Quantitative and qualitative research writing is thought to differ in a number of ways, which include the visibility given to the human agents involved, that is, writers and participants in the study. However, most studies have so far centred on writer visibility alone, which has been measured principally through personal pronoun use. This paper approaches the issue of writer and participant visibility in one area of research where both quantitative and qualitative methods are frequent, namely health sciences. A (...) new methodology is applied, based on the presence of verbs that imply a human agent and thus potentially offer an opportunity for writer or participant visibility. Two corpora are built to represent quantitative and qualitative research writing in health sciences, and quantitative data are obtained. Exploration of the most frequent human-agent verbs, their active uses and their subjects shows that both quantitative and qualitative researchers in health science maintain low writer visibility, but that both writers and participants are more visible in the case of studies using qualitative methodology. These findings are discussed in the light of the bibliography, and pointers are provided for future research. The contribution of the present paper to corpus-assisted research on academic writing is highlighted. Finally, some applications for teaching scientific writing at graduate level are proposed. (shrink)

This article undertakes a critical analysis of the work of Gisèle Sapiro, with reference to sociology of literature. From 1999 (Sapiro, 2014a), Sapiro has developed the Bourdieusian research tradition, amplifying especially Bourdieu’s theory of crisis. Focusing on the antagonisms between literary “prophets” and “priests”, she has drawn on a rich sample of 184 writers to elucidate the struggles inherent in World War II between writers from different field positions and literary habitus. Further, her historical analyses of the ethical commitments of (...) nineteenth century writers via a fresh microsociology of literary trials (Sapiro, 2011) has reminded us of the importance of popular poets in articulating the suffering of the subordinate classes. Her most recent book (Sapiro, 2018) has expanded on her earlier themes, whilst identifying the recuperation of certain 1930s’ fascist worldviews within contemporary literature. This article notes that there is a telling divergence between Bourdieu and Sapiro on the issue of interests behind disinterestedness, exemplified in the case of Zola. On this issue, Sapiro’s reading (Sapiro, 2011) is found convincing. Finally, the dialectic of avant-garde consecration and routinisation is questioned as a universal structure. It is suggested that certain avant-garde – the Harlem Renaissance, for example – did not undergo swift consecration or routinisation, although this contention deserves greater research. The paper concludes by showing that Sapiro’s conception of writers’ responsibility owes its origins less to Sartre than to the Durkheimian/ Bourdieusian notion of the expertise of the “specific intellectual”. It welcomes Sapiro’s concern for literature as a potential force for social change. (shrink)

Resumen: Los profesores universitarios ocupamos mucho tiempo en ofrecer retroalimentación oral o escrita a los trabajos de los estudiantes. Sin embargo, una de las preocupaciones que surge es saber qué hacen los estudiantes con dichas sugerencias ¿Las siguen? ¿Las omiten? El objetivo de esta investigación es presentar los resultados del análisis de las acciones ejecutadas por estudiantes universitarios a partir de los 434 comentarios escritos ofrecidos por dos profesores guías a un total de 6 borradores durante el desarrollo de una (...) investigación final de grado. Para ello, adaptamos la taxonomía de Faigley y Witte para analizar las acciones realizadas por escritores a partir de la retroalimentación recibida. Analizamos, a partir del texto terminado, las acciones realizadas por los estudiantes en términos de adopción, no adopción o supresión de las sugerencias ofrecidas para mejorar el escrito. Los resultados demuestran que los estudiantes adoptan prácticamente todas las sugerencias ofrecidas. Básicamente lo que más hacen es consolidar y sustituir en el escrito. Asimismo se reporta que existe alguna relación entre la manera como se ofrecen los comentarios y las acciones que realizan los escritores. Si bien se trata de un estudio de caso, es interesante notar una cierta relación entre la oferta de órdenes y la adición, y entre preguntas con reformulaciones en el escrito.: We, university teachers, invest most of our time in offering written or oral feedback to the student’s assignments. However, one of the issues is to know what students do with these comments. Do they follow them? Do they omit them? The aim of this research is to present the results of the analysis carried out about the actions that students perform based on 434 written comments provided by 2 supervisors teachers in total of 2 drafts produced in the development of the final undergraduate research. To analyze the actions carried out by the writers from the feedback received, Faigley and Witte taxonomy was adapted. These actions were analyzed in terms of adoption, non adoption or suppression of the suggestions offered to improve the text. The results show that students adopt almost all the suggestions offered. Basically, what they do the most is to consolidate and substitute. Likewise, it is possible to report that there is a relation between the way comments are offered and the actions the writers carry out. While, this is a case study, it is interesting to notice a certain relation between offering order and the text addition and questions with the text modifications. (shrink)

