Languages, Literatures, & Cultures

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    THE REJECTION OF CRUEL OPTIMISM IN FRENCH CONTEMPORARY THEATER: TROIS PIÈCES D’INITIATION
    (2020) McMahon, Morgan; Eades, Caroline; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    My doctoral research explores the effects of family trauma as presented in French contemporary theater, situating three plays written by Xavier Durringer, Jean-Luc Lagarce and Marie Ndiaye within the context of Lauren Berlant’s theory of Cruel Optimism. While Berlant points to a universal series of obstacles as proof of the current inability to achieve “the good life” through “lively, durable intimacy”, Durringer, Lagarce and Ndiaye depict a way through these obstacles as a means of initiation and agency, demonstrating an optimistic trend in French theater.
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    Shades of Gay: Representations of Male Same-Sex Desire in French Literature, Culture, and Ideology from 1789-1926
    (2014) Gomolka, Carl Joseph; Orlando, Valérie; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    "Shades of Gay: Representations of Male Same-Sex Desire in French Literature, Culture, and Ideology from 1789-1926," provides a critical overview of ways of representing homosexuality in France from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. More specifically, I contend that the emergent nineteenth-century gay subculture influenced not only the way socio-political and medico-juridical sources represented and defined sexual and gender identity but that nineteenth and early twentieth century authors followed suit, contributing to the construction and deconstruction of social definitions of sexual and gender identity through literature. The first chapter of my thesis, titled "Preparing the Palette: Gay Male Literature from 1792-1910," surveys the works of nineteenth century authors who created the framework for a homosexual epistemology that would structure representations of homosexuality during and after the nineteenth century. In the second chapter, entitled "Through the Looking-Glass: Representations of Fin-de-Siècle Homosexuality in the Works of Jean Lorrain," I explore the influence of science on representations of homosexuality, especially with regard to criminal and degenerate images of the homosexual in the works of Jean Lorrain. My third chapter, entitled "Scandalous Sexualities: the Baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen and the World of Apologetic Impropriety," addresses the relationship between scandal, journalism, and literature in the works of Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen. This chapter also questions whether Akadémos, the journal orchestrated by Fersen, can be considered France's first gay journal. The fourth chapter, entitled, "For the Love of Boys: Ephemeral (Homo)sexuality and Platonic Politics in the Works of Achille Essebac" pioneers an analysis of the works of Achille Essebac, the first such study in English. The final chapter, titled "The Trouble with Normal: the Politics of the Closet in the Works of André Gide," analyzes the dichotomies silence/disclosure and desire/restraint in the fin-de-siècle and early twentieth century works of André Gide, contradictory notions that are of particular interest in the context of sexual and gender identity study. Ultimately, I contend that the authors examined in my dissertation pull from social, ideological, cultural, as well as political representations of sexuality and gender to create an antagonistic and pugnacious literature that contributes to the contemporary definition of homosexuality.
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    Grammatical Gender Representation and Processing in Advanced Second Language Learners of French
    (2009) Vatz, Karen L.; DeKeyser, Robert; Michael, Erica B; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    One of the most difficult challenges of learning French as a foreign language is mastering the gender system. Although there are theories that account for how French native speakers (NSs) master their gender system, it is not fully understood why second language (L2) learners are unable to do the same. The goal of the present study was to investigate this difference in ability between French NSs and non-native speakers (NNSs), specifically, how L2 learners of French store grammatical gender knowledge, and how their storage system relates to processing of grammatical gender in terms of the ability to realize accurate gender agreement throughout a sentence. First, a gender priming task investigated whether advanced L2 learners have developed a gender-nodal system in which gender information is stored as an inherent property of a noun. Second, an online grammaticality judgment task addressed L2 learners' gender agreement ability during processing, while taking into account (a) the role of gender cues available to the participant, and (b) non-linguistic processing constraints such as working memory (WM) through manipulating the distance of an adjective from the noun with which it must agree. In order to investigate the role of a learner's native language (L1) in gender representation and processing, participants included learners of French from three L1 groups: Spanish, whose gender system is congruent to that of French; Dutch, whose gender system is incongruent to that of French; and English, whose gender system is minimal, relative to French. A group of NS controls also participated. Results from the gender priming task indicate that the NNSs in the current study have not developed a native-like gender-nodal system, regardless of L1-L2 gender-system similarity. At-chance accuracy on the grammaticality judgment task indicates L2 gender agreement is far from native-like, even for advanced learners. Whereas the presence of gender cues was beneficial, neither WM nor L1-L2 similarity facilitated performance. The results from this study confirm previous findings on the difficulty of L2 gender agreement, and shed light on the nature of L2 gender representation as a possible explanation for this processing difficulty.
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    In the Margins: Representations of Otherness in Subtitled French Films
    (2008-05-05) Turek, Sheila; Eades, Caroline; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Translation involves integration of a multitude of disciplines and perspectives from which to compare two or more cultures. When translation is extended to film dialogue, in subtitling, the target language viewer unfamiliar with the source language must rely upon the subtitles to access the film's dialogue provided within the space of the verbal exchange, and often the subtitles offer an altered version of the dialogue, particularly given the time and space constraints of the medium. Subtitling, a unique form of translation, not only involves interlingual transfer but also intersemiotic transfer from a spoken dialogue to a written text. This work examines the linguistic treatment of three marginalized groups--homosexuals, women, and foreigners--as expressed in subtitles. In many instances, translation of certain elements in the films, such as forms of address and general referential language, change the meaning for the TL viewer. Cultural references present in the oral dialogue often get omitted or modified in the subtitles, altering the TL viewer's perception of the narrative and characters. These differently rendered translations have connotative qualities that are often differ significantly from the oral dialogue. In many cases, epithets and grammatically gendered language in the SL dialogue get diluted or omitted in the TL subtitles; likewise, power relationships expressed through use of forms of address, such as titles or tutoiement and vouvoiement, cannot be adequately conveyed, and the TL viewer is excluded from this nuanced form of discourse. Cultural references providing supplemental information, including non-dialogic text, are not always rendered in the subtitles, depriving the TL viewer of additional layers of meaning. In dual-language films featuring foreigners, nuances expressed by code switching and code mixing cannot be completely represented in the subtitles. Close analysis of subtitles within the framework of the sociolinguistic and cultural interpretations of the resultant TL dialogue reveals a great deal about the transmission and reception of cultural ideas and has not been addressed to this extent from this perspective. It is to be hoped that this study will inspire interest in further explorations of this nature and contribute to the ever-growing corpus of research in subtitling studies.