007, p. 72). After having pinpointed the various feminist and psychological theoretical views on wife abuse, this paper will provide a summary of Elizabeth Haynes’s Into the Darkest Corner. SUMMARY OF THE NOVEL The novel offers an in-depth exploration of the experience of the protagonist, Catherine. Catherine was a survivor of an abusive marital relationship, who struggled to liberate herself from her husband’s control and reclaim her sense of dignity and self-respect. Throughout the course of this literary work, the circumstances that led the protagonist to remain captive of her abusive marriage were highlighted, showing the complexity of her status as a battered wife. Some of the most important circumstances or factors that contributed to the continuation of Catherine’s oppression on the hands of her brutal husband were her husband’s over-powering control, her parents’ death and lacking her friends’ support when she began considering putting an end to her miserable violent marriage, and, most importantly, lacking the support and protection of upper-hand specialized authorities like the police, for example. Catherine described her husband’s controlling practices saying: ‘Things got better when I told him I was thinking of taking a sabbatical from Into the Darkest Corner: The Importance of Addressing Factor-Based Particularity in Relation to Domestic Violence Experiences in Post-Modern Literary Theory work. I did it as a safety precaution; if anyone from work phoned, or if I let something slip, it would give me an explanation to fall back on. And of course he’d always wanted me to give up work, right from the start’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 198). Through his financial control of Catherine, Lee was able to guarantee that she would never counteract against his oppression; as she would have no power to support her potential resistance: ‘And of course he’d always wanted me to give up work, right from the start. I had thought it was because he wanted to see more of me, but of course it was all about control, even then’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 198). Yet, Lee’s control through violent behaviour constantly fluctuated, and as the severity of the violence incidents escalated, Catherine’s fear took greater control over her and prevented her from leaving. At one point, when she felt that her husband’s violent practices were overwhelming, Catherine described her desperate need for the neighbour’s help to escape saying: I spent some time looking out of the window, willing someone to see me. I looked over into the next-door neighbor’s yard, desperate for them to come out, so that I could bang on the window. I tried banging on the glass with the handcuffs, but the noise was so terrible I was afraid he would come up the stairs. It was pointless anyway. There was nobody to hear, apart from him. (Haynes, 2012, p. 242). Lee’s violent behaviour left Catherine not only physically incapable of taking counter-action against his abuse, but also mentally paralyzed and haunted by the possibility of death: ‘When I opened my eyes, my first thought was this: Today I’m going to die’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 244). With regard to her lacking support from friends, Catherine described this painful experience and how crippling it has been stating: ‘Do you know what the worst thing was?… It wasn’t sitting in there, in that room waiting for him to come back and kill me. It wasn’t being hit, it wasn’t the pain, it wasn’t even being raped. It was that afterward nobody, not even my best friend, believed me’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 172). With respect to Catherine’s lacking the support and protection of upper-hand authorities, Catherine shed light onto this crippling aspect of her experience saying: ‘I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t call the police, could I? He was one of them. They would look at me, and he would invent some story about me being traumatized by some incident he’d been working undercover on, how I was showing signs of mental illness and he’d been trying to help me’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 232). This lack of authoritative support renders survivors of marital violence paralyzed since they constantly doubt that taking formal counteraction against their perpetrators would be of any value. Despite these factors that forced the protagonist to endure her brutal abusive marriage, she finally decided to pick up the pieces and walk away from her abuser: ‘“It’s no good,” I said. “I can’t do this. You make me afraid, Lee. I don’t want to be with you anymore. This isn’t doing either of us any good, is it?”’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 169). Nevertheless, Catherine’s decision to put an end to her relationship with her husband, Lee, was far from being conclusive. Despite the fact that she realized that her relationship with Lee was damaging for her, she went back to him after having decided to leave him several 35 times. In an attempt to manipulate her feelings and encourage her to stay with him, Lee at one point said: ‘“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Don’t do this. You regretted it last time”’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 169). At another instance, Catherine stated: ‘Today is going to be the start of my fight back, I decided __ the way I decided every day, until he turned up at my house’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 181). This fluctuating attraction to remaining with Lee continued until Catherine begins to slip into the grip of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), into the ‘Darkest Corner’ of her mind. Nevertheless, Catherine managed to pick up the pieces and start afresh after Lee is imprisoned and she found the professional assistance she needed through Stuart and Alistair. After having presented a brief summary of the novel, the next section will focus on investigating the protagonist’s mental status in relation to her domestic violence experience and its effects on her struggle to liberate herself. THE PROTAGONIST’S MENTAL STATUS AND ITS EFFECTS ON HER STRUGGLE TO LIBERATE HERSELF The protagonist of Haynes’ Into the Darkest Corner does not suffice by providing the reader with a surface description of her mental experience of (PTSD7). By contrast, Catherine allows the reader to access her thoughts, to see her constant psychological struggle and to feel her pain throughout her journey with (PTSD). During her conversation with her psychiatric doctor, Alistair, Catherine’s psychological struggle is not merely described as an illness which has certain symptoms. Haynes rather gradually introduces the reader to Catherine’s illness until she lets the reader live in the depths of Catherine’s mind, allowing the reader greater appreciation of her ordeal. Through Alistair, the reader experiences the initial discomfort that consumes Catherine with time: ‘It’s that pernicious worm of doubt, isn’t it? You know full well that the door is locked, the tap is turned off, but still there is that doubt, and you have to go back and check again’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 191). Catherine’s (PTSD) is pictured as ‘pernicious’; it is a parasite that breaks her up gradually until she begins to think of death. Much research has been done on investigating the various impacts of (PTSD) on the lives of abused women. While some researchers have classified (PTSD) as crippling and destructive (Najavits, 2002; Kubany and Ralston, 2008; Zimbardo, Sword and Sword, 2012), others have unveiled its potential strengthening impact (Ford, 2009). In this paper, both the negative and positive impacts of PTSD on the life of the protagonist are investigated, highlighting how she manages to ultimately break free from her crippling mental status that resulted from her exposure to wife abuse moving towards the revelation of her inner value and strength. After her initial diagnosis with PTSD, Alistair explains to Catherine the psychological symptoms of her case and the mechanism of her mind when processing ideas that are related to her recurrent wife abuse experience with Lee saying: The thing you need to remember, Cathy, is that these thoughts have to go somewhere. They are in your head at the moment and they have no way out. That’s why 36 they’re so upsetting. You have these thoughts and when you get them, you try and bat them to the back of your mind. You try to push them away, then they will have to come back because your mind hasn’t had time to process them, to deal with them. If you let them come, consider them, think about them, then you will be able to let them go. Don’t be afraid of them. They are just thoughts. (Haynes, 2012, p. 218) In response to Alistair’s words, Haynes voices the protagonist’s fears, putting the readers in her shoes, and allowing them to live her pain and internal struggle: ‘You say that. They might be just thoughts, but they’re still terrifying. It’s like living in a horror film’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 218). The fearful thoughts Catherine was experiencing increased eventually to reach a sense of anxiety in which she was entrapped: I spent the first twenty minutes or so checking all the doors and windows. Everything was secure and I heaved a sigh of relief. I didn’t check the bedroom, of course; there didn’t seem to be any point. When I went up to bed at about ten, there, on my bed, was a little pile of shiny keys, and a note: GOT SOME MORE KEYS CUT FOR YOUR NEW LOCKS. SEE YOU LATER XX. [Capitals as in original] (Haynes, 2012, pp. 189-190) After the first physical injury that is inflicted onto Catherine, she is depicted as anxious and haunted by the constant urge to check if the doors and windows at her flat were tightly locked in order to protect herself and retain her sense of security away from her abuser; especially that she has tried to leave her abusive husband many times, and yet he continues to show up at her place of residence repeating his cyclic violence over and over again. She describes her anxiety and urge to carry out her seemingly endless checking practices that the entrances and windows of her flat have been locked, which become necessary survival ‘routines’ as the anxiety escalates, as debilitating and crippling: I checked again, concentrating, my breathing already starting to quicken, my heart thudding in my chest. I couldn’t get beyond the image of him standing just on the other side of the door, waiting for me to stop checking, waiting for me to step away from it so he could take advantage. This was bad, very bad. My phone was in the kitchen, Stuart was at work, and in any case I still hadn’t seen him or spoken to him since that text. I couldn’t leave the door, I couldn’t even get as far as the bedroom. (Haynes, 2012, p. 140) Catherine’s wife abuse experience was destroying her life. Researchers in different disciplines have attempted to investigate the negative impacts of violence or trauma resulting from exposure to violence on the lives of the abused individuals including women in literature (Tandon and Kapoor, 2005; Balaev, 2008). For instance, Balaev (2008) argues that violence may result in the individual’s experiencing trauma, a status which ‘creates a speechless fright that divides or destroys identity’ (Balaev, 2008, p. 149). In his more recent book The Nature of Trauma in American Novels, Balaev (2012) sheds light onto the ways through which the effects of exposure to traumatic experiences could be investigated IJALEL 9(1):30-39 and analysed from a critical literary perspective: ‘In fictional portrayals of trauma, the contextual factors of experience and remembering, particularly place and landscape, are meaning-making sites that portray the wide-ranging signification of emotional suffering’ (Balaev, 2012, p. xv). The place for Balaev, whether it is the actual setting where the traumatic experience occurred or the larger social context in which an individual is located, enriches the reader’s understanding of the effects of trauma on the character. Balaev (2012) elaborates stating the ‘landscape imagery functions as a preferred medium to portray the effects of trauma on consciousness and, in particular, dissociative states of the mind, which is one among many types of responses to trauma’ (Balaev, 2012, p. xvi). From literary (Allport, 2009) and feminist (Heidarizadeh, 2015) perspectives, researchers have explored the effects of domestic violence on women in literature which include: ‘Anxiety, panic, depression, multiple personalities, paranoia, anger, and sleep problems; tendencies towards suicidality, irritability, mood swings, and odd rituals; difficulty trusting people and difficult relationships; and general despair, aimlessness, and hopelessness’ (Allport, 2009, p. 43). One of the most recurrent effects of exposure to spousal violence that is highlighted throughout Haynes’ Into the Darkest Corner is ‘anxiety’. From the perspective of literary criticism, Lois Tyson (2015) explores the psychological status of experiencing anxiety saying: ‘Of course, sometimes our defenses momentarily break down, and this is when we experience anxiety, the disturbing, often overwhelming, feeling that something is wrong or that we are in danger’ (Tyson, 2015, p. 16). Catherine constantly allows the reader to live through her anxiety experiences and panic attack incidents. For instance, while conversing with her psychiatric doctor, Alistair, during one of her therapy sessions, Catherine voices her crippling psychological struggle: Our hour together was nearly up when Alistair picked up my list again. “I think you should consider that there are a few elements missing from the list,” he said. “Such as?” “Think. What’s your biggest fear? The real biggie.” I thought, not knowing what he meant at first, and then suddenly knowing and not wanting to say. I felt the anxiety responses we’d just been discussing—my heart rate speeding up, my hands starting to tremble. (Haynes, 2012, p. 229) In addition to the aforementioned psychological consequences of PTSD that the protagonist experiences, Haynes highlights the violence-induced physical consequences that the protagonist was exposed to, including headaches and an overall sense of fatigue. The physical and psychological symptoms of PTSD not only render Catherine feeling crippled during her marriage, but also after she has left the perpetrator. For instance, in line with Allport’s behavioural investigation of PTSD resulting from violence-induced trauma (2009), Catherine voices her struggle with the need to perform what Allport (2009) referred to as ‘odd rituals’, or practices that are constantly repeated by the abused woman to give her a sense of safety that might not be explainable to other people: Into the Darkest Corner: The Importance of Addressing Factor-Based Particularity in Relation to Domestic Violence Experiences in Post-Modern Literary Theory Getting up isn’t my problem, getting out of the house is. Once I’m showered and dressed, have had something to eat, I start the process of checking that the flat is secure before I go to work. It’s like a reverse of the process I go through in the evening, but worse somehow, because I know that time is against me. I can spend all night checking if I want to, but I know I have to get to work, so in the mornings I can only do it so many times. (Haynes, 2012, p. 17) The protagonist is kept from living her life comfortably because she is haunted by the idea that her perpetrator will reappear in her life and expose her to further abuse. Thus, out of fear for her life, she feels an internal psychological pressure that urges her to check that her apartment is secured. She checks the doors and windows constantly, yet this is not what causes her frustration. What frustrates her the most is her recurrent sense of doubt that her checking has not been performed accurately enough to ensure her safety from any potential confrontation with her perpetrator. Therefore, the checking process is prolonged. The longer it takes, the more relief she feels. However, the protagonist’s sense of security and relief is exposed to constant doubt in the efficiency of the safety checking measures she performs which entraps her in an endless cycle of fear, insecurity and self-criticism. Yet, as pointed out earlier in this paper, while some researchers have argued that the effects of PTSD, like the effects Catherine experiences, could be crippling and destructive on an individual’s life (Allport, 2009), others have had opposing views (Ford, 2009). The latter group of researchers have pointed out that despite the difficulties and hindrances caused by such effects, abused women could still challenge them and turn them into sources of strength. In confirmation with the views of this group of researchers, I would like to argue, Catherine reaches the point where she decides that she has had enough, and that her abusive husband must be stopped from controlling her life any further. After Catherine’s abusive husband, Lee, was locked in prison where he was by no means capable of hurting her neither physically nor mentally, Catherine realizes that she is not ‘trapped anymore’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 25). She struggles to break free from her recurrent anxiety attacks. At one point she portrays her desperate struggle saying: I came around slowly, my face against the carpet, the smell of vomit in my nose. Almost immediately I started to panic again. Stuart tried to get me to breathe slowly. He held me, stroked my face, talked to me calmly, but at first it didn’t work. I couldn’t even hear him. I threw up again. Fortunately I was breathing enough not to pass out again, but in a way oblivion would have been kinder. (Haynes, 2012, p. 42) As clearly shown in this quotation, Catherine’s panic attacks and anxiety are not always manageable. Sometimes, they are debilitating as she feels incapable of performing the simplest activities like moving freely or even breathing. Nevertheless, with the availability of professional assistance and support, she manages to overcome her painful experience and start anew. Catherine’s ability to verbalize her traumatic experience to Stuart enables her to break free 37 from her internalized fright that had for long entrapped her under Lee’s patriarchal dominating control. In the context of abused women’s ‘healing’ journeys, Allport (2009) quoting Gilligan (1998) asserts that: …finding a voice that has been lost, meaning swallowed, buried deep within oneself, held in silence; finding a way to say what could never be said because there were no words or no possibility of being heard, or because speaking was too risky, too dangerous…Both literally and metaphorically, finding a voice brings one into relationship. (Gilligan, 1998, p. xi) Thus, finding one’s voice with the proper assistance enables her to pick up the pieces, fortify her broken self and become an empowered woman. This healing process explains Catherine’s words when she says: ‘I forgot about everything except him, Stuart, and the warmth of his hands on my skin’ (Haynes, 2012, p. 266). The presence of Stuart does not only provide Catherine with the professional expertise that she needs, but also with feelings of love and attention that fill up the emotional void Lee has left. CONCLUSION In conclusion, Catherine represents the character of a woman who is crippled by oppressive male control through violence. The multi-faceted violence she endures from her husband has been a tool to keep her passive, submissive and controllable. However, there are factors that helped her to end her violent marital relationship. These particular factors have been investigated in detail throughout this paper as aspects highlighting the ‘particularity’ of her domestic violence experience rather than its generalizability. As the violence continues and the pressure escalates, Catherine reaches to a point of zero tolerance. She decides to take counteraction, to break her silence and challenge male control over her. She tries to reclaim her control over her body by having a sexual relationship after leaving her husband’s home, the place to which he has had the alleged right to free access and where he has been able to remain in absolute control over her. She reclaims her voice that has been robbed by the controlling power of her husband, the tyrant male, and overtly embraces her liberation from his domination over her after having made full use of the available power resources. END NOTES 1. 2. ‘Sociological studies of domestic violence, like Lenore Walker’s The Battered Woman Syndrome, have influenced literary analyses of what Nancy Armstrong termed domestic fiction. In these literary analyses, the novel exists as both the disseminator of domestic ideology and the narrative and imaginative space in which the boundaries of domestic power can be challenged and subverted’ (Carter, 2009, p. 588). ‘Most statutes define child abuse in terms of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. Physical child abuse is the physical injury of a child, resulting from, but not limited to, strikes, shoving, shaking, biting, burning, poking, twisting limbs, and bodily throwing. Child IJALEL 9(1):30-39 38 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. sexual abuse can occur as a single act or a series of abusive behaviors. It can occur in a single event or over the course of many years. Child neglect occurs when a caretaker by act or lack of actions places the child in a dangerous situation’ (Bernades and Wallace, 2007, p. 704). ‘Elder abuse is conduct that results in the physical, psychological, or material neglect, harm, or injury to an elderly person. This definition includes abuse by family members as well as institutional abuse. The term material in this definition refers to the exploitation of the elderly person’s financial resources. An elderly person is usually someone over the age of sixty-five’ (Bernades and Wallace, 2007, p. 704). ‘The growing interest in the topic of trauma within literary criticism began in the 1990s. Yet, since Kali Tal’s Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma (1996) and Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience (1996), most analyses regularly employ a narrow definition of trauma culled from only one among many psychological theories, despite the fact that psychology research has produced a multifaceted and at times contentious body of work on the subject over the centuries’ (Balaev, 2012, p. 3). ‘Voice is part of the physical world, and its psychological power comes from this fact: that it transposes what has no physical manifestation – the psyche, the soul, ourselves’ (Allport, 2009, p. 40). ‘The concept of patriarchy generally refers to the empowerment of males over females in the social organization of everyday life’ (Ismael and Ismael, 2000, p. 185). ‘In “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), Freud defined traumatic neurosis as “a consequence of an extensive breach being made in the protective shield against stimuli” (1984, 303); in 1980, the American Psychiatric Association officially acknowledged the phenomenon of trauma, describing its effects as a new illness coined as “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD). 