This paper addresses the broad question of how work in sociolinguistics should be related to social theory, and in particular the assumptions about cognition that can underpin that relation. A discursive psychological approach to issues of cognition is pressed and illustrated by a reworking of Stubb's review of work on language and cognition. A discursive psychological approach is offered to the topics of racist discourse, courtroom interaction, scientific writing, and sexism. Discursive psychology rejects the approach to 'cognition' as a collection of more or less stable inner entities and processes. Instead the focus is on the way 'mental phenomena' are both constructed and oriented to in people's practices.

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences theory is presented as a cognitive perspective on intelligence which has profound implications for education in general. More specifically, it has led to the application of eight of these frames to language teaching and learning. In this chapter, we will argue in favour of the application of MIT to the EFL classroom, using as support some of the major insights for language teaching from brain science.

Up until now, ‘migration literature’ has primarily been defined as ‘texts written by migrant authors’, a definition that has been discussed, criticised, and even rejected by critics and authors alike. Very rarely has ‘migration literature’ been understood as ‘literature on the topic of migration’, which is an approach this book adopts by presenting a comparative analysis of contemporary texts on experiences of migration. By focusing on specific themes and motifs in selected texts, this study suggests that migration literature is a sub-genre that exists in both various bodies of literature as well as various languages. This book analyses English and German texts by authors such as Monica Ali, Dimitré Dinev, Anna Kim, Timothy Mo, Preethi Nair, Caryl Phillips, Hamid Sadr, and Vladimir Vertlib, among others.

Er(r)go …,
anglistycznie, czyli zanurzamy się we własne źródło – „Er(r)go” bowiem z anglistyki się wyłoniło – a potem podążamy odnogami, dopływami, odpływami. A więc świadectwa intelektualnych nastrojów z czasów wczesnego naporu cultural studies;  z jednej strony kiedyś owoc zakazany, z drugiej strachy i obawy: a to utrata tożsamości literaturoznawczej  i kulturowej , a to marksizm niebezpieczny, a to zagubienie wartości estetycznych i rozmycie w egalitaryzmie. I problem zbliżony: jaka jest rola anglistów – fachowców od propagowania obcej kultury i obcego języka – wobec tożsamości językowej narodu? Zatapiają ten ojczyźniany statek (to Sienkiewicz) dopompowując językowe skażenia zamiast je wypompowywać, czy też pomagają mu się utrzymać na burzliwych falach przemian? Ambiwalentny zatem mit anglisty.  Anglista w Polsce jako Robinson Crusoe na wyspie zarosłej różnymi kontekstami, polskimi i niepolskimi? I oczywiście problemy przekładu. Tłumacz jako element trzeci – pośrednik między dwoma rzeczywistościami, które zapośredniczeniu się nie poddają; subiektywność w translacji i tłumacza skok wiary.

Desubiektywizacja i przemysł tłumaczeniowy; masowe oszustwo. I co tu czytać, skoro błazny i łotry tworzą listy lektur. Zatem fundamentalna kwestia kanonu: równo czy elitarnie? Kanon jako fundament i emanacja tożsamości. Precz zatem z Martwymi Białymi Europejskimi Mężczyznami! Ale czy Zulusi dadzą nam Tołstoja? Jest przynajmniej pornologia Markiza de Sade’a, a poza tym „nicość, puste miejsce niemożliwości identyfikacji”. Ratunkiem edukacja humanistyczna? Ale jaka? Prawicowa, czyli poszukiwanie jednej prawdy, czy lewicowa, czyli kształcenie niezależności intelektualnej. I tu anglista odwołuje się do Rorty’ego i idzie ze sobą na kompromis, choć nie bez wahań, tarć i polemik. Angielski łaciną dnia dzisiejszego?

Numer ten został przygotowany pod opieką Leszka Dronga.

