Download Abstracts - Högskolan Dalarna

Student Essay Conference in English Studies
Högskolan Dalarna, Falun
19th May, 2005
LIST OF ABSTRACTS
Astrén, Johanna (C-Essay Linguistics)
Hogwarts, Muggles and Quidditch: Translation of Names in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter
Books
In about five years the Harry Potter books have been translated into more than sixty
languages. In this presentation of my C-essay I discuss the translation of some of the names in
the books and look at how the translation agrees with and/or deviates from the original.
Special focus is put on features such as alliterations, allusions and imaginative inventions,
which are characteristic of J.K Rowling’s style and may be particularly tricky and challenging
when translating. A comparison is made between the names in the original texts and the
translated texts. Focus is on the Swedish translation, but Norwegian examples are included
too.
Dauletbayeva, Tamilla (D-Essay Irish Literature)
Global Thinking and National Localisation in “The Dead” by James Joyce and “The
Faithless Wife” by Sean O’Faolain
Think global. Act local.
(Theodore Levitt)
Is it possible to think global and act local simultaneously? Is global thinking a way of
escaping, perhaps, national localisation? Is it necessary to try to escape from the established
local communities where people belong to from the birth, grew up and shared common
history and language that is associated with these communities? These questions, among
many, arise when taking a closer look at the short stories “The Dead” by James Joyce and
“The Faithless Wife” by Sean O’Faolain. The choice of these particular stories is not an
accidental one. In each of them there are three main characters, which embody three main
notions, which this essay will investigate further on. These are globalization as an act of exile,
localisation as a way of preserving national culture, tradition, language and history, and
finally migration as the means of compromising those previously mentioned concepts in order
to be an exemplary figure of modernity.
Eklycke, Sandra (D-Essay Irish Literature)
Fluid Meaning and Storytelling as Vital Preservers of History and Identity in Ciaran
Carson’s “Belfast Confetti,” “Dresden” and “Judgement”
By means of an innovative and unconventional language, the Belfast poet Ciaran Carson takes
his readers on a journey to forgotten places permeated by questions of history and identity.
One of Carson’s many preoccupations is that translations from English to Gaelic are
extremely problematic since meaning is lost during the process of translating and instead
becomes something fluid and variable. This, in its turn, means that the understanding of Irish
identity is lost as well since language itself carries with it cultural identity and origin. Thus, I
want to show that language, history and identity are interrelated as well as essential elements
in Carson’s poems “Belfast Confetti,” “Dresden” and “Judgement” by approaching these
poems from a poststructuralist point of view.
Franzén, Fredrik (C-Essay Irish Literature)
Yeats and the Non -Aristocratic Ireland
This essay is a biographical analysis of W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Fisherman.” The essay argues
that the ambiguity in the poem has to do with the various influences Yeats had in his life
especially from his friends. According to my thesis, Yeats was torn between aristocratic ideas,
coming from his association with and fascination for the aristocracy of Ireland at the time; and
socialistic ideas, resulting from his engagement in the nationalistic movement and Ireland’s
Home Rule movement, and not least from his love for Maud Gonne; and finally fascism, ideas
that mostly came from his involvement with the modernistic movement and his belief in the
idea of “the hero.” The essay examines how influence from all these very different
movements is seen in this poem.
Goës, Ingelöv (D-Essay Linguistics)
Alternative Identities and Foreign Language Learning
My D-essay has the working title “Alternative Identities and Foreign Language Learning”. I
have chosen this area because I have noticed a certain reluctance among Swedish students to
use the foreign language English in English classes. They often seem embarrassed to express
themselves in a language which is not their mother tongue, but they seem less embarrassed
when they are allowed to act somebody else. These two observations converge into a focus of
discussion on the matter, which will be supported by a minor study of my own, by extracts
from other people’s essays on the matter, and by an overview of current literature on
language, identity and drama.
The aim of my essay is to compare Swedish students’ willingness to use the foreign language
English when acting minor plays in school, as themselves and as a chosen character, and to
investigate the possibility of improving students’ willingness to use a foreign language, when
Given the opportunity to do so through acting somebody else.