In Greek Writers and Philosophers in Philo and Josephus Erkki Koskenniemi investigates how two Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus, quoted, mentioned and referred to Greek writers and philosophers.

The author portrays the reception of Janusz Korczak’s writings and ideas in Israel. She presents Israeli writers both Polish- and Israeli-born, considering their writings as consequence of extensive interest in universal values and universal figure suck as Janusz Korczak.

This short essay attempts to bring D.H. Lawrence and Alexis de Tocqueville into the same field of vision via a comparative assessment of the former's 1922 novel entitled 'Kangaroo' and the latter's classic study of the politics of the New World, 'Democracy in America.' It argues that as 'Good Europeans' the two writers were seeking both to learn from, as well as to teach about the meaning of modern civilization's transition to Democracy via the example provided by a specific national (...) experiment 'in the field' - in Tocqueville's case as a result of his visit to America in the 1830's and in Lawrence's case as a result of his stay in Australia in the 1920's. The suggestion is that what Tocqueville's 'Democracy' is to America, so too Lawrence's 'Kangaroo'' is to Australia, which is to say that it is a book intended as a careful portrait of an 'actual democracy' (to use Lord Bryce's phrase) which is of universal significance in terms of the future of all societies moving in the direction of liberal freedom and democratic equality. In other words, the essay assumes that Lawrence's 'Kangaroo' may be taken as an 'update' of Tocqueville's classic study of democracy from almost a century before, even as Lord Bryce's 'The American Commonwealth' has always been so taken since its emergence about half way between the comparable studies of the 19th Century French 'sociologist' on the one hand and the 20th Century English novelist and the other. (shrink)

In an updated edition of his hugely successful student introduction to English literature from 1100 to 1500, J. A. Burrow takes account of scholarly developments in the the field, most notably devoting a final chapter to the impact of historicism on medieval studies. Full of information and stimulating ideas, and a pleasure to read, Burrow's book deals with circumstances of composition and reception, the main genres, 'modes of meaning', and medieval literature's afterlife in modern times. It shows that the literature (...) of authors such as Chaucer, Gower, and Langland is more readily accessible than usually imagined, and well worth reading too. By placing medieval writers in their historical context - the four centuries between the Norman Conquest and the Renaissance - Professor Burrow explains not only how they wrote, but why. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The purpose of the research is to outline the strategies of desacralization of writers by means of merch, to determine the positive and negative aspects of the search for new meanings in the reproduction of cult figures. _Theoretical basis._ The article examines merch as a tool that encourages people to change sacred meanings and ideas about writers as bearers of the sacred for Ukrainians. The source base of the study is the works devoted to the problems of the sacred (...) in philosophical thought, as well as the process of desacralization in art and literature. The peculiarities of the destruction of tendencies regarding the notions in the perception of writers as idols of the nation, the formation and emergence of new meanings regarding sacred figures are highlighted and described. The relevance of this study is due to active searches in business, propaganda, agitation for the use of literary practice, transformation and new contexts of literary idols. _Originality._ Until now, the change in the processes of sacralization and desacralization of writers by means of merch has not been considered as a reversal of worldview in culture, vectors of changes in the dominants of spirituality in the world picture. It turned out that the metacategory of the sacred has been studied by many scholars, both foreign and domestic, in recent years. The problems of the sacred are in the centre of attention of sociologists, philosophers, literary critics, and culturologists, but merch as a basis for the desacralization of man was not considered in publications in the field of mass communication theory. Scientists considered the worldview vectors of the sacred and desacralization as processes that are inherent not only in postmodernity, but also those that accompanied Ukrainian culture during previous periods. It is determined that the most noticeable manifestations of desacralization are the reproduction of the figure of Kobzar, moreover, in quite unusual and even provocative images of him. However, the majority of Ukrainians positively perceive the updated images of the prophets of the Ukrainian nation and talk about the permanence of their worldview, despite the change and reinterpretation of many years of later development. _Conclusions._ Conscious desacralization of literary images is gradually gaining momentum. We observe a tendency to positive perception of merch with the figures of T. Shevchenko, I. Franko, H. Skovoroda, Lesia Ukrainka in a new interpretation: during the war, on the barricades – wherever the struggle for Ukrainian statehood is taking place. From the results of the survey it becomes clear that stereotypical perceptions of writers need to be changed, but only if it is an organic fusion with value imperatives, only emphasizes and affirms the spiritual greatness of Man and serves the growth of Ukrainian society and every Ukrainian. (shrink)