Wojciech Kalaga


Er(r)go …,
on English studies. And so we submerge into our own spring—since Er(r)go emerged from English studies—and then we follow the arms, the tributaries, the tides. Thus the substantiation of the intellectual mood of the times of the early onset of cultural studies; on the one hand, once a forbidden fruit, on the other, anxieties and fears: it could mean the loss of cultural identity and identity of literary studies; could mean dangerous Marxism, could mean losing aesthetic values and diffusion in egalitarianism. And  a related problem: what is the role of English philologists—professionals in promoting foreign culture and foreign language—towards linguistic identity of their nation? Are they sinking the national ship (that’s Sienkiewicz) pumping in linguistic contamination instead of pumping it out, or are they helping the ship to stay afloat on the stormy seas of change? Thus, the ambivalent myth of the English philologist. The English philologist as Robinson Crusoe on an island overgrown with different contexts, Polish and not Polish. And, of course, the problems of translation. The translator as the third element—the mediator between two realities, which do not yield to mediation; subjectivity in translation and the translator’s leap of faith.

Desubjectification and the translation industry; a mass fraud. What is there to read, if fools and rogues create reading lists? Thus the fundamental question of canon: equality or elitism? The canon as the foundation and the emanation of identify. Thus away with Dead White European Males! But will the Zulu give us Tolstoy? At least there remains Marquise de Sade’s pornology, but apart from that “nothing, an empty space of the impossibility of identification.” Humanist education as possible salvation? But of what kind? Right-winged, or the search for the only truth, or left-winged, the shaping of intellectual independence? And here the English philologist calls upon Rorty and chooses a compromise, albeit not without hesitations, tensions and polemics. English as Latin of today?

The present issue was prepared under the supervision of Leszek Drong

Wojciech Kalaga

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

The current use of podcasts, as a new channel to input knowledge, has effectively been promoting listening comprehension which consequently has increased the acquisition of target language. The objective of the present study is to investigate the effects of video-podcasts integration on listening comprehension. The twelve-week quantitative study employed a quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design. Samples included in both the control and experimental groups were 120 English major male undergraduates from a University in Saudi Arabia. The Findings of ANCOVA analysis showed that the video-podcast group significantly outperformed the control group on the post-test. The findings imply that video-podcasts are useful resource for enhancing EFL learners’ listening comprehension. Article visualizations:

This article examines seventeen children poems by Sylvia Plath written in the years 1960-63, in relation to the poetics of romantic love. Drawing on motherhood studies (Klein, 1975; O’Reilly, 2010; Rich, 1976; Winnicott, 1956, 1965, 1967), the maternal shift in psychoanalysis (see Bueskens, 2014: 3-6), and attachment theory (Bowlby, 1950, 1969, 1988), it reads love as a continuous human disposition, informed by one’s attachment history, and realized at different stages of one’s life (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). It specifically refers to Daniel Stern’s and Anthony Giddens’s largely overlapping concepts of maternal and romantic love to argue that Plath’s children poems are significantly infused with a poetics of romantic love. This poetics, however, becomes gradually compromised by a poetics of ambivalence, withdrawal, and self-effacement.

Az angol turista kalauzt elsősorban olyan magyar anyanyelvűeknek szántuk, akik hosszabb-rövidebb időt szándékoznak angol nyelvterületen eltölteni. Ez természetesen meghatározza a könyv felépítését és hatással van a témák kiválasztására is. Tematikus elrendezésben szerepel benne minden olyan alapszituáció, amely az emberek közötti kapcsolattartásban egy külföldi tartózkodás során általában elő szokott fordulni, ideértve az utazást, a határátlépést, a szállásfoglalást, az étkezést,  a hivatalos szervekkel való kapcsolattartást, a tájékozódást,  a városnézést és az olyan kellemetlen, de gyors reagálást igénylő kívánó helyzeteket is mint például a baleset, a rosszullét vagy betegség. Természetesen azokra is gondoltunk, akik az angol nyelvet alig vagy egyáltalán nem beszélik. Ez a könyv nekik is szól. Az angol szavakat, illetve társalgási paneleket minden esetben közöljük fonetikus átírásban, így informálva a használót ezek kiejtéséről. Munkánk tekintettel van  a brit angol és az amerikai angol közötti eltérésekre is.

