Feminine Sentences

This new book integrates material drawn from a variety of sources - feminist theory, cultural and literary analysis, sociology and art history - in an original discussion of women's relationship to modern and post-modern culture. The essays in the book challenge the continuing separation of sociological from textual analysis in cultural (and feminist) theory and enquiry. They address critically the question of women's writing, exploring the idea that women may begin to define their own lives and construct their identities in a patriarchal culture through the very process of writing. They also present a cogent defence of a feminist cultural politics, including a politics of the body.

This study analyzes passive sentences in English and Portuguese which result from a post-semantic transformation applied when a nound, which does not play the semantic role of actor, is chosen as syntactic subject. Choice between a passive and its non-passive or active counterpart reflects differences in the distribution of information in the sentence as regards the relative importance of the latter's constituents for communication. Such distribution is analyzed in terms of Praque school theory, especially that involving the notions of communicative dynamism and the distribution of theme and rheme. The book concludes with a contrastive analysis of English and Portuguese passive sentence patterns which serves as the basis for observations on the teaching of Portuguese passives to native speakers of English.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Middle East has become an increasingly important place in the minds and concerns of the English-speaking world. This volume, originally published under the title Jerusalem Arabic, is the gold standard for anyone beginning to learn the Arabic spoken by Palestinians, or those who live in Syria or Lebanon. Written in transcription using the Roman alphabet, the "Levantine" Arabic, or Jerusalem dialect, is a central Middle Eastern dialect and is recognized by Arabs virtually anywhere--in large part due to the Palestinian diaspora--and a good choice for anyone wishing to learn a base Arabic dialect. Enhanced by a CD with MP3 files (replacing the former set of nine audiocassettes), Eastern Arabic provides the best available structured introduction to the essential features and vocabulary of spoken Palestinian Arabic.

Gender inequality remains an issue of high relevance, and controversy, in society. Previous research shows that language contributes to gender inequality in various ways: Gender-related information is transmitted through formal and semantic features of language, such as the grammatical category of gender, through gender-related connotations of role names (e.g., manager, secretary), and through customs of denoting social groups with derogatory vs. neutral names. Both as a formal system and as a means of communication, language passively reflects culture-specific social conditions. In active use it can also be used to express and, potentially, perpetuate those conditions. The questions addressed in the contributions to this Frontiers Special Topic include: • how languages shape the cognitive representations of gender • how features of languages correspond with gender equality in different societies • how language contributes to social behaviour towards the sexes • how gender equality can be promoted through strategies for gender-fair language use These questions are explored both developmentally (across the life span from childhood to old age) and in adults. The contributions present work conducted across a wide range of languages, including some studies that make cross-linguistic comparisons. Among the contributors are both cognitive and social psychologists and linguists, all with an excellent research standing. The studies employ a wide range of empirical methods: from surveys to electro-physiology. The papers in the Special Topic present a wide range of complimentary studies, which will make a substantial contribution to understanding in this important area.

Through analyses of a wide range of Chinese literary and visual texts from the beginning of the twentieth century through the contemporary period, the thirteen essays in this volume challenge the view that canonical and popular culture are self-evident and diametrically opposed categories, and instead argue that the two cultural sensibilities are inextricably bound up with one another. An international line up of contributors present detailed analyses of literary works and other cultural products that have previously been neglected by scholars, while also examining more familiar authors and works from provocative new angles.The essays include investigations into the cultural industries and contexts that produce the canonical and popular, the position of contemporary popular works at the interstices of nostalgia and amnesia, and also the ways in which cultural texts are inflected with gendered and erotic sensibilities while at the same time also functioning as objects of desire in its own right. As the only volume of its kind to cover the entire span of the 20th century, and also to consider the interplay of popular and canonical literature in modern China with comparable rigor, Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture is an important resource for students and scholars of Chinese literature and culture.