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San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Nigerian Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadiscourse and its Relationship with their Persuasive Writing Quality Muhammad Mukhtar Aliyu*, Shehu Muhammad Korau Department of English and Literary Studies, Bauchi State University, Gadau-Nigeria Corresponding Author: Muhammad Mukhtar Aliyu, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 21, 2019 Accepted: December 20, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 Persuasive writing in second (L2) or Foreign Language (FL) is found to be a very challenging task for many undergraduates. Metadiscourse are devices used to help writers to make a connection with the audience and express ideas clearly. However, many Nigerian undergraduates are not fully aware of or do not appropriately utilise these devices in their writing. Also, little attention has been paid to the devices by researchers in the Nigerian context. Therefore, this study investigates undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse and its relationship with their persuasive writing performance using a correlational research design. An intact class of 56 thirdyear undergraduates in a local university in Nigeria was selected for the study. Data for the study were collected through a writing task in English, and a questionnaire. The essays were graded using a validated scale. The questionnaire was analysed using SPSS software. Findings of the study show that the participants have a low awareness of metadiscourse. The findings also reveal that there is a positive relationship between the participants’ awareness of metadiscourse and their persuasive writing quality. The study gives insight to researchers and lecturers, not only in the language field but in other areas, on how to improve the students’ awareness and use of metadiscourse which would eventually develop writing performance. Finally, the study makes some recommendations for further studies. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: The research is financed by TETFUND Nigeria, 2019. Key words: Awareness, ESL Writing, Metadiscourse, Nigeria, Persuasive Essay INTRODUCTION In academic institutions, developing a good command of students’ written English is one of the desires of teachers and lecturers most especially in countries where English is adopted as a second (ESL) or foreign language (EFL). In higher institutions, writing is largely used as a tool to measure students’ performance and thinking (Gillett et al., 2009; Murray & Hughes, 2008) through writing assignments, tests, reports, term papers, examinations and projects. Writing, according to social constructivist theory is a social activity (Vygotsky, 1978) which both the writer and the reader are actively involved in making meaning of the text (Spivey, 1995). This shows the need for a writer to be aware of and consider his/her audience in the writing process. Academic writing generally is described as a persuasive one because writers are expected to present and explain their ideas to convince the readers. Regardless of the genre, academic writing aims to sway the reader’s opinion to agree with that of the text/writer (Silver, 2003). Thus, Academic writing process involves critical thinking and persuasive skills which are also essential for students in meeting the challenges of the current world (Tan, 2003). In academic writing, writers are required to critically think of ideas and logically present the ideas to persuade their readers. They should also sequence their thoughts so that they are well received by their readers (Jones, 2011; Hyland, 2005). They also have to present their propositions using logical reasoning and linguistic devices to build a relationship with their readers. These linguistic devices are known as metadiscourse. According to Hyland (2005), metadiscourse is a ‘set of features which together help explain the working of interactions between text producers and their texts and between text producers and users.’ Metadiscourse offers various strategies for the writers to shape their texts and involve the readers along with revealing their attitude to a material as well as addressees. Beauvais (1989) defines metadiscourse as the overt markers which help the listeners to identify how the arguments of a speaker are to be understood. Many scholars have stressed the importance of metadiscourse in academic writing. However, many ESL undergraduates and even young researchers in the ESL context face challenges with the use of metadiscourse in their academic writing (Bogdanović & Mirović, 2018), Nigerian undergraduates included. In Nigeria which is also an ESL context, numerous researchers have shown that many undergraduates cannot produce good writing in English (Ngadda & Nwoke, 2014) and they are not exposed to metadiscourse (Haruna, Ibrahim, Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.40 Nigerian Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadiscourse and its Relationship with their Persuasive Writing Quality Haruna, Ibrahim & Yunus, 2018). From the researchers’ experiences of evaluating the undergraduates’ writing, absence or wrong usage of metadiscourse devices have been observed in the students’ writing. In an attempt to ensure good writing skills among the students, most researchers and L2 teachers emphasize on identifying problems in areas like grammar, punctuations, spelling and tense in the students’ writing in English (Bodunde & Sotiloye, 2013; Theodore, 2013). The area of metadiscourse is neglected by many researchers and language instructors in Nigeria. In the real sense, good writing is beyond grammar and punctuation or tense but the number of ideas and how the ideas are presented to convince the readers. Hence, there is a need to investigate the use of metadiscourse in the students’ writing. Therefore, this study aims at investigating the students’ awareness of metadiscourse and its relationship with their persuasive writing performance. This is because they can only utilize the devices when they are aware of them. Purpose of the Study The study aims to investigate the Nigerian undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse. It also aims to examine the relationship between the undergraduates’ metadiscourse awareness and their persuasive writing quality. Research Questions The following research questions were formulated to guide the study. 1. What is the Nigerian undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse? 2. What is the relationship between the undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse and persuasive writing quality? LITERATURE REVIEW 41 reading, the reader, by making use of these metadiscoursal features, decodes, reconstructs and interprets the text. In short, by providing context it facilitates communication, supports the writer’s position and builds the writer-reader relation. Model of Metadiscourse Some early studies of metadiscourse, as well as some of the recent analyses, identified two levels to metadiscourse based on the Hallidayan distinction between textual and interpersonal macro-functions of language (Halliday 1973). The first level, called ‘textual metadiscourse’, contributes to the deployment of rhetorical strategies used to express a theory of experience coherently. It provides a framework which clarifies the schematic structure of the text. The second level, labelled ‘interpersonal metadiscourse’, concerns the interactional and evaluative aspects of the author’s presence in his/ her discourse. It expresses the writer’s persona. This type of metadiscourse is used to convey attitudes to propositional material and to involve the writer in more intimacy and dialogue with the reader. Interpersonal metadiscourse indicates the writers’ assessment of information and their conviction in its reliability or truth, thereby projecting a strong, authoritative and credible authorial presence in the text. Hyland (2005) divides metadiscourse into two broad categories, namely Interactive and Interactional. 1. Interactive — features used to organize propositional information in ways that the target reader should find coherent and convincing. 2. Interactional — features that draw the reader into the discourse and allow them to contribute to it and respond to it by alerting them to the writer’s perspective on propositional information and orientation and intention concerning the reader. The Table 1 below presents the details of the classification which will be adopted in this study. Definition of Metadiscourse Previous Studies on Metadiscourse Metadiscourse refers to linguistic devices which writers use to help readers decode the message, share their views and reflect particular conventions that are followed in a given culture. It is defined by Hyland (2000) “as the interpersonal resources used to organise a discourse or the writer’s stance towards either its content or the reader” (p.109). Although the term is defined by various scholars in different ways, it is seen as an umbrella term including an array of features that help relate a text to its context by assisting readers to connect, organise, and interpret material in a way preferred by the writer concerning the understandings and values of a particular discourse community (Halliday, 1998). Hyland (2005, p.37), defines metadiscourse as “the cover term for the self-reflective expressions used to negotiate interactional meanings in a text, assist the writer (or speaker) to express a viewpoint and engage with readers as members of a particular community.” On the one hand, it helps the writer to organise the content of the text, on the other hand, it assists the reader to understand and interpret the text. During the Many studies were carried out in different parts of the world to investigate the use of metadiscourse in the undergraduates’ academic writing. For instance, Tan and Eng (2014) investigated the use of metadiscourse among Malaysian undergraduates. The results indicated that between the two main domains of metadiscourse, both groups of writers exhibited a greater preference for the use of interactional metadiscourse than the interactive. Between the two groups of writers, it was the HEP writers who exhibited a higher frequency of use for both the interactive and interactional metadiscourse. In terms of the forms used, the HEP writers also used a greater variety of metadiscourse forms when compared to the LEP writers. Anwardeen, Luyee, Gabriel & Kalajahi, (2013) examined the usage of metadiscourse in argumentative writing of Malaysian college students. They observed that Malaysian college students are more inclined to using textual metadiscourse instead of interpersonal metadiscourse. Besides, the selected students are using fewer code glosses and stance IJALEL 9(1):40-49 42 Examples writing. The findings showed that many of the students did not use or wrongly used the devices. This suggests that they were not exposed to these elements, thus, they write an academic essay the way they speak. Express relations between main clauses in addition; but; thus; and METHODOLOGY Refer to discourse acts. Sequences, or stages finally; to conclude; my purpose is Research Design Endophoric markers Refer to the information in other parts of the text noted above; see Fig; in section2 A correlational research design is adopted for the study. This research design allows the researcher to investigate the relationship between the participants’ awareness of metadiscourse and their persuasive writing quality. Evidentials Refer to information from other texts according to X; Z states The Setting of the Study Code glosses Elaborate propositional meanings namely; e.g.; such as; in other words Interactional Involve the reader in the text Hedges Withhold commitment and open dialogue might; perhaps; possible; about Boosters Emphasize certainty or close dialogue in fact; definitely; it is clear that Attitude markers Express writer’s unfortunately; I attitude to proposition agree; surprisingly Self-mentions Explicit reference to author (s) I; we; my; me; our Engagement markers Explicitly build relationship with reader consider; note; you can see that Table 1. Hyland’s model of metadiscourse Category Function Interactive Help to guide the reader through the text Transitions Frame markers (Adopted from Hyland, 2008) indicator in their argumentative writing. The students committed quite several errors in using metadiscourse and practices are needed to train them in using metadiscourse correctly. In the English as a foreign language context (EFL), Gholami, Nejad, and Pour, (2014) conducted a study to investigate the use of metadiscourse devices in the argumentative essays of EFL undergraduates. They discovered the students commits various errors in their usage, among an overuse of metadiscourse devices was found to be the major one. In a recent study, Shafique, Shahbaz, and Hafeez, (2019) examined the use of metadiscourse by comparing research articles written by native English and Pakistani. Their findings reveal that Pakistani research writers use more interactive markers whereas the interactional markers are found frequent in native English academic writers. The findings generally reveal that the research articles of the Native English are more persuasive and readers are involved and guided through the text by using different markers effectively. However, in the Nigerian context, few studies are conducted to examine the use of metadiscourse among undergraduates. Haruna, Ibrahim, Haruna, Ibrahim and Yunus (2018) examined the metadiscoursal choice and its influence on the success of final year undergraduates’ academic The site of this study is a local university in the North-eastern part of Nigeria. Specifically, students from the Departments of English and Literary Studies were considered for the study. Participants of the Study The participants of this study are 56 third-year undergraduates of English and literary studies. The participants are purposefully selected because it assumed that they have attained a certain level of proficiency in writing in English in their first and second years of the University. Also, they have acquired a certain level of proficiency in the English language based on the minimum entry requirement for admission into the University. Instruments Two instruments, writing task and a questionnaire, were employed for the data collection of the study. The writing task was given to the participants to ascertain their writing quality. They were given a writing prompt to write an essay for about 500-750 words (see Appendix A for the writing prompt). The questionnaire was used to collect data regarding the participants’ knowledge of metadiscourse. The questionnaire is divided into four sections. The first section elicits the participants’ background information which includes their L1, knowledge of metadiscourse and academic writing. The second section gathers participants’ experiences writing in English. The third section elicits participants’ knowledge of metadiscourse and the last section gathers information on the participants’ use of metadiscourse devices in their writing. Sections A, C and D are adapted from Bogdanović and Mirović, (2018). The modifications are made to suit the current study as their study is on young researchers. Data Collection Procedure Having obtained permission from the Department, the consent of the participants was sorted for. They were asked to fill in an informed consent form. The data were collected in two stages. In the first stage, the participants were given a topic to individually write an essay of about 500-750 words. In the second stage, the questionnaire was administered to the participants to fill out and submit to the researchers. Nigerian Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadiscourse and its Relationship with their Persuasive Writing Quality 43 Data Analysis Writing Experiences As mention previously, two sets of data were collected and the data were analysed using different methods of data analysis. To achieve the first objective of the study on the Nigerian undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse, the data collected from the questionnaires were analysed descriptively using SPSS. The participants were then grouped based on their level of metadiscourse awareness. Finally, to achieve the second objective of the study which is to examine the relationship between the undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse and writing performance, the essays written by the participants were graded by two trained raters using Analytical Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW) developed by Nimehchisalem (2010). It is a heuristic scale with five components with a total score of 100: 1, content 20, organization 20, vocabulary 20, language convention 20 and overall effectiveness 20. Each of the components has the following five categories: excellent, competent, modest, Basic and Very Limited (see Appendix B for the complete description of the components). The participants’ writing scores were compared with that of metadiscourse awareness. The participants were also asked to rate their experiences and perceptions of writing in English by indicating the extent to which they agree with each statement in the following Table 2 using 1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= undecided, 4=agree and 5= strongly agree. From their responses, it is revealed that the majority (about 75%) of the participants agree that they like writing in English. However, items 2 shows that Writing in English is a very difficult task for many of the participants. Especially in choosing appropriate word/phrase, developing ideas and using correct grammar as indicated by items 4, 7 and 5 respectively. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The data collected for the study were analysed and the findings are presented to answer the research questions of the study. Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadiscourse To achieve the first research objective of the study, (to examine the Nigerian undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse), the data obtained using the questionnaire were analysed. From the responses of the questionnaire, it is discovered that all the participants have more than ten years’ experience of learning English, right from their primary, secondary schools to the tertiary institution. However, none of the participants ever attended a course specifically for academic writing in English. The other findings are presented in the following subsections which include their writing experiences that are considered difficult by many of the participants; information related to Metadiscourse where the majority of the participants are not much aware of the term let alone utilise it in their writing. Information related to Metadiscourse As for the awareness of metadiscourse, the participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they are aware of metadiscourse with 1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= undecided, 4=agree and 5= strongly agree. The findings show that the majority of the participants are not much aware of the term as indicated by the items of the questionnaire. It is further shown that most of the participants neither premeditate the use of metadiscourse while writing in English nor do they pay much attention to metadiscourse when writing English in Table 3. Use of Metadiscourse As for the use of the metadiscourse device, the participants were asked to choose numbers 1-5 to indicate how often you use the following expressions when writing English: 1=I don’t use them at all, 2=I rarely use them, 3=I occasionally use them, 4= I use them quite often, 5=I always use them. The results of the questionnaire show that the expressions that refer to the source of information from other texts/papers/books (according to X, Z 1990, Y states, as shown in [1]) have the highest mean scores of (M 3.0). Followed by expressions that withhold your full commitment to the information (e.g might, perhaps, possibly, about, approximately, to some extent) have the second-highest mean scores of (M 2.7). While the Expressions that explicitly refer to you as the author (I, we, my, our) recorded the lowest mean scores (M 1.7) in Table 4. To enable the researchers to ascertain the participants’ awareness of metadiscourse, the results of the participants’ Table 2. Summary of the participants writing experiences S/N Item 1(%) 2(%) 3(%) 4(%) 5(%) 1 I like writing in English. 5.4 2 Writing in English is a very difficult task. 7.1 3 To succeed in my university studies, I must write well in English. 4 I have difficulty choosing an appropriate word/phrase in my writing. 5 I tend to use wrong grammar in my writing 6 I have problems organizing my ideas in a logical sequence 7 I have difficulties developing ideas for my writing. 8 I have difficulty using the appropriate style of writing 7.1 7.1 12.5 42.9 9 I think about readers when I am writing 26.8 26.8 21.4 19.6 44.6 SD 4.07 1.126 5.4 10.7 5.4 50 37.5 4.11 1.039 5.4 7.1 17.9 37.5 32.1 3.84 1.125 39.3 23.2 37.5 4.14 .773 7.1 12.5 44.6 35.7 4.09 .879 14.3 33.9 M 14.3 33.9 37.5 3.95 1.051 12.5 42.9 44.6 4.32 .690 3.82 1.161 5.4 2.50 1.236 IJALEL 9(1):40-49 44 Table 3. Summary of the participants’ information on metadiscourse S/N Item 1 2 3 4 50% 33.9 5 M SD 1 I know what metadiscourse is. 10.7% 5.4% 1.714 .868 2 I premeditate the use of metadiscourse while writing in English. 