Gulli, Elin (C Essay American Literature)
An American Adam: Bob Dylan's autobiography Chronicles, Volume 1
Bob Dylan is one of the most influential songwriters, musicians and poets of our time. His
autobiography, Chronicles Vol 1 (2004), offers fans and critics a new source of information
about Dylan. What image of himself does Dylan present? This paper will argue that contrary
to Dylan's popular image as a spokesman for his generation and a rebel against the prevailing
social and political order, he represents himself here as a rebel of the kind that there are many
of in American literary history: in the figure of the American Adam. The American Adam
has been defined as an individual who stands alone in the world, without a distinct past,
emancipated from history and happily bereft of ancestry. Another definition is that he is a
living embodiment of the possibilities of America. In a comparative reading of the
autobiography and critical texts on the American Adamic myth I will show that Bob Dylan is
in fact a perfect example of an American Adam.
Gölen Pineda, Annica (C-Essay Linguistics)
American and British English in Sweden
The aim of this essay was first, to investigate how the impact of American English in Sweden
affects English-teachers. British English has been promoted in education from the beginning
in Sweden but with the global expansion of the American variety this will be difficult to
maintain. I myself have some difficulties when it comes to the “consistency rule” which was
the norm when I started studying at Högskolan Dalarna. Secondly, to find out what the norm
is today in English teaching.
I have interviewed three young, recently graduated teachers and three experienced teachers at
secondary and upper secondary schools. I have tested them on vocabulary and pronunciation
to see which variety they use and if they mix the two, British and American. My hypothesis
was that young teachers mix the two more than teachers who were trained before the massive
American influence began in Sweden. I believe that these teachers could internalise the
British variety since it was the dominating model in Sweden when they started to work while
young teachers have grown up with the two varieties.
The outcome of my investigation is that young teachers do mix, to some smaller degree, more
than experienced teachers do and they show a clear preference for the American variety. The
experienced teachers tested were consistent with their British pronunciation but with
vocabulary they were to a small extent inconsistent.
I have found that the “consistency rule” is not demanded at higher levels, instead there is
more attention given to the study, in linguistics and literature, of all the global “Englishes”
that exist today,. Books used in English-teaching at secondary and upper secondary schools
today contain many chapters with American English. From the literature I have read it seems
that young people are adopting a preference for using American terms and pronunciation.
This is also what my investigation has confirmed.
It has been interesting to encounter the term and phenomena “Mid-Atlantic English”. MidAtlantic English is a form of English, which includes features of both British and American
English. Marko Modiano argues that “the Americanization of Euro-English will eventually
lead to the establishment of Mid-Atlantic English as the educational standard, not only in
Europe, but throughout the world”. But this definition of Mid-Atlantic English as a
descriptive term of a variety of its own is argued by several linguists.
Henderson , Chad (D-Essay Irish Literature)
Emerging from Depression: Mothering, Identity and Gender in Bernard MacLaverty’s
Grace Notes
This paper examines the theme of female identity as portrayed in the character of Catherine McKenna in the
Irish writer, Bernard MacLaverty's Grace Notes and argues that the birth of Catherine's daughter triggers in her a
crisis of identity. Catherine must identify herself as a mother, yet is psychologically unprepared to do so given
her unresolved relationship with her own mother. In addition, the birth brings to a head several other conflicts in
her life, including her loss of faith in religion and her value as a woman in a male-dominated society. Through
composing music and self-reflection she becomes aware of her unconscious fears, and as a result she is able to
transform them. This transformation occurs through Catherine re-privileging and restructuring, both
linguistically and emotionally, patriarchal ideals and her conception of herself as a woman and a mother.
Kleinman Johansson, Christine (C-Essay American Literature)
“The Ghost in the Machine:” Framing the Deconstruction of the American Literary
Canon through Beloved
Throughout her critical discourse, Toni Morrison asserts the need for a re-examination of the
canon of American literature in a search for what she terms its “ghosts in the machine,”
manifestations of “literary blackness” that have been fabricated to oppose and thereby define
the first principle of “literary whiteness” that governs American literature. Applying the
conclusions of Morrison’s critical essays, as well as the tenants of deconstructive criticism,
this essay considers the possibility that Morrison’s own “ghost story” presents the framework
for discovering the “Africanist presence” that “haunts” American literature, and provides the
tools to deconstruct the polarizing tactics that have motivated its construction
Larsson, Lena (C-Essay Literature)
Narratives and Identities: Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine and Sally Morgan’s My Place
According to Fanon colonised people need to reclaim their past in order to find a voice and an
identity. This paper will discuss Erdrich’s Love Medicine and Morgan’s My Place exploring
three generations of female characters in the novels, focusing on their role in the process of
reclaiming their voice and knowledge of the past. Particularly the paper will investigate how
and why older generations of women do not tell the whole story and how selecting and
withholding stories affects the younger generation’s notion of native identity. A question
raised in the paper is how these processes are represented depending on geographical/cultural
context (North America or Australia).
