Volume 12 Number 2 2020 - Page 3

Transport, Mobility and Mobile Groups in Bengal: Deconstructing Colonial Myths of Movement and Migration in the Eighteenth Century

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251 views

Baijayanti Chatterjee

Assistant Professor of History, Seth Anandram Jaipuria College, Calcutta University.

ORCID: 0000-0003-1176-6557. Email: chatterjeebaijayanti@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.04

 Abstract

This article sets out to dismiss the European notion of a lazy and static Bengali perennially averse to movement, by looking at transport networks, mobility and mobile groups in eighteenth century Bengal. The article argues that Bengali society was highly mobile, owing to the presence of an efficient system of transport by land and water which sustained movement. The so-called ‘indolence’ of the Bengali and his reluctance for movement was in fact a ‘myth’ created by the Europeans with a vested interest to disparage native society and to justify European domination over Bengal.

 Keywords: Colonial myth-making, transport & mobility, eighteenth-century Bengal

Role of Code-Switching and Code-Mixing in Indigenous Communicative Contexts: A Study of The God of Small Things

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321 views

Sangeeta Mukherjee1 & Devi Archana Mohanty2

1Senior Assistant Professor, VIT University, Tamil Nadu, India. Orcid: 0000-0002-5488-2876. Email:  sangeetamukherjee70@gmail.com

2Assistant Professor, NIET, Greater Noida, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-7103-7079. Email: devi1archana@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.03

 Abstract

Communicative strategies like code-switching and code-mixing have interested researchers the world over. These strategies have traversed from real life situations to creative writings to social networking domains and are dominant in bilingual or multi-lingual societies for multifarious reasons. While majority of the research was conducted in the spoken form from the real-life contexts, a few were directed towards the written forms in literary genres and computer-mediated communication. However, a significant gap becomes noticeable and needs to be explored in Indian English fiction where creative writers have dexterously used these communicative strategies. Keeping the above in mind, the present paper attempts to analyze the role of these strategies in indigenous interpersonal communicative contexts in Indian English fiction. The text chosen for this purpose is Arundhati Roy’s TheGod o Small Things and the analysis is based on the grammatical and pragmatic explanation of indigenous words which mostly belong to the area of interpersonal communication. The study shows how the author has skillfully used these strategies to unravel the indigenous cultural and social customs and mindset of the people within a particular indigenous community as well as the role-relationship between the interlocutors in a particular communicative context.

Keywords: Code-switching, code-mixing, code-retention, interpersonal communicative context, pragmatic markers.

Literary Recreation of the Colloquial Syntax in La Chanca by Juan Goytisolo

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214 views

María Gómez Mesas1, Francisco J. Rodríguez Muñoz2

1 Department of Spanish Language and Literature, IES Los Ángeles, Almería, Spain

2Department of Education, Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Almería, Spain, ORCID: 0000-0001-6071-509X. Email: frodriguez@ual.es

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.02

 Abstract

This paper examines the literary recreation of the colloquial modality in the novel by Juan Goytisolo La Chanca, claiming the syntax as a fundamental level of the stylistic analysis, which arises from a pragmatic-discursive perspective. Consequently, the study focuses on the colloquium syntax and applies the grid analysis developed by the Groupe Aixois de Recherche en Syntaxe. More specifically, attention is paid to the symmetry and enumeration figures, to the suspended statements, and to the cumulative syntax in the work. It is concluded that Goytisolo manages to recreate the colloquial modality in La Chanca, also from the syntactic perspective, capturing not only aspects that are characteristic of the phonetics, the morphology or the lexicon of the diatopic and diastratic variations represented, but also of the constructions which are typical of the colloquial conversation.

Keywords: colloquial syntax, grid analysis, Juan Goytisolo, La Chanca, literary recreation

A Medieval Woman Dares to Stand Up: Marie de France’s Criticism of the King and the Court

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383 views

Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona, USA. ORCID: 0000-0002-3878-319X. Email:  aclassen@arizona.edu

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.01

 Abstract:

While medievalists have long recognized Marie de France’s extraordinary literary abilities, we have not yet fully identified the extent to which she stood up as a social critic who attacked many social ills within her society, not holding back in her sharp attacks both against the figure of the king and against the powerful nobles of her time. Only if we combine her lais and her fables in our analysis, can we gain a full understanding of the far-reaching discourse about the danger of abuse of power at the hand of the mighty and rich in the high Middle Ages. Although we tend to identify that past era as deeply remote from us, as repressive, simple-minded, and submissive, Marie’s strong criticism of the abuses by the high-ranking contemporaries sheds important light on a world that was not really that far away from us in many different ways, with many intellectuals already extensively aware about social injustice and the danger of tyranny.

Keywords: Marie de France, court criticism, criticism of the king, lais, fables

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