In This Paper I Will Be Discussing The Troubles Faced By

In this paper I will be discussing the troubles faced by an individual who experienced depression as a teenager and even into their adult life. I will be exploring the experiences that they faced that may have lead them to depression and how these experiences may be attributed to other larger public issues. The method in which we are going to be examining this issue is commonly referred to as the sociological imagination. The sociological imagination looks at the issues or struggles of an individual and examine the external factors that contribute to this issue. These external factors can be so impactful that they cause a large population of people to suffer from the same issue. As a result of this, sociologist will attribute these†¦show more content†¦By this point their parents had noticed this self harm and stepped in. The parents quickly took steps to pursue professional help for their child through a variety of therapists to help address issues. Over time he began to do better and turn away from self harm and beginning open to seeking the help of others but his anxiety was still there. It wasn’t till he reached college that his anxiety was dealt with once he began to take anti depression medication. In society depression has been an issue that has been ignored and kept quiet for years. A stigma has been placed on depression as something that is a mindset instead of a mental health issue. Especially for males, the concept of being overly emotional has long been frowned upon for males of all ages. Being emotional is commonly seen as unmasculine and young males are usually taught to keep their emotions to themselves.(Nemade, 2007) In a study done by the American Psychological Association, it is found that about 6 million men suffer from depression every year. The American Psychological Association is urging mental health care providers to take special action to address this issue since men are less open to seeing help for issues for mental health issues compared to women. In addition, since men have â€Å"higher risk of abusive anger, substance abuse, risky behavior and suicide.† addressing mental issues in men mayShow MoreRelatedThe Syrian Refugee Crisis869 Words   |   4 Pagesterm for change over time. However, this word extends to much more than simply a bird’s beak getting longer over generations. This principle can also be associated with the growth of a person, but in a much more metaphysical fashion. To give an example, throughout this performance task, I have evolved as a writer, student, and team member. This is clearly exemplified through the steps my team and I took to complete this essay. 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This branch is governed by the People’s Council. This council has 250 members elected for a four year term. The function of the People’s Council include voting for a president, passing laws , discussing government policy, ratification of treaties, and approving budget and development of plans. Lastly, the Judicial branch. The judiciary, including the

Psychological Analysis Arsats Behaviors and Thoughts in...

Psychological analysis of literary works is an approach to understand the truth in humans mind and behavior in different aspects. This kind of analysis uses characters in stories as representatives of human beings under circumstances motivating human to react mentally and physically. As characters in literary work reflects what in their minds through their actions and thoughts, analyzing literatures using psychological theory is a realistic and reasonable method. To understand motives of Arsats, a character in â€Å"The Lagoon† thoroughly, we need to analyse â€Å"The Lagoon† by applying the literary interpretation with a psychological theory; Sigmund Freuds â€Å"Structural Model of Psyche†. In â€Å"Structural Model of Psyche†, Sigmund Freud divided†¦show more content†¦After he obtain his minor goal, Diamelen, he abandon his brother necessarily or he cannot reach his main goal, â€Å"from the quote I never turned my head, my own name!...My bro ther! Three times he called-but I was no afraid of life, Was she not there in the canoe?†. The major thing that he is worried is to have Diamelen beside him and leads him the the main goal. Second, Arsat uses Daimelen as his encouragement to find the country where death is unknown which he believe that Love from both both Diameen and him will guide then to his illusion world, from the quote â€Å"My love is so great, that I thought it could guide me to the country where death was unknown.† The character, Arsat, is controlled unconsciously by the Id that makes him trying to respond his craving without thinking of morality, society and family. It also drives him to abandon his responsibility to family and country. He decides to accept his desire and is bound up in self-satisfaction and uncaring to others. Secondly, Ego works as the rational part of mind trying to block the Id and making the Id to realize that it cannot always get what it wants. Ego Operates relating to th e real world and function as the negotiator between the Id and the Superego. Like Id, Ego aims to get the Ids satisfaction but based on reason and long-term consequences. In â€Å"The Lagoon†, Arsats Ego works well in the

