210 research outputs found
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Laughing at Cancer Online: a corpus-based investigation of irreverent humour as coping
In the context of illnesses like cancer, humour and joking, especially gallows humour âthat treats serious, frightening, or painful subject matter in a light or satirical wayâ (Watson 2011: 38), can still be socially unacceptable. Yet people with cancer and their carers amongst themselves, can sometimes find much needed comfort and relief in breaking social taboos and making light of their often life-threatening situations. Such naturally occurring interactions, however, can be difficult to capture in the physical world.
This paper therefore explores the role of irreverent humour used by patients and carers in the digital world, on a UK-based online forum dedicated to cancer. Specifically, the focus is on a thread called âFor those with a warped sense of humour WARNING- no punches pulled hereâ, consisting of half a million words, over 2500 posts, contributed by 68 individuals. A statistical comparison of this thread with other threads on the same forum using Wmatrix (Rayson 2009) reveals that the key humorous utterances make fun of cancer and its consequences, such as embarrassing bodily functions and paraphernalia required as part of treatment: If baggy had farted lots then HB would have shot across the pool... jet propulsion!
Focusing on such examples identified through combined corpus and qualitative methods, I discuss potential functions of this kind of humour in the cancer context, such as community building, support and empowerment in a situation where people otherwise feel powerless. I also reflect on the affordances of digital environments, both as facilitating such risqué interactions and in enabling researchers to capture them
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The role of second-person narration in Sylvia Plathâs Smith Journal
This paper looks at instances of second-person narration in âThe Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plathâ. Second-person narration is defined as ââŠa narrative mode in which the narrator tells a story to a (sometimes undefined, shifting, and/or hypothetical) narratee â delineated by you â who is also the (sometimes undefined, shifting, and/or hypothetical) principle actant in that storyâ (DelConte, 2003:207-8). Entries written in the second-person are examined in order to determine the role that a narrative shift (from first- to second-person narration) can have in terms of its potential implications as a linguistic representation of mental states. The contributions of different approaches (narratology, linguistics, psychology) to the study of second-person narration are considered and their findings are re-applied to a non-fictional text. The focus is on only one of Sylvia Plathâs Journals, the âSmith Journalâ, as this is where the narrative shifts occur.
Second-person narration can have a variety of functions stemming from the inherent properties of the second-person pronoun and some of these properties combine, or even clash to produce a whole array of effects such as distancing, sense of an inner split, self-alienation, or similar. This paper proposes that any effects are not only brought about by a narrative shift, but are also dependent on temporal orientation. The effects identified in the text are then linked with research in psychology as well as Sylvia Plathâs known biography in order to comment on how various linguistic patterns can allude to states of mind
Laughing at Cancer: Humour, empowerment, solidarity and coping online
In the context of cancer, humour and joking can still be seen as socially unacceptable. Yet people with cancer can find relief in making light of their often life-threatening situations. How and why they do this has received little systematic attention to date. This paper begins to address this gap by exploring 530,055 words of online patient-patient interactions on a thread explicitly dedicated to humour within a UK-based cancer forum.
A corpus informed analysis reveals that characteristic forms of humour make fun of cancer and its consequences (e.g. embarrassing bodily functions and paraphernalia required as part of treatment), sometimes via co-constructed fantasy scenarios running several posts. Facilitated by the affordances of the online environment, the main functions of these humorous utterances and exchanges include enabling contributors to talk about frightening, sensitive, embarrassing and/or taboo experiences; potentially reducing the psychological impact of their experiences; potentially facilitating a sense of individual and collective empowerment in a context where people can feel powerless; and building a sense of a cohesive, supportive community, reducing potential feelings of isolation. In these ways, humour helps contributors cope with their illness
Verordnungen ĂŒber die Bestattungen in den mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen Quellen aus dem Szeklerland
Written sources indicate that burials inside churches and
within the churchyard enjoyed a special status throughout the
Szekler region. For both Catholics and Protestants, burials
in the church, mainly around the communion table, had a
particular status linked to the belief that the chances for
resurrection on the day of the Last Judgement were higher for
those who were closer to the saints, to the sanctuary.
Nobles, donors and benefactors of the church as well as
clergymen would normally be buried there. However, the church
allowed every social category to have a grave in the church
against a certain amount of money.
Burials in the church and in the churchyard were regulated by
several ecclesiastic decrees that were disregarded most of
the times. The austerity measures in the church protocols
give us some information about those situations. In the
Middle Ages the church was packed with graves, which, at the
beginning of the early modern period, led to decisions to
confine burials to the church crypt alone. However, the
ecclesiastical regulations did not have the expected results
of moving the cemetery outside the inhabited space. At the
end of the 18th century, at the initiative of the secular
authorities, began an evacuation process on sanitary
considerations that ended only at the end of the 19th century
and during which cemeteries were moved from inside the church
to the churchyard
The Cancer Card: metaphor and humour in online interactions about the experience of cancer
Employing a dynamic system approach, this chapter investigates the use of one particular
metaphorâthe âcancer cardââon an online forum dedicated to cancer. Far from being a
common Card Game metaphor with a stable source-target mapping, the metaphor is
collaboratively developed (i.e. used, re-used, adapted) to express the idea that patients can
use their illness to their advantage in a variety of situations, while also reflecting a broader
tendency to employ humor as a strategy for coping with adversity. An analysis of all 106
instances of â(cancer) card(s)â on one of the threads of the forum shows that, though related
to English expressions like âplay the [âŠ] cardâ and to conventional conceptual metaphors like
LIFE IS A GAME, its use is specific to the interactions among the members of this online
community. Our analysis of the âcancer cardâ as a group-specific metaphoreme (Cameron &
Deignan 2006) emphasizes that multiple interacting factors must be considered to account for
such rich and complex phenomena as the use of metaphors in online interactions
SÄpÄturi arheologice la biserica reformatÄ din TÄuÈii MÄgheruÈi (jud. MaramureÈ)
A MĂĄramaros megyei MiszmogyorĂłs (rom. TÄuÈii MÄgherÄuÈ)
NagybĂĄnyĂĄtĂłl nyugatra, 11 km tĂĄvolsĂĄgra helyezkedik el.
