“What do you want me to tell?” The inferential texture of Alice Munro’s ‘Postcard’

This paper considers some of the ways in which ideas from pragmatic stylistics (based here on relevance theory) can be applied in exploring aspects of the production and interpretation of Alice Munro’s story ‘Postcard’. It identifies some features of the story, considers the role of inferential processes in reading, writing and evaluating texts in general, and considers how focusing on inference can help in understanding specific effects of the story on readers. Finally, it considers how focusing on inference can help to account for what Stockwell (2009) terms the ‘texture’ of the story, i.e. what it feels like to engage with the story during and after reading it

Identity inferences: implicatures, implications and extended interpretations

This article considers how ideas from relevance-theoretic pragmatics can be applied in understanding the construction of identity in interaction, while presupposing that consideration of ideas about identity can make a significant contribution to pragmatic theories. While previous work on pragmatics has focused on the construction and performance of identity, this has not been much discussed in work from a relevance-theoretic perspective. For illustration, the article refers mainly to a video recording of a UK House of Commons Select Committee session on drug addiction. While the video provides considerable relevant data about identity construction, the article does not develop a detailed analysis of the video or the extracts it focuses on. Instead, it uses them to argue for the usefulness of relevance-theoretic ideas in understanding identity and impression management. The ideas focused on are that communication can be stronger or weaker (i.e. it can be more or less clear that particular assumptions are being intentionally communicated), that there is no clear cut-off point between very weakly communicated implicatures and non-communicated implications, that interpretation generally involves going beyond what the communicator intended to derive the addressee’s own conclusions, that the effects of communicative interaction include more than the derivation of new assumptions and that adjustments to ‘cognitive environments’ (the sets of assumptions which are accessible to individuals at particular times) can continue after interactions take place. These ideas can be useful in a number of areas including in understanding identity in general, literary identities, attitudes to language varieties, the production of communicative acts and the teaching of spoken and written communication

Miss America Kissed Caleb: Stories

The mountain is a lonely place. Welcome to Sourwood, a small Kentucky town inhabited by men and women unique and yet eerily familiar. Among its joyful and tragic citizens we meet the crafty, spirited Caleb and his curious younger brother; Pearl, a suspected witch, and her sheltered daughter, Thanie; superstitious Eli; and the doomed orphan Girty. In Sourwood, the mountain is both a keeper of secrets and an imposing, isolating presence, shaping the lives of all who live in its shadow. Strong in both the voice and sensibilities of Appalachia, the stories in Miss America Kissed Caleb are at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. In the title story, young Caleb turns over his hard-earned dime to the war effort when he receives a coaxing kiss from Miss America, who sweeps into Sourwood by train, “pretty as a night moth.” Caleb and his brother share in the thrills and uncertainties of growing up, making an accidental visit to a brothel in “Fourth of July” and taming a “high society” pooch in “The Jimson Dog.” These stories invoke a place and a time that have long passed—a way of living nearly extinct—yet the beauty of the language and the truth revealed in the characters’ everyday lives continue to resonate with modern readers. Billy C. Clark is the award-winning author of thirteen books and countless short stories and poems. His stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories and numerous other anthologies. Clark grew up poor in Cattlettsburg in the northeastern corner of Kentucky in the 1940s, and these stories reflect that environment unfailingly. —Appalachian Heritage Memorable characters and a strong sense of the natural beauty surrounding Sourwood help explain why this place is obviously dear to the author\u27s heart. —Booklist A loving and poignant study of life in both the past and present. —Bourbon (Paris, KY) Times Miss America Kissed Caleb is Billy C. Clark at his best with touches of O. Henry and James Still stirred in, and that’s the highest compliment I can pay for a writer of short fiction. Clark’s characters are growing up, noticing girls, changing from tadpoles to bullfrogs. Funny, bittersweet, bitter, even rowdy, and sometimes sentimental, the stories in this new collection are rife with the details of 1940s rural life and rich in characters who reflect their place and their time. Masterful as always, a storyteller who has perfected his craft, Billy C. Clark has done it again. —Garry Barker, author of Notes From a Native Son Here in the new millennium is a writer whose original language, the language of frontier storytellers, is completely unspoiled...this language is pure American poetry. —Gurney Norman, author of Kinfolks and Divine Right\u27s Trip Clark is a master storyteller; his tales have the staying power of myth. . . . His tales are timeless in the way they entertain us and in the messages they bring us. —Journal of Appalachian Studies With his typical mastery, Billy C. Clark shows the reader an interesting array of characters in this small Kentucky town in the 1940s. —Kentucky Monthly Clark is not a writer who leans on the all-too-familiar Appalachian stereotypes. His characters would still be fully rounded people, torn by the struggle between kindness and meanness, anywhere they lived. —Lexington Herald-Leader Clark recreates in loving and authoritative detail the unwritten history of a rural mountain community. A first-rate collection of stories and sketches. —Richard Taylor, former Kentucky Poet Laureate Clark is a master of the Southern tale. . . . Readers of all types, from all places, and of all ages can find something of value as Clark’s prose pierces the differences that divide people as it touches readers’ hearts. —Union County (KY) Advocatehttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/1048/thumbnail.jp

Lang/Lit from A to BA: integrating Language and Literature study at school and university

This report is based on a workshop held at Middlesex University on 7 July 2012, which focused on Lang/Lit provision at school in English, Wales and Northern Ireland, and at university across the UK. It presents anecdotal and more formal data which we gathered in preparing for the event, and some aspects of discussions that arose following the workshop. We hope that this report will be the beginning of a fuller investigation of issues about Lang/Lit provision. We plan to explore these further ourselves and hope that they will also be explored by other people and institutions involved in the provision of Lang/Lit work. Section 2 explains some of the informal background and motivation for this work. Section 3 considers integrated Lang/Lit provision at A-level (referring collectively to AS and A2 except where the distinction between the two is relevant), the views of students, teachers/lecturers and examiners, and problems and possibilities around this provision. Section 4 addresses the same for BA-level. Section 5 draws these aspects together and reviews transition between the two levels, investigating content, student and provider experience, and obstacles and opportunities for improving the relationships between A-level and BA-level study. Section 6 concludes the report with a summary and suggested avenues for progress

English: diverse but unified: putting texts at the heart of the discipline

Billy Clark, Marcello Giovanelli and Andrea Macrae argue that ‘language and literature’ points the way towards a coherent vision of English, both at school and at university, as a unified but diverse subject encompassing literature, language, drama, media and creative writing