Cougars on the prowl

Question: Write an article onCougars on the prowl". Answer: The article discusses the sexuality of the women beyond the age of forty. It states the views of two different ideologies about sexuality and ageing. The first explains the link between sexuality and aging that does not agree with the fact that older women seeks younger sexual partners and believe in the stereotype age and gender relation. The second ideology disagree with the first ideology and tries to recognize the sexual desire of the older generation which is the new trend and it support sexual activity and sexual health for the life time. The article has shows the findings from a survey of 84 women in the age group of 20-60. The reactions of these women regarding the ideology was noted and concluded that majority of the women goes with the first ideology. However few has accepted the changing trend and indicated the reality of the older womens sexual desire (Montemurro Siefken, 2014). An American media has identified a term cougar for the women of 40s who desire to have younger sexual partners. The term is generally used for desperate divorce women or others who are beyond 40s. It is the new trend of looking at the older women who are previously perceived to have disinterest in sexual life. The trend of identifying cougar has started in north America and was first time used by the media in 2006 in one of its article. Later, it was used further in American film in 2008 and then appeared several times in 2009, 2010 and 2011 in several articles of newspaper, magazine. Further, in 2012, even several websites were started which paired the older women with young men (Weg , 2013). The paper basically tries to analysis whether the term cougar can be used to show the deviation from traditional sexual scripts both in respect of gender and age. It tries to understand the attitudes of other women towards cougar in society and shows the insight of the peer group for women who are assertive towards sexual life in the society. The paper discusses the stereotype ideology about women sexuality which asserts that beyond 40 are frigid older women and does not have desires towards sexual life. Several studies have shown that a significant number of women do response to sexual desire even after the menopausal state and it remains active till the age of 90s.There is no uniformity between aging and sexual desires. The women get affected by the physical and social factors such as cultural norms, relationship status, generations, sexual orientation and health issues. It has been found that about 63% of women have health issues between the age fifty-seven and seventy-four and so there is increasing disinterest in the sexual life. There are several studies that tries to understand the changing ideologies about sexuality of women and concluded that the current trend has shown some reality in the changing ideology (Trompeter et al, 2012). The methods used to make a study on the changing sexuality of older women were through collection of data from the mode of direct interviews. There were ninety-five women whose interviews were taken from the period 2008 to 2009 and the sample was stratified in terms of marital status, race, age and parental status. The composition of age was as follows: Age Sample size 20s 20 30s 20 40s 19 50s 18 60s 18 The questions asked in the interview was regarding their attitude towards sexuality and aging and the way sexuality changes over the life time. There were question about the term cougar and its acceptance in the society. Out of the total sample size 70% lived in suburban areas and 30% lived in urban areas. The data were then analysed and sorted to establish attitudinal patterns towards the term cougar and idea about the aggressiveness about sexuality of the older women (Spatz et al., 2013). The findings of the study say that the term was familiar to most of the respondents and almost all of them have given their views about the women sexuality. Only 15% of the women were ignorant of the term. Out of the total respondents 56% of the women responded negatively towards the term and rest showed mixed reactions. The view of the majority of the respondents were that the term is used not only for the older women but also for those who goes against the traditional norms of the society and indulge in sexuality beyond the general rules of the society. It can be also use for women who reinforce double standards towards sexuality. Only few women, seventeen out of the total, accepted the term cougar as it is stated. Hence as a word, cougar reflects a social image of aggression and desperation stimulated by modern culture (Beausoleil et al., 2013). The discussion in the paper reflects the changing attitude of people towards their sexual life. I disagree with the stated link between changing sexual desires of older women and modern culture. The sexuality of women varies widely and is not uniform with individuals and so drawing a generalised conclusion about the sexuality behaviour of older women is not supported. The term cougar was restrain by many as it violated the traditional behaviour of the society. There may be few who violate the traditional behaviour but it cannot be stated as generalised behaviour for older women. There was tension between the alternate and hegemonic ideologies and that clears the traditional outlook of the society which still holds the dominant position. The cougar, if exists, holds a subordinate position in the society and the cultural life of the people (Montemurro Siefken, 2014). The use of the term cougar may push the pharmaceutical industry and increase their profit by creating more demand for medicines which keep the people fit forever and fight off the declining desire of sexuality. It can be only used to show the changing social and cultural scenario but cannot be the stated situation of the modern society. In a society the cultural changes and start influencing the society and then slowly bring social change. The image tried to be created by the continuous usage of the term cougar may affect the cultural of few people and later become contagious to the society which may lead to the expected social change by the author. I completely disagree with the propagation of such negativity in the society by the usage of the term cougar. It should be the personal interest of the individual and should be used only at the personal level so that the traditional cultural of the society does not get destroyed (Mc , 2013). The women who were interviewed had shown mixed reaction towards the use of the term but were common in thoughts regarding the concept to be personalised rather than publicised. Their response shows their likes and dislikes about the older women sexual desires and acceptance of it is a personal view (Lee et al., 2016). "text-align: justify;"It is true that the society is changing and the change is very obvious in all respects, ie in terms of relationship, attitudes, culture and aggressiveness. There are multiple views regarding the older women sexuality and it should be treated as the choice of the older women and not as a topic of discussion for the society. It is a personalised factor and will affect the society culture if propagated in the society (Giddens, 2013). In conclusion, the brief of the paper is given. The paper discusses the sexuality of the women beyond the age of forty and brought the discussion of two different ideologies about the sexuality of the older aged women. The first ideology explains the link between sexuality and aging that does not agree with the fact that older women seeks younger sexual partners and believe in the stereotype age and gender relation. The second ideology disagree with the first ideology and tries to recognize the sexual desire of the older generation which is the new trend and it support sexual activity and sexual health for the life time. In this regard a research study has been done with the set of primary data collected from interviewing 84 women. The results show a mixed response. However, broadly maximum of the women respondent disagree with increasing sexual desire with older women and getting more aggressive in choosing younger men as partners (Di, Breland Allen, 2013). Hence the concept of cougar is disagreed to be used publically to show the changing society. The variation in sexuality is accepted but categorizing the older women by a particular state is disagreed. Further, the society is changing but generalising the personal interest on the society is not accepted and disagreed. At the personal individual level, the desires of older women towards sexuality may be according to the discussion in the paper, but it may hold only for rare few and not for all. Thus generalising the concept will affect the growth and development of the society (Burgdorf, Sirin Wolff, 2015). References Beausoleil, R. A., Koehler, G. M., Maletzke, B. T., Kertson, B. N., Wielgus, R. B. (2013). Research to regulation: Cougar social behavior as a guide for management.Wildlife Society Bulletin,37(3), 680-688. Burgdorf, J., Sirin, A. Wolff, F., 2015, September. The COUGAR Experiment for BEXUS 18-Lessons Learned. In22nd ESA Symposium on European Rocket and Balloon Programmes and Related Research(Vol. 730, p. 613). Di Napoli, E. A., Breland, G. L., Allen, R. S. (2013). Staff knowledge and perceptions of sexuality and dementia of older adults in nursing homes.Journal of Aging and Health,25(7), 1087-1105. Giddens, A. (2013).The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. John Wiley Sons. Lee, D. M., Nazroo, J., OConnor, D. B., Blake, M., Pendleton, N. (2016). Sexual health and well-being among older men and women in England: findings from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.Archives of sexual behavior,45(1), 133-144. McClintock, A. (2013).Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. Routledge. Montemurro, B., Siefken, J. M. (2014). Cougars on the prowl? New perceptions of older women's sexuality.Journal of Aging Studies,28, 35-43. Spatz, E. S., Canavan, M. E., Desai, M. M., Krumholz, H. M., Lindau, S. T. (2013). Sexual activity and function among middle-aged and older men and women with hypertension.Journal of hypertension,31(6). Trompeter, S. E., Bettencourt, R., Barrett-Connor, E. (2012). Sexual activity and satisfaction in healthy community-dwelling older women.The American journal of medicine,125(1), 37-43. Weg, R. B. (Ed.). (2013).Sexuality in the later years: Roles and behavior. Elsevier.

