• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.127-157
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• 2014

Among many literary isms, impressionism is often regarded as the most frank expression of personality. As a masterpiece of modernism, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier is a celebration of the subjectivity which reflects the writer's experiential reality. For Madox Ford, art is not to achieve the true objectivity of human society, but to seize the momentary perception in personal life. As the beginning of modernism, Madox Ford's impressionaism was mostly devoted to give fictive life to subjective impressions. And his heroes are usually the egoless person who can absorb the intense rapidity of consciousness without any prejudice. However, the innocent mind's receptions of myriad impressions, like those of the protagonist John Dowell or his idealized version of Major Ashburnham in The Good Solidier, were described as the enjoyable yet deceptive ones in Madox Ford's works. To engrave more sold perceptive impressions into life, Madox Ford often contrasts or mixes truth with deception, life with death as he did in his real life. Speicially as the result of thick application of real-life subject matters to his writings, Madox Ford's literary works get more vivid colors and penetrating forms. Thus, his literary impressionism based upon his harsh and passionate realities overcomes the limitations of shifting moments of senses, demolishing the boundaries between what is objective and what is subjective, like post-impressionism or expressionism. Namely, as Walter Lowenfels said, Madox Ford did not follow the impossible objectivity passively, yet instead "knew how to invent the truth."

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.65-92
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• 2018

According to Wenying Xu, Asian American literature abounds in culinary metaphors and references (8); subsequently, a growing number of critics have begun to recognize that food "feeds into the literary rendering of Asian American subjectivity [and] provides a language through which to imagine Asian alterity in the American imagination" (Mannur 13). Ann Mah's Kitchen Chinese: A Novel about Food, Family, and Finding Yourself (2010) is yet another text within which to investigate how food "operates as one of the key cultural signs that structure people's identities" (Xu 2). Even as Kitchen Chinese insists on underscoring that Chinese food, as much as the voyage to her "motherland" China, is critical to protagonist Isabelle's quest to gain a better understanding of herself, we are able to observe how Isabelle exploits Chinese culture and its foodways as "food pornography" in order to align herself with mainstream America. Needless to say, the novels' relegation of Chinese food as "food porn" is problematic in that it encourages readers to participate in the exoticization of Asia and its culture, and the reduction of its people as the other. Ultimately, this essay aims to consider how the consumption and rejection of food becomes a critical means by which the Asian American subject fashions her identity.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.961-973
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• 2009

Walter Benjamin expresses his concern that the new technologies of mechanical reproduction robs the artwork of its own uniqueness, its "aura." Benjamin uses the word "aura" to refer to the sense of awe or reverence one presumably experiences in the presence of works of art. This aura does not merely inhere in the works of art themselves, because Benjamin extends his notion of aura to the level of how he both understands and positions the modern subject in the world of uncertainty and transitoriness. The theoretical framework of Benjaminian aura becomes a crucial and efficient strategic apparatus to read The Education of Henry Adams. As for Benjamin the modern implies a sense of alienation, a historical discontinuity, and a decisive break with tradition, Adams observes that modern civilization has wiped out "tradition," a mythic home in which man can experience order and unity. Adams claims that the growth of science, reason, and multiplicity at the expense of religion, feeling, and unity has been accompanied by a parallel growth in individualism at the expense of community and tradition. To Adams the collapse of traditional values such as maternity, fecundity, and security in America is a waking nightmare of the moral dilemmas of a capitalist society, in which the cruel force of the modern Dynamo is becoming a prime governing principle.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.59-81
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• 2013

Samuel Beckett's literary sympathies with underdogs enslaved to authoritative figures, found in his earliest plays, continued in a more or less subdued form in his later plays: Not I is a good case in point thematizing a social authority psychologically embedded within a subject. The incessant bouts of self-defense, or confessional, which Mouth carries out on a dark stage is directed to an inner authority. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1931), Freud's diagnosis for individuals torn between the opposite calls of a social order-- which he called, by turns, civil society, civilization, and culture--and of individual freedom was a "neurosis." What Not I dramatizes seems to be this state of neurosis suffered by a subject bound to the contradictory calls of an internal social authority, which forces Mouth to carry on a confessional till she obtains a symbolically/linguistically viable social title of "I," and of her individualistic denial of the position("what?..who?..no!.. she!.."). Mouth's ordeal on stage does not signify the psychological pressure of the social system, with its disciplinary measures of guilt, justice, and punishment, triumphs over individualistic irregularities and abnormalities, for her "maddened" confession will never see its closure. The opposite psychological forces at work inside Mouth, who is both "in" and "out[side]" "this world," will keep engaging in an eternal battle. In a way, she is a perfect parable about us humans living within a system, "discontent" and hung between the contradictory calls of individualism and social collectiveness.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.27-54
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• 2017

Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son, one of the outstanding Filipino American novels after the LA riots, critically deals with a racial issue of his community which has been intermingled with the myth of model minority. Gabe and Thomas, considered as obedient Filipino younger immigrants, are asked to achieve the American dream as a way to place themselves at the center of the mainstream white society. However, they recognize that they cannot be accepted as a suitable subject for the invincible racism deeply rooted in the society. While Tomas refuses to become a model minority by identifying himself with the Mexican, Gabe is expected to become an idealistic subject of model minority by his mother since he complies with the rules of the mainstream society. However, he accepts his brother's violent way of life in that violence is necessary to protect his family from the racial discrimination in America. Though he is his mother's hope for model minority, he recognizes the only condition to achieve her expectation is the American society where there is no racism at all. However, by taking the case of Gabe and Thomas, Roley suggests that the younger generation of Filipino American immigrants have no choice but to accept violence to survive in the American society because racism always threatens their life.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.907-930
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• 2010

Most previous studies on A Gesture Life focused on illuminating the role and significance of Kkutaeh, the Korean comfort woman, whom Hata runs across at a military camp in the Burmese jungle. For instance, Carroll Hamilton argues that the return of Kkutaeh as a traumatic subject disrupts Hata's nationalist narrative, causing the protagonist's eventual failure at national enfranchisement. However, this paper focuses on Hata's relationship with Bedley Run, the sleepy suburban white town, in which the protagonist settles down right after immigration to the US. The racial/racist nature of Bedley Run has not received due critical attention, although a few studies on the novel saw Hata's gestures as a survival tactic deployed against the hostile environment of his new host society. This paper, resorting to Pierre Macherey's thesis on symptomatic reading, exposes what Hata, the narrator/protagonist, hides from his readers concerning his status in his muchbeloved town; and it also explores the subversive significance of Hata's ethnic memories. The aim of this study is, after all, to map both the subversive possibilities and the limitations of Hata's immigrant narrative as a bildungsroman.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1047-1065
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• 2010

English inversion constructions are not only hard for non-native speakers to learn but also difficult to teach mainly because of their intriguing grammatical and discourse properties. This paper addresses grammatical issues in learning or teaching the so-called 'predicate inversion (PI)' construction (e.g., Equally important in terms of forest depletion is the continuous logging of the forests). In particular, we chart the grammatical (distributional, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic) properties of the PI construction, and argue for adata-driven teaching for English grammar. To depart from the arm-chaired style of grammar teaching (relying on author-made simple sentences), our teaching method introduces a datadriven teaching. With total 25 university students in a grammar-related class, students together have analyzed the British Component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), containing about one million words distributed across a variety of textual categories. We have identified total 290 PI sentences (206 from spoken and 87 from written texts). The preposed syntactic categories of the PI involve five main types: AdvP, PP, VP(ed/ing), NP, AP, and so, all of which function as the complement of the copula. In terms of discourse, we have observed, supporting Birner and Ward's (1998) observation that these preposed phrases represent more familiar information than the postposed subject. The corpus examples gave us the three possible types: The preposed element is discourse-old whereas the postposed one is discourse-new as in Putting wire mesh over a few bricks is a good idea. Both preposed and postposed elements can also be discourse new as in But a fly in the ointment is inflation. These two elements can also be discourse old as in Racing with him on the near-side is Rinus. The dominant occurrence of the PI in the spoken texts also supports the view that the balance (or scene-setting) in information structure is the main trigger for the use of the PI construction. After being exposed to the real data and in-depth syntactic as well as informationstructure analysis of the PI construction, it is proved that the class students have had a farmore clear understanding of the construction in question and have realized that grammar does not mean to live on by itself but tightly interacts with other important grammatical components such as information structure. The study directs us toward both a datadriven and interactive grammar teaching.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.574-575
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• 1996