44.6% 44.6% 5.4% 5.4% 1.714 .803 3 I pay much attention to metadiscourse when writing English. 41.1% 44.6% 14.3% 1.732 .700 4 I have a set of metadiscourse that i regularly use while writing in English. 32.1% 19.3% 2.054 .942 39.3 8.9% Table 4. Summary of the participants’ use of metadiscourse in academic writing S/N Item 1 2 3 4 M SD 1 Expressions to indicate semantic relation between main clauses and main sections in your writing, (but, thus, in addition, consequently etc). 14.3 28.6 42.9 14.3 2.57 .912 2 Expressions that refer to writing organization, express sequence, label text stages, announce discourse goals, or indicate topic shift (finally, to conclude, the purpose is, first, next) 14.3 28.6 28.6 28.6 2.71 1.04 3 Expressions that refer to information in other parts of your writing (noted above, see Fig., in section 2) 28.6 42.9 28.6 2.00 .763 4 Expressions that refer to the source of information from other texts/papers/ books (according to X, Z 1990, Y states, as shown in [1]) 28.6 42.9 28.6 3.00 .763 5 Expressions that restate and explain information for better understanding (namely, e.g., such as, in other words) 42.9 28.6 14.3 2.43 .915 6 Expressions that withhold your full commitment to the information (might, perhaps, possibly, about, approximately, to some extent) 42.9 42.9 14.3 2.72 .707 7 Expressions that emphasize your certainty in the information stated (in fact, definitely, it is clear that) 14.3 42.9 28.6 14.3 2.43 .912 8 Expressions that explicitly express your attitude towards information in your writing (unfortunately, I agree, surprisingly, promising idea, important contribution) 14.3 28.6 42.9 14.3 2.58 .912 9 Expressions that build relationship with the reader (consider, note that, you can see that) 42.9 28.6 14.3 14.3 2.00 1.079 10 Expressions that explicitly refer to you as the author (I, we, my, our) 42.9 42.9 14.3 writing experiences, information on metadiscourse and the use of metadiscourse were categorised into three levels (high, moderate and low). The participants’ writing experiences as presented in Table 1, shows that the majority of them have a positive attitude and experiences of writing in English as shown in Table 5 and Figure 1. The participants’ awareness of information on metadiscourse which is presented in Table 2 is also categorised into three. The result shows that a larger percentage of the participants (60.7%) have low information on metadiscourse as shown in Table 6 and Figure 2. Finally, the results of the analysis of the participants’ use of metadiscourse in academic writing as presented in Table 7 and Figure 3 show moderate use of metadiscourse by the participants. 14.3 5 1.71 .706 Table 5. Levels of the participants writing experiences Level Frequency Percentage High 52 92.9 Moderate 4 7.1 Low 0 0 Total 56 100 Table 6. Levels of the participants’ information on metadiscourse Category Frequency Percentage High 0 0 Moderate 22 39.3 Low 34 60.7 Total 56 100 Discussion Therefore, to answer the first research question of the study, it could be seen that despite the positive attitude and experiences of writing in English, the majority of the participants have low awareness of metadiscourse devices but moderate use of the devices in their academic writing. These findings may seem surprising that the participants have very high positive experiences of writing in English but low information on metadiscourse. It is not surprising because while filling out the questionnaires, the participants informed the researchers that they are not aware of the term metadiscourse. Majority of the participants revealed that they have heard of the term for the very first time. Also, they confessed that none of them ever attended a course specifically for academic writing in English. Thus, the participants Nigerian Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadiscourse and its Relationship with their Persuasive Writing Quality want to improve their writing in English, however, they are not allowed to acquire some essential skills in doing so. Furthermore, the results may appear contradictory that the participants have low information on metadiscourse but moderate use of metadiscourse devices in their academic. They may use the devices subconsciously. The findings have proved the study conducted by Haruna, Ibrahim, Haruna, Ibrahim and Yunus (2018) which suggested that many of the undergraduates were not exposed to metadiscourse because they write academic essays in the same manner they speak. The findings further agree with the findings of Anwardeen, Luyee, Gabriel, and Kalajahi (2013) which observed that students are more inclined to a certain type of Figure 1. Levels of the participants writing experiences 45 metadiscourse while ignoring or using less of other types in their argumentative writing. This suggests the students’ lack of metadiscourse awareness. This because over usage or under usage of metadiscourse could both affect writing quality negatively. Similarly, the study of Gholami, Nejad, and Pour, (2014) discovered that EFL undergraduates overuse of metadiscourse devices among other errors in their argumentative essay. Relationship between Metadiscourse Awareness and Persuasive Writing Quality To achieve the second objective of the study, which is to examine the relationship between the undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse and persuasive writing quality, the participants’ essays were graded and the scores were compared to the results of their metadiscourse awareness obtained from the questionnaire. The average scores of the participants’ essays are Content 13; Organization 10; Vocabulary 11.5; Language Conventions 11; Overall Effectiveness 10 as shown in Table 8. Based on Nimehchisalem’s scale (2010), the result implies that the content of the participants’ essays are reasonably mature and extensive accounts of relevant claims and data, but at times lacks adequate backing. As for the organization, their introduction/conclusion: brief/lacking; despite certain redundant ideas, easy to follow writer’s line of thought and purpose; sentences linked well but cases of wrong connection evident. There are occasional incorrect word forms, phrases, or collocations; mostly using simple words; use of synonyms/antonyms to avoid repetition but still a few repeated words. Also, there is almost one error every other sentence; form blurring meaning sometimes, some spelling, capitalization, or punctuation problems blurring meaning, spelling, capitalization or punctuation problems in almost all sentences blurring meaning. Overall, the participants’ essays display a reasonable ability in presenting arguments but through a simple, fairly correct, clear and appropriate style; task still fulfilled reasonably well; written over/to the word limit. Table 7. Levels of the participants’ use of metadiscourse in academic writing Category Figure 2. Levels of the participants’ information on metadiscourse Frequency Percentage High 0 0 Moderate 42 75.0 Low 14 25.0 Total 56 100 Table 8. Summary of the participants’ writing scores Figure 3. Levels of the participants’ use of metadiscourse in academic writing S/N Components Scores 1 Content 13 2 Organization 10 3 Vocabulary 12 4 Language conventions 11 5 Overall effectiveness 10 6 Total 56 IJALEL 9(1):40-49 46 Table 9. Level of the participants writing quality Category Frequency Percentage High 1 1.79 Moderate 54 96.42 Low 1 1.79 Total 56 100 The results of the participants’ essays were further categorised into three: high (from 100 to 70 marks), moderate (from 69 to 39 marks) and low (from 38 to 0 marks). It is shown that almost all the participants’ writing quality (96.42%) is moderate as indicated in Table 9. To answer the second research question of the study, it could be seen that writing quality of the majority of the participants is moderate, so also their awareness of the use of metadiscourse devices. Thus, it could be concluded that there is a positive relationship between the participants’ awareness of metadiscourse devices and their writing quality. The finding is not surprising because many studies show that metadiscourse are essential devices that ensure effective academic writing. Thus, since most of the participants have low awareness of metadiscourse, their writing quality is presupposed to be low as well. The findings agree with the findings of previous studies on metadiscourse. For instance, Tan and Eng (2014) show that high English proficient Malaysian undergraduate writers use a higher frequency of metadiscourse devices in their writing than their low English proficiency counterparts. The high English proficiency level students also utilise a greater variety of metadiscourse forms as opposed to the low proficiency students. Based on the results, it could be concluded that the high the English proficiency of students, the greater their awareness of academic writing conventions and metadiscourse. On the other hand, the lower English proficiency of students, the lower their awareness of academic writing conventions and metadiscourse. CONCLUSION The aim of the study is to examine the Nigerian undergraduates’ awareness of metadiscourse and its relationship with their persuasive writing quality. Metadiscourse has been neglected by many researchers in investing the writing skills of Nigerian undergraduates. The findings show that the participants have low awareness of metadiscourse and there is a positive relationship between their awareness and their writing quality. The findings are important as they suggest that awareness and usage of metadiscourse can help to develop undergraduates academic writing which is mostly persuasive. The findings also reveal the need to teach undergraduates academic writing most especially the awareness of the audience and how to convince the audience in their writing, as it is shown that generally that explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers significantly improves EFL learners’ writing ability (Dastjerdi, & Shirzad, 2010). The need is particularly important in the Nigerian context where the teaching of metadiscourse is neglected even among language instructors. While assessing undergraduates’ academic writings, lecturers, regardless of the field of study, should place much emphasis on how students convince their audience in their writing. The study is limited to only 56 participants which could limit the generalizability of the findings. Further studies can randomly select a larger number of participants. The study only describes the undergraduates’ metadiscourse awareness levels and persuasive writing quality it does not give any treatment. Future studies could adopt an experimental research design to investigate how to increase the undergraduates’ awareness and usage of metadiscourse in academic writing. To sum up, while metadiscourse awareness is important in improving undergraduates’ academic writing, teachers, instructors and lecturers should help to create the students’ awareness and ensure its usage in any academic writing. REFERENCES Anwardeen, N. H., Luyee, E. O., Gabriel, J. I., & Kalajahi, S. A. R. (2013). An analysis: The usage of metadiscourse in argumentative writing by Malaysian tertiary level of students. English Language Teaching, 6 (9), 83-96. Beauvais, P. J. (1989). A speech act theory of metadiscourse. Written Communication, 6(1), 11–30. Bodunde, H. a., & Sotiloye, B. S. (2013). A critique of undergraduate students’ writing skill in an ESL setting: Samples from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria. World Journal of English Language, 3(2), 10–21. Bogdanović, V., & Mirović, I. (2018). Young researchers writing in ESL and the use of metadiscourse: Learning the ropes. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 18, 813–830. Dastjerdi, H. V. & Shirzad, M. (2010). The impact of explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers on EFL learners’ writing performance. The Journal of Teaching Language Skills (JTLS)2 (2), 155-174. Gholami, J., Nejad, S. R., & Pour, L. J. (2014). Metadiscourse markers misuses: A study of EFL learners’ argumentative essays. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 98 (2014), 580 – 589. Gillett, A., Hammond, A., & Martala, M. (2009). Successful academic writing. London: Pearson Longman. Halliday, M.A.K. (1973). Explorations in the functions of language. London: Edward Arnold. Haruna, H. H., Ibrahim, B., Haruna, M., Ibrahim, B. & Yunus, K. (2018). Metadiscourse in students’ academic writing: Case study of Umaru Musa Yar’adua University and Al-Qalam University Katsina. International Journal of English Linguistics, 8 (7) 83-92. Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse. New York: Continuum. Hyland, K. (2005b). Metadiscourse: Mapping interaction in academic writing. University of London, UK http://ojs. ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/article/view/417 Hyland, K. (2006). English for academic purposes: An advanced resource book. New York: Routledge. Hyland, K. (2008). Metadiscourse. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Nigerian Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadiscourse and its Relationship with their Persuasive Writing Quality Jones, J. F. (2011). Using metadiscourse to improve coherence in academic writing. Language Education in Asia, 2(1), 1-14. Ngadda, Z. Y., & Nwoke, A. (2014). An analytical study of errors in the written English of undergraduate engineering students, ATBU a case study. Journal of Education and Practice 5 (38) 8-16. Nimehchisalem, V. (2010). Developing an analytic scale for evaluating argumentative writing of students in a Malaysian public university. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Universiti Putra Malaysia. Shafique, H., Shahbaz, M. & Hafeez, M. R. (2019). Metadiscourse in research writing: A study of native English and Pakistani research articles. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9(4), 376-385. Silver, M. (2003). The stance of stance: A critical look at ways stance is expressed and modeled in academic discourse. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2(4), 359-374. 47 Spivey, N. N. (1995). Written discourse: A constructive perspective. In L. P. Steffe, & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in Education (pp. 313-330). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tan, O. S. (2004) Students’ experiences in problem-based learning: Three blind mice episode or educational innovation? Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 41(2), 169-184. Tan, H. (2011) Metadiscourse features in the persuasive essays of undergraduate writers. Unpublished PhD thesis, Universiti Putra Malaysia. Tan, H. & Eng, W. B. (2014). Metadiscourse use in the persuasive writing of Malaysian undergraduate students. English Language Teaching; Vol. 7(7), 26-39. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, M.A: Harvard University Press. IJALEL 9(1):40-49 48 APPENDIX A Questionnaire on Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadicourse in Academic Writing Section A .Personal Information Kindly provide the following information. The information provided will kept highly confidential 1 Level 2 Course of Study 3 Gender 4 Age 5 L1 6 How long have you been studying English? 7 Have you ever attended a course in Academic writing? Section B. Writing experiences Please tick (√) to indicate the extent you agree with each statement in the following Table. 1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= undecided, 4=agree and 5= strongly agree S/N Item 1 I like writing in English. 2 Writing in English is a very difficult task. 3 To succeed in my university studies, I must write well in English. 4 I have difficulty choosing appropriate word/phrase in my writing. 5 I tend to use wrong grammar in my writing 6 I have problems organizing my ideas in a logical sequence 7 I have difficulties developing ideas for my writing. 8 I have difficulty using the appropriate style of writing 9 I think about readers when I am writing 1 2 3 4 5 Section C. Information related to metadiscourse S/N Item 1 I know what metadiscourse are. 2 I premeditate the use of metadiscourse while writing in English. 3 I pay much attention to metadiscourse when writing English. 4 I have a set of metadiscourse that I regularly use while writing in English. Eg… 1 2 3 4 5 Section D. Detailed Metadiscourse Analysis Please choose numbers 1-5 to indicate how often you use the following expressions when writing English: 1 – I don’t use them at all, 2 – I rarely use them, 3 – I occasionally use them, 4 – I use them quite often, 5 – I always use them S/N Item 1 Expressions to indicate semantic relation between main clauses and main sections in your writing, (but, thus, in addition, consequently etc). 2 Expressions that refer to writing organization, express sequence, label text stages, announce discourse goals, or indicate topic shift (finally, to conclude, the purpose is, first, next) 3 Expressions that refer to information in other parts of your writing (noted above, see Fig., in section 2) 4 Expressions that refer to the source of information from other texts/papers/books (according to X, Z 1990, Y states, as shown in [1]) 5 Expressions that restate and explain information for better understanding (namely, e.g., such as, in other words) 6 Expressions that withhold your full commitment to the information (might, perhaps, possible, about, approximately, to some extent) 1 2 3 4 5 Nigerian Undergraduates’ Awareness of Metadiscourse and its Relationship with their Persuasive Writing Quality 7 Expressions that emphasize your certainty in the information stated (in fact, definitely, it is clear that) 8 a) Expressions that explicitly express your attitude towards an information in your writing (unfortunately, I agree, surprisingly, promising idea, important contribution) 9 Expressions that build relationship with the reader (consider, note that, you can see that) 10 Expressions that explicitly refer to you as the author (I, we, my, our) 49 APPENDIX B Writing Task on Undergraduates’ Use of Metadicourse in Persuasive Writing Writing Activity In not less than five paragraphs (which include an introductory paragraph, developmental paragraphs and a concluding paragraph), write a persuasive essay on why end-of-semester examinations should be banned in your university. Provide at least three convincing reasons to explain your stand on the topic. To support your stand, you can quote relevant sources, use tables, statistics, and your life-experiences. APPENDIX C Analytical Scale of Argumentative Writing International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Literature as Activism - From Entertainment to Challenging Social Norms: Michael Nava’s Goldenboy (1988) Angelos Bollas* Dublin City University, Ireland Corresponding Author: Angelos Bollas, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 14, 2019 Accepted: December 13, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 The aim of this article is to examine how Michael Nava appropriates the conventions of Detective/ Crime Fiction to engage in artivism, whereby art is used to challenge sexual and ethnic social oppression and inequality. By providing an analysis of the heteronormative conventions of the Detective and Crime Fiction genre, the article focuses on the ways in which narratives portray homophobic violence, as well as on the fact that such portrayals result from and contribute to the promotion of heteronormative hegemonies. Following this, I focus on Michael Nava’s Goldenboy (1988) and I analyse Nava’s writing in relation to the wider Chicano tradition of using art to engage in activism, what has been termed as ‘artivism.’ The central argument of this paper is that Nava ‘queers’ the form of the Detective Fiction genre to highlight the shortcomings of our society, the effects of the hegemonial heteronormativity, and the need for social change. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Artivism, Queer literature, Heteronormativity, Violence, Detective Fiction, Queering, Queer theory INTRODUCTION In a society like ours where social inequalities and oppression are heightened rather than eliminated, it is more important than ever to explore as many possible ways of offering social commentary and providing opportunities for discussion and change as possible. In recent years, more and more people engage in anti-war and anti-globalisation activities. Pushing agendas and raising awareness of social issues using art is becoming more and more common (Brody, 2017). Detective fiction, one of the most widely read genres of fiction (Cox, 1992), could not but engage in these activities. As this essay shows, artists such as Michael Nava use their work not only for their audience’s entertainment but also in order to engage in the ever-growing discussion about social injustice and inequality. The aim of this essay is to examine the ways in which Michael Nava’s Goldenboy (1988) appropriates the conventions of the genre in a manner that elevates the work from a literary artefact to a work of artivism arguing against heteronormativity and homophobic behaviour and practices. The focus of this essay is ‘queering,’ a hybrid technique of altering already established genres to make a socio-political statement. Queering is a result of the queer theory developed in the 80s and the 90s (Cohen et al., 2013). It is, therefore, important to situate this essay within the works of Sedwick (2013), Warner (1993), and Butler (2007). Following the emergence of activist groups (e.g. Act Up), the term queer was used not only to describe “assimilationist tendencies” (Cohen et al., 2013); but it also acquired more radical connotations. Rooted in queer theory, politics, and activism, ‘queering’ came to represent ways for “social and political subversion of [the] dominant culture” (Barker and Scheele, 2016). For Sedgwick, queer meant “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, […] and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, or anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (Sedgwick, 1993; p. 8). “To act queerly,” Hanman (2013) argues “is to think across boundaries, beyond what is deemed to be normal, to jump at the possibilities opened up by celebrating marginality, which in itself serves to destabilise the mainstream.” Similarly, for Warner (1993) and Butler (2007), queer is defined against what is considered normal rather that against the heterosexual. Understanding the various meanings attached to the words ‘queer’ and ‘queering’ is important in the discussion of ‘queering’ as a technique used by Nava in Goldenboy to challenge the injustices and inequalities caused by heteronormativity. I start this essay by surveying violence in detective fiction. This is followed by a focus on homophobic violence in particular. With these two sections, I examine how engraved heteronormative ideas are to the genre of detective fiction. The next two sections focus on Chicano detective fiction and artivism. Not only do I want to situate the discussion of Goldenboy in the right context, but I also wish to introduce the relationship between sexuality and ethnicity and show how art has been used as a locus for discussion and Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.50 Literature as Activism - From Entertainment to Challenging Social Norms: Michael Nava’s Goldenboy (1988) societal change. I then include present the essay’s theoretical background to highlight the emergence of ‘queering,’ as a tool which allows audiences to reinterpret and re-envision works of art or history in a way that explores sexual oppression and injustices. The second part of this essay focuses on Nava’s Goldenboy and explores how Nava uses well-established institutions, such as masculinity, religion, and the macho culture to expose the toxic ways in which heteronormativity has informed these facets of the society. Then, I provide some examples of how Nava is ‘queering’ the genre itself by appropriating some of its conventions, namely the characters and plot. In doing so, rather than having the audience ‘queer’ their reading of his text, he actively facilitates this ‘queering’ process to emphasise the shortcomings of our society, the effects of the heteronormative matrix, and the need for social change. The artist, therefore, uses his art and becomes an activist against sexual and ethnic oppression and inequalities. LITERATURE REVIEW Violence in Detective Fiction Violence is not only at the core of detective fiction, but it is also celebrated through the conventions of the genre. According to Cawelti, “[it] is normative rather than exceptional, and the hero who can use it for just and valuable purposes is inevitably a leading citizen” (Cawelti, 2004: p. 162). Whether it is described in detail or it is assumed, violence is the central motif in all detective fiction (Danyte, 2011). It is important to note that it takes multiple forms and it is exerted and experienced by all central characters. The initial point of a detective fiction plot is the result of the violence exerted by the murderer (Cox, 1992). The victim, as Van Dine (1928) confirms, experiences physical violence, while being murdered, but they can also experience emotional or mental violence in the events preceding and/or leading up to their murder. Victim and murderer are not the only characters involved in acts of violence. During the investigation process, the detective becomes susceptible to emotional and, in some cases, physical violence (ibid.). However, the detective is a character who also exerts institutional violence while collecting evidence and interviewing possible suspects. The last act of the detective’s violence is the punishment of the murderer. Cawelti (2004) describes the law of retaliation, what is termed as ‘lex talionis’, as “the dominant moral principle informing [detective fiction]” (p. 162). 51 “explicit homosexuality is brutally attacked, those identified as gays are ostracized [and/or] beaten up every night” (Žižek, 2006: p.366). Instances of homophobic violence in detective fiction, though, are not limited to physical violence. Attributing “damaged, failed, or otherwise abject gender to homosexuals, […], calling gay men “feminine” or calling lesbians “masculine” (Butler, 1993: p. 238) is not uncommon in this genre. In Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1929), for example, Sam Spade, the protagonist detective, refers to the homosexual Cairo as “the fairy” and to Wilmer as a “gunsel”. Similarly, in Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939), Marlow comments that “fags can’t hit hard, no matter what they look like” (Berlatsky, 2012). Chicano Detective Fiction This essay focuses on the way in which homophobic violence has been used in Chicano detective fiction but before discussing this, it is important to survey the emergence of Chicano detective fiction as a genre. The traditional American detective fiction of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and the 90s is set in urban environments. Such settings were gradually populated by Chicanos/as. The change in the demographics of urban environments was followed by an increase of new Chicano detective fiction authors and readers. García (2016) attributes the birth and popularity of Chicano detective fiction as a genre to the proliferation of Chicano writers and to the readers’ increasing interest in these stories. Chicano detective fiction received “growing credibility” and became the “cultural capital of detective fiction” (Rodriguez, 2005: p. 4). Such a change could not but translate into the genre itself. Characters - Chicano characters in particular - stopped being portrayed in a negative manner and they were no longer represented as being closely associated with crime. Chicano writers started questioning the archetypal form of the genre and by modifying it, they engaged in an endeavour whereby “minority groups […] would claim a meaningful place in the larger social context” (Rosell, 2009: p. 1). Therefore, Chicano characters were given more meaningful roles. Those “whose cultural experiences have been excluded from the traditional detective formula, and whose cultural aesthetic alters the formula itself” (Gosselin, 1999: p. xi-xxi) are now using this formula to challenge social injustices and inequalities which have historically been deemed deviant, if not criminal. Chicano Detective Fiction and Artivism Homophobic Violence in Detective Fiction Another form of violence often portrayed in detective fiction is homophobic violence. Greenwell (2015) observes that this genre “use[s] queer people primarily as figures of ridicule and contempt.” Some examples of literary works that portray homophobic violence include Calder-Marshall’s Victim (1961), Walker’s Cruising (1970), Muller’s The Cheshire Cat’s Eye (1983), and Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter crime stories (1970-1991). These are examples of works in which Using a well-established artistic form to fight injustices is not new to the Chicano culture. Since 1997, Brody (2017) argues that Chicano artists started using their art as a means of protest and awareness raising on matters of public and social importance. Asante (2009) explains that “the artivist […] uses [their] artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression – by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, IJALEL 9(1):50-55 52 the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination” (p. 39). This new form of activism, therefore, invites the artist to use their art in such a way that will bring about change in the art form itself and, subsequently, to society. In other words, by appropriating the conventions of a genre, in this case detective fiction, the artist reinvents their art but, more importantly, they have the opportunity to question societal forces and manifestations of inequalities, In doing so, they invite their audience to question and challenge such forces, as well. Another vary famous literary artivist, Eve Ensler (2011) argued that through artivism “edges are pushed, imagination is freed, and a new language emerges altogether.” Queer Theory and ‘Queering’ The next part of this essay examines the extent in which Nava is queering the genre of detective fiction as well as the effects of this. Before doing so, though, it is important to trace the term ‘queering’. Coming out of queer theory, queering has been used interchangeably with queer reading (Barker and Scheele, 2016). The aim of queering for the reader, Sedgwick argues (2013), is to identify how heteronormativity manifests itself in a literary work and to find ways to challenge it. Famous examples of ‘queering’ in literature are Butler’s (2007) reading of Larson’s Passing (1929) and Hekanaho’s (2007) reading of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951). In both attempts, the scholars focused on the representation of established heterosexuality and the possible underlying existence of non-binary sexualities in these works. In doing so, they attempted to “[dismantle] the dynamics of power and privilege persisting among diverse subjectivities” (Young, 2012: p. 127). In this essay, rather than using the term ‘queering’ to describe a specific reading of a work of art, and in light of the discussion on artivism I presented above, I use the term ‘queering’ to explain how Nava uses the genre of detective fiction to challenge heteronormativity. How, in other words, ‘queering’ becomes a writer’s tool in their quest to topple the dominant culture. HETERONORMATIVITY IN NAVA’S GOLDENBOY In order for heteronormative behaviours to be challenged, they first need to be presented in ways that are faithful to the conventions of the genre of a work of art. Like in any other work of detective fiction, heteronormativity is mostly evident through homophobic instances throughout the story. As Sedgwick (1985: p. 88) put it, “homophobia [is] a mechanism for regulating the behaviour of the many by the specific oppression of a few.” In this section, the essay analyses those instances of homophobic behaviour in an attempt to highlight how heteronormativity has shaped three of the basic features of detective fiction: masculinity, religion, and the macho culture. Heteronormativity and Masculinity Plain claims that crime fiction “[.] is seen to be almost synonymous with conventional discourses of masculinity” (p. 11). The International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities (Flood et al., 2007) offers a typology of male detectives in crime fiction: a. those who perceive violence as an attribute of masculinity but who also need to be in control of this violence in order for them to be good members of the society, b. those who are “cleansed of any sort of feminine taint” and whose manliness is defined in relation to what isn’t feminine, and c. those whose sole purpose is to get rid of their somewhat feminine psychological traits in order for them to avoid “a literal death or a psychotic rupture” (p. 134). Faithfull to this typology, Nava includes such representations of masculinity in Goldenboy. For instance, when Henry Rios first meets Jim Pears to announce that he is his new lawyer, the following exchange is taking place: “You’re gay,” he said. “That’s right.” “Gay lawyer,” he said, mockingly. “Do you wear a dress to court?” (Nava, 1988: p. 47) What is interesting in this exchange is that both men are gay. By having Jim mocking Henry for being gay, Nava is challenging the male stereotypes of detective fiction. Rather than representing male characters who define their masculinity in opposing terms of femininity, he is using homophobic violence, in this case mockery exercised by another gay man, to address the issue of internalised homophobia. Heteronormativity and Religion Another institution which is linked to heteronormativity is religion. Christianity has always been closely tight to detective fiction. “Solving a crime and bringing the guilty to justice still do not undo the wrong that was done to the victims. And so, where the detective is limited, Christian faith can comfort the suffering and give meaning to the loss endured” (Morlan and Raubicheck, 2013: p. xxvii). It is, therefore, common for works of detective fiction to celebrate Christian faith. In Goldenboy, Nava challenges this faith when, in an encounter with Jim’s parents, they tell him that they want to sue the government for negligence. Henry, though, realises that they are doing this not out of love for and acceptance of their son but because they want to benefit from the money they could claim, should they win the case. Toward the end of the encounter and upon Henry’s disapproval of Jim’s parents’ intentions, Mrs. Pearse, Jim’s mother, addresses Henry saying that “[t]here is a special place for people like you” (Nava, 1988: p. 95), alluding to the hell of the Cristian doctrine. Nava portrays a pseudo-Christian mother who, rather than protecting and caring for her child, is solely interested in the profit she can make out of her son’s misery. As it is clear from this encounter, the mother would not be able to protect and care for her child because Jim is gay, and he only deserves to go to that “special place for people like [him]” (ibid.). Readers, here, are presented with the established Literature as Activism - From Entertainment to Challenging Social Norms: Michael Nava’s Goldenboy (1988) institution of religion but rather than celebrating it, they are led to challenge it. By not disregarding them altogether and by excluding them from his work, Nava asks us to reconsider and question the functions of such institution in our society. Heteronormativity and Macho Culture The Cambridge dictionary (2019) defines macho as “behaving forcefully or showing no emotion in a way traditionally thought to be typical of a man.” Ramos (2005) further explains that “[i]n the United States “macho” […] has been used historically as a derogative adjective to describe Hispanic males” (p. 108). Heteronormativity, therefore, in Chicano literature and culture cannot but result from a complex interplay between layers of identities. In examining this interplay, Nava comments on the relationship between heteronormativity and ethnic identity. Toward the end of the book, in a conversation about Cresly, a character in the story, Josh, Rios’s new lover, says to Rios “Why do you hate him? […] Cause he’s a homophobe? The world’s full of them […] I was one. I called Jim Pears a faggot, just like the other guys at the restaurant.” (Nava, 1988; p. 204) Foster (2008) argues that “homophobia is bound up with maintaining an ‘authentic’ ethnic identity” and Nava, in this excerpt, shows that for a Hispanic male, such as Josh, embracing his Hispanic ethnic identity means subscribing to heteronormative values of homophobic behaviour and bullying. Once again, Nava invites us to question our society and culture which dictate that in an attempt to ascribe to one’s ethnic identity, one has to turn against their sexual identity. CHALLENGING HETERONORMATIVITY So far, I have shown how Nava uses heteronormative clichés of detective fiction to twist them around and make the reader aware of the unjust society which we live in. By using those conventions, Nava manages not to estrange but to engage the reader in a discussion about the effects of heteronormativity in Chicano culture. Here, I further discuss how Nava is queering the characters, the plots, and ultimately the genre of detective fiction “for the purpose of furthering a viewpoint or, in this case, a cause” (Sauerberg, 2016: p. 148). Queering the Characters Nava has been faithful to the characteristics of the genre and has incorporated all characters typically found in detective fiction: a detective, a primary suspect, other characters who could be suspects, and representatives of justice (Szpak, 2017). However, the way he has portrayed them is not a typical representation of such characters in detective fiction. “Like other hard-boiled heroes, Rios adheres to a high moral code, and he’s driven to seek the truth” (Markowitz, 2004: p. 144). In detective fiction where the main protagonist is heterosexual and adheres to the masculine and macho culture analysed above, the reader is shown the dark side of our society by focusing on issues of “child molestation, spouse abuse, exploitation, betrayal, and murder” (ibid.). By 53 deciding to present us with a gay detective, Nava explores “homophobia, violence, fear, and self-hatred,” (ibid.) urging the readers to expand the way they see the world and become more sensitized to issues affecting gay people. A similar analysis can be applied to all other characters involved in this story. For instance, it is not uncommon in detective fiction to read about the justice system being corrupted (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019) but here, Nava presents us with a judge who is willing to oversee certain evidence out of fear of prejudice. Nava (1999) illustrates this when Hart explains to Rios that “[j]udges are elected, too, and if you’re black and a woman someone’s always gunning for you” (p. 88). The fact that these characters are typical of detective fiction but are represented here in light of the sexual and racial prejudice existing in America at the time provides the readers with a better understanding of the context of the story as well as the real effects of the existing societal mechanisms and its values. Queering the Plot In Goldenboy, Nava is using the basic courtroom plot of a detective fiction story “but inverts the usual polarisation of the individual against the high and mighty to the supplementary polarization of discriminated minorities against mainstream, that is sexually and racially prejudiced, America” (Sauerberg, 2016: p. 148). What we read, in other words, is not one but two plots. The first plot is the one that follows Rios from the courtrooms to the streets and is focused on the investigation of a murder. This is consistent with the conventions of the genre and readers experience one of the best examples of detective fiction writing (Kirkus, 2019). Nava, however, is telling an additional story: the story of the gay community who, in light of the AIDS pandemic, are fighting for their rights. Ross’s gradual death by AIDS and Rios’s investment in his relationship with Josh are the two main events which function as the gates to this second subplot. In doing so, Nava elevates his work by not only providing “just” another masterpiece of detective fiction writing, but mainly by turning his detective fiction writing into a canvas of social and cultural thought and by bringing into the limelight issues of sexuality, gender, and ethnic identity. This is typical of younger generations of artists who are using their art to challenge oppression and social injustices (Barker and Scheele, 2016). CONCLUSION In this essay, I have shown that Nava’s Goldenboy is an example of artivism whereby Nava is using his art to not only address issues of inequality and oppression but also to challenge the current status quo and to invite readers to question their own ideas and beliefs. By presenting a brief survey of violence and homophobic violence in detective fiction, I aimed to show how the genre itself promotes and celebrates heteronormative ideas. I, then, focused on Chicano detective fiction and artivism. Here, I 54 traced the development of the genre in Chicano culture, introduced the interplay of sexuality and ethnicity, as well as the ways in which art has been used to provide a locus of discussion and societal change. Before focusing on Nava’s Goldenboy, I also provided a theoretical background to the act of ‘queering’ which formed the basis of my discussion of Goldenboy. In the second part of this essay, I focused on the ways in which Nava used the conventions of the genre to offer an insight into the heteronormative society within which his story is set. I also provided some examples of how he ‘queered’ some of the conventions of the genre in order for him – and the readers - to “destabilize [and challenge] heteronormativity as the matrix upon which people and social institutions function” (Bollas, 2014: p. 97). Nava, in his work, referred to masculinity, religion, and the macho culture not in a celebratory manner but in a way that highlighted the hypocrisy that underlies those institutionalised social values. In addition, he tweaked the well-established characters and plot of detective fiction in order to invite the readers to a journey of questioning heteronormativity and to urge them to challenge instances of social oppression and inequality. REFERENCES Asante, M. K. (2009) It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Barker, M. J. and Scheele, J. (2016) Queer: A Graphic History. London: Icon Books. Berlatsky, N. (2012) ‘The detective and the closet,’ The Hooded Utilitarian. Available at: http://bit.ly/2vCJf4g (Accessed: 16 April 2019). Bollas, A. (2014) ‘Live and let live: the destabilisation of heteronormativity in Moises Kaufmann’s The Laramie Project,’ Forbes and Fifth. 4. pp. 97-112. Brody, D. (2017) ‘Artivist in the modern landscape’, The Huffington Post, 6 December. Available at: http://bit. ly/2vFkbte (Accessed: 4 April 2019). Butler, J. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of “Sex”, New York: Routledge. Butler, J. 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(ed) Chicano Detective Fiction: A Critical Study of Five Novelists. North Carolina: McFarland and Company. Rodriguez, R. E. (2005) Brown Gumshoes: Detective Fiction and the Search for Chicana/o Identity. Austin: University of Texas Press. Rosell, S. (2009) ‘La detectivesca de Latinas en los Estados Unidos’, Revista de critica literaria y de cultura. 21. Available at: http://bit.ly/2VcXFr6 (Accessed: 2 April 2019). Sauerberg, L. O. (2016) The Legal Thriller from Gardner to Grisham. London: Pelgrave Macmillan. Sedgwick, E. K. (1985) Between Men: English Literature And Male Homosocial Desire, New York: Columbia University Press. Sedgwick, E. K. (1993) Tendencies. New York: Duke University Press. Literature as Activism - From Entertainment to Challenging Social Norms: Michael Nava’s Goldenboy (1988) Sedgwick, E. K. (2013) ‘Queer and now,’ in Hall et al. (eds) The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. London: Routledge. Szpak, A. (2017) ‘Characteristics of crime fiction,’ Pen and the Pal. 17 April. Available at: http://bit.ly/2Jr2qGv (Accessed: 22 April 2019). Van Dine, S. (1928) ‘Twenty rules for writing detective stories.’ American Magazine. September 1928. 55 Warner, M. (1993) ‘Introduction,’ in Warner, M. (ed) Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. xxiii – xxxi. Young, T. (2012) ‘Queering “the human situation”. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 28. pp. 126 – 131. Žižek, S. (2006) The Parallax View. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au COVID 19-The Foreign Virus: Media Bias, Ideology and Dominance in Chinese and American Newspaper Articles Mohammad Awad AlAfnan* American University of the Middle East, Eqilah, Kuwait Corresponding Author: Mohammad Awad AlAfnan, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 11, 2019 Accepted: December 20, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 This contrastive study examines media bias, media ideologies and dominance in two newspaper articles that are published by the American Washington Post newspaper and the Chinese People’s Daily newspaper on COVID 19. The study reveals that media bias is practiced through gatekeeping bias, coverage bias and statement bias. Ideology bias is practiced through the selection of topics to cover and the tone for reporting on these topics. Dominance is practiced through the foregrounding and backgrounding of information and ideas. This contrastive study also reveals that the topics that are foregrounded by the American newspaper are backgrounded or filtered by the Chinese newspaper and the topics that are backgrounded by the American newspaper are foregrounded by the Chinese newspaper. This paper also reveals that foregrounding is not necessarily carried out explicitly; it can also be carried implicitly by foregrounding the opposite. The paper suggests that proper reading of media texts requires critical discourse analysis in terms of interpretation and contextual awareness in terms of knowledge. This is the case as the intended meaning of media texts is communicated between the lines. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Media Bias, Ideology Bias, Dominance, Critical Discourse Analysis, Mass Media INTRODUCTION Late in 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, China, a new infectious disease was identified. This infectious disease, which swiftly spread all over the world, was commonly named COVID 19. As of now, 209 countries worldwide reported confirmed cases of COVID 19. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared it, on the 11th of March 2020, a pandemic. Eyes have turned to the prospect of a vaccine. However, even though laboratories and medical institutions are assiduous to create a vaccine, their efforts are not abundantly successful. This, maybe out of frustration, led into a war of words and an exchange of blames. In this study, I will not suggest a vaccine, as I am not a medical specialist; I will analyze the war of words on Coronavirus in Chinese and American mass media texts. In a Tweet on the 12th of March, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman suggested that the US military might have brought Coronavirus to the Chinese city of Wuhan. This tweet was not received well and a war of words started between a number of American newspapers and a number of Chinese newspapers. In this article, I will conduct a critical discourse analysis (CDA) onto a newspaper article that was published on the 20th of March, 2020, in Washington Post titled ‘Don’t blame ‘China’ for the coronavirus-blame the Chinese Communist Party and another newspaper article that was published by the People’s Daily newspaper-English edition on the 19th of March, 2020, titled ‘Don’t fall for it! Trump is using “Chinese Virus” label to cover up his mishandling of coronavirus. The main objective of this contrastive study is to examine media bias, ideology and dominance in Chinese and American mass media texts. LITERATURE REVIEW This study is mainly a contrastive study. A number of research articles have targeted cross-cultural English and Chinese (AlAfnan, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019a/2019b; Kong, 2005; Scollon, 2000; Scollon & Kirkpatrick, 2000; Wei, 2006; Zhu, 2000) texts. However, it is obvious that these studies “are far from enough to establish an overall picture of writing practices in these two languages” (Wei, 2006, pp 1-2). It is widely reported, especially in the facets of Fairclough’s (1995) CDA, that the production of media texts depends on economic, political and cultural factors. According to Fairclough (1995), “an account of communication in the mass media must consider the economics and politics of the mass media: the nature of the market which the mass media are operating within, and their relationship to the state, and so forth” (p. 36). That is, the economic values relate to who owns or finances the agency, the political facet depends on the power and ideology of the media, whereas the cultural facet depends on ‘the issues of value’ in the community. Examining the influence of these three facets on the production of newspaper articles regarding COVID 19 in American and Chinese mass media texts would be interesting as these two countries belong to different ideologies. The US, a democratic country, has supported, Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.56 COVID 19-The Foreign Virus: Media Bias, Ideology and Dominance in Chinese and American Newspaper Articles at least ostensibly, the movement to democracy in the world. The Chinese political system, however, is a single-party regime that has governed China since 1949. As such, examining the economic, political and cultural values affecting the production of media texts in these two countries would produce a “truly thick” description of how bias, ideology and dominance influence the construction of mass media texts. To examine the above-mentions factors, Fairclough (1995) suggested examining the text, discourse and socio-cultural practices. Text practice analysis targets the vocabulary, grammar, and the cohesion organization of the communicative event. Discourse practice, however, “straddles the division between society and culture on the one hand, and discourse, language and text on the other” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 60). That is, examining discourse practice should consider the process of producing and consumption of texts. It also includes the institutional process and discourse processes. The socio-cultural practice, however, shall look at, according to Fairclough (1995), the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of a communicative event. Conducting CDA on a communicative event, however, does not need to examine all these practices as the analysis could be carried out on the focuses that “be relevant to understanding the particular event” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 62). Given that the main focus of this study is examining media bias, ideology, and dominance in newspaper articles pertaining to ‘COVID 19’ in a couple of American and Chinese newspapers, the focus will be drawn to two main practices that are the text and the socio-cultural practices. In examining the text practices, the focus will be drawn to the vocabularies used when reporting about COVID 19 in these articles. The importance of examining vocabulary or the linguistic choices in a communicative event arises as the linguistic choice, according to Fowler and Hodge (1979, p. 188), is “principled and systematic”. In conducting the socio-cultural and socio-political practice analysis, however, the focus will be drawn to the economic values of newspapers and the political and cultural values of the country of origin in which the newspaper is based. The political dimension will be examined in relation to the official stand of the country towards COVID 19 as reported in local media; the cultural dimension, however, will be examined by looking at the ‘issues of value’ in the country of origin. The main purpose for examining these texts using CDA is that CDA is an approach to discourse analysis that aims at examining the use of language in everyday communication whether it is spoken or written. It views language as a social practice (Halliday, 1979) that does not only signify other social practices, but also constitute elements like dominance, resistance, power and ideology (Atkins, 2002). For Chuliaraki and Fairclough (1999), conducting CDA “of a communicative interaction sets out to show that the semiotic and linguistic features of the interaction are systematically connected with what is going on socially, and what is going on socially is indeed going on partly or wholly semiotically or linguistically.” (113). METHODOLOGY This study aims to investigate how American and Chinese writers construct their newspaper articles concerning COVID 19. It struggles to examine the elements of media 57 bias, ideology, and dominance in language use in the selected articles to expose how the writers manipulate the topic to outfit the interests in the respective countries. This will definitely include examining the economic, political and cultural values of the newspapers and the country in general. In order to achieve the aims of the study, a couple of newspaper articles are collected: an article from an American newspaper and an article from a Chinese newspaper (English edition). The American article is collected from the wellknown Washington Post and the Chinese articles is collected from People’s Daily: English Edition, which circulates around 200.000 daily copies. The articles are collected electronically from the website of the abovementioned newspapers. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the mixing of CDA and CL. CDA assists identifying “the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (Van Dijk, 2001, p. 352). This includes the conflict of ideologies as of “Us and Them … We are Good and They are Bad” (Van Dijk, 1998 p. 25). The use of CL, however, assists in creating credibility and trustworthiness to the findings of the study, as the researcher attempts collecting a specialized corpus that is representative of the text type (Hunston, 2002). In this sense, the analytical framework will look into the textual and contextual analysis. The textual analysis will examine the vocabularies used in the texts and their semantic and pragmatic significance in presenting writers’ view. The contextual analysis, however, will examine the economic, political and cultural values for the newspapers, on the one hand, and the interest in the country of origin, on the other. ANALYSIS This analysis will look into the newspapers and their political, economic and cultural values. Through the examination of these values, we will be able to comprehend the motive behind the linguistic choices. The Newspapers The two news papers selected for this study are the American Washington Post and the Chinese People’s Daily. The Washington Post is a major daily newspaper in the US. It was founded in 1877. It circulates around 447.000 newspapers a day as it also has more than a million digital subscribers, according to Fitcher (2013). The newspaper, which won 47 Pulitzer Prizes, is owned by Nash Holdings, a holding company established by Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest person on earth and the owner of Amazon. Eisinger, Veenstra, and Koehn (2009), after examining news articles from 1991 to 2004, came up with a conclusion that the Washington Post is neither conservative nor liberal newspaper. However, this finding came after investigating the number of published advertisements for Republican and Democrat senators and congressmen. That is, the newspaper is neither conservative nor liberal locally. However, when it comes to dealing with news or accusations that are external, this stand may change. The People’s Daily, however, belongs to the largest media group in China with more than 3 million readers. Its’ English edition has more than 200.000 readers per day. The newspaper was founded in 1948 and is managed by the Central Committee IJALEL 9(1):56-60 58 of the Communist Party of China. However, even though the English edition of the People’s Daily is managed by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it is believed that it aspires to have a Western journalism style (Wang and Lee, 2014). That is, the English edition of the People’s Daily is unlike the Chinese edition which is very patriotic in reporting events. It targets international audience and strives to report events neutrally. However, even if the newspaper adopts a neutral discourse in reporting, being a member of a national (governmental) media corporation would require a stern reaction to claims and accusations that some people, inside and outside China, regarded as offensive. This would lead into a more emotional and patriotic style to reflect the nature of the event. The Selected Articles As mentioned above, two articles were selected for the sake of this study- An article from Washington Post and an article from the People’s Daily- English edition. The Washington Post’s article was published on the 20th of March, 2020, and titled ‘Don’t blame ‘China’ for the coronavirus — blame the Chinese Communist Party’. The writer of this article reserved the right of the American administration and the American public to respond to the Chinese accusations that Coronavirus was brought to China by the American military. However, at the same time, the writer asked the government and the people to be a little bit more sensitive in expressing opinions as the accusations may spark racism and “stigmatize Chinese citizens or Chinese Americans”. Even though the writer asked the readers to stop labeling Coronavirus as the “Chinese Virus”, the “Wuhan Virus” or the “Kong Flu”, he labeled it as the “CCP Virus” in reference to the Chinese Communist Party. The article also praised Chinese researchers, scientists, doctors, nurses, and journalists but attacked the Chinese ruling party. The writers claimed that the Chinese regime is a source of oppression, aggression and bad influence. He also stated that the Chinese people do not influence the actions of the Chinese government. The writer also asked the readers to learn a lesson from the Russian interference in the American elections back in 2016 and asked the readers to avoid falling to the attempts of the CCP to divide the Americans. The article that was selected from the People’s Daily is titled ‘Don’t fall for it! Trump is using “Chinese Virus” label to cover up his mishandling of coronavirus’. The article, which was published on the 19th of March, 2020, highlights the labeling of the COVID 19-coronavirus as the ‘Chinese Virus’ by the American administration. The article also highlighted using other labels that intend to “smear China”. These labels, according to the article, inflame anti-Chinese racism and stigmatizing China. The writer of the article also quoted a number of Chinese American journalists who felt offended by the labeling of the coronavirus as the Chinese Virus, the Wuhan Virus and the King Flu. The newspaper also highlighted international reactions to this labeling, which was described by the newspapers as racist and anti-Chinese. The article of the People’s Daily also claimed that the American administration comes up with the labeling to deflect the attention of the people from the failure and the mishandling of the situation. The newspaper cited the number of COVID 19 confirmed cases and the number of COVID 19 related deaths in the US. It remarked that the situation will worsen in the coming weeks as, according to an American research center, the overwhelming majority of the confirmed cases in the US are located in big American metropolitan cities. Media Bias Media bias can be divided in three categories. Firstly, gatekeeping bias, which refers to reporting on a certain topic from a pool of available topics. Secondly, coverage bias, which refers to the unbalanced reporting on a topic or an event. Thirdly, statement bias, which refers to inserting writers’ own opinion when reporting on an event. The two selected newspaper articles have evidences of the three types of media bias. In relation to gatekeeping bias, it is evident that the fight against COVID 19 in these two articles has moved from the medical arena to the political arena. Even though people around the world get infected every single second and people from different nationalities and ethnicities pass away every single minute, the writers of these two articles found time to politicize the pandemic. The blame game is evident in the article published in Washington Post, “Don’t blame China, blame the Chinse Communist Party”, in which the writer attacked the ruling party in China. The People’s Daily, on the other hand, responded to labeling COVID 19 Coverage bias can also be evident in both articles. The article of Washington Post calls people to blame the CCP and “its internal repression, its external aggression” and rejected accusations of racism. However, in the body of the article, the writer repeatedly used three nicknames of Corona 19 that are “the Chinese Virus”, “Wuhan Virus” and “Kong Flu”. In communication and media studies, this is called mainstreaming. That is, intentional or unintentional repetitions of a viewpoint would create a public opinion. To avoid mainstreaming, we need to avoid using terms that would possibly lead to portraying something in a certain manner. On the other hand, the article that was published by the People’s Daily assumes American failure in dealing with the threat as a result of mishandling the situation. This was presumed as there were 7000 COVID 19 confirmed cases in the US in comparison to more than 75000 confirmed cases in China. The number of deaths was 100 in the US in comparison to 20000 in China. Even though the number of COVID 19 confirmed cases increased drastically in the US after the 19th of March, the day in which the article was published, the Daily had no solid evidence of failing to deal with the virus. Additionally, the Daily portrayed nicknaming the virus by some quarters in the US as racist, but it did not refer to the Tweet of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Spokesman who accused the American military of bringing the virus to Wuhan. In regards to statement bias, the Daily’s and the Post’s articles are full of opinions that are inserted into the articles. In the Daily’s article, even though the writer maintains the formal reporting style, which is based on neutral reporting, he focused on one side of the coin. He only referred to offensive labeling and racist comments. This was foregrounded throughout the article. However, to maintain this streamline, the writer backgrounded several calls from the US, including major news agencies and politicians who criticized this labeling. This made it sound as if the overwhelming majority of the public agrees with that labeling. In the Posts’ article, however, the writer COVID 19-The Foreign Virus: Media Bias, Ideology and Dominance in Chinese and American Newspaper Articles maintained the use of the inclusive ‘we’ and ‘us’ against the ‘they’ and ‘them’, which almost always referred to the CCP. The ‘we’ against ‘they’ stand in reporting reflects statement bias as the writer takes a clear stand in support of the ‘we’ against the stand or the practices of the ‘them’. The writer of the Washington Post’s article asked the ‘we’ to stop labeling the virus as the ‘Chinese virus’ for the sake of unity, but he labeled the virus as the “CCP virus’ as they, the rulers of Beijing, are “the malign influence”, according to the writer. Ideology Examining ideology in media texts can be demonstrated in the selected topics for reporting and the angle of or the tone for reporting. To start with the selected topics, it is noticed that the Washington Post’s article is diverting the attention or the blame to the government of China. Using the inclusive ‘we’ the writer tries to comfort the readers, including the Chinese and Asian Americans, that they are not the problem. The problem is with the Chinese authorities as they are unfair and cause a lot of trouble for the local Chinese and the international community. He praised the people of China and labeled them as heroes, but diminished their rulers, which has “malign influence in free and open societies”. That is, CCP, according to the writer, is aggressive and undemocratic. After labeling Corona 19 virus as the Chinese Virus, the Wuhan Virus and the Kong Flu by some quarters in the US, the writer is trying to comfort the Chinese and Asian Americans by prompting inclusiveness and unity as CCP, according to the writer, is trying to “divide us (Americans) along political, ethnic and racial lines”. The article strives to comfort the Chinese, in general, and the Chinese Americans, in particular, by excluding the common Chinese people from the labeling by labeling the virus as the ‘CCP virus’. That’s is, the Chinese government is not representative of the Chinese people-the government was not selected through democratic means. The writer is trying to tell them (the Chinese) that you are not the Chinese we mean. The Chinese we talk about are the ones involved in the government. This can be noticed in the examples used to comfort the Chinese reader and appeal to the un-Chinese reader. The writer of the Washington Post’s articles appealed to the public using the ‘values’ and the ‘ideologies’ that the target audience (Americans) believes indemocracy and inclusiveness. In general terms, Americans value and believe in democracy and democratic practices. They stand against authoritarian and autocratic systems. Starting from here, the writer targeted the CCP for its’, according to the writer, aggression, oppression and malign influence. As such, the conflict of ideologies is between democratic and autocratic policies and believes among political systems and people. In the People Daily’s article, however, the target is the outsiders, mainly American voters. The article emphasizes that labeling the virus as Chinese intends to divert attention and manipulate opinion, especially that the American administration failed in containing the virus. It mishandled it. The phrase “Don’t fall for it” intends to create a public opinion. The word “mishandling” would also create a negative influence and reaction among readers especially that the