Sheraton Hotels and Resorts

Introduction Background to the study According to Lawson (p. 29), value addition refers to the various strategies which an organization undertakes in an effort to improve the products and services it offers to its customers. By delivering value to its customers, a firm is able to develop a higher competitive advantage relative to its customers. According to Michael Porter who is a renowned scholar, there are various activities through which a firm can add value in its operation.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Sheraton Hotels and Resorts specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Porter categorizes these activities into 2 categories, that is primary and support (Lowson, 2002, p. 29).The primary activities include outbound and inbound logistics, operations, marketing and service. On the other hand, the support activities include procurement, human resource management, and infrastructure and technology development. Through these activities, it is possible for a firm to position itself optimally in the market. Over the past three years, various industries were affected by the economic recession. One of these industries is the hotel industry. This led to a decline in the firms ‘level of profitability. However, this trend is likely to improve in 2011 with the recovery of the global economy. This will lead to an increment in the level of competition amongst firms within this industry. Since its inception in 1937, Sheraton Hotel and Resort have been very successful. The firm has managed to expand its operation to 55 countries. The firm’s success is associated with its emphasis on value creation. The lucrative nature of the industry has led to a large number of new entrants leading to an increment in the level of competition. Therefore, it is vital for firms in this industry to consider incorporating the concept of value creation and value addition (Scoop Business, 2009, para. 1). Their value a ddition activities should not only include internal activities but also external activities. In its operation, Sheraton Hotel and Resort has laid more emphasis on innovation as one of its core external value addition activity. Aim This report is aimed at analyzing the various ways through which Sheraton Hotel and Resort creates/ adds value in its operation. Analysis Modeling customer satisfaction Huse (2007, p.7) argues that the aim of every firm to create value in its operation. This arises from realization of the fact that creating value can contribute towards the firm attaining its profit maximization objective (Duam, 2003, p.310). In addition, some scholars are of the opinion that making value creation to be a priority in the firm’s course of operation is paramount. John (2003, p.106) asserts that this will ensure that all the employees’ activities are focused towards value creation culminating into a high level of customer satisfaction.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More According to Hesselbach and Hermann (2007, p.88), consumers’ behavior towards consumption of a particular product or service is determined by the value he/she expects to attain through consumption of the product. This is inline with the means-end theory which postulates that consumers develop a conception on suitability of a particular product or service on the basis of three elements. These include the attributes the set values and the utility expectations. In this case, attributes refers to the quality of the product or service. The chart below illustrates the process through which the customer attains satisfaction through acquisition of the expected value. Additionally, John (2003, p.106) is of the opinion that firms management team are also required to conduct continual evaluation and monitoring of the desired customer value. This arises from the fact that customer value is dynamic and hence the need to adjust to these changes so as to sustain the created competitive advantage. Organization’s value delivery strategy Woodruff and Gardial (1998, p.7) defines a value delivery strategy to include the various decisions which a firm undertakes in ensuring that the customers attain value. To attain this, it is important for a firm’s management team to understand the value which the customers require. Woodruff and Gardial (1998, p.7) assert that customer value is not mainly inherent in the particular product or service which a firm offers but in the experience that he or she receives after consuming the product. Value delivery strategy is composed of five steps as illustrated in the chart below. Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Sheraton Hotels and Resorts specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Figure 1. Process of planning a customer value delivery strategy There fore, the first step in delivering value to the customers is identifying it. In order to create value effectively to the customers, it is important for a firm’s management team to conduct a comprehensive market research. The research should be focused on the customers as the main marketing variable. Market research should enable a firm to analyze the customers’ wants and needs comprehensively. According to Webb and Gorman (2006, p.137), one of the mistakes which undermine the effectiveness of a market research is failure to analyze the customers’ values. In an effort to align itself with the customers’ requirements, Sheraton Hotel and Restaurant has instituted a comprehensive market research with regard to the various business environments which include the legal, social, economic, political and technological environments. According to Pizam (2005, p.656), technological innovations have revolutionized the hotel industry. One of the aspects which have been affected is the value chain. Enz (2010, p.18) suggests that managers should be alert to the technological changes occurring within the business environment. This way, the firm will be able to take advantage of the emerging technologies. Enz (2010, p.18) further asserts that consideration of technological advances is important if a firm is to create value to its customers. Findings of a market research conducted by the firm revealed that there is an increment in demand for fast internet amongst travelers especially the business travelers to enable them transact electronically at their hotel rooms. In addition, other customer categories also required a fast internet connection so as to be network with others individuals in a more reliable manner at the comfort of their rooms. The increase in demand is illustrated by Whiteling (2010, para. 5) who assert that travelers who patronize various hotels and resorts are increasingly demanding the service of a world-class internet services. In an effort to create value to its customers through incorporation of information technology in its infrastructure, Sheraton Hotel and Resort has undertaken an extensive investment in information technology with regard to internet technology. The firm instituted a free high-speed internet within all its premises located in California, Culver City, Monrovia and Rafael.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The firm achieved this by outsourcing the services of IT Global Solution which specializes in installing Local Area Networks (LAN) and the associated wireless LAN. IT Global Solution installed an internet network which met the specifications of Sheraton Hotel and Resort. Apart from provision of the internet, Sheraton Hotel and Resort also provides other, support technologies. According to Woodruff and Gardial (1998, p.9), value delivery strategy should also incorporate the related support services. Examples of these services include warranties, repair and customer ‘hotlines’. The support services increases the probability of a firm developing customer satisfaction. As one of the support services, the firm offers internet security of its customers. This was achieved by IT Global Solutions selecting D-Link Wireless Access Points as its security mechanism due to its ease of configuration and its strong security features. The firm ensures that customers can access internet in various parts of the hotels such as the guest rooms, conference rooms, game rooms and lobbies. To ensure that there is no unauthorized usage, the firm has implemented D-Link DSA-3100 Hot Spot Gateways which ensures that those accessing the internet are only the authenticated. This prevents the firm from losing value. Through the internet, customers attain a unique experience through provision of a secure hotspot network which enables their information to remain confidential. Sheraton Hotel and Resort has been able to create value and meet the demand of business travelers who patronize the firm. The resultant effect is that the firm has been able to create a high level of customer satisfaction. Woodruff and Gardial (1998, p.9) assert that a firm’s management team should not assume that the customers are aware of the value it is offering through its products and services. However, the firm should take the initiative of ‘communicating the value’ which the custome rs expect to achieve upon consuming its products. In order to create awareness regarding its development, Sheraton Hotel and Resort has integrated an aggressive marketing campaign program. The aim of the campaign is to create awareness regarding the new technological development within the firm. Creating market awareness plays a significant role in attracting and retaining customers within the firm. Doole and Lowe (2005, p.211) are of the opinion that brand awareness contributes towards improvement of a business’ brand image. According to Doole and Lowe (2005, p.211), customer brand knowledge is vital in enhancing brand value. In order to create value through marketing, it is important for a firm to be committed in its integrated communication strategy. Integrated communication campaign entails undertaking product or service promotion through various methods such as advertising, sales promotion, public relation amongst others. This ensures that a large number of customers lea rn about the intended value( Craven, 2002). The final step in value delivery strategy is assessing the value. This entails monitoring how the intended value is being implemented. Assessing the value also includes evaluating the level of customer satisfaction achieved. For example, the firm can conduct a post purchase evaluation to determine the perceived value of its service or product in comparison to that of a competitor. Additionally, value evaluation also includes identifying the consumers’ complaints regarding its services. This will aid in identifying areas which should be improved. To be effecting in assessing the value created, Sheraton Hotel and Resort has implemented the concept of Consumer Relationship Management. This has been made possible through integration of a CRM software which enables customers to post their opinions regarding the firm’s operation to the management. Other strategies which can be used to assess value delivery include analyzing the fir m’s market share, sales volume, and profitability. Advantages of the value delivery strategy By incorporating hotspots within the hotel premises, there is a high probability of the firm increasing its occupancy rate. Currently, potential customers inquire whether a particular hotel or resort provides internet services before booking in. If the answer is no, then the firm loses a potential customer. Provision of internet increases the guests’ satisfaction. According to a report by Farpoint Group (2006, p.1), a significant number of business travelers enjoy the services of a convenient and fast internet at hotels. Despite the fact that implementation of fast internet is costly, they benefits cannot be downplayed. For example, increase in occupancy rate will culminate to an increment in the hotels level of profitability. Access to fast internet can also encourage customers to spend more time within the hotel. Through the fast internet, it is also possible for the firm to promote other services to its guests. This can be done through the customized hotspot screens. Drawbacks Despite the benefits of the above value delivery strategy, there are some challenges which remain open to the firm. For example, the firm will be required to readjust its business model so as to cater for the investment required. In addition, provision of the free internet through outsourcing means that new stakeholders to the firm will emerge. These stakeholders need to be integrated in the firm’s business model. Farpoint Group (2002, p.2) assert that there are security risks associated with wireless hotspot. Despite the fact that incorporation of appropriate safeguards in the internet network can protect business personnel, a considerable number of customers risk their systems and data through the hotspot internet. For example, sharing data using LAN may lead unencrypted packets. In addition, using a public LAN can be risky to the firm. This is due to the fact that there is a possibility of the internet being used by competitors or other individuals to attack the firm’s network. Farpoint Group (2002, p.3) is of the opinion that hotels can be potential venues through which individuals interested in hacking traveler’s confidential data can use. In most cases private Local Area Networks use firewall to protect users against internet-borne attacks. However, hotel LANs have got topologies which vary widely. Conclusion Value creation especially in the service industry can contribute towards a firm’s long term success. The high rate of competition within the hospitality industry requires firms in the industry to develop a high competitive advantage. There are a number of ways through which firms can achieve this. Some of these relate to primary and support activities. In order to attain a high competitive advantage through value addition, firms need to to concentrate on both internal and external value creation activities. Some of the external value creation services include incorporation of emerging technologies. In its operation, Sheraton Hotel and Resort has been able to develop a high competitive advantage through improvement of its infrastructure. The firm has attained this by offering free fast internet to its guests. Decision to incorporate the fast internet arose from an increment in demand for internet services amongst travelers. The internet service has enabled the firm to attract and retain a large number of customers. The flexible internet provides the customers a unique experience. As a result, they are able to derive value hence attaining their desired utility. Some of the benefits which a firm can attain through value creation include increment in its profitability potential as a result of increase in the volume of its customer base. However, firms should also institute mechanisms to deal with the possible drawbacks of value creation. Recommendations For Sheraton Hotel and Resort to be effective i n value creation, it is paramount for the management team to consider the following. A continuous market research should be conducted. The research should focus on both the competitor and the consumers. Consumer market research will enable the management team to identify the most desired value amongst the customers. As a result, it will be possible to formulate its value delivery strategy. The competitor market research will aid the firm compare its value creation with that of its competitors. Additionally, the firm should evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of its value creation strategy. This will enable the firm to determine whether it is contributing to towards attainment of its profit maximization objective. As a result, it will be possible to make necessary adjustments. Prior to implementing its value creation strategy, a firm should ensure that all the possible drawbacks which would limit its ability to attain the desired objectives are eliminated. Reference List Craven, R., 2002. Customer is king: how to exceed their expectations. London: Virgin. Duam, J., 2003. Intangible assets and value creation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Doole, I. Lowe, R., 2005. Strategic marketing decisions in global markets. London: Thompson Learning. Enz, C., 2010. The Cornell school of hotel administration handbook of applied  hospitality strategy. Los Angeles: Sage. Farpoint Group. 2006. Access on the road: putting hotspot security to the test. Web. Hesselbach, J. Herrmann, C., 2007. Proceedings of the 3rd CIRP International  conference on industrial product. New York: Prentice Hall. Huse, M., 2007. Boards, governance and value creation: the human side of corporate  governance. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. John, J., 2003. Fundamentals of customer-focused management; competiting through  service. Westport, Conn. Lowson, R., 2002. Strategic operations management: the new competitive advantage. New York: Routledge. Pizam, A., 2005. International encyclopedia o f hospitality management. Amsterdam: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. Scoop Business. 2009. Adding value is vital for hotels in tough times.Web. Webb, M. Gorman, T., 2006. Sales and marketing the six sigma way. Chicago, IL: Kaplan Publication. Whiteling, I., 2010. Hotels 2020: what the hotel industry will look like in 10 years time. Web. Woodruff, R. Gardial, S., 1998. Know your customer new approaches to  understanding customer value and satisfaction. Malden, Mass: Blackwell. This report on Sheraton Hotels and Resorts was written and submitted by user Dominique A. to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Pascual Orozco, Early Leader of the Mexican Revolution