The theme of the current study is to study intonation of Taiwanese(Tw.) by comparing the intonation patterns in native language (Ll), target language (L2), and interlanguage (IL). Studies on interlanguage have dealt primarily with segments. Though there were studies which addressed to the issues of interlanguage intonation, more often than not, they didn't offer evidence for the statement, and the hypotheses were mainly based on impression. Therefore, a formal description of interlanguage intonation is necessary for further development in this field. The basic assumption of this study is that native speakers of one language perceive and produce a second language in ways closely related to the patterns of their first language. Several studies on interlanguage prosody have suggested that prosodic structure and rules are more subject to transfer than certain other phonological phenomena, given their abstract structural nature and generality(Vogel 1991). Broselow(1988) also shows that interlanguage may provide evidence for particular analyses of the native language grammar, which may not be available from the study of the native language alone. Several research questions will be addressed in the current study: A. How does duration vary among native and nominative utterances\ulcorner The results shows that there is a significant difference in duration between the beginning English learners, and the native speakers of American English for all the eleven English sentences. The mean duration shows that the beginning English learners take almost twice as much time (1.70sec.), as Americans (O.97sec.) to produce English sentences. The results also show that American speakers take significant longer time to speak all ten Taiwanese utterances. The mean duration shows that Americans take almost twice as much time (2.24sec.) as adult Taiwanese (1.14sec.) to produce Taiwanese sentences. B. Does proficiency level influence the performance of interlanguage intonation\ulcorner Can native intonation patterns be achieved by a non-native speaker\ulcorner Wenk(1986) considers proficiency level might be a variable which related to the extent of Ll influence. His study showed that beginners do transfer rhythmic features of the Ll and advanced learners can and do succeed in overcoming mother-tongue influence. The current study shows that proficiency level does play a role in the acquisition of English intonation by Taiwanese speakers. The duration and pitch range of the advanced learners are much closer to those of the native American English speakers than the beginners, but even advanced learners still cannot achieve native-like intonation patterns. C. Do Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers\ulcorner Ross et. al.(1986) suggests that the presence of tone in a language significantly inhibits the unrestricted manipulation of three acoustical measures of prosody which are involved in producing local pitch changes in the fundamental frequency contour during affective signaling. Will the presence of tone in a language inhibit the ability of speakers to modulate intonation\ulcorner The results do show that Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers. Both advanced (84Hz) and beginning learners (58Hz) of English show a significant narrower FO range than that of Americans' (112Hz), and the difference is greater between the beginning learners' group and native American English speakers.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.72-79
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• 1999

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of abstracts of original articles. Methods. This subjects selected total 63 abstracts of the original articles of the Korean Journal of Preventive Medicine in 1997. The quality of abstracts was measured against a checklist of evaluation criteria, which were divided into eight categories and the numbers of inappropriate words (including grammar) according to criterionbased survey. A score for each abstract was obtained by dividing the number of criteria presented by the number applicable. The overall mean score was also determined. Results. The overall mean score of abstract quality was 0.55 out of 1. Of the abstracts subject selection 83% didn't include specific technical descriptors. Of those that gave conclusions 92% didn't address study limitations and 78% made no recommendations for future study. The overall mean number of inappropriate usage of words (including grammar) per abstract was 14.1. The overall mean number of English words was 283. In the multiple regression analyses, the research career of the first author and the number of English words to the number of inappropriate usage of words were statistically significant. Also, in the secondary regression model, the number of English words to the quality score of abstract was only statistically significant. Conclusions. Most of the abstracts provided some information pertaining to each evaluation criterion. However, they did not provide sufficient details to enhance the reader's understanding of the article. On the basis of the study the abstracts need improvement in its description of the reported subject selection, statements of limitations and recommendations, etc. The Korean Society for Preventive Medicine will recommend a proposal for more informative abstracts in Korean J Prey Med and will take into consideration the introduction of foreign review of abstracts. Future studies should address these issues and compare the quality of abstracts between different journals and their time of publication.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.121-144
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• 2003

This thesis has a research focus in effectively Practicing cooperative instruction where teacher-librarians play a role. The cooperative Instruction means to practice cooperatively with the subject teachers and teacher-librarians, in teaching subject matters(Korean, English, Social studies. Science, History, and so forth), using the school library. This thesis presents three steps by theory-model-support for a practice method through developing a cooperative instruction model. This is based on curriculum which is an axis of school education and an instructional design theory which is a base theory for subject matters.