human ‘values’ of wellbeing, and safety are under threat as they ‘were not safeguarded’ by the Administration, according to the article. The picture 59 which accompanied the article portrays the president as an unconfident person supports the title that the one who labeled the virus as ‘Chinese’ is diverting attention as he failed to contain the virus. The usage of words like “defending”, deflect”, “failure” also creates negative emotions and negative impressions. The writer of the People Daily’s article through the selection of topics, the tone of reporting on the topic and the appeal to human values is trying to create a public opinion. Besides, by highlighting the mishandling of the pandemic by the American administration, the writer implies the successful practices of the Chinese government in handling the pandemic and containing it. That is, it implicitly praised the efficient and successful handling of COVID 19 by the Chinese authorities. Efficiency is one of the highly appreciated values in China. As such, media ideologies are apparent in the two articles for two different goals. The Washington Post’s article by attacking the ‘aggressive practices’ of the Chinese authorities in China highlights democratic practices and democracy in the US. The People Daily’s article, through the highlight of the racial comments and the mishandling of the medical crisis, tries to appeal to human values that are championed by humankind: efficiency and equality. Domination The investigation into domination is carried out through foregrounding and backgrounding events in the two articles. Looking into the Washington Post’s article, we notice that the writer foregrounded the “aggression” and the “repression” of the Chinese government, but backgrounded how well they reacted in fighting the virus. The writer did not mention the decreased number of new cases of COVID 19 in China. He did not refer or backgrounded the firm measurements that were taken by the authorities to cure more than 75% of confirmed COVID19 cases in China. The writer did not mention or backgrounded all the efforts to fight the virus in China and the world. This backgrounding intended to diminish the efforts of the Chinese government in reacting to the pandemic and focusing on or foregrounding political situations during this difficult time. The only praise the writer provided is to the doctors and nurses forgetting that they do not work independently without supervision or directions from formal authorities. This foregrounding and backgrounding in the Post’s article intended to highlight wrongdoings and lessen the right doings. The reason is to implicitly create an impression among Asian and Chinese readers that they are not intended by the labeling that circulates around. The government is intended. In People Daily’s article, however, the “failing” in addressing the danger and the use of “racist” labeling is foregrounded. The relatively small number of confirmed cases in the US (on the 19th of March 2020) is backgrounded. The writer foregrounded “racism” to create a public opinion about the administration which leads one of the most multiracial countries in the world. This foregrounding has taken place to create a public opinion especially that the administration will run for elections in less than 9 months. If the newspaper managed to create this public opinion, the chance of this administration to win the next general elections will decrease, which might possibly be the target. The writer of the article backgrounded that the one who started the blame game is a Chinese Foreign IJALEL 9(1):56-60 60 Ministry official who suggested that the virus was brought by the American military. It is noticed that the reaction was foregrounded, but the action was backgrounded. In fact, the action that was the reason behind the American reaction was not mentioned at all. As such, we notice that the labeling of COVID 19 as the Chinese virus, Wuhan Virus, and Kong Flu was foregrounded in the People Daily’s article to create a negative hollow among Asian Americans, but it was backgrounded in the Washington Post’s article and was replaced by the labeling of “CCP Virus” to create a positive impression among Asian and Chinese Americans. On the other hand, the success of the Chinese authorities was backgrounded in the Washington Post’s article to diminish their achievements in fighting COVID 19, but it was implicitly foregrounded in the People Daily’s article by exposing and foregrounding the mishandling of COVID 19 by the American administration. CONCLUSION This article investigated media bias, ideologies and dominance in two newspaper articles that were published by the American Washington Post newspaper and the Chinese People’s Daily (English Edition) newspapers. The article revealed that the writers through the selection of topics, the tone of reporting, mainstreaming, manipulation, foregrounding and backgrounding communicate bias opinions, ideologies and practice dominance. By examining these two articles on COVID 19, it was revealed that the topics that were foregrounded by the American newspaper were backgrounded by the Chinese newspaper and the topics that were backgrounded by the American newspaper were foregrounded by the Chinese newspaper. As such, a proper reading of media texts requires critical discourse analysis in terms of interpretation and contextual knowledge to properly read the explicit and implicit meaning intended by writers. 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Discourse Studies, 2(4), 525-548. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au African Prose Fiction and the Depiction of Corruption in Islamic Society and Religion: A Critical Study of Abubakar Gimba’s Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apples Oluchi Chris Okeugo1*, Obioha2, Jane Onyinye2 Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria, 2School of Midwifery Alex Ekwueme Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki Ebony State Corresponding Author: Oluchi Chris Okeugo, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 29, 2019 Accepted: December 09, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 African prose fictions have written on a whole number of ideas and perception, but have conspicuously paid little or no attention to what is predominant in the Islamic society and religious world. For Gimba, the intrigues and contestation over power, especially within the civil service, assume a metaphoric significance in unraveling social contradictions in society. Gimba thus, evaluates the various dimensions of power and how it is used to subjugate or oppress people. In most of his works, Gimba pillories the repressive nature of power and the conflicts it engenders are graphically illustrated. In his articulation of this disabling environment, Gimba evokes a consciousness, concerned with Manichaeism and alienation. Gimba is sensitive to his characters as they adjust to the uncertainties of a postcolonial society with all the indices of underdevelopment, greed, corruption, bureaucratic tardiness, indiscipline, political instability etc. These characteristics of modern Nigeria form the background from which Gimba’s characters are drawn. However, drawing from their Islamic background, the characters in Gimba’s works express their morality, conviction and thought through the ideals of the religion. This leads to a remarkable blending of social and moral concerns with the supervening influence of Islam without sermonization. The outcome of this fusion is a balance between aesthetics and spiritual interests in a way that captures the essence of Northern Nigeria with vividness and freshness. Gimba, like Tahir, therefore relates the traditional and cultural values of the people to their response to the dilemma of new experiences and their interpretations of them. Gimba draws his sources from The Holy Qur’an in the delineation of setting, action and character. As a liberal feminist, he chooses urban heroines through whom he restructures our visions. This article attempts to investigate Gimba’s works using Neo-humanistic theory in evaluating his inclusion of religion and the techniques used conspicuously in the novels, Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apples. This scholarly work equally argues that the writer’s creativity in religion can best be appreciated through an analytical study of the novel. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Islamic Society and Religion, Neo-Humanist Theory, African Literature, Manichaeism, Alienation, Holy Qur’an, Post-colonial, Gimba INTRODUCTION As a prolific and proficient writer, Gimba had within the span of a decade taken he Nigerian Literary scene by surprise with the following titles: Trail of Sacrifice (1985), Witnesses To Tears (1986), Innocent Victims (1988), Sunset for a Mandarin (1991), Sacred Apples (1997), Footprints (1998), a collection of essays Once Upon A Reed (1999), a collection of poetry, Inner Rumblings (2000). He is a writer who is interested in the world and the people around him, particularly in the intrigues and intricacies of the civil service and the bureaucracy. His works revolve around morality, encoding sympathy for the innocent characters who are usually persecuted and unfairly treated by the system. Gimba’s works are intensely concerned with decency, proper use and control of power and the creation of an egalitarian society. However, the emergence of Abubakar Gimba in the mid-eighties was to further expand the scope of the novel in English in Northern Nigeria beyond the point of Tahir’s The Last Imam. Beyond the concern with the people’s contact with Islam and their ensuing attempts at adjustments, Gimba explores the many vagaries of human experience. The significance of Gimba’s works lies in the way that he locates his motifs strictly within the bureaucratic structures of post-colonial Nigeria from where he takes a panoramic view of the entire society. Religion, a system of faith based on the existence of God, has remained a subject-matter of the Nigerian novel since Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.61 62 its inception. Most early writers came from the South-East and were witnesses to the clashes between traditionalism and Christianity during the colonial encounter. Colonialism in Africa found a justification for its mission in certain halftruths peddled about the continent by Christendom in the sixteenth century. Leo Africans, an ex-slave and Christian convert, for instance, was known to have said: “The inhabitants of the black lands are bucolic people without reason, wit or skill and with no experience of anything at all; they live like brute beasts without law or order” (Claude Wauthier, 1978:48). The colonizing powers convinced the Christian West that Africa was a dark continent of barbaric races, a land of all the iniquities only the devil’s world could muster, which, for this reason, needed to be rescued and civilized. Nigeria, as a colony of Great Britain, was seen in the above light. The country’s name speaks volumes of this unbridled savagery which the colonizers set out, with Christianity in the vanguard, to crush. The problems facing African societies are multi-dimensional and in phases. Slavery is the worst and darkest experience in the history of African people. Religion, including Islamic religion and colonialism immediately followed and now neo-colonialism through African dependent on the Western World for its economic and political stability. To sustain and promote their interests at the expense of Africa, the international hegemonic forces have ensured that their African collaborators remain in power to do their biddings. These agents consider and pursue policies that satisfy their interest and those of their imperialist masters even at the brink of economic collapse occasioned by the “fictitious debts and religious charlatanry and propaganda. Achebe (1975:45), states the position of the early writers: … I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that, their past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first European acting on God’s behalf delivered them. Achebe and his contemporaries in Nigeria did not write to profess Christianity. On the contrary, their objective seemed to have been to present the truth about the pre-colonial past. Thus, if they ever took recourse to doctrine, they did so only to ridicule. The aim of this study is to investigate the theme of corruption in Post-Colonial African Novels. To fulfill the aim of this study the objectives are to: 1. Assess the realism in Witnesses to Tears by Gimba Abubakar? 2. Assess the realism in Sacred Apple? By Gimba Abubakar 3. Investigate how Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apple portray corruption in Post-Colonial Islamic Africa? CONTEXTUAL STUDY OF THE NOVELS WITNESSES TO TEARS AND SACRED APPLES Witnesses to Tears: ‘Tears’ is the most important in the novel. “Tears” are the drops of salty liquid that come out of one’s eyes usually because one is unhappy, hurt or in pains. The novel deals with the pervading unquenchable drive of the modern man to acquire wealth by perversion as well as IJALEL 9(1):61-66 the wanton destruction of both self and others by the perpetrator. Man’s inordinate ambition is portrayed as leading to a total disregard for the value of life and humanity in general. It pushes out the bestial nature of human beings, even when they struggle to cover up with open kindness. The fictionalized situation of the novel deals with a beautiful, loving and innocent victim of blind love, Hussaina, whose husband’s inordinate desire to amass wealth, even through perverse means resulted in, although by a twist of fate, an impenetrable horror that became the ironical reward of Hussaina’s innate kindness, love, respect and good manners. The concern of the novel is the plight of the innocent ones, especially women and children, who suffer over crimes committed by people close to them as they share in the retributions for those crimes. The message of the text is that acquisition of wealth through dubious means results in the destruction of both the perpetrators and their family members who might be innocent; and that good name is far greater and more enduring than wealth acquired through dubious means. This message is projected at the primitive level using lexis and structure. “Tears” in the title of the novel refers to the fictionalized situation in general and to the major characters in particular. “Tears” come out of one’s eyes when one is crying. In the text’s semiotic universe, they are mostly shed due to loss of loved ones. “Tears” are a result of melancholy caused by either pains or grieve. When adults cry, it is often a result of death of loved ones. “Tears” in this novel refers to death and wanton destruction of human beings caused by Lahab’s burning desire to amass wealth and to fight for positions through abnormal means, which involve the use of human blood that resulted in multiple deaths. They are both a result and a sequence of the disregard for the value of life. There are multiple killings of souls, which violate the sanctity of human life as preached by all religions of the world. “Tears” serve as a node for the following list of expressions and lexical items that mean or connote death, murder, mourning and other death related terms. The following is a list of some of these lexical items for illustration: (P.7) A safe coma (P.10) extremely critical but safe (P.11) …was as awesome as death (P.14)…dead Zarah was very much alive (P.15) …khartoum Hospital was filled with about a score of men from the police homicide squad. (P.16) But we are not saying that we have got the killers of Sarah and Sani Tanko. (P.24) But standing there at the bus stop in the windy Torrents, seemed an even greater danger, I thought I just chose the Lesser of the evils. (P.27) I appreciate what he did…at least he did prove that even in times like these when abnormality has gained such ….to a state of everyday acceptance, not all men are wolves except that my little girl, most are in sheep’s attire. (28) (P.37) A perversion that killed her fountain of love (P.36) Could it be professional incompetence or simply ineptitude In hospital management that killed her mother. African Prose Fiction and the Depiction of Corruption in Islamic Society and Religion: A Critical Study of Abubakar Gimba’s Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apples (P.41) …increased smugglings, attacks on young girls, murderers, Kidnappings… (P.68 …that a person should die without trace, unknown to the family. (P. 71) Lahab had Lahab had always wished his wife’s fatherdead. Anas’ shadow had always tormented his moral conscience. The man was too upright. (P.78) He had secretly despised him for that very trait.when he lived, and actually nursed an inner satisfaction when he died … he was no longer around to see and question his propriety or his bottled impropriety, so …away from the sight of other men. The list provides evidence that there is the projection of the message of human destruction resulting from the illicit acquisition of wealth in this novel based on the lexical items and expressions underscored in the list. Admissibly, Abubakar Gimba is the only Nigerian novelist who presents the world of Islam with some measure of concentration and a sense of metaphorical felony. In his Witnesses to Tears (1986) and Sacred Apples (1994), he seeks explication of event and character through references and allusions to the Qur’an. This way, his writing can be said to have a special touch of Islam and, by extension, responds to the theme of the role of literature in national development. Nigeria’s unity depends on the extent, to which her peoples understand one another, particularly, the religions which inform every group’s ethos. This point is easily appreciated when one recalls that ignorance leads to intolerance and accounts for most of the violent social conflicts the nation has experienced since the amalgamation of 1914. Our study of Gimba’s novels, therefore, is bound to anchor on the Pro-Aristotelian or Neo-Humanist concept of literature as a utilitarian art, one which edifies through delighting. For our purpose, what T. S. Eliot (1962:724) has said about literature and religion is significant? “The common ground between religion and fiction is behaviour. Our religion imposes our ethics, our judgment and criticism of ourselves, and our behaviour toward our fellow men”. The Holy Qur’an regulates the ethos of an Islamic society. And Gimba’s fictional world, though it does not exclude other religions, is fundamentally Islamic. The Quran (Islamic Influences) on Gimba’s Prose Fiction According to F. A. Klein (1971:38), Islamic scholars accept two divisions under which doctrines and religious practices are treated. The Tauhid deals with scholastic theology and reviews concepts of the godhead. For want of competence, this is beyond the scope of our discussion. The fight on the other hand, is the practical part which consists of precepts and commandments to be obeyed, rules and customs to be observed, duties to be fulfilled. The exhortations from the Sacred Book, relating to this second part, are the bases for the assessment of social sanctity and parameters with which to gauge the extent to which individual ethics conform with the teachings of Islam. Gimba explores this part in his plot structure, the depiction of settings and the portrayal of characters. 