Colloque international "Patrimonialiser la mémoire diasporique", dans le cadre du projet « Pensando Goa », Aix-en-Provence et Marseille 11-12 mai 2018.

Le colloque international organisé dans le cadre du projet Pensando Goa (USP), par le laboratoire I.M.A.F./CNRS, le département d'études luso-brésiliennes et par la chaire Eduardo Lourenço (Camões IP) s'inscrit dans un axe sur lequel l'Université d'Aix-Marseille a investi ces dix dernières années : l'étude de la valorisation scientifique et de la visibilité touristique des patrimoines matériels et immatériels. La mise en scène des pratiques et des savoirs suppose une association transdisciplinaire complexe que l'expérience des projets comme Pensando Goa peut aujourd'hui mobiliser au profit de la visibilité des patrimoines de Goa [et au-delà, des territoires « lusophones » de l'océan Indien] au carrefour entre Littérature, Histoire, Histoire de l'Art, archéologie, Anthropologie, Linguistique. En matière des nouveaux axes de recherche transdisciplinaire, l'exemple de Goa représente une des possibilités les plus intéressantes d'étude de cas. Ce territoire possède non seulement un des plus riches patrimoines de l'Asie mais aussi un des plus grands potentiels touristiques du monde. Il occupait, dans l'imaginaire européen des voyageurs de l'Epoque Moderne, la place qu'occupe aujourd'hui Rio de Janeiro dans le désir de découverte du touriste occidental.

In his article “What is Neo-Victorian Studies?” (2008), Mark Lewellyn argues that the term neo-Victorian fiction refers to works that are consciously set in the Victorian period, but introduce representations of marginalised voices, new histories of sexuality, post-colonial viewpoints and other generally ‘different’ versions of the Victorian era. Valerie Martin’s gothic-romance Mary Reilly drew on Stevenson’s novella to introduce a woman’s perspective on the puzzle of Jekyll and Hyde. Almost twenty-years after the publication of Martin’s novel, the newly established field of research in Neo-Victorian fiction has questioned the extent to which Neo-Victorian recreations of the Victorian past respond to postmodern contemporary reflections and ideas about the period. This article aims to examine the ways in which this Neo-Victorian gothic text addresses both the issues of Victorian femininity and feminist principles now in the light of later Neo-Victorian precepts, taking into considera...

Why Lydia Bennet is the True Feminist Heroine of Pride and Prejudice

Frequently overlooked as little more than Elizabeth Bennet’s annoying little sister, Lydia is not always characterized in the most favorable terms: “vain, ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled” and “the most determined flirt that ever made herself or her family ridiculous” (Austen 135), are just some of the choice words her sister uses to describe her. However, I find, that these seemingly negative attributes are precisely what make Lydia a progressive female character as they radically break with the expectations on proper femininity at the time. Her vanity, for instance, can also be interpreted as valuable self-confidence at a time where modesty demanded women to be almost afraid of their own bodies. Similarly, her “idle” and ”uncontrolled” (135) tastes for pleasure and entertainment are significant when women were expected to be silent, self-sacrificing beings. Her Ignorance, too, also renders her ignorant of many of society’s oppressive norms, allowing her to act and speak her mind unabashedly. Finally, for a woman to be a “flirt” (135) and freely express her sexual desires can really only be considered negative in an antiquated society that will not permit her to be anything short of ‘pure’ and ‘angelic’. Lydia, thus, rebels against Regency constructions of femininity in a major way. Perhaps most importantly, her rebellion is never punished for after her elopement with Wickham (one of the most radical acts at a time were female purity before matrimony was near-sacred) she returns still “untamed, unabashed” and “fearless” (181). Therefore, Lydia Bennet, as I will argue, can be considered far more than just the comic side character of the “silliest [girl] in the country” (18), in fact she might well be the real ‘feminist heroine’ of Pride and Prejudice.

