American Research Journal of English and Literature

Arunav Das

This study demonstrates how mythical narrative constructs a post-confessional tone in Louise Gluck’s Averno (2006) through her personal experience of love, memory, liberty of mind and body, morality, and freedom of gender identity. Averno is a prolonged mourning; its lengthy, frenetic compositions are equally fascinating, while traditional climaxes or solace are equally magnificent despite being violent and heartbroken. Averno presents an autobiographical narrative, the terrific eternal reality, and juxtaposes the link between myth and narrative of personal experiences into a universal context. The myth of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades brings Gluck’s infatuation with death to relate to the nature of the underworld and earth. Persephone’s image in Averno symbolizes Gluck’s disappointment in love, individual journey of survival, and hope. Gluck’s uses of mythical allegory challenge the notion of patriarchy, and the standard of female as an object of violence by providing a voice to the powerless victim, which conflates mythical past and contemporary reality by transcending the biography and avoiding Gluck’s direct self-confessionalism. Thus, this study explores Gluck’s self-proclaim confessionalism through her poetic expression of mythical narrative, emotional memory, and experiences of personal suffering in Averno.  

Kaseem Oladimeji Olaniyi, PhD

The study investigates the comparative advantage of Nigerian Law makers being bilinguals in a multilingual nation for the conduct of legislative matters. In other words, it seeks to establish if bilingualism is a strength or a weakness with the bid to conclude that law makers across the Houses of Assembly in Nigeria prefer the Language of their Immediate Environments (LIE) to the official English Language. The study seeks to contribute to solving Nigeria’s National Language Question, by investigating the efforts being made towards realizing the dream of having an indigenousl lingua franca in Nigeria. The theoretical orientation of the essay is the duo of Sapir-Whorfian and Bernstein’s hypotheses. The theories help to unravel the perception of Nigerian Senators and their preferred codes when they have to choose between their indigenous languages or the official English language with which to communicate their ideas in the hallowed chambers. The theory corroborates the observations made during the researcher’s visit to the National Assembly where the language at plenary is strictly English. The research work has been able to confirm the clause in section 91 of the National Language Policy that an indigenous language may become the official language of the country when “adequate arrangement has been made”. We find that the English language has remained preponderantly a preferred language of the parliament. 

Adeoye Adeyinka Olushola, PhD1, Acheoah John Emike, PhD2

In any field of knowledge, theoretical concepts facilitate the investigation of phenomena. This is the case in language and linguistics, where pragmatics is well established. Pragmatics is the study of context-sensitive use and interpretation of verbal and non-verbal communication. There are different concepts in pragmatics. As research in the field expands, more concepts emerge. Classical pragmatic theories are replete with the discussion of core concepts: speech act, context, presupposition, implicature, shared knowledge, non-verbal communication, etc. In this study, we examine four core concepts in pragmatics: speech act, context, presupposition and implicature. Hinging on Hymes’ (1962) Taxonomy of Situation Component, this study concludes that speech act, context, presupposition and implicature are concepts that give readers introductory perspectives on the term “pragmatics”, because they elucidate basic communication questions: Who says “what”, “where”, “how” and “why”?  

EA Gamini Fonseka, BA, MA, PhD, FRSA

In the short story ‘The Happy Prince’, Oscar Wilde uses all his imaginative powers to convey a universal message of charity through its protagonists, a chunk of lead turned into a statue of a human form, which sends the jewels and gold that furnish its body parts and outfit to the needy to recover them from various ails of poverty, and a swallow, who commits himself to carry out all the charitable missions he is assigned to by the statue. Finally, the Happy Prince loses its elegance as an object of beautification and material value and appears as an eyesore in the city while the Swallow falls dead unable to resist the cold and hunger. They become rubbish in the eyes of the city authorities but get sanctified through the intervention of Angels of the Paradise and God himself. The story conveys thus a heroic act of charity where one donates his body parts while the other donates his life for the well-being of the poor and needy. Although the story has a Christian basis, the character of the Happy Prince parallels that of Prince Siddhartha (who later became the Buddha) in his opinion about suffering and misery and his commitment to help others. While analysing Wild’s application of allegory in the projection of his sense of charity and the coherence he maintains in combining reality and fantasy in storytelling with a didactic aim, the paper pays attention to his use of irony, sarcasm, and humour in achieving social criticism.