Pascual Orozco, Early Leader of the Mexican Revolution Pascual Orozco (January 28, 1882–August 30, 1915) was a Mexican muleteer, warlord, and revolutionary who participated in the early parts of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). More of an opportunist than an idealist, Orozco and his army fought in many key battles between 1910 and 1914 before he â€Å"backed the wrong horse,† said General Victoriano Huerta, whose brief presidency lasted from 1913 to 1914. Exiled, Orozco was captured and executed by Texas Rangers. Fast Facts: Pascual Orozco Known For: Mexican revolutionaryBorn: January 28, 1882 in Santa Inà ©s,  Chihuahua, MexicoParents: Pascual Orozco Sr. and Amanda Orozco y VzquezaDied: August 30, 1915 in the Van Horn Mountains, MexicoNotable Quote: â€Å"Here are the wrappers: send more tamales.† Early Life Pascual Orozco was born on January 28, 1882, in Santa Inà ©s,  Chihuahua, Mexico. Before the Mexican Revolution broke out, he was a small-time entrepreneur, storekeeper, and muleteer. He came from a lower-middle-class family in the northern state of Chihuahua and by working hard and saving money, he was able to acquire a respectable amount of wealth. As a self-starter who made his own fortune, he became disenchanted with the corrupt regime of Porfirio Dà ­az, who tended to favor old money and those with connections, neither of which Orozco had. Orozco became involved with the Flores Magà ³n brothers, Mexican dissidents trying to stir up rebellion from safety in the United States. Orozco and Madero In 1910, opposition presidential candidate Francisco I. Madero, who lost due to election fraud, called for a revolution against the crooked Dà ­az. Orozco organized a small force in the Guerrero area of Chihuahua and quickly won a series of skirmishes against federal forces. His force grew with every victory, swelled by local peasants who were drawn by patriotism, greed, or both. By the time Madero returned to Mexico from exile in the United States, Orozco commanded a force of several thousand men. Madero promoted him first to colonel and then general, even though Orozco had no military background. Early Victories While Emiliano Zapatas army kept Dà ­az federal forces busy in the south, Orozco and his armies took over the north. The uneasy alliance of Orozco, Madero, and Pancho Villa captured several key towns in Northern Mexico, including Ciudad Juarez, which Madero made his provisional capital. Orozco maintained his businesses during his time as general. On one occasion, his first action upon capturing a town was to sack the home of a business rival. Orozco was a cruel and ruthless commander. He once sent the uniforms of dead federal soldiers back to Dà ­az with a note: â€Å"Here are the wrappers: send more tamales.† Revolt Against Madero The armies of the north drove Dà ­az from Mexico in May 1911 and Madero took over. Madero saw Orozco as a violent bumpkin, useful to the war effort but out of his depth in government. Orozco, who was unlike Villa in that he was fighting not for idealism but under the assumption that he would be made at least a state governor, was outraged. Orozco had accepted the post of general, but he resigned it when he refused to fight Zapata, who had rebelled against Madero for not implementing land reform. In March 1912 Orozco and his men, called Orozquistas or Colorados, once again took to the field. Orozco in 1912–1913 Fighting Zapata to the south and Orozco to the north, Madero turned to two generals: Victoriano Huerta, a relic left over from the days of Dà ­az, and Pancho Villa, who still supported him. Huerta and Villa were able to rout Orozco in several key battles. Orozcos poor control of his men contributed to his losses: he allowed them to sack and loot captured towns, which turned the locals against him. Orozco fled to the United States but returned when Huerta overthrew and assassinated Madero in February 1913. President Huerta, in need of allies, offered him a generalship and Orozco accepted. Huertas Downfall Orozco was once again fighting Pancho Villa, who was outraged by Huertas murder of Madero. Two more generals appeared on the scene: Alvaro Obregà ³n and Venustiano Carranza, both at the head of huge armies in Sonora. Villa, Zapata, Obregà ³n, and Carranza were united by their hatred of Huerta, and their combined might was far too much for the new president, even with Orozco and his colorados on his side. When Villa crushed the federales at the battle of Zacatecas in June 1914, Huerta fled the country. Orozco fought on for a while but he was seriously outgunned and he, too, went into exile in 1914. Death After the fall of Huerta, Villa, Carranza, Obregà ³n, and Zapata began slugging it out among themselves. Seeing an opportunity, Orozco and Huerta met up in New Mexico and began planning a new revolt. They were captured by American forces and charged with conspiracy. Huerta died in prison. Orozco escaped and was later shot and killed by Texas Rangers on August 30, 1915. According to the Texas version, he and his men tried to steal some horses and were tracked down and killed in the ensuing gunfight. According to the Mexicans, Orozco and his men were defending themselves from greedy Texas ranchers, who wanted their horses. Legacy Today, Orozco is considered a minor figure in the Mexican Revolution. He never reached the presidency and modern historians and readers prefer the flair of Villa or the idealism of Zapata. It should not be forgotten, however, that at the time of Maderos return to Mexico, Orozco commanded the largest and most powerful of the revolutionary armies and that he won several key battles in the early days of the revolution. Although it has been asserted by some that Orozco was an opportunist who coldly used the revolution to his own gain, that does not change the fact that if not for Orozco, Dà ­az may well have crushed Madero in 1911. Sources McLynn, Frank. Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2000.Pascual Orozco, Jr. (1882–1915).  Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, Encyclopedia.com, 2019.