Indian residential schools lasted in Canada for nearly 150 years, with the last one closing in 1996. Canada's recently concluded Truth and Reconciliation Commission has confirmed what Indigenous families have said all along: many Indigenous children endured abuse, prolonged separation between parent and child, and intergenerational legacies. Thousands of children died while attending school. Indian residential schools were one of Canada's many colonial strategies, which aimed to inculcate students in a British world view and assimilate them by denigrating their spiritualities, epistemologies, and relationships to land. Indian residential schools also attacked Indigenous languages and insisted on English only. While historical studies of teaching English often elide a broader history of colonialism, this paper uses a settler colonial studies analysis to read nineteenthcentury government reports as well as school newspapers to uncover how nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools publicly conceived of the teaching of English; my reading of nineteenth-century archival documents is informed by survivor testimony and memoir that help to puncture the propaganda of government and school documentation. Informed by the work of Wallace Lambert and Ruth Spack, I argue that school documentation represented English only rather than the more complicated understanding of English and -English in addition to Indigenous languages. This distinction critically separates the policies of government and school from the beliefs of many parents and children, who learned English for their own reasons but not at the expense of another language.

This book retraces the formation of modern English Studies by departing from philological scholarship along two lines: in terms of institutional histories and in terms of the separation of literary criticism and linguistics.  It is argued that the full potential of the discipline’s global scope and pluralistic formation can only be realized by departing further from philology rather than returning to it – and that this is possible only by engaging with philology rather than by forgetting it. Part 1 outlines the complexities and coherent features of philological scholarship. Part 2 examines historical accounts of the discipline’s moves away from philology in several institutional contexts (UK, USA, India, post-1990 EU). Part 3 explores the gradual bifurcation of English linguistics and literary studies, departing concurrently from philology and from each other.

The present paper seeks to closely explore Kurt Vonnegut " s Slaughterhouse-Five in terms of Judith Herman " s surveys and categorization of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. It is an attempt to analyze the conflict between the will to deny horrible events experienced by the protagonists of the novel in World War II and the will to proclaim them aloud. The psychological distress symptoms including the inability to sleep, lack of concentration, flashbacks and state of surrender are thus investigated in the narrator and Billy Pilgrim as the two figures who are suffering from PTSD. These symptoms are analyzed in a way to call attention to the existence of unspeakable secret and simultaneously as means to deflect attention from it. The protagonists are both subjected to the dialectic of trauma in that they find it difficult to remain clearheaded, to see more than a few fragments of the picture at one time, and to retain all the pieces and to fit them together. It is even more difficult to find a language that conveys persuasively what they have seen.

Book reviews Économie rurale et société dans l'Europe franque (VI e-IX e siècles). Tome 1: Fondements matériels, échanges et lien social. By Jean-Pierre Devroey. Paris: Editions Belin. 2003. 391 pp. + 31 tables and diagrams, 25 b/w figures, 11 maps, 9 graphs. ISBN 2 7011 2618 5. Puissants et misérables. Système social et monde paysan dans l'Europe des Francs (VI e-IX e siècles). By Jean-Pierre Devroey. Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique. 2006. 727 pp. + 1 colour figure, 8 maps, 28 tables and diagrams. €55. ISBN 2 8031 0227 7.

The first section of the following account characterizes the status of English and English studies in Finland today, against which the subsequent historical narrative unfolds. The second section looks at the period from the foundation of the first university in 1640 to the beginning of the twentieth century. The third section traces institutionalization, discussing the establishment of the first chair in Helsinki and the creation of professorships in newlyfounded universities in other parts of the country, providing some general information on the staff and the syllabus in the English departments. The fourth section addresses the development of specializations, for reasons of space barely mentioning the work of many individuals, leaving most of them unnamed. The fifth section provides some information on scientific societies and channels of publication. The conclusion summarizes some major changes. 1