Dagong writers – writers who are factory workers – engage in two kinds of labor, the physical labor that earns a living and the spiritual labor that comforts the soul. They are closely related. First, physical labor provides the raison d’être for spiritual labor, becoming an important theme for it. Second, spiritual labor alleviates the fatigue of physical labor, enabling the alienated labor to obtain poetic salvation. Because of their achievement in spiritual labor, many workers have made the leap from (...) assembly line to office, and from factory workers to contemporary writers. When they are no longer engaged in physical labor, there is a risk that the authenticity of their Dagong literature will fade. The reason why Dagong workers choose literature, especially poetry, as a means of their spiritual labor is closely related to the characteristics of the genre and their limited cultural education. (shrink)

While trying to write her first novel, Georgelle Hirliman found herself suffering a severe case of writers block. To break free she installed herself in the window of a bookstore with her typewriter and invited passersby to ask her anything they wanted. She found that responding immediately to unexpected questions freed her to write, and gave her joy, so for ten years she sat in bookstore windows in New York, New Mexico and Oregon, answering with grace and wit such questions (...) as: WHAT IS THE ANSWER TO LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING? WHY ARE THE RICH SO RUDE? WHY IS LIFE SUCH A BITCH? WHY WONT MY PARENTS BUY ME A HORSE? HOW MANY ROACHES ARE THERE IN NEW YORK? WHY DO PEOPLE FOLLOW THE GRATEFUL DEAD? WHAT HAPPENS TO ERASED WORDS? WHY ME? (shrink)

The article is dedicated to a complex analysis of the “war texts”. Discursive features of the triad “war – author – text” are proposed to be researched through the prism of the holistic linguistic act of communication. Discourse analysis of “war texts” is carried out on the material of works of Oksana Zabuzhko, namely, the collection of essays “And Again I Crawl into the Tank” and “The Longest Journey”. The way the topic of the Russian-Ukrainian war is understood and interpreted (...) in the public intellectual discourse is investigated. Such research gives a possibility to acquire data on how the author presents her/his own activity-in-the[1]world and transfers her/his attitude to the events described. It is reiterated that the topic of the Russian-Ukrainian war can be researched within the boundaries of development of the discourse portrait of language personality, as the author’s texts are the information tracks of public discourse. Models of “war texts” of Oksana Zabuzhko are characterized with the help of three types of meaning: experiential (thematic sphere of communication), interpersonal (meaning of social roles), and textual (characterizes the channel of communication). The sense structure of the corresponding respective texts was scrutinized. That helped to acquire new data about their semiotic models. (shrink)

ArgumentThe famousCahiersof Paul Valéry cannot be reduced to a single scientific discipline, a specific philosophical tradition, or a literary genre. For today's reader these notebooks constitute a formatsui generis, one very often characterized by an “observation of a second order”: in theCahiersValéry uses writing, drawing, and calculating not only for purposes of argumentation; he also pays attention to the significance of such writing, drawing, and calculating processes for the production of knowledge. It is particularly thepracticeof note-taking and sketching in Valéry's (...) notebooks that documents, rehearses, or questions the medial and instrumental conditions of both scientific research and artistic production. This is especially true of the early stages of theCahiersin the years beginning around 1894 when Valéry was intensely searching for notation systems that would be conducive to his research interests. At the time the problem of how to write was intrinsically bound up with the way he established his notebooks as a specific scene of writing. By closely examining a number of pages from the early notebooks I hope to show that the emerging regulation of Valéry's writing in theCahiersresults from simple operations that are noted and repeated by the writer until they gradually become procedures. What Valéry'sCahiersshow us, however, is that procedures do not always work in favor of a final synthesis, but may also give rise to a format of eternal beginning. In the following I will present some of the constitutive procedures found in Valéry's early notebooks, procedures that range from a tentative gathering together and simple forms of recursion and variation to the rehearsing or invention of symbolic or graphic forms of notation. (shrink)