Sample Recommendation Letter for Graduate School

Sample Recommendation Letter for Graduate School Whether youre applying to business school, medical school, law school, or another program, most graduate school applicants are going to need two to three letters of recommendation that will be submitted to the admissions committee (along with your undergraduate transcripts, standardized test scores, essays, etc.) as part of the application process. Not every school requires letters of recommendation. You can often get by without one at some online schools and even brick-and-mortar schools that have more relaxed admission requirements. However, schools with highly competitive admissions processes (i.e. the ones that get a lot of applicants but dont have classroom space for everyone) use recommendation letters, in part, to determine whether or not you are a fit for their school. Why Graduate Schools Ask for Recommendations Graduate schools seek recommendations for the same reason employers require career references. They want to know what people who have seen your work and experienced your efforts firsthand have to say about you. Nearly every other resource you provide to a school is a first-person accounting. Your rà ©sumà © is your interpretation of your career achievements, your essay answers a question with your opinion or tells a story from your point of view, and your admissions interview includes questions that, again, are answered from your point of view. A recommendation letter, on the other hand, is all about someone elses perspective on you, your potential, and your accomplishments.   Most graduate schools encourage you to choose a reference who knows you well. This ensures that their letter of recommendation will actually have substance and wont simply be full of fluff or vague opinions about your work attitude and academic performance. Someone who knows you well will be able to provide well-informed opinions and concrete examples to back them up.   Sample Letter of Recommendation for Grad School This is a sample recommendation for a graduate school applicant was written by the applicants college dean, who was familiar with the applicants academic achievements. The letter is short but does an ample job of emphasizing things that would be important to a graduate school admissions committee, such as  GPA, work ethic, and leadership ability. Notice how the writer includes plenty of adjectives to describe the person being recommended. Theres also an example of how the subjects leadership capability has helped others. To Whom It May Concern: As the Dean of Stonewell College, I have had the pleasure of knowing Hannah Smith for the last four years. She has been a tremendous student and an asset to our school. I would like to take this opportunity to recommend Hannah for your graduate program. I feel confident that she will continue to succeed in her studies. Hannah is a dedicated student and thus far, her grades have been exemplary. In class, she has proven to be a take-charge person who is able to successfully develop plans and implement them. Hannah has also assisted us in our admissions office. She has successfully demonstrated leadership ability by counseling new and prospective students. Her advice has been a great help to these students, many of whom have taken time to share their comments with me regarding her pleasant and encouraging attitude. It is for these reasons that I offer high recommendations for Hannah without reservation. Her drive and abilities will truly be an asset to your establishment. If you have any questions regarding this recommendation, please do not hesitate to contact me. Sincerely, Roger Fleming Dean of Stonewell College As positive as this letter is, it would have been even stronger if the writer had provided additional specific examples of his students achievements, or had pointed to quantifiable results. For example, he could have included the numbers of students the subject had worked with or detailed specific instances in which she had helped others. Examples of any plans shed developed, how she implemented them, and what the outcome was once they were put to use would have been useful as well.  The more detailed the letter, the more likely it is to tip the admissions scale in your favor.

Booty Call Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Booty Call - Essay Example At such a phase of life, we want to enjoy not only sex but by the passage of time we also realize the need for someone very special for us, someone, whom we can call our better half, someone who is more caring to you than anybody else in the life. That 'someone' is the person whom you wish to love you so much that you love him and you expect that 'someone' to not only be with you in bed, but with you through every thicks and thins of your life, to whom, you are far more than a booty call. Moreover, you not only want to have this feeling for him, but you also want him to have the same feeling for you. So we can say that at youth age, initially making sex is the main concern, however, when you keep on doing this with same person, one of you ultimately end up asking for something more than a 'booty call'. At this point of time, the desire for sex is then converted into the desire for the relationship, a committed one. (Mc Graw) I would like to provide the advice on your issue. This lett er will reveal you that the relationships between the man and women exist in varying degree. However, this is common in all degrees, especially the closer ones, that when one set of desires are being fulfilled, you start to desire for more things into that relationship. This very psychology has made you demanding for a committed relationship, rather than a booty call. Thus after clarifying in your mind the dynamics of such psyche, my honest advice to you would be that you must be clear to yourself that what do you want, you can use some strategies like recalling past memories etc. to arouse the same desire of committed in relationship in him too. Even if it fails, you then need to prioritize between your feelings and your partner, that what is more important to you. When we talk of the interaction between a girl and guy in the western world, it exists with a varying degree of intensity. It may range from acquaintance to sexual relationship. There are very thin lines between various consecutive levels of relationships. When it comes to your case the two consecutive levels of interaction are 'booty call' and 'sexual relationship'. You need to realize the different between the two, especially what is really absent in the booty calls We must be clear about what I mean by booty call and the committed relationship. Booty call, in your context, is simple making sex with each other, without any committed relationship. It is simply a response to the mutual sexual urges. So, it is the commitment that differentiates the relationship. Moreover, booty call is restricted to the bed only. It does not include any typical dates, social gatherings etc. In your case, it seems that initially, you had a relationship with him, as you mentioned that you people used to hang out together. However, after meeting again it had been converted into the booty call type thing or we can say a relationship purely intended for sex and not having any other feeling or commitment. See, many studies show that when two people start having sex with same partners repeatedly, it is bound to happen that one of them will ultimately feel urge for something more. (Lecture, 7/19/07) He or she will start to get possessive about his or her partner. So it is a common phenomenon. It is also said that when you consistently sleep with one guy, this practice ultimately compels you enter into a committed relat

S XYZ Co. Able to Identify and Exploit Sources of Competitive Dissertation

S XYZ Co. Able to Identify and Exploit Sources of Competitive Advantage to Sustain The Emerging Competition - Dissertation Example Other changes followed the implementation of the first Saudi Insurance company's services, which were evident in the increased awareness of the people in regards to insurance policies, as well as the substantial increased risk in accordance with the introduction of compulsory motor third party liability (BMI, 2011). Other changes included the legislation passed which made health insurance on expatriates and their families mandatory and the increase in oil prices had also been reflected on the citizens of the country's personal incomes in accordance with classes that includes travel insurance (Ansari, 2011). Other insurances include life and property, which was subsequently followed by the increase in house loans, the amplified boost of the insurance market, as reinforced by the registration of more than 15 new insurance companies, thus fortifying the competition within the market. The growth in competition led to enjoining new entrants in the industry, which was supported by the gove rnment's efforts to open the chance for foreign capital to investment in Saudi's insurance sector (Ansari, 2011). 1.1. The Significance of Competitive Advantage among business firms A firm is equipped with competitive advantage when it has the means to edge out rivals when vying for the favour of customers. In that regard, a firm is considered to possess competitive advantage by implementing strategies that produce value that are not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors (De Wit and Meyer, 2005). However, the defined subject of competitive advantage in financial service has a wide existence in the body of literature. The complexity and intangibility focusing on financial service products that include insurance limited the understanding of the average customer in regards to the features and benefits provided by such service. This then implies the complexity of identifying and achieving competitive edge (Barney, 1991). The study of competitive advant age in the field of insurance as an aspect of financial service imposes the process of collecting literature in the context of competitive advantage that is particular to financial service in order to deliberately construct a theoretical model of attributes or features against the perception of the subject of the study, which is the company management to be evaluated. For instance, Delvin (1997a) had made use of a detailed questionnaire, which he had distributed widely among marketing personnel. The context of the questionnaire delved on the strategy employed by relevant senior personnel in UK retail financial services. Delvin (1997a) investigated the factors which managers emphasise when attempting to formulate strategies to add value to service offerings and, hence, achieve competitive advantage in services markets. The study was able to conclude that the features and quality of the core service, inclusive of the price, image and reputation, functional service quality, support ele ments, and location and service recovery are the factors crucial in adding value to service offerings (Delvin, 1998). In comparison to the findings of Delvin's study, it would be noted that in a study conducted by Gronroos (2001) pertaining to service quality, the latter confirmed the importance of the functional quality on the basis of his perspective, as a very vital factor in order to maintain the gap between the expected service and the perceived service