This thesis analyses the theme of forbidden love as it is captured in William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby", comparing its significance in the two tragic story tellings. The theme of forbidden love holds equal importance in both texts, constituting the driving force behind the main characters' actions and by ultimately determining the two stories' finale. From the first encounter of Romeo and Juliet, and, of Gatsby and Daisy both happening at a party, to the denial of reality, the misfortunes of fate, the hatred prevailing in the society, the imminent feeling of revenge, the unconditional love, to the end portraying the death of the infatuated characters, the two narratives are comparable on many levels, even though it is not explicitly obvious at a first glance. Arguing forbidden love to be clearly dominant in both these literary masterpieces, in one and the other, the theme is clearly addressed through the presence of contrasting elements; light and darkness, public and private, fast and slow, past and present, language and reality, life and death, love and hate, and at last, fate and free will. Although the theme of forbidden love can be sustained to be less relevant in "The Great Gatsby" than it is in "Romeo and Juliet", this paper argues that by sharing common elements, the theme of forbidden love is at the core of both these works which stand as two pillars of the global literature landscape in time.

Grade: A

This study discusses the benefits of remedial teaching to poor performers or 'at risk' students in an English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) classroom. It presents a case of remedial teaching to a group of 21 intermediate level students in a technical vocational training institution in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The learners are all male students of age 16-22, trained to work as entry level technicians in the oil and gas industry upon completion of their studies. They were identified within the first month of the semester and measures taken for intervention. To implement the remedial work, several tools and procedures were used including diagnosis, material preparation, motivation, data collection and classroom observation, to name just a few. The success rate of the program provides testimony to the worth of early intervention in curtailing and remedying learning deficiencies and rescuing slow performers at the risk of failing a subject or perhaps dropping out of an entire course. Significantly, the study adds voice to the existing literature that commends remedial education as a guiding instrument suited to overcome underperformance while raising the level of learner competency.

This paper explores the way literary representations of dementia enhance our understanding of what it is like to experience this disease. the light that dementia narratives throw on the particular plight of the sufferer. How does knowledge, in the sense of awareness of one's cognitive decline, interact with emotional pain? How does narrative technique contribute to an empathic engagement with the character afflicted by dementia? What are the ethical implications of both writing and reading about this condition? The main part of the paper is devoted to a close analysis of two fictional narratives, Out of Mind by J. and the more recent debut novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova . Aware of the discrepancy between fictional worlds and the 'actual' world, this chapter nevertheless outlines the potential value of narrative fiction as a means of improving one's understanding of another person's mind and another person's pain.

Although a great paucity exists in scholarly studies on education in Somalia, the scarcity is more evident in the English studies area, particularly English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) (used interchangeably in this study), where almost none had existed until Mohamed Eno's MA TESOL Dissertation in 2005 and his recent article in the Journal of Somali Studies in 2017. Influenced by both the paucity and the latter study in 2017 1 , which recommended further examination of ESL/EFL area studies, this research investigates EFL students' perceptions of what they consider as more motivating or most motivating skill among the four second language acquisition (SLA) skills of reading, listening, speaking and writing. 2 Consequently, the results reveal that learners do not perceive more listening as a very motivating factor compared to more speaking, identified as the most motivating skill and ahead of more writing in the overall ratings. With very low results on the whole, more reading, on the other hand, is much below both speaking and writing in significance, though ahead of listening as a potential motivator. Interestingly, the findings also reveal persistent learner misunderstanding of the interlinkedness of the four skills, with a misperception that acquisition of one skill is independent of the others, as captured from an analysis of the vagaries in their responses.

Travail d'Initiation à la Recherche  en Littérature (L2 Etudes Anglophones). Nous devions choisir une nouvelle d'Edgar Allan Poe et proposer un angle d'attaque pour l'analyser. Mon travail se focalise sur la manière dont Poe brouille la frontière entre culpabilité, folie et surnaturel dans ses nouvelles, en particulier dans le climax de the "Tell-Tale Heart". J'y explore également les possibilités d'adaptation filmique et les éventuels parallèles avec d'autres oeuvres littéraires. Novembre 2019.