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – (...) which allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's doxastic state. (shrink)

Like other major modernist writers, Adorno sets himself against modern social formations, understood as deadening and evacuated of meaning. In Minima Moralia, he makes emphatic use of distinctively modernist literary techniques within philosophy as a form of writing. In focusing on particular circumstances of trauma and epiphany, he seeks to disclose in images the hollowness of modern life and to gesture toward life otherwise.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 3, Page 426, June 2012.

One of his obituarists describes Colin Ward (1924-2010) as ‘as one of the greatest anarchist thinkers of the past half century’, ‘a pioneering social historian’ and a chuckling anarchist.1 In the p...

This article examines how the historian deals with ‘information’ broadly conceived, especially its acquisition, retention and loss. Ammianus details a complex interplay between those who control information and those who must work with an information deficit. Just as this dialogue plays out within the text, however, so too does it with respect to the author's methodology, which dances between the poles of incomplete and complete information depending on circumstance. Ammianus thus becomes an author as hard to pin down as many (...) of his characters, by turns the omniscient narrator and the dumbfounded participant. (shrink)

Feminist work in the history of philosophy has been going on for several decades. Some scholars have focused on the ways philosophical concepts are themselves gendered. Others have recovered women writers who were well known in their own time but forgotten in ours, while still others have firmly placed into a philosophical context the works of women writers long celebrated within other disciplines in the humanities. The recovery of women writers has challenged the myth that there are no women in (...) the history of philosophy, but it has not eradicated it. What, we may ask, is impeding our progress? This paper argues that so often we treat early modern women philosophers’ texts in ways that are different from, or inconsistent with, the explicit commitments of the analytic tradition, and in so doing, we may be triggering our audiences to reject these women as philosophers, and their texts as philosophical. Moreover, this is the case despite our intention to achieve precisely the opposite effect. (shrink)

Writing About a Woman Writer's Writing: On Gender Identification and Being a Male Critic of Carol Shields's Work This essay takes as its starting point my experience as a male critic of Carol Shields's work. Throughout the researching and writing of my PhD on Shields, I have noted with curiosity the surprise registered by many people upon discovering that a male critic would choose to write about the work of a female author. This reaction, confirmed by other male academics (...) working on female authors, raises a number of interesting questions. What does it mean for a male critic to write about the work of a female author? Why is this still considered surprising, unusual, even strange? Is this view symptomatic of the kind of disturbing devaluation of women's fiction that Shields herself explores so candidly in her final novel Unless? I suggest that the anti-feminist backlash, and the profitable establishment of popular literary genres such as "Chick Lit" and "Lad Lit," have led to a retrogressive "hardening" of gender roles within popular culture, one which endorses a simplistic relationship between author and audience, presuming that texts "by" women must necessarily be "for" women only. Situated within the context of Shields's own professed ambivalence about her status as a "women's writer," and drawing on the theories of Emma Wilson, the essay attempts to broaden out into a wider reflection upon issues of gender and identification within contemporary literary culture. Shields's work, I argue, subverts assumptions about gendered reading patterns, encouraging through its polyphony and its use of dual narrators a mobile and flexible reading experience which allows the reader to inhabit a range of perspectives and to read productively across gender binaries. (shrink)