Globalization of Technology Essay Example for Free

Globalization of Technology Essay Politics Technology enables and even promotes changes in every aspect of our lives. Through the years it has changed what and how we eat (the microwave), how and where we work (the internet), how we are entertained, and even how we keep in touch with friends and family. And though many people may notice these types of quick advances of technology, many may not notice how technological advances have tied into changes in politics and the way they have been run. †¢The power of mass images has really become a major influence on politics as a product of a increasing technology. In the 1960’s, images of wealth in the west eventually exposed the weakness of the communist regime running the old Soviet bloc. There is the story Nikita Khrushchev narrating a film of Harlem in the 1960’s to demonstrate poverty in America. Instead, his poor, struggling citizens focused on the nylons hanging on backyard clothes lines and the number of fine autos in the street, and saw wealth rather than poverty. Today, the pictures from Iran appear in graphic detail on our televisions. The power of the mass media has made it more difficult for the state to wall off the outside world. †¢The television has been used to promote politics through commercial advertisement since the Dwight D. Eisenhower campaign in 1952. That was over 50 years ago. It has been used to broadcast presidential debates since the Kennedy vs Nixon Great Debate in 1960 which was exactly 50 years ago. However, nothing is like the way the television is used today. †¢The most recent Presidential campaign, in 2008, showed how fundraising is being impacted. President Obama raised a record breaking 600 million dollars in contributions during his run up to the election. Of that 600 that Obama received, 500 million came from the internet and through public financing through the internet. He ran as fierce an internet campaign as he did his television and radio campaigns. Later the same young people who followed Obamas every move online, turned out to vote. †¢Is technology damaging politics? †¢For example, you can argue that because there are dozens of news channels. Campaigns are now much more media run. The media decides what is news worthy (which as of the past few years has been whatever gets ratings), interprets the meaning of events for its viewers, and manipulates the decision making process of its viewers. †¢Can technology be damaging to political candidates themselves? †¢Political videos of nearly every 2008 presidential candidates can be found on YouTube. In many of the posted videos, candidates are engaged in old speeches, contradicting their current political positions. †¢Also, since the election, the internet seems to have gone from President Obamas best friend, to his greatest political enemy. Some of the most controversial legislation in US history is being introduced and posted online for all Americans to see, online commentators who once supported Obama are continuously pointing out unfilled promises. Economy and Social Relations Technological progress is the key to offering future populations the potential for improved standards of living. Technical change enables firms to combine inputs in a novel manner to produce existing products more cheaply and to develop new products to meet consumer needs. Economists and other social scientists pretty much agree that technological change is the most important contributor to economic growth in the modern era and it is estimated that more than half of the country’s long-run growth is can be attributed to technological change. †¢A prime example of technology based increases in productivity comes from the field of agriculture. Until at least the 17th century, about 90% of the population was directly involved in agriculture. In the United States, the farm population was 44% of the total population as recently as 1880. Currently, the U.S. farm population is about 2% of the total population. But over that same period, total production from farms has more than doubled. The increase in productivity is correlated with several technological innovations in the field of farming. The innovations include the widespread use of farm chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides), and farming equipment. Thus, the tremendous increase in farm productivity is seen as a direct result of the technological advances that were made in the field. †¢Technological change in production processes like that often reduces the amount of labor and other resources needed to produce a unit of output. This is good on one hand because it reduces the cost of production for products but on the other, it also results in a loss of jobs in the short-r un. The long-run is a different story though. By reducing the cost of production you thereby are lowering the price of a particular good in a competitive market, which then frequently leads to a greater demand for that good. And a greater output demand results in increased production, which requires more labor, and offsets the effects of losing jobs in the short-run. †¢Along with production technology, constant improvements of transportation and communications technologies have also had major impacts on today’s economy. Previously, physical and human resources moved around the world by means of land, sea, and air transportation. Now, with data serving as a basic resource and digital communications the means of transport, financial capital is moving throughout the world at nearly the speed of light. †¢How has technology negatively affected the economy? †¢One challenge that technology has brought about to the new global economy comes from the new wave of outsourcing. As a concept its not new. Companies have chased cheap labor around the globe for decades, making cars in Mexico, plastic toys in Taiwan and shirts in Malaysia. But in the past couple of years, the debate over outsourcing has intensified as technology companies reduce costs by sending technical support, software development, quality assurance and other functions offshore. A few years ago this idea would have been impossible. The world mostly turned to its technology leaders, companies such as Microsoft Corp. for example, when it needed software. But with the growth of broadband Internet connections and e-mail, technical support staff and software developers can respond to questions with the same speed in Bangalore, India, as they do in Bellevue. And they can do it at a fraction of the cost. †¢Of course this comes at the expense of not only lower class and low skilled workers in the U.S., but even in the middle classes, there are plenty of jobs that are now outsourced.. Again, inability to find work means inability to purchase homes, spend money, and profit companies. When people don’t buy, corporations that produce things don’t make money, which can thus â€Å"trickle down† to fewer jobs available and a greater desire to outsource to make things more cheaply so they will be more attractive to consumers. †¢Those supporting outsourcing say that lowering expenses of corporations will create jobs. There are plenty of government agencies that outsource some of their work, saving them millions of dollars, a direct effect on the US economy and on federal spending. A common theory contends that being able to pay people lower wages for work means that companies will be able to produce things with less expense and transfer this saving to consumers. Lower prices may mean more consumer spending, and companies will be able to hire more workers in the US because they’re paying less for workers outside of it. †¢Further, many argue that giving jobs to workers in less developed countries improves those countries economically and increases trade for US products. It also increases a country’s ability to pay back debts to the US, and may promote better political relationships. Companies economically benefit by selling their products in other countries. This means they can hire more people in the US and lower their prices on products for US consumers.

Fire on the Home Front - The Possessive :: Possessive Essays

Fire on the Home Front - The Possessive  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   General Douglas Macarthur said that "the best time to meet the threat [of war] is in the beginning. It is easier to put out a fire in the beginning when it is small than after it has become a roaring blaze" (qtd. in Urofsky, part 9). The mother in Sharon Olds' "The Possessive" undoubtedly feels the same way. War is a terrible time between two or more nations that fight to part from each other or for some other reason; nations fight over property rights and independence. In "The Possessive," Olds uses powerful images of war, such as helmets, blades, and fires to show how her daughter is similar to a warring country that has pulled away from her.    Sharon Olds states "In her bright helmet / she looks at me as if across a great distance" (Olds, 506). The helmet exemplifies the imagery that Olds uses to show the warlike tone in her poem. In modern day wars people see pictures of Cruise missiles and Stealth Bombers on CNN. However, when asked what they envision when they think about war, some will talk about guns, knives, helmets, and fires. As Olds talks about her daughter, she realizes that there is an impending battle yet to come. This battle, too, will be about possession. When her daughter sits in the barber's chair, Olds realizes that her daughter will soon reach her teens. The teenage years are a time when parents battle over cars, boys, and other rights with there children. The children and parents will fight over haircutting rights. As Olds reports, her daughter "has been to the barber, that knife grinder, / and had the edge of her hair sharpened" (506). Knife grinding and sharp objects are another image of war. Soldiers must be sure that their instruments are perfectly sharp if they want to win the war. The first time Olds things about the upcoming battle occurs during the warlike image of the haircut. These first warlike images set the tone of the rest of the piece.    The most vivid and important warlike image that Olds uses in "The Possessive" is the image of fire. The fire imagery appears more than once in the piece. Olds writes that "Distant fires can be / glimpsed in the resin light of her eyes" (506).

