International audience

This article explores the ways in which different language ideologies manifest themselves in the English agrégation (competitive exam) in France, showing how they contribute to the construction of the (socio)linguistic object named “English” in this context. Bringing together tools from sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and discourse analysis, I analyse a corpus of Agrégation jury reports and show how native-speakerism, national, standard language and raciolinguistic ideologies, as well as ideologies of coherence and purism, all play a role in shaping a set of ideal(ised) models of English – and thus of English speakers – in this context. The article concludes by suggesting that, given the influence of the Agrégation in France, the phenomena observed here may contribute to elaborating what goes by the name of “English” in French education, and in France, more generally.

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) spent much of his life travelling around the globe, at least until his untimely death from tuberculosis. But Lawrence’s travel writing was inextricably linked with his personal philosophy, and one aspect that particularly fascinated Lawrence was the idea of straight lines. In Mornings in Mexico, for example, he makes the startling assertion that “the straight course is hacked out in wounds, against the will of the world”. For Lawrence clearly associated linearity with the scientific, causal thinking of a human world which he detested, and he aimed to develop an alternative model. Thus, he sought to shift from a horizontal axis to a more vertical one (expressed in his own terms, it involves not contenting oneself with exploring the surface, but rather seeking out the hidden depths); hence his interest in crossing “dividing lines”, or “gulfs” or “abysses”, which pushed him indefatigably to pursue new, unpredictable and surprising encounters with people, places and even things. And yet his search for another paradigm led him still further. In Mornings in Mexico Lawrence also wrote the following: “Strange that we should think in straight lines, when there are none, and talk of straight courses, when every course, sooner or later, is seen to be making the sweep round, swooping upon the centre”. Ultimately, a radically non-linear, anti-scientific vision is shown to be at the very heart of Lawrence’s travel writing.

Yves Carlet chez lui, à Montaud. © ? C’est en février 2023 à Montaud, dans sa maison qu’il a lui-même rénovée et agrandie, que Francis Bordat et moi-même avons rencontré Yves Carlet pour un « Grand entretien » qui allait mêler littérature et cinéma, Thoreau, Crane, Capra, Kazan et Chaplin. Il faisait un froid sec et ensoleillé, nous avons parcouru les couloirs et recoins de la maison en haut du village, à flanc de colline, et nous nous sommes posés dans une jolie pièce où les voix complices ...

Le dossier « Regards croisés sur La Nouvelle-Orléans : la cité décalée / Perspectives on New Orleans, the Misfit City » (14.1 2016) est l’émanation du colloque « La Nouvelle-Orléans : la cité décalée » / “New Orleans : the misfit city” organisé par le LERMA, en partenariat avec deux universités de Louisiane (Loyola University – New Orleans et University of Louisiana – Lafayette), du 7 au 9 novembre 2013. Fig. 1 Young New Orleans Photo Leslie Parr (Loyola University New Orleans) Tous droits r...

The Stylistics of ‘You’ invites the reader to explore the use of the second-person pronoun across space and time and in different genres and media, within an interdisciplinary approach typical of stylistics. Indeed, while linguistically-oriented, it borrows from multiple theoretical backgrounds such as discourse analysis, narratology, socio-pragmatics, philosophy of language, or communication studies. It proposes a general model accounting for the different pragmatic functions and effects of ...

This article looks at the under-researched topic broadly defined as Sylvia Plath’s relationship with Europe and European culture. Plath often highlighted that her European heritage was just as important to her as her American nationality. By focusing on Europe, I aim to shift the focus from Plath’s embeddedness in American culture and demonstrate that Plath was a multicultural and multifaceted writer and citizen. My research focuses on Plath’s relationship to one specific country, namely Hungary. While this at first may seem an odd choice, Sylvia Plath is tied in many ways to Hungary: she was courting with a Hungarian man and wrote about the 1956 Freedom Revolution against Russia. From her maternal side, she was also close geographically to Hungary, as her grandmother was from Austria. My essay reflects on the many ways Plath engaged with Hungary’s culture and politics as part of her broader interest in European culture and literature. On the other hand, while Plath experienced the Cold War context in the West, Hungary was part of the Iron Curtain of the East. There are parallels and opposition between Plath’s perception of the early stages of the Cold War and Hungary’s history. Plath’s novel The Bell Jar (1963) famously starts with the electrocution of the Rosenbergs; in Hungary, public places were named after the victims of the Cold War. I contextualise Plath’s knowledge and engagement with Hungary, which contributes to an inclusive reading of her writings, biography, and experiences of the early Cold War.

On ne doute pas que le dernier ouvrage d’Élisabeth Angel-Perez, paru en 2022 et qui a remporté le prix de la recherche SAES/AFEA en octobre 2023, fera date et marquera durablement la recherche sur le théâtre britannique contemporain. Agrémenté d’une riche bibliographie, d’un double index et de nombreuses illustrations (photographies de mises en scène ou d’œuvres d’art évoquées en regard des pièces étudiées), organisé en quatre parties composées chacune de deux ou trois chapitres, chaque chapi...

L’ouvrage de Laurence Chamlou Mirages persans : Les récits de trois voyageuses au tournant du XXe siècle s’inscrit bien dans la continuité des recherches de l’autrice dans les domaines de l’orientalisme et du postcolonialisme britanniques. Le livre, pluridisciplinaire, se lit aussi bien comme une histoire culturelle du féminisme britannique que comme une évolution du genre de récit de voyage au féminin moderniste vue sous le prisme de la « nouvelle histoire impériale ». Alors qu’au tournant d...

The genesis and publication history of Virginia Woolf’s “How Should One Read a Book?”, whose final version appeared in The Second Common Reader in 1932, is by now well-established. Critics, including Andrew McNeillie and Beth Rigel Daugherty, have traced its inception in a lecture given by Woolf in 1926 and documented the successive revisions undergone by the text. In the wake of such studies, this paper focuses on the differences between the Yale Review and the Common Reader versions of “How Should One Read a Book?” to suggest that the change in medium – periodical vs. book-form essay – alters Woolf’s relationship to the subject she is writing about: reading books. Whereas in The Common Reader, Woolf is writing from within the field she explores (books and their various “classes”), The Yale Review essay approaches the same question from the perspective of the journal article. As I argue, a number of the differences between the two versions of the essay – including the reading strategy devised by Woolf – are accountable to this change of perspective.