63 Within these aspects of the novel, the author presents the main themes of his writing. The plot of each of these novels reflects a picaresque structure wherein the major characters are very mobile. Witnesses to Tears is the story of Hussaina, the only child of a widower, Mr. Anas Al-Amin. In spite of her father’s cautionary statement that a man who bribes the police could be a criminal, Hussaina marries Lahab: she is enchanted by this man’s taciturnity, and is sympathetic toward him for having just lost a wife. It turns out that Lahab is a hideous character. As soon as the wedding is over, Al-Amin leaves his Futa Toro Heights apartment in Sabonville and embarks on an extensive tour of the country. He dies on the way back. Lahab feels relieved from his father-in-law’s watchful eyes: he amasses wealth through corruption and engages the services of a marabout, Dr. Saahir, for protection. Though Hussaina is suspicious of her husband’s sudden affluence, she is kept in the dark until a traumatic experience happens to her: her only son, Anas Al-Amin Sagiir is kidnapped from his school. Later that night, she discovers the boy’s decapitated head in the deep- freezer in one of the rooms in the basement of her home; he has been the victim of Dr. Saahir’s ritual murder aimed at saving Lahab’s business empire from collapse. Hussaina ends up in B8 at the Female Traumatology Ward of Khartoum Hospital. Her husband returns from a pilgrimage to Mecca only to join his mentor, Dr. Saahir, in police custody. Sacred Apples is a sequel to Witnesses to Tears. Lahrah is Hussaina’s great-granddaughter. Zubaydah, Lahrah‟s grandmother, is the product of a later marriage after the Lahab-Saahir saga. When the story in Sacred Apples begins, Lahrah has just been divorced by Yazid. She together with her three children - Unnnaymah, Bilguees and Mustapha - is on her way from her ex- husband’s home in New Tymbuktu to her brother, Ya-Shareef, who resides in Rabbah City. Hardly, have mother and children left New Tymbuktu than their car is attacked by an irate mob of protesters. Lahrah is abducted, her car is set ablaze and, as far as she knows, her children have been cremated. As soon as she leaves hospital, she changes course to Minsra, her grandmother’s city. Before she completes her iddah, she is re-united with her children: a couple - Rashad and Miriam - had rescued them before their car was set on fire. Lahrah and her offspring finally settle with Ya-Shareef in Rabbah. She gets employed as an industrial officer and soon, her boss, Nousah proposes marriage. This marriage exposes her to the hostilities prevalent in polygamy: Nousah’s other wives - Salma and Ailimah - team up against her. They are regular guests of marabouts. Ailimah, who is already pregnant for her witchdoctor, An-Najmu, brings home the sacred apples which kill Nousah and endanger Lahrah’s life. These picaresque structures make for a lot of journeys which generate the conflicts built up and expended over panoramic settings. Such settings are utilized to explore themes essential to Islam. Unlike the traditional settings of the earlier novels, Gimba’s fictional world is a diffused picture of the social 64 realities of the new African urban aggregations (Eustace Palmer, 1978:105). Events or actions move, along with characters, from one city to another. In Witnesses to Tears, most of the happenings occur in Sabonville, the capital of an imaginary country known as Songhai. In this city, there are such street names as Gambia, Mali, Zimbabwe, Angola and Libya; there are institutions named after major African landmarks and personalities: Khartoum, Lusaka, Futa Toro; Cabral, Luthuli, etc. In Sacred Apples, action begins in New Tymbuktu, moves on to Minsra and Rabbah City. The distance between the first and third destinations amounts to about ten hours journey by road. In both novels, therefore, we are dealing with cosmopolitan settlements. Thus, Gimba brings together characters with diverse religious interests. In such settings, the author presents the theme of Islam as a tolerant religion. It is very likely that Serah Bello, in the first novel, is a Christian; yet, she and Hussaina, a Moslem, are so close for the one to die in an effort to protect the other. In Sacred Apples, the union of faiths is symbolized in the marriage between Rashad, a Moslem, and Miriam, a Roman Catholic Christian. Each of the spouses retains his or her faith. Their marriage succeeds while those where both partners are Moslems hit the rock. Gimba is making a point that is fundamental to the unity of our country: Islam respects human interaction, for to God „belongs every being‟ (Sura xxx:26). The true faith is that which upholds the one-ness of God and man should set his face perpetually “To the pattern on which/He has made mankind” (Sura xxx:30). The author is suggesting that every sect should strive to build bridges across those religious gulfs that threaten Nigeria’s unity in diversity. The reflection of pan-African ism in the settings conveys a message of the brotherhood of all men. Closely related to the above theme is another - the quality of Islamic faith. The orthodox doctrine holds that faith is a thing of the heart and one can be faithful without confessing and without performing any good works. As Klein (1971:40-1) puts it, „A man. may be a believer, though he neither confesses his faith nor performs any good works, but on the contrary be an evil-doer so that consequently faith and wicked works may be combined‟. Islam sees this kind of faith as the lowest. “He, however, who combines belief with confession and good works “, Klein continues, has reached perfection... in faith”. In Gimba’s novels, these categories of faith are displayed. Evil and violence are rife. The first lines of Witnesses to Tears introduce us to a comatose in B8 in the Female Traumalogy Ward of Khartoum Hospital. The rest of the story shows the bestiality of man with violence as its aftermath at all times. That Hussaina begs for a lift, a choice which introduces Lahab into her life, is to avoid exposure to a looming storm as well as a possible attack by hoodlums. That choice only ensnares her. The society, evil is pervasive. She is eventually wedded to a criminal: Lahab steals students’ fees, a crime for which his weak messenger is to be incarcerated for ten years; he connives with school contractors to dupe the government; he fraternizes with a witch-doctor who ensure that IJALEL 9(1):61-66 he is protected; the last violence to which he is a party is infanticide, and, in a twist of fate, his only child, Sagiir, is murdered for the ritual. At the time of this last evil act, Lahab is in Mecca asking „for Allah’s forgiveness for‟ himself and his marabout Sacred Apples begins and ends in violence. Protesters in New Tymbuktu attack Lahrah’s car; her life and those of her children are in jeopardy. She is nearly abused physically and psychologically by Al-Aswad; then follow the murder of her new husband and the shooting and arson involving An- Najmu and Al-Aswad. Gimba does not refute the existence of evil and violence in the Islamic world. In fact, he highlights these as factors which have aroused universal suspicion and ridicule for Islam. However, he acknowledges that this situation is far from what the Prophet has enjoined. The faithfuls who are malevolent end tragically: Lahab in Witnesses to Tears returns from the hajj and walks straight into prison; An-Najmu and Al-Aswad in Sacred Apples, pay the bitter price of death for their crimes. The Holy Qur’an says: “Eschew all sin, Open or secret those who earn sin Will get due recompense for their earnings”. (Sura VI: 120). Those who heed this injunction attain perfection in faith. Anas Al-Amin, though dead, leaves his good name behind. Blessings accruing to his good works pave the way for Hussaina’s husband. Ya-Shareef, Lahrah’s brother, sees the divorce of a dutiful wife, rape and murder as violence, and goes on to guard and protect his sister. Gimba approves of these men because they combine faith and good works. Finally, God’s commandment on marriage is another theme that engages this writer’s attention. Islam enjoins marriage and discourages celibacy. The Qur’an permits polygamy but it is not the given: Marry women of your choice, Two, or three, or four; But if ye fear that ye shall not Be able to deal justly (with them), Then only one... (Sura IV:3). God knows that no man can be fair to four women at once; that makes the proviso absolutely important. Gimba is in favour of monogamy, knowing that polygamy was expedient as a result of the depletion of the male population during the Jihads. Flis heroines are women who are emancipated, empowered and urban, characters whom Gloria Chukukere (1989:64) would describe as „dynamic and politicized‟. Their pedigrees mark them out as women who have exceeded Nana Ai, in Alkali’s The Virtuous Woman, in their quest for self-actualization, even though they do not attain Li’s militancy in The Stillborn. In Witnesses to Tears, Hussaina’s father, a graduate of Queen City University and, before his death, a director in the Department of Information and Culture, ensures that his daughter whom he has brought up single-handedly is adequately educated and can depend on herself. Her freedom at home is unhindered and her father has “absolute confidence” in her „sense of judgement (54). Lahrah, in Sacred African Prose Fiction and the Depiction of Corruption in Islamic Society and Religion: A Critical Study of Abubakar Gimba’s Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apples Apples, is a graduate. She demonstrates her empowerment when, after her divorce, she settles at Rabbah, gets employment as an industrial officer and, within a short space of time, heads the investment unit. These heroines come into marriage with their physical elegance and innocence. Hussaina is cast in the image of a Madonna: “Not a single person either among her fellow students or her instructors could ever point to a single stain of mean act on her” (15). She is conscious of the abundance of evil in her world but she cannot bring herself to suspect how close it is to her. In spite of her father’s cautionary statement, when she seeks his consent to marry Lahab: She tried to imagine Lahab as a bad man, a vile character immersed in base practices. No! She couldn’t convince herself that Lahab could be that bad... She shuddered at her own thoughts with a sense of guilt. She felt she had committed some sin against a saintly character (24). As for her great-daughter, Lahrah, in the next story, she is wise, though she is not evil. She can tell a lie to wade off a rapist, but she is incapable of doing harm. Her husband wrongfully accuses her of plotting his death. She puts up this sincere defence: “It will be too cruel to do what you have accused me of...! (64). These women go into marriage believing that their husbands will be satisfied. They know what the commandant says. They do not endorse polygamy. Hussaina remains Lahab’s only wife till the end. Her great-grand-daughter, in the other story, accepts Yazid on this promise: „. that as long as she lived, there would be no other woman in his life... no face so attractive, no voice so sweet, and no companionship so cherished as Iters’ (63). Their husbands turn out to be beguiling devils in saintly garbs. Behind Lahab’s youngish face and its seeming calmness is a lurking snake. As long as Mr. Anas remains alive, his son-in-law’s criminal nature is kept on hold. As soon as the gentleman’s death is confirmed, Lahab collects the casket with relief: Yes, Amen! Lahab said to himself as he began to drive home. Amen, he said repeatedly with a kind of inner satisfaction of one who had achieved the ultimate victory over an obstacle that posed the biggest threat to the achievement of his life’s ambition. Satisfied with the finality of his father- inlaw’s exit (69). From now on, he waxes strong in crime. And not until he inadvertently causes his only child to be murdered, Hussaina remains ignorant of his evil nature. In Lahrah’s case, Yazid Yaagi-Mankow, her husband, is also vicious. He is irresponsible enough to allow an extra-marital affair get into his head such that he divorces a loving wife. After this, he gambles with marriages. Gimba is a moderate feminist and this means a lot in a society where the dominant males have interpreted the commandments subtly to enhance the enslavement of women. However, notwithstanding that his heroines are enlightened and no longer need physical male escorts, a long oppressive tradition, innocence and gullibility render them very vulnerable. 65 CONCLUSION The reconstruction of the two distinct phases of the post-colonial Nigerian condition in Witnessess to Tears and Sacred Apples show the reality as a product historical force and the characters appear to be caught helplessly in the web of conflict, social evolution and post-colonial disillusionment. Although concerned with the contemporary reality, the colonial legacy looms large in the novels. The historical events related to colonization seem to have shattered the spiritual fabric of the Nigerians causing their loss of traditional values and making them participate in the historical development for which they have not been prepared. The immediate consequences are chaos, corruption, and instability in all spheres of life. With a keen awareness to the socio-political forces operating in postcolonial Nigeria, Gimba presents this crisis in fictional term. His conviction about art’s” disquieting relationship” with a “recognizable reality” and his understanding of the artist’s responsibility in the African context have enabled him to give a poignant expression to the prevailing corruption and instability–the two disrupting forces affecting the health of the entire nation. Gimba has used his prolific writings to awaken the consciousness of the masses to the realities of their circumstances. Some of the writers do not only stop at this level of awakening but go further to recommend serious resistance measures against the enemies of the people. Gimba’s novels appear like sermons based on The Holy Qur’an. His stories create the healthy impression that, in Nigeria, Islam has the potential to repeat the Prophet’s achievement in Arabia. In the words of Ahmed Aziz (1980: xviii-xix), this would translate into transforming “tribes who had been for centuries content with ignorance into a people with the greatest thirst for knowledge”. With such learning crystallizing, Nigerians shall make “universal human brotherhood a fact and principle of common law”.Coming as they do at a time when Islam is being sniffed at as a religion that instigates terror and opposes peace and stability in the modern world, Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apples provide food for thought. The world appears to have mistaken political and secular practices for religious observances. For we that are residing in Nigeria, Gimba’s novels give the assurance that Islam projects a very dynamic culture and it is inimical to the emergence of a cohesive, virile nation blessed with pageants, heterogeneous yet ensuring homogeneity. Here is without controversy, a work of post-colonial disillusionment. REFERENCES Clnikukere, G. (1989). The Delemma of the Heroine in Contemporary African Fiction: The Example of Mariama Ba and Aminata Sow-Fall (Ed.), Humanities and Social Change. Osita Njelita and Austine Okereke. Lagos: Ofo-Heritage. Chukwu, V. O. (2005). Landmarks: African Novels of the Twentieth Century. Onitsha: West and Solomon Publishing Co. Ltd. 66 Eliot, T. S. (1962). Religion and Literature. In Five Approaches of Literary Criticism, (Ed.). Wilbur Scott, New York: Collier. Farah, N. (1982). From a Crooked Rib. London: Heincmann. Gimba, A. (1986). Witnesses to Tears. Enugu, Nigeria: Delta Publications. ----------- (1994). Sacred Apples. Ibadan: Evan Brothers (Nigeria). Idris, Y. (1984). Flic Stranger in Rings of Burnished Brass, Frans Catherine Cobliam. London: Heinemann. Klein, F. A. (1971). The Religion of Islam. New Ed. London: Curzon Press. IJALEL 9(1):61-66 Nnolim, C. (1988). “The „Sons of Achebe”:The Example of John Munonye in Kriteria: A Nigerian Journal of Literary Research, Vol. 1 No. 1. Palmer, E. (1978). Two Views of Urban Life: Meja Mvvangi, Going Down River Road and Nuruddin Farah, A Naked Needle in African Literature Today. No. 9. The Holy Qur‟an (1968). Trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Beirut, Lebanon: Dar A1 Arabia. Wauthier, C. (1978). The Literature and Thought of Modern Africa. 2nd English Language Edition. London: Heinemann. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Self-mythology Through Trauma Studies in Paul Auster’s Invention of Solitude Mohammad Amin Shirkhani* Faculty of Industry & Mining (Khash), University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran Corresponding Author: Mohammad Amin Shirkhani, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received: October 01, 2019 Accepted: December 25, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 Auster’s first novel The Invention of Solitude was significant, in that it not only catalogued his own experiences, but also provided one of the earliest examples of the psychological processes involved in trauma and memory storage. It demonstrates the self’s psychological use of the Ego, in a classical sense, to negotiate between emotional response and reality, in order to create meaning around a set of events. More specifically, the death of Auster’s father operates as a catalyst for the author’s journey of self-discovery, which is richly tied to the psychoanalytical principles of Freud and Lacan, and which ultimately allows him to fully appreciate his experience of loss, by supporting the wish fulfillment related to his relationship with his father, and his need to understand the rejection he perceives suffering as a child. This highlights the difference between the inner child’s ego-centric or narcissistic perception, and the adult’s ability to rationalize, especially as it relates to memory and unfulfilled need. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Paul Auster, psychoanalysis, Trauma, Memory, Self-myth INTRODUCTION Everyone experiences trauma, however, the way they handle that trauma is unique, and irreversibly connected to their other life experiences, their memories, and their personal psychological process. This is visible in Paul Auster’s memoir The Invention of Solitude, which was not only his first major work, but also one of his most influential, in terms of trauma studies, and understanding the impact of trauma on the individual. More specifically, the story, while autobiographical in nature, is heavily laced with psychological theory, and questions the nature of trauma and relationships, as they relate to the creation of self-myth. More specifically, the configuration of self-mythology occurs through trauma studies within the text, as it relates to Freud and Lacan, and their theories of self. Auster’s memoir, which is ultimately predominantly a journey of self-discovery, is catalyzed by the death of Auster’s father. This familial trauma could not be described as a primary focus of the work, but rather, as a springboard for Auster to enter into the discussion of his major themes, which include fatherhood, memory, and the creation of self (Righi 19). The text is almost essay-like in nature, stopping short of a stream-of-consciousness style, but most certainly taking place in unconscious motivation, or the conscious discussion of unconscious behaviors (Roger 1). As such, it is pertinent to analyze the role of the “I” within the text, as it relates to Ego, and the creation of self-myth, especially during trauma. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Trauma Studies Trauma has its foundation in the Greek word “trauma”, which is “to wound” and was originally used to describe an injury of the body (Caruth 3). However, it has been extended, in English to refer to not only physical, but likewise psychological trauma. More specifically, one of the earliest definitions applied in trauma studies, Lenore Terr, who did the first longitudinal study of traumatized children, defined trauma as stimulus that “occurs when a sudden, unexpected, overwhelming, intense emotional blow, or series of blows, assaults the person from the outside. Traumatic events are external, but they quickly become information in the mind (Terr 8). From a psychoanalytical perspective, Freud, defined trauma as stimulus that surpasses a psychological barrier, such that it can “provoke a very extensive disturbance in the workings of energy of the organism” (“Beyond the Pleasure Principle 34). Similarly, Caruth describes it as a “breach in the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world” (3). However, this breach of the mind is complex, and should not be seen only as an externally inflicted wound. While the stimulus is external, the processing of the stimulus is internal. Vand der Kolk defined this complex co-dependency by stating that “Traumatization occurs when both internal and external resources are inadequate to cope with a perceived external threat” (“The Compulsion to repeat…” 393). As such, what is traumatizing is different for each person, and specific to their personal resources and coping abilities, such Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.67 IJALEL 9(1):67-72 68 that one individual may be traumatized by an experience that another individual could easily weather. Trauma is also, frequently connected to memory. Generally, the way that things are remembered, or how memory is stored, is impacted by stress, and the impact of trauma. The images, emotions, and perceptions that are tied to trauma do not get stored like other memories, but rather continue to impact behavior beyond the moment, and are stored in a way that is more vivid than a standard memory (Le Doux 68). More specifically, evidence indicates that those memories, which are tied to trauma are more deeply imbedded in the brain, and so are remembered longer, and with greater, through potentially less accurate, detail than most stored memory (Le Doux 68). Further, evidence suggests that these memories are stored without words (“Trauma and Memory” 1440). As such, going through the process of putting the experience “back into words” may provide healing, or lessen the psychological side effects of the trauma (“Trauma and Healing 1442). This includes re-experiencing the trauma, or allowing stimulus to trigger a recurrence of the stress related to the experience (Ehlers, Hackmann, & Michaels 403). In addition to placing the trauma back into words, it is also useful to explore what is now known, which was not before, or to incorporate new information into the memory of the trauma, using “I now know” statements (Ehlers, Hackmann, & Michaels 403). Based on these studies, it is clear why trauma and memory studies, together, are a field that is growing in interest and popularity. They are widely considered complimentary, because of the pathological process of remembering, and the way that we process and remember trauma. More specifically, any lifetime trauma can be understood, not only as it is experienced, but also as it is retrospectively perceived. More specifically, according to Caruth, traumatic events are “unbearable in their horror and intensity” and so “they often exist as memories that are not immediately recognizable as truth” (i). As a result, they are best analyzed, or understanding is gained, not from immediate or straightforward analysis of facts, but rather through a “process of discovery” that explores memory and seeks to understand consciously what was stored unconsciously (Caruth 1). Self-myth Self-mythologizing is a process, defined by Tad Waddington as creating in yourself a hero, by viewing in oneself the traditional heroic qualities, when facing every obstacle (1). He uses Odysseus as the quintessential example of a man mythologized, because he increased his greatness to meet every challenge, and so by demanding greatness of himself, he in fact became a greater man. The term was actually first employed by Carl Eisteien who referred to a “private myth” which was used psychoanalytically to consider parts of the human persona, that were tied to their own experience, and the way that they view their performance, or development, during that experience, especially as it related to art (Feinstein, & Krippner 111). These personal myths serve the same function, in one’s own life that cultural myths perform in society (Warmoth, 18). Joseph Campbell described the functions of a myth, stating that myths are a means of understanding, or establishing a connection between the current and the past (9). When the connection is lost, or is not understood, individuals will respond to a psychological need to either rediscover existing myths, or creates their own myths that serve a greater purpose. In doing so, they provide a means of explaining, or dealing with, our individual realities (Campbell 19). In keeping with this idea, Campbell defines the four most basic functions of the myth: to give a sense of wonder and mystery to routine happenings in the universe, or