This essay looks at The Pale King's representation of three bureaucratic technologies—paper documents, punch cards and computers—and describes its intertextual relationships with John Barth's 1979 novel LETTERS and the films Blade Runner and The Terminator. The Pale King is “a portrait of a bureaucracy”, but it is also a novel which wrestles with the idea of self-reference. Its imitation of bureaucratic documents, by the use of cross-referencing, footnotes and the section symbol (§), means that its self-references constitute an unexpected kind of mimetic realism. Its representations of newer bureaucratic technologies—punch cards and computers—involve strategies for escaping narrative linearity borrowed from LETTERS: spatial organization of data, alphabetization and automation. The Pale King uses these bureaucratic textual strategies to explore the analogy between reflexivity in fiction and the Science Fiction trope of consciousness arising in artificial technologies, an analogy David Foster Wallace propos...

New Issue of the Polish Journal of English Studies!

The Communication of Luxury: A Semiotic Analysis of a Luxury Brand’s
Perfume Commercial - Brygida Hurek
Evolution of the Mary Sue Character in Works by the Wattpad Social
Platform Users - Patrycja Biniek
The American Tradition of Social Satire in South Park Television Series - Przemysław Komsa
Online Grooming as a Manipulative Social Interaction: Insights from
Textual Analysis - Mariia Horskykh
Representations of Polish Migrants in British Media from the Perspective of
“Moral Panic” Theory - Alicja Portas
27th Annual Conference of the Polish Association for the Study of English
Conference Report

Parody is a most iridescent phenomenon: of ancient Greek origin, parody's very malleability has allowed it to survive and to conquer Western cultures. Changing discourse on parody, its complex relationship with related humorous forms (e.g. travesty, burlesque, satire), its ability to cross genre boundaries, the many parodies handed down by tradition, and its ubiquity in contemporary culture all testify to its multifaceted nature. No wonder that 'parody' has become a phrase without clear meaning. The essays in this collection reflect the multidimensionality of recent parody studies. They pay tribute to its long and varied tradition, covering examples of parodic practice from the Middle Ages to the present day and dealing with English, American, postcolonial, Austrian, and German parodies. The papers range from the Medieval classics (e.g. Chaucer), parodies of Shakespeare, and the role of parody in German Romanticism, to parodies of fin-de-siecle literature and the intertextual puzzles of the late twentieth century (such as cross-dressing, Schwab's Faust parody, and Rushdie's Satanic Verses). And they have transformed the contentious nature of parody into a diverse range of methodologies. In doing so, these essays offer a survey of the current state of parody studies.

In this paper, I discussed  how individual apprehension of reality is represented in three periods of the novel, Realism with Charles Dickens, Modernism with Virginia Woolf and Post-modernism with John Barth.

My analysis of the novel as a vehicle for the individual apprehension of reality takes you first through realism in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend where the author focuses on details. Modernism in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse presents a changed technique as well as a different approach to the subject. In modernism, the character’s mind becomes more important. Further, Woolf constructs her novel as a sculpture, all at once—scenes show on a small scale the characteristics of modernism at a particular historical moment—internalisation in character’s mind and representation of reality. Finally, the novel brought us to the postmodernist parody in John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse. This literary form contradicts all conventions used before in Realism and Modernism. In Post-modernism the more unrealistic, the more perfect the representation becomes.

One of the serious decisions which every administrator may need to make during his/her professional career is to select or reject applicants based on their general language skills or competence. These significant decisions, which may be of serious consequences not only for the individuals but also for the society in general, are occasionally made based on norm-referenced proficiency tests. Out of internationally available proficiency tests such as the TOEFL test, those which fit the specific local cultural and academic contexts seem of greater prominence. One such test, which has been specifically designed for the Iranian EFL context by the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology, is the MSRT proficiency test. While a few studies have been conducted on the analysis of the reliability and validity of the mentioned test, no study has yet reviewed the test and its component parts. Therefore, the current study aimed at considering the strengths and weaknesses of the test in general and its component items in particular. The results implicated that the MSRT benefits from more efficient general reliability and validity, well planned language items, practicality, ease of administration, objective scoring, ease of accessibility, as well as reasonable fees, while it needs to be more substantiated in terms of the inclusion of the speaking skill assessment, the computerized adaptive assessment procedures, and the correction factor for guessing. In addition, the use of the individual-based listening apparatus for testing listening comprehension as well as the consideration of the integrative communicative tests for its concurrent validity purposes can contribute to more appropriate distinction of proficient and non-proficient applicants.