Males, William, Högskolan i Gävle (D-Essay Pedagogics)
The Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing in Sweden
Creative writing, as a course and workshop, has evolved for the last six years at the University
College of Gävle in Sweden. The students who enroll in this course are mostly non-native
writers of English. Students have been asked for their input about the course and by
implication for their reflections on creative writing. These texts have been archived in a
virtual classroom.
Based on a sample of these student texts, I propose to examine and discuss preconceptions
regarding the teaching and practice of creative writing. My critical approach is
phenomenographically informed and will result in the categorization of insights and
perceptions.
McGregor, Terry (C-Essay Irish Literature)
HORSLIPS - Celtic Aliens of The Western World: A Lyrical Search for an Indigenous
Irish Identity
It was the stagnancy of the 1970s that helped spawn the emergence of the Irish folk and rock
band Horslips who, upon the release of their first single Johnny´s Wedding in 1972, “brought
Irish traditional music screaming into the 20th Century.” (Roddy McGregor). My contention,
in this essay is that Horslips did more than merely bring traditional music “screaming” into
the 20th century. On their musical journey, I would suggest, they brought the whole of Ireland,
consciously or unconsciously, with them in their wake, and, in so doing, were amongst the
earliest architects of the modernised country we bear witness to today. Ireland may no longer
sit still to be painted - as Augustine Martin commented in the mid-1980s (Forgiveness, 13) but Horslips, in the 1970s, applied the first dramatic paintstrokes to a canvas that badly
needed a severe dosage of colour and perspective. This essay will examine how from their
inception in 1970 until their disengagement in 1980, the Horslips developed into a veritable
Irish institution and, over the course of these ten years, enlivened and enhanced a stagnant
local music scene in an era when showbands ruled the important cultural domain of the
dancehall circuit throughout the length and breadth of Ireland.
Qwarnström, Loretta (D-Essay Irish Literature)
“Incarnate, Maculate and Tousled:” Enabling Narratives of Goddesses in the Poetry of
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Paula Meehan
Through an analysis of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill’s and Paula Meehan’s poetry, I will explore the
theme of identity, and the different ways in which identity will be referred to as an articulation
of the interior externalised. Against a background of Irigaray’s ideas of difference and Rosi
Braidotti’s theories of Identity formation I will examine the motifs of The Virgin Mary and
the Mother Goddess, two female icons whose identity has remained fixed and entrenched in
the Western tradition.. This paper will investigate how the above poets challenge and subvert
the traditional, conventionally accepted images of these two iconic figures, and contrary to
passivity and fixed identity, they offer new fluid nomadic models of identity.
Roccasalva, Candice (C-Essay American Literature)
The Mechanisms of Fear in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Jack Clayton’s
The Innocents
The force of the horror fiction The Turn of the Screw by Henry James resides in its complex
narrative structure: the few events that happen in the book are only expressed through the
voice of the first-person female narrator, and it is precisely in her exacerbated sensitivity more
than in any factual occurrences that the feeling of fear is rooted. For these reasons, the book is
renowned for being impossible to adapt for cinema. But in 1963, in The Innocents, American
director Jack Clayton strikingly succeeded in rendering both the subtleties of the narrative
voice and the sophistication of language and offered what is commonly regarded as the best
adaptation of the book. Using scholar Yvonne Leffler’s definition of horror fiction, I intended
to analyze the recognizable stylistic patterns of suspense and horror used by both authors to
find out why Clayton succeeded where many failed before him.