When Politics Trumps Policy

While the public demand for the criminal justice system to help ensure a safe and secure environment, there are also occasions whereby the public may feel that the criminal justice agencies are actually the one posing unnecessary threats to the society. Issues like the abuse of authority, deadly vehicle pursuits and unauthorized use of weapons are all examples of cases in which the criminal justice system is actually threatening the safety of the public. This paper will discuss the case of Racin’ Ray’s Wild Day to examine the issues involved in the decisions made by Ripley as a law enforcing authority. Central Issues The central issue in the case study would be the authority of the police officers to use excessive force as well as to engage in violent pursuits. Due to a previous incident of a violent pursuit ending with the death of a 14 year old teenager, the Pineville County Sheriff’s Department is currently facing a lawsuit. As such, the Department has implemented stricter rules and regulations to prevent such accidents from happening again. However, another key issue which has cropped up would be that of the behavior of Deputy Raymond Ray Ripley who has been observed to be overstepping regulations as well as engaging in activities that are not part of his responsibilities such as to go for extra patrol as well as to engage in the violent pursuit of a vehicle that was not warranted since rules have been implemented to prohibit any pursuit which does not involve any violent felony crime or pose significant threat to the community. In addition, he is also using weapons which he does not have the authority to use (Peak, 2010). Use-of-force policy Ripley’s actions is not compliant with the use of force policy which states that â€Å"a supervisor [should] cancel any pursuit that does not involve a violent felony crime or other circumstances that would justify the danger and potential liability† . In addition, â€Å"A separate policy prohibits the firing of warning shots unless â€Å"circumstances warrant. †Ã¢â‚¬  (Peak, 2010). In the given case, Ripley had no evidence to demonstrate that the vehicle he was chasing was involved in any violent felony crime or circumstances that would pose extreme danger. In addition he used his fired warning shots even though the circumstances were not yet dangerous. As such, he was clearly violating the use-of-force policy. End Ripley’s pursuit The lieutenant should end Ripley’s pursuit. Firstly, this is because Ripley has already overstepped the policies implemented by the Department, as such there is a possibility that he would further abuse his power to bring about unnecessary harm to others. In addition, the Department is already involved in a current legal tussle. Should any mistakes go wrong with this one, the consequence would be especially dire and people would lose confidence in the criminal justice agency. Firing warning shots The deputy should have fired the warning shot. The department has already informed officers that no warning shots should be fired unless circumstances warrant. In this case, the officer was following normal regulations of being at least 30 meters away from the vehicle. In addition, he has proof to show that the circumstances warrant his actions since the driver was speeding towards him and thus the warning shot was fired to save his life. Lodging a complaint In the event that the people in the vehicle lodge a complaint about Ripley and his use of the force, the dog and the taser gun, there are various departmental policies which would need to be applied. First, it is necessary to record down all the processes involved during the whole incident including when , how and why the deputy came across the vehicle, fired the warning shots and gave chase to the vehicle. Given that there is evidence to sufficient to show that the deputy did abuse his authority such as to own a Taser gun and to use a dog, appropriate disciplinary actions would need to be taken to hold the deputy accountable for his actions. However, the head of the department will need to deliberate and take into account the factors affecting the situation and the decision-making of the deputy behind implementing the most appropriate form of punishment (Davis). Additional policies Given that the misconduct of the deputy has been identified, it is important that the department implement policies to ensure that similar acts do not occur again. Hence, this would involve programs like training as well as frequent audits to ensure that officers do not engage in behaviors that involve the abuse of their authority. In addition, the department should also set up a program to monitor the progress of those who have previously engaged in misconduct before to ensure that they are competent enough for their work. Conclusion In conclusion, the case of Ripley demonstrates the serious consequences of the abuse of authority by law enforcing officials. Therefore, it is necessary for criminal justice agencies to implement the appropriate strategies and programs to ensure that similar incidents do not occur again. ? Reference Davis, J. (n. d. ). Police Misconduct and Civil Rights Law. Retrieved from http://library. findlaw. com/1999/Nov/1/126320. html †¢Peak, K. (2010). Justice administration: police, courts, and corrections management (6th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ. Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Stylistics