... French penitential, Waddington's Manual de Pechiez, whence it was trans. ... 25 See The Wanderer, ed. TP Dunning and AJ Bliss (London, 1969), 111, rejecting Willi Erzgraber's suggestion that 'slaep' refers to the vision of his lord that the narrator relates, and 'sorg' refers to the ...

En 1976, le phénomène punk surgit à Londres, semble remettre en cause certains des codes sociaux et des normes culturelles la société britannique, et est le sujet d’une « panique morale ». La même année, en Irlande du Nord, 297 personnes sont tuées à cause du conflit. Les Sex Pistols invoquent l’anarchie dans leurs textes, mais pour les nord-irlandais, « Anarchy in the UK » est bien plus qu’une chanson : il s’agit de leur quotidien. Pourtant, alors que le conflit fait rage, alors que protestants et catholiques restent cantonnés dans leurs quartiers respectifs, des centaines de jeunes issus de deux communautés que tout semble opposer se retrouvent semaine après semaine dans les mêmes lieux pour partager une passion commune : celle du punk rock. Quelles sont les spécificités que présentent le punk en Irlande du Nord ? Quel impact ce phénomène de culture populaire a-t-il sur les pratiques des jeunes Nord-Irlandais qui participent à cette scène et à cette subculture alors que le conflit bat son plein ? Quels mécanismes permettent aux punks d’imaginer et d’incarner une « Alternative Ulster » ? Afin d’apporter des réponses à ces questions, le présent travail s’attache à retracer l’émergence de la scène punk nord-irlandaise (1976-1983), à analyser les manières dont sont « pratiqués » les lieux sur lesquels elle repose, à interroger l’importance de la tenue et du corps punk et, finalement, à mettre en lumière les thématiques qui traversent la chanson punk.

***

In 1976, punk took the United Kingdom by surprise, and for one brief moment, challenged some of the cultural and social assumptions of British society, shocking public opinion and causing an outbreak of moral panic in its wake. The Sex Pistols could sing about it, but for people living in Northern Ireland, “Anarchy in the UK” was more than just a song, it was what they experienced in their everyday lives. Yet, while the conflict raged on, and at a time when cross-community contact had become uncommon, a minority of the North’s youth turned to punk. These young Catholics and Protestants ignored their political and religious differences and met up in streets and record shops during the day, and at night crowded into the few bars and pubs that allowed punk bands to play. What specific features did Northern Ireland punk display? What impact did this popular culture phenomenon have on the practices of the young participants who took part in this scene and subculture in the midst of the “Troubles”? What mechanisms enabled punks to imagine and embody an “Alternative Ulster”? In order to find answers to these questions, we will provide an account of the emergence of the punk scene in Northern Ireland (1976-1983), analyse the ways in which its spaces were “practiced”, examine the importance of punk dress and, finally, explore the themes which appear in punk rock songs.

The article attempts to elaborate upon the swirling nature of what is constituted as “self” and “identity” in a contested area of postcolonial discourses, outlining relevant literatures and theories relating to postcolonial identities. With regard to postcolonial identities a variety of opinions exist which are based on surveys, analyses and intuition. One of the aspects of postcolonial identities as being static, imposed, assumed, ascribed or moving is thoroughly debated in studies on identity. However, the force of identity is pervasive enough to transcend binaries and move freely in and out of spaces. The article argues that the nature of identities could be volatile and violent coming in contact with the predicament of the postcolonial condition.

There is a sudden rise in the number of PhD aspirants in these parts of the country. This may be because many universities in Gujarat and elsewhere offering the PhD Entrance Test (PET) in a quick succession. It may also be due to the UGC resolution that those who have completed their PhD following 2009 norms will be exempt from National Eligibility Test (NET) for lecturer-ship, and probably also due to the new Academic Performance Index introduced by the UGC in the sixth pay commission will be important in getting the seventh pay commission salaries.  However, not many are clear about what research in literary studies means, or why they are doing it in the first place. The current write up is intended to give such beginners a sense of literary research in English studies in India.