Drawing on four years of ethnographic research with romance novel writers, we show how their affiliation with romance—a literary genre known for stories containing sexual content—prompted outsiders to sexually stigmatize them. Our work examines both the application and management of this stigma. We describe how outsiders applied the stigma in two ways: by conveying blatant disapproval through “sneering” and inviting writers to display a highly sexualized self through “leering.” Writers interpreted outsiders’ sneering as slut-shaming rhetoric and responded discursively to manage (...) the stigma; leering, however, sent a more complicated message that was harder for writers to manage. In revealing how these interactions threatened to strip writers of their sexual agency, our analysis suggests gender may be a primary mechanism by which stigma is applied and managed, which has theoretical implications for the stigmatization of women’s sexual selves. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of the semiotic analysis in which the story of Krystian Bala, a Polish author who was convicted of murder, is studied in detail. The presented case study focuses on the interactions between real and fictional worlds, in particular, on the possibility of amalgamation of a real author’s and a fictional storyteller’s roles. Furthermore, the double-dimensional analysis of reality and fiction is complemented and broadened by an in-depth examination of how this story has inspired other authors. (...) By discussing real events and texts of culture based on them, this paper aims at presenting the process in which the writer who had turned to be the murderer became the protagonist of artistic creations of others, and, in consequence, a part of a broader socio-cultural phenomenon. (shrink)

In this paper, I trace the concept of ‘becomings’, most thoroughly articulated in the tenth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, as it relates to the notion of the writer as sorcerer. More precisely, my aim is to articulate how it is that Deleuze and Guattari conceptualise the writer as really effecting what they understand as ‘becomings’. My thesis is that if the writer is a sorcerer, capable of enabling real becomings, it is because language itself, for Deleuze (...) and Guattari, is bodily and material, and the author, particularly the literary author, has the ability to disrupt language's representational domain of sense, causing language to hum with the intensive vitality that puts it in closest proximity to the body, from whence language emerges in the first place. We shall first look to Bergson and Spinoza, from whom Deleuze and Guattari abstract their intensive conception of the body in A Thousand Plateaus. From here we will outline the apparent progression of becomings in the tenth plateau. Finally, we will look to the Kafka book as outlining the material and affective capacities of literature. (shrink)

Darwin the writer -- Learning to see : Darwin's prophetic apprenticeship on the Beagle voyage -- The prose of On the origin of species -- Surprise and paradox : Darwin's artful legacy -- Darwinian mind and Wildean paradox -- Hardy's Woodlanders and the Darwinian grotesque -- Coda : the comic Darwin.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore whether freelance technical writers experience greater ethical issues than do their permanently employed counterparts. Because freelance technical writers work at the whim of the client, it is possible that the perhaps tenuous nature of this relationship may leave freelance technical writers feeling obligated to complete projects about which they have ethical concerns.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study was conducted through an e‐mail survey, a more detailed e‐mail interview, and a phone interview.FindingsA clear majority of the (...) respondents in this study have never had ethical issues with their clients and fell that they, not permanently employed writers, are at an ethical advantage in their work.Research limitations/implicationsThe respondents for this study worked for clients from a wide variety of fields and industries. Conducting additional research with controls in place to focus on specific, individual fields could prove very enlightening.Practical implicationsRespondents discussed the challenge of clients being wary to trust them as they worked off‐site. These results suggest that freelance technical writers, as a whole, are professionals with a high degree of personal ethics that guide their work lives. Perhaps, this research could allay fears of those previously concerned about having technical writers do work for them away from their corporate plants.Originality/valueFreelance technical writers and the ethical issues that arise from their work have previously not been studied. (shrink)

Traditional literature considers complex biometric sources such as words, letters and signatures for writer verification/identification. In this work the use of small segments of the handwritten stroke for writer verification is proposed. A grapheme is defined as the concatenation of smaller segments or fragments. Two models of grapheme are developed based on the idea that the segments are parts of a circle with or without direction. The average of Gray Level of the Perpendicular Line to the Skeleton and (...) Local Binary Pattern are adopted as descriptors. A database of 3,000 images of 50 writers, with 6 types of segments and with 10 samples per segment has been developed. A binary output support vector machine was applied as classifier. Thus, 50 classifiers were trained using 100 balanced data sets generated using subsampling of the majority class. Experiments are carried out with the proposed models, with an identity verification hit rate of 97 % on average. The positive results of experiments show that it is possible to achieve high precision in writer verification using segment of graphemes. (shrink)