Schoushi, Daniele (C-Essay Irish Literature)
The Mythical Source of Eavan Boland ’s Poetic Creation
The paper will analyse what Eavan Boland refers to as the “point where myth touches
history” in her poem “Listen. This Is the Noise of Myth.” It will be argued that Boland’s
rewriting of myth – which involves the interweaving of the personal and the public with
myth and national consciousness – deconstructs the hegemonic structure of myth by
reinserting female subjectivity in the patriarchal tradition of myth and history. Boland’s
poem could be regarded as a poem of place, but a nation is more than a place. Ireland is
a country of legends, wars, famines, bardic traditions, heroes and bloodshed, and in
Boland’s poem the Irish past as well as its present becomes inseparable from the bardic
woman-poet’s voice, which articulates national experience as a female experience.
Employing a Structuralist and Semiotic reading of the poem, I will examine how the
binary polarities work in the text. The paper will also examine Boland’s deconstruction
of the hierarchical dichotomy man-woman.
Strömberg, Anette (D-Essay Linguistics)
Social Variation in Australian English
When watching an Australian TV series I suddenly found myself watching it with my
linguistic glasses. I asked myself: Why can I say that these people come from Australia?
During my background research I found out that a lot of research had been done on the history
of Australian English, and what is significant for Australian English are social differences in
pronunciation, rather than regional differences. I decided to compare the vowel realisation in
some lexical sets that distinguish the three Australian varieties Broad, General and Cultivated
partly from each other and partly from one of the standard varieties of English; Received
Pronunciation.
In my study I have chosen four characters from the TV series McLeod’s Daughters from
different social classes, and I have hypothesised that the social position of the characters
portrayed will be related to the variety spoken by the actor.
Strzelczyk, Karolina (C-Essay English Literature)
Interpreting Fate in The Cider House Rules, the Novel and the Film
This Essay analyzes the idea of fate and free will in the novel The Cider House Rules by John Irving
and its film adaptation. In the novel, Irving presents the world of determinism that is inherent in the life
of the main protagonist Homer Wells. The film on the other hand provides us with the picture of human
possibilities and free will and suggests that life is full of opportunities and choices. The novel, however,
stresses the determined fate of each and everyone of us.
Stål, Ann-Jeanett (C-Essay Irish Literature)
Aspects of Liminality in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s The Dancers Dancing
In this essay I refer Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s narrative construction of the main characters and the
theme of the novel The Dancers Dancing in the context of the anthropologist Victor Turner’s
concept of liminality. Thus the summer in the Gaeltacht that five teenage girls experience, can
be understood as a depiction of the liminal phase in a rite of passage. Ní Dhuibhne’s
differently constructed characters enlighten different aspects of liminality and through the
céilí dance their experiences are exposed. Furthermore this essay suggests that Julia
Kristeva’s notion of the chora, which can be associated to dance, is also relevant when
describing the unbounded and unlimited process that radically can reform social structures. I
conclude that the liminal space offers an area of many possibilities. It functions as a free zone
where the main characters can freely explore their personal issues that trouble them, or the
difficulties of their own society. Once back in their ordinary social situation they can use their
acquired knowledge to alter it.
Tynelius, Anna (C-Essay Linguistics)
Translation into Swedish of the ING-form in The Da Vinci Code
My essay deals with the translation into Swedish of the ING-form in the novel The Da Vinci
Code. I have chosen a popular contemporary novel because I believe most people who read a
translated text instead of the original do so because they find it too difficult to read in aforeign
language. This puts a great deal of responsibility upon the translator if the reader is to have an
equivalent reading experience to a reader of the original. The reason for looking at the ING
form is that it is a grammatical structure, which is difficult to render in Swedish since there is
no exact equivalent, at least not one that is used in the same manner as the English. The aim is
to find out how the translator has dealt with the ing-form and also to find out whether there
are any instances where the context has been altered due to the manner in which the
translation has been carried out.
Vucič, Monika (D-essay Linguistics)
Vocabulary in English Course Books
In this presentation I will talk about vocabulary in course books aimed for English teaching at
upper secondary school. I investigated two course books aimed for A-level, Toolbox and
Route. Vocabulary from two texts in each book has been analyzed and compared from a both
pedagogical and linguistic point of view. Things that have been taken to account are; these
words’ frequency in the texts, where the authors have chosen to present the vocabulary items,
near the text or elsewhere, etc. It has also been considered how students and teachers work
with these and similar course books feel about working with this kind of layout.