Reformåtus temploma a våros központi részén talålható, a régi
Tótfalu/Misztótfalu részen. A templomot a Nagybånya-Szatmår
DN 1C nemzeti Ășt veszi körĂŒl.
A 2009 tavaszån a templom alapozåsa mellett végzett drénezési
munkĂĄlatok kapcsĂĄn kerĂŒlt sor megelĆzĆ rĂ©gĂ©szeti feltĂĄrĂĄsra.
A kutatĂĄs cĂ©lja a templom Ă©pĂtĂ©störtĂ©netĂ©nek Ă©s a hozzĂĄ
tartozĂł temetĆ kapcsolatĂĄnak megĂĄllapĂtĂĄsa, annak
idĆrendjĂ©nek tisztĂĄzĂĄsa volt. A rĂ©gĂ©szeti kutatĂĄs sorĂĄn kĂ©t
szelvĂ©nyt jelöltek ki: az SI/2009 felĂŒletet a templom dĂ©li
falĂĄval merĆlegesen nyitottĂĄk, a templomhajĂł Ă©s a szentĂ©ly
talĂĄlkozĂĄsĂĄnĂĄl, mĂg az S II/2009-est a szentĂ©ly Ă©szaki kĂŒlsĆ
falĂĄval pĂĄrhuzamosan nyitottĂĄk a 16. szĂĄzadban elfalazott
sekrestyeajtĂł elĆtt.
A kutatĂĄs sorĂĄn megĂĄllapĂtottĂĄk, hogy az S I/2009 szelvĂ©nyben
a templomhajĂł Ă©s a szentĂ©ly alapozĂĄsa Ă©s felmenĆ fala között
lĂ©tezik egy falelvĂĄlĂĄs, ami arra utal, hogy ezek kĂŒlönbözĆ
fĂĄzisokban Ă©pĂŒltek. Mindezt a megĂĄllapĂtĂĄst alĂĄtĂĄmasztja az
alapozås mélysége, a falszövet összetétele és a habarcs
ĂĄllaga. A falak környeztĂ©bĆl nem kerĂŒlt elĆ leletanyag, amely
alapjĂĄn keltezni lehetne ezeket az Ă©pĂtĂ©si periĂłdusokat. Az \ud
ĂĄsatĂĄs a templom körĂŒli temetĆ 27 temetkezĂ©sĂ©t tĂĄrta fel.
Figyelembe vĂ©ve azt, hogy a temetĆ csak rĂ©szben kutatott, Ăgy
a feltĂĄrt temetĆrĂ©szlet alapjĂĄn jelen elemzĂ©s csak
részeredményeket tartalmaz és tåjékoztató jellegƱ. Kiemelném
azt a tényt is, hogy egy katolikus eredetƱ templomról és
közössĂ©grĆl van szĂł, amely ĂĄttĂ©rt a reformĂĄtus vallĂĄsra, Ăgy
a feltĂĄrt temetkezĂ©sek elkĂŒlönĂtĂ©se Ă©s keltezĂ©se viszonylag
nehĂ©z feladatot jelent. MĂĄs temetĆfeltĂĄrĂĄsokhoz hasonlĂłan,
ahol sikerĂŒlt elkĂŒlönĂteni a katolikus Ă©s protestĂĄns
temetkezésket (låsd. Szentåbrahåm, Telekfalva, Teke), a
miszmogyorósi reformåtus templom esetében ez nem volt
lehetsĂ©ges. A szegĂ©nyes leletanyag alapjĂĄn a temetĆ
hasznĂĄlatĂĄnak periĂłdusĂĄt a 16-18. szĂĄzadra hatĂĄrozhatjuk meg
Interview with Peter Rutkoff
Professor Peter Rutoff at Kenyon College talks about raising his children Jewish, his own history with the religion and the culture, and the anti-semitism he has experienced.https://digital.kenyon.edu/lt_interviews/1036/thumbnail.jp
Complexity theory and conversational humour: Tracing the birth and decline of a running joke in an online cancer support community
This paper argues that a fuller understanding of conversational humour, in all its multifunctional, multifaceted, and heterogeneous nature, could be achieved by conducting at least some conversational humour research from the perspective of complexity theory (an umbrella term covering âcomplex adaptive systems theoryâ, âdynamic systems theoryâ, âchaos theoryâ, etc.). Complexity theory encourages questions that are not usually asked about conversational humour and provides ways of answering them. It âaims to account for how the interacting parts of a complex system give rise to the system's collective behaviour and how such a system simultaneously interacts with its environmentâ making 'change central to theory and methodâ (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron 2008: 1). The âobjects of concernâ are no longer entities or things (e.g. the joke, a pun, etc.), but processes, changes and continuities: how do particular jokes, puns or humorous lexemes come into being in a given discourse community, how do their uses and meanings develop? The paper demonstrates the potential of a complexity approach to conversational humour by applying it to one particular manifestation of conversational humour: 235 instances of a running joke centred around the lemma rolo*, in approximately 680,000 words of online peer-support data (2544 forum posts, 47 blogs and blog comments), produced by 97 contributors over a period of 13 months in 2011â2012
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