to explain life’s mystery, to explain how the world works, or the science of experience, to fill a sociological need, or to validate our own sense of belonging, and confirm the social order of which we are a part, and finally, to function pedagogically, or in order to teach a lesson (Campbell 38). Bearing these functions of the myth in mind, a connection can be made between self-myth and psychoanalysis, as it relates to generating a sense of identity, and creating meaning about one’s own existence. Krippner states that self-myth informs the development of personality, by helping individuals learn from personal experiences or categorize traumatic experience in a meaningful way (7). Psychoanalysis In order to understand how Auster engages with psychoanalysis, especially as it relates to his creation of his own selfmyth, the practice of psychoanalysis must be defined. The study and practice of psychoanalysis, as it relates to human behavior, was created by Sigmund Freud (“The Uncanny” 1). He theorized that everything a person mentally experiences or behaviorally exhibits, including dreams, personality traits, and subconscious acts can be psychologically analyzed, or broken down and understood. He developed three specific branches of the self, known as the id, ego and superego, to describe various features of an individual’s psyche (“The Ego and the Id” 1). More specifically, an individual’s id controls primitive and instinctual desire. This includes sexuality, aggression and defense, as well as other instinctive needs and responses. The super ego is the individual’s moral compass, or the part of the psyche that is socially driven, and which determines what the individual feels is right and what they believe is wrong. Finally, the ego is the element of the psyche that mediates between reality and fantasy, or between narcissism and reason, in order to ensure that the individual can make rational decisions (“The Uncanny” 1). Freud uses the id, ego and superego as the basis for psychoanalysis, and defends the belief that an individual, or in the case of literature a character, can be analyzed, based on their personality traits, actions, and emotions, facilitating the understanding of the individual’s personal psychological state, and related reactions (“The Uncanny” 1). More recently, Jacques Lacan has worked to expand upon Freud’s framework for psychoanalysis (1). He extended Freud’s theory, by stating that the id, ego, and super ego act in direct response to man’s needs, demands and desires. As such, what drives an individual’s emotions, behaviors, and personality traits is their personal needs, or what they Self-mythology Through Trauma Studies in Paul Auster’s Invention of Solitude perceive as needing from others (Lacan 17). This is primarily tied to a need to feel validated, recognized and to satisfy the need to feel loved and accepted (Lacan 69). This means that when an individual is psychoanalyzed, the researcher, carrying out the analysis, is seeking to understand the need or desire that an individual is seeking to fulfill, and how the id, superego, or ego perceive and respond to that demand. RESEARCH METHODS For the purpose of the following study, the researcher textually analyzed Auster’s self-myth, and his use of psychoanalytic principles within the text of The Invention of Silence, as it relates to Auster’s trauma, and parallels trauma studies. This analysis allowed the researcher to consider the way that trauma and the ego work together to create the self-myth, as well as how that self-myth functions, from a psychoanalytic perspective, and as it aligns with Freud and Lacanian theories of self, and psychological need, especially as it relates to the way the individual processes trauma. RESULTS The constructs of trauma and memory studies were only beginning to take shape, at the time that Auster wrote his novel (Whitehead 11). In the case of Auster, this process of discovery, and the way in which he remembers and processes his trauma, is depicted in the creation of his self-myth, and its pedagogical function. More specifically, writing the book The Invention of Solitude serves not only as a therapeutic process of meeting need, and putting his trauma into words, but also serves the function of psychoanalyzing his needs and actions, through reflection. As such, it is necessarily tied to the idea of the self, the study of trauma, and the psychoanalytic understanding of whar motivates the individual’s actions. The text of The Invention of Solitude is broken into two sub-texts, or essays. The first, “Portrait of an Invisible Man” contains Auster’s myth. It is the cataloguing of the journey that Auster takes in order to get to know his father. On this journey, which can be compared to Odysseus’s odyssey, he travels to his childhood home, gets rid of his father’s belongings, considers the significance of an empty photo album, especially as it compares to a stack of old photos, and seeks to paint a meaningful picture in his own mind of his father, who he considers a “tourist” within his life (7). The moment of learning, consistent with the function of myth, as described by Campbell, comes in the form of an epiphany at the very end of the first half of the book, or at the end of the “Portrait” section. At this point, Auster states that having discovered his family secrets, and the truth about his father’s childhood, he understands that his father “never learned to trust anyone” or to “want anything” as such, his father was not cold to him, on purpose, but rather, focused on what he could control, rather than what he could not. This in turn made him focus on his work, rather than his family, and so prevented him from making deep connections with his family members (Auster 51). He uses this epiphany in the second half of the text, the “Book of Memory” in order to connect to 69 the first half of the book by using the myth of the father and son, or Auster’s self-myth, as a platform for critically analyzing concepts and feelings related to the development of self, and psychoanalyzing their purpose. This directly ties to trauma and memory studies, in terms of how he is describing and defining his own trauma experience. Within this discussion found in Part II, Auster directly works to tie the self-myth, which he has constructed in Part I of the text, with psychological theory, and explains how and why certain events occur, and why they are perceived as they are. More specifically, the myth Auster has built, surrounding the trauma of his father’s death, is directly tied to his experience as a child. The connection is, according to Auster, directly tied to Freud’s argument that each stage of our self, is ultimately co-existing with all other stages of our self. This theory of the inner child, as first presented by Freud suggests that the child inside of us is petulant and prone to narcissism and temper tantrums (Diamond 1). In other words, the inner child is interested in protecting itself, and in promoting its own best interest. Thus, memories that are stored by the internal child cannot be relied upon for accuracy because they are tainted by the experience and the emotion of the child that suffered the related trauma. As such, it could be stated that memory is impacted by, and made less accurate because what is stored in memory continues to function as it did when we were a child, even while we attempt to analyze it as an adult. Auster states that the memories within us are not “intact” by a set structure, but rather, impacted by our personal perception at our most ego-centric state (Auster, 1982). More specifically, in “Mourning and Melancholia” Freud states that he does not understand the “mechanism” of mourning or the “economics of pain,” but does know that what is stored is not consistent with what is experienced, and as such man should not “overestimate” the “value of our conclusion” as it relates to our experience of trauma (252). However, Auster’s use of the world “invention” within the title also insinuates that he does not think that memory represents a full truth, or encompasses all the potential of the “pre-existing” self. Rather, he insinuates that there is not a “unique and autonomous” self to be discovered, but rather the self that is invented, and who is evolving, as the myth is self-written (Dow 272). Similarly, Auster found that “even as adults we have buried within us a memory of the way we perceived the world as children” (Auster 148). In the case of Auster, it is clear that he perceived his father as cold and indifferent because of his personal dislike for Auster himself, and for his family as a whole. However, when he goes on a journey to “find” his father, he discovers that his narcissistic perception, based on memory and the experience of childhood, was not an accurate depiction of his father, and his motivations. Rather, it was more reflective of Auster’s own sense of rejection, because of his father’ actions, and because of the trauma of his father’s indifference, thus it was not rationally founded in reality. This is described by Freud, in his work “The Uncanny” by stating that when we experience trauma, or other “uncanny” events that we do not have the ability to fully rationalize 70 or understand that, the experience leads “us back to the old, animistic conception of the universe.” (1). This, animistic concept is ultimately rooted in a child-like belief in magic, and shares many of the functions of myth, as were described by Campbell (36), as it relates to the function of explaining the unexplainable. More specifically, Freud states that the understanding that is developed is: characterized by the idea that the world was peopled with the spirits of human beings; by the subject’s narcissistic overvaluation of his own mental processes; by the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts and the technique of magic based on that belief; by the attribution to various outside persons and things of carefully graded magical powers, or ‘mama’; as well as by all the other creations with the help of which man, in the unrestricted narcissism of that stage of development, strove to fend off the manifest prohibitions of reality. (“The Uncanny” 1) Thus myth, is directly related to the perceptions of childhood, and the psychoanalytic principle that man is driven by emotional impulses and the need to escape what is frightening, and understand what is complex, in simple terms. This is, Auster states, because we have a need, as adults, to categorize and define our memories, including those that are childbased, in a single and conclusive way. Freud states that when our “infantile” memory is revived when “some impression” or current experience, seems to confirm the assumptions of our childhood, such that we must seek meaning anew (“The Uncanny” 1). Thus, in the case of Auster, the current loss of his father, revives the feelings of loss and abandonment that are contained within his memories of childhood, and his father’s role as a “tourist” in his life, and he is forced to write a new, or to invent and evolve, his self-myth, in order to give meaning to that experience, and to seek resolution of the traumas that are tied to his relationship with his father. In the “Book of Memory” reflecting on his experience in “The Portrait of an Invisible Man” he speaks genuinely about the role of the storytelling, as it relates to the building of the self-myth. He specifically notes that understanding Freud’s theories of memory and trauma do not provide an explanation for his emotions, or his perceptions, but rather, “serves to describe the process, point out the terrain on which it takes place” (Auster, 148). This use of language, and the word “terrain” is interesting because it feeds into the idea of the analysis, or “Portrait” section of the text as a myth, or storytelling. Just as Odysseus suffered the perils of the sea, as the terrain of his myth, so must Auster, referred to simply as “A” in the “Book of Memory” section of the text, suffer the terrain of his own memory, in trying to find his way “home” (Auster 149). Lacan (1958) similarly spoke of the inner child’s desire to sabotage, out of narcissism, as a “passion for ignorance” or a “lack which is filled by self-possessed adult reason “(Parker 111). In other words, children, or the inner-child, categorizes memory of traumatic events according to what they take away, or what lack they create in an individual’s life, as such, even an adult, when analyzing memories of the past, which have been reasoned and stored as a child, may be ego-centric in nature. For example, Auster states, when IJALEL 9(1):67-72 referring to his own memory that “A. is more than willing to accept it as true. Unhomeness…” (Auster 148). He was tying current experience to the memory and experience of childhood, and how it “appeared to him in the present in the form of these experiences” (Auster 148). This is a reflection of how he experienced his father’s death, in the current, as a direct correlation to, or reliving, or the traumatic experiences of his childhood. In essence, his father had chosen to be vacant during his childhood, focusing more on his career than his relationship with Auster, and now, from an emotional perspective, Auster felt that, in death, he was abandoning him for a second time, without ever really getting to know him. All aspects of this journey of self-discovery are thus meaningfully tied to Auster’s self. This is a consistent theme in Auster’s works, which was first explored in his writing of his first novel, The Invention of Solitude and which is carried throughout many of his works. Rogers (1) defined this theme by stating “the conscious part of the self, spies on the intimate, secret, unconscious self, so as to see through its workings.” In other words, Auster uses his writings as a means of allowing the ego to mediate between the conscious and unconscious, test reality, and form a sense of personal identity, or the creation of the self-myth that fulfills the need for understanding (Edwards 24). For Auster, this process occurs through writing. More specifically, he states that “he is remembering his childhood and it is writing itself out for him in the present.” (Auster 148). The writing is the function of the ego, as it was defined by Freud, in testing reality, and what is written therefore becomes the self-myth. This occurs, according to Freud as the result of unfulfilled needs, more specifically, as they relate to the desires, and wishes of the child. He specifically states “unsatisfied wishes are the driving power behind phantasies, every separate phantasy contains the fulfillment of a wish, on unsatisfactory reality (“The relation of the poet…” 36). So, in creating his self-myth Auster seeks to satisfy the need for a relationship with his father, through self-myth, which was unsatisfied in reality, and which cannot be satisfied because of the finality of his father’s death. This is consistent with the cathartic resolution of the story, in that his conclusion states that he has a new appreciation of his father, and drew closer to him during the journey of self-discovery that “The Portrait of an Invisible Man” offered to him. More specifically, Auster (22) wrote that before writing his relationship with his father seemed like “in an unmovable relationship, cut off from each other on opposite sides of a wall.” As such, Auster feels that he is able to breathe new life into his father, and gain a relationship with him, by writing about him, and at the end of the essay, suffers his loss and absence for a third and final time, stating: “When I step into this silence, it will mean that my father has vanished forever” (Auster 65). This sense of morning could not have been accomplished if it were not for the journey of discovery that the writing provided and the way that it let him fulfill the fantasy of a satisfying relationship with his father. Freud specifically wrote of the creation of self-myth, though he did not call it such, as it relates to the production of Self-mythology Through Trauma Studies in Paul Auster’s Invention of Solitude writers, and the need for fulfillment of these types of wishes, writing that “all [writers] have a hero who is the center of interest.” This hero, however, is self-created, because it is “his majesty the Ego, the hero if all day dreams and novels” (“The relation of the poet…” 40). As such, what Auster was writing was consistent with the trend in writers of self-myth, as defined by Freud, and become ego-centric, and focused on explaining the self. 71 However, he gives his memory voice through writing, and by allowing the story, or in this case, his self-myth, to write itself (i). This allows him to incorporate his new knowledge, in this case his family secret, and his new understanding of his father’s behavior, into his self-myth. Ultimately, this resolves the trauma by providing him a connection with his father, after death that he could not achieve in life. CONCLUSION DISCUSSION The building of a self-myth, is designed to serve the same functions as cultural myth, based within one’s personal experiences. In the case of Auster, the stimulus, or experience that leads to self-mythologizing is his father’s death, and through the exploration of not only the trauma of his father’s death, but also the relationship with his father as a whole, as it is visible from the point of completion, serves as the adventure/ experience of the hero within the myth, while Auster himself acts as the hero. This then allows his own exploration of his experience to explain the phenomenon, provide sociological validation, and teach a lesson. The original trauma, which causes a “break” between Auster, and what he is capable of coping with is not his father’s death, but rather, the perception that his father was a visitor in his life, or an “invisible man” within his childhood (2). This absence of his father is then revived, or brought back to memory, by the death of his father, at which time he reexperiences the loss. His need, therefore, is to understand his father, and to build a bond with him, even in his absence. More specifically, he states ““What disturbed me was something else, something unrelated to death or my response to it: the realization my father had left no traces.” (4). His father is just as invisible to him, in death, as he was in life, leaving Auster with an overwhelming feeling of need, or of lack, because of a need that was unfulfilled. So, the creation of his self-myth is, according to Lacan’s definition of psychoanalysis, the action taken to fulfill the need for creating understanding of his father, or telling a story, in which he can be the hero, and his need for his father’s presence can be fulfilled. This also allows it to severe as his own healing process, as outlined previously, trauma is stored without words, and so, in order to resolve the trauma, often, the memory must be connected with the words in order to resolve the trauma, and incorporate new knowledge. Auster expresses the wordlessness of memory, stating “It is also true that memory sometimes comes to him as a voice. It is a voice that speaks inside him, and it is not necessarily his own.” (122). He specifically addresses the way memory is stored without the words to describe trauma, and his needs to address it with words, stating Then he must speak to it in his own voice and tell it to stop, thus returning it to the silence it came from. At other times, it sings to him. At still other times it whispers. And then there are the times it merely hums, or babbles, or cries out in pain. And even when it says nothing, he knows it is still there, and in the silence of this voice that says nothing, he waits for it to speak.” (123). Auster, in his autobiographical text The Invention of Solitude, explores not only one man’s trauma, but also the reexperiencing of childhood trauma in the adult self. More specifically, the loss of his father causes him to re-experience the absence of his father and the rejection of his childhood, while also coping with the more permanent loss of the father figure. According to trauma theory, this creates a break between Auster’s reality, and his ability to cope, which alters the way memories are stored and processed. Psychoanalytically, this leaves a need for Auster to come to a full understanding of his experience, and to contextualize it, and give it meaning. This is ultimately accomplished through the creation of a self-myth. In this case, the first half of the text, “The Portrait of an Invisible Man” is used to generate the myth that gives Auster meaning related to his trauma, and to incorporate new knowledge, into meaning, while also allowing his personal story to serve a pedagogical function. This allows him to give words to the memories that mumble and babble, and instead give them shape. This is followed, then, by his own psychoanalytical exploration of his myth, and his need for the myth, as a way of finding peace. Ultimately, as described by Lacan, the ego is the negotiator between the need, in this case related to an understanding of his father, and the rational. The journey that he goes on, through his self-myth, allows him to replace his father, as a “tourist” with a man of stature, who, though he suffers flaws, is tractable within Auster’s life, and writing. He sees himself, ultimately, as a Pinocchio style hero, saving both himself, and his father, from invisibility. Ultimately, it can be asserted, that while everyone experiences hard times, what constitutes trauma, and how a person responds to that trauma is unique, and based on both their resources and their primal need. This directly impacts their memories, or the way they process experience. This is specifically visible in Paul Auster’s memoir The Invention of Solitude, which serves as a framework for understanding the connection between trauma, memory, and language as a framework for expressing the psychological need to resolve trauma, and create meaning. The Invention of Solitude, as an autobiographical text, and a complete self-myth, performs all of the functions of a myth, within Auster’s own recollection, and resolution, allowing him to make meaning from, and redefine his own experiences, and to meet his psychological need for connection with his father. 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