STYLISTICS In Stylistics Richard Bradford provides a definitive introductory guide to modern critical ideas on literary style and stylistics. The book includes examples of poems, plays and novels from Shakespeare to the present day. This comprehensive and accessible guidebook for undergraduates explains the terminology of literary form, considers the role of stylistics in twentieth-century criticism, and shows, with worked examples, how literary style has evolved since the sixteenth century.This book falls into three sections: Part I follows the discipline of stylistics from classical rhetoric to poststructuralism; Part II looks at the relationship between literary style and its historical context; Part III considers the relationships between style and gender, and between style and evaluative judgement. Richard Bradford is Professor of English at the University of Ulster. He has written books on Kingsley Amis, Roman Jakobson, Milton, eighteenth-century criticism, visual poetry and li nguistics. THE NEW CRITICAL IDIOMSERIES EDITOR: JOHN DRAKAKIS, UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING The New Critical Idiom is an invaluable series of introductory guides to today’s critical terminology. Each book: †¢ provides a handy, explanatory guide to the use (and abuse) of the term †¢ offers an original and distinctive overview by a leading literary and cultural critic †¢ relates the term to the larger field of cultural representation. With a strong emphasis on clarity, lively debate and the widest possible breadth of examples, The New Critical Idiom is an indispensable approach to key topics in literary studies. See below for new books in this series. Gothic by Fred Botting Historicism by Paul Hamilton Ideology by David Hawkes Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form by Philip Hobsbaum Romanticism by Aidan Day Stylistics by Richard Bradford Humanism by Tony Davies Sexuality by Joseph Bristow STYLISTICS Richard Bradford LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1997 by Routledge 11 New F etter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. â€Å"To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www. Bookstore. tandf. co. uk. † Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001  © 1997 Richard Bradford All rights reserved. No part of this book my be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bradford, Richard Stylistics / Richard Bradford. p. cm. —(The new critical idiom) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Style, Literary. I. Title. II. Series. PN203. B68 1997 809–dc20 96–27990 CIP ISBN 0-203-99265-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-09768-1 (Print Edition) 0-415-09769-X (pbk) To Jennifer Ford CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE INTRODUCTION iii ix xi PART I A SHORT HISTORY OF STYLISTICS 1 2 3 4 5 Rhetoric Stylistics and modern criticism Textualism I: poetry Textualism II: the novel Contextualist stylistics 2 11 14 50 72 PART II STYLISTICS AND LITERARY HISTORY 6 7 8 9 10 11 Renaissance and Augustan poetry Literary style and literary history Shakespeare’s drama: two stylistic registers The eighteenth-and nineteenthcentury novel Romanticism Modernism and naturalization 98 110 117 126 143 151 PART III GENDER AND EVALUATION vii 12 13 Gender and genre Evaluative stylistics BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX 67 183 201 206 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the Faculty of Humanities and the School of English, University of Ulster, for providing me with the time to finish this book, and to John Drakakis, a scrupulous editor. The author and publisher are grateful for the permission to reproduce extracts from T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909– 1962, reprinted courtesy of Faber & Faber Ltd. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use copyright material in this book. Please contact the publisher if any omissions have inadvertently occurred.SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE The New Critical Idiom is a series of introductory books which seeks to extend the lexicon of literary terms, in order to address the radical changes which have taken place in the study of literature during the last decades of the twentieth century. The aim is to provide clear, well-illustrated accounts of the full range of terminology currently in use, and to evolve histories of its changing usage. The current state of the discipline of literary studies is one where there is considerable debate concerning basic questions of terminology.This in volves, among other things, the boundaries which distinguish the literary from the non-literary; the position of literature within the larger sphere of culture; the relationship between literatures of different cultures; and questions concerning the relation of literary to other cultural forms within the context of interdisciplinary studies. It is clear that the field of literary criticism and theory is a dynamic and heterogenous one. The present need is for individual volumes on terms which combine clarity of exposition with an adventurousness of perspective and a breadth of application.Each volume will contain as part of its apparatus some indication of the direction in which the definition of particular terms is likely to move, as well as expanding the disciplinary boundaries within which some of these terms have been traditionally contained. This will involve some re-situation of terms within the larger field of cultural representation, and will introduce examples from the x are a of film and the modern media in addition to examples from a variety of literary texts. INTRODUCTIONStylistics is an elusive and slippery topic. Every contribution to the vast and multifaceted discipline of literary studies will involve an engagement with style. To accept that the subject of our attention or our critical essay is a poem, a novel or a play involves an acceptance that literature is divided into three basic stylistic registers. Even a recognition of literary studies as a separate academic sphere is prefigured by a perceived distinction between literary and non-literary texts.Stylistics might thus seem to offer itself as an easily definable activity with specific functions and objectives: Stylistics enables us to identify and name the distinguishing features of literary texts, and to specify the generic and structural subdivisions of literature. But it is not as simple as this. When we use or respond to language in the real world our understanding of what the words mea n is supplemented by a vast number of contextual and situational issues: language is an enabling device; it allows us to articulate the sequence of choices, decisions, responses, acts and onsequences that make up our lives. Style will play some part in this, but its function is pragmatic and purposive: we might admire the lucid confidence of the car advertisement or the political broadcast, but in the end we will look beyond the words to the potential effect of their message upon our day to day activities. The style and language of poems, novels and plays will frequently involve these purposive functions, but when we look beyond their effect to their context we face a xii INTRODUCTION otentially disorientating relation between what happens in the text and what might happen outside it. Stylistics can tell us how to name the constituent parts of a literary text and enable us to document their operations, but in doing so it must draw upon the terminology and methodology of disciplines which focus upon language in the real world. The study of metre, narrative and dramatic dialogue is founded upon the fundamental units and principles of all linguistic usage: phonemes, rhythmic sequences, grammatical classes, forms of syntactic organization and so on.But these same fundamentals of communication also underpin the methodology of pure linguistics, structuralism and semiotics, discourse theory, sociolinguistics, gender studies, linguistic philosophy and a whole network of disciplines which involves the context and pragmatic purpose of communication. Consequently, modern stylistics is caught between two disciplinary imperatives. On the one hand it raises questions regarding the relation between the way that language is used and its apparent context and objective—language as an active element of the real world.On the other, it seeks to define the particular use of linguistic structures to create facsimiles, models or distortions of the real world—literary la nguage. This problematic relationship is the principal subject of this book. In Part I, I will consider the progress of modern stylistics from its origins in classical rhetoric to its function in modern literary studies. This will focus upon the tension between stylistics as a purely literary-critical discipline—its function in defining literature as an art form (which I call textualism)—and its operations within the broader field of structuralism and social studies (contextualism).Part II will re-examine this tension in relation to literary history: what is the relationship between literary style and historical context? Part III is a detailed study of two issues that feature in the margins of Parts I and II. ‘Gender and Evaluation’ will be concerned with the way in which the twin elements of feminist criticism and women writers relate to stylistics. INTRODUCTION xiii ‘Evaluative Stylistics’ will look at how the discipline of stylistics underp ins our subjective experience of reading. PART I A SHORT HISTORY OF STYLISTICS 1 RHETORIC The academic discipline of stylistics is a twentieth-century invention.It will be the purpose of this book to describe the aims and methods of stylistics, and we will begin by considering its relationship with its most notable predecessor —rhetoric. The term is derived from the Greek techne rhetorike, the art of speech, an art concerned with the use of public speaking as a means of persuasion. The inhabitants of Homer’s epics exploit and, more significantly, acknowledge the capacity of language to affect and determine nonlinguistic events, but it was not until the fifth century BC that the Greek settlers of Sicily began to study, document and teach rhetoric as a practical discipline.The best-known names are Corax and Tisias who found that, in an island beset with political and judicial disagreements over land and civil rights, the art of persuasion was a useful and profitable prof ession. Gorgias, one of their pupils, visited Athens as ambassador and he is generally regarded as the person responsible for piloting rhetoric beyond its judicial function into the spheres of philosophy and literary studies. Isocrates was the first to extend and promote the moral and ethical benefits of the art of speech, and one of Plato’s earliest Socratic dialogues bears the name Gorgias.It is with Plato that we encounter the most significant moment in the early history of rhetoric. In the Phaedrus Plato/Socrates states that unless a man pays due attention to philosophy ‘he will never RHETORIC 3 be able to speak properly about anything’ (261 A). ‘A real art of speaking†¦which does not seize hold of truth, does not exist and never will’ (260E). What concerned Plato was the fact that rhetoric was a device without moral or ethical subject matter.In the Gorgias he records an exchange between Socrates and Gorgias in which the former claims that p ersuasion is comparable with flattery, cooking and medicine: it meets bodily needs and satisfies physical and emotional desires. Rhetoric, he argues, is not an ‘art’ but a ‘routine’, and such a routine, if allowed to take hold of our primary communicative medium, will promote division, ambition and self-aggrandizement at the expense of collective truth and wisdom, the principal subjects of philosophy.Plato himself, particularly in the Phaedrus, does not go so far as to suggest the banning of rhetoric; rather he argues that it must be codified as subservient to the philosopher’s search for truth. Aristotle in his Rhetoric (c. 330 BC) produced the first counter-blast to Plato’s anti-rhetoric thesis. Rhetoric, argues Aristotle, is an art, a necessary condition of philosophical debate. To perceive the same fact or argument dressed in different linguistic forms is not immoral or dangerous.Such a recognition—that words can qualify or unsettle a single pre-linguistic truth—is part of our intellectual training, vital to any purposive reconciliation of appearance and reality. Aristotle meets the claim that rhetoric is socially and politically dangerous with the counterclaim that the persuasive power of speech is capable of pre-empting and superseding the violent physical manifestations of subjection and defence. The Plato-Aristotle exchange is not so much about rhetoric as an illustration of the divisive nature of rhetoric.It is replayed, with largely Aristotelian preferences, in the work of the two most prominent Roman rhetoricians, Cicero and Quintilian; it emerges in the writings of St Augustine and in Peter Ramus’s Dialectique (1555), one of the founding moments in the revival of classical rhetoric during the European Renaissance. Most significantly, it operates as 4 RHETORIC the theoretical spine which links rhetoric with modern stylistics, and stylistics in turn with those other constituents of the cont emporary discipline of humanities: linguistics, structuralism and poststructuralism.Plato and Aristotle did not disagree on what rhetoric is; their conflicts originated in the problematical relationship between language and truth. Rhetoric, particularly in Rome and in post-Renaissance education, had been taught as a form of super-grammar. It provides us with names and practical explanations of the devices by which language enables us to perform the various tasks of persuading, convincing and arguing. In an ideal world (Aristotle’s thesis) these tasks will be conducive to the personal and the collective good.The rhetorician will know the truth, and his linguistic strategies will be employed as a means of disclosing the truth. In the real world (Plato’s thesis) rhetoric is a weapon used to bring the listener into line with the argument which happens to satisfy the interests or personal affiliations of the speaker, neither of which will necessarily correspond with the tru th. These two models of rhetorical usage are equally valid and finally irreconcilable. Lies, fabrications, exaggerations are facts of language, but they can only be cited when the fissure between language and truth is provable.For example, if I were to tell you that I am a personal friend of Aristotle, known facts will be sufficient to convince you (unless you are a spiritualist) that I am not telling the truth. However, a statement such as, Aristotle speaks to me of the general usefulness of rhetoric’ is acceptable because it involves the use of a familiar rhetorical device (generally termed catachresis, the misuse or mis-application of a term): Aristotle does not literally speak to me, but my use of the term to imply that his written words involve the sincerity or the immediate relevance of speech is sanctioned by rhetorical-stylistic convention.What I have done is to use a linguistic device to distort prelinguistic truth and to achieve an emotive effect at the same time. M y reason for doing so would be to give a RHETORIC 5 supplementary persuasive edge to the specifics of my argument about the validity of Aristotle’s thesis. Such devices are part of the fabric of everyday linguistic exchange and, assuming that the hearer is as conversant as the speaker with the conventions of this rhetorical game, they are not, in Plato’s terms, immoral or dishonest.But for Plato such innocuous examples were merely a symptom of the much more serious consequences of rhetorical infection. The fact that Aristotle lived more than two millennia before me cannot be disputed, but the fabric of intellectual activity and its linguistic manifestation is only partly comprised of concrete facts. Morality, the existence of God, the nature of justice: all of these correspond with the verifiable specifics of human existence, but our opinions about them cannot be verified in direct relation to these specifics.The common medium shared by the abstract and the concrete di mensions of human experience is language and, as a consequence, language functions as the battleground for the tendentious activity of making the known correspond with the unknown, that speculative element of human existence that underpins all of our beliefs about the nature of truth, justice, politics and behaviour.Plato and Aristotle named the conditions of this conflict as dianoia and pragmata (thought and facts, otherwise known as res or content) and lexis and taxis (word choice and arrangement, otherwise known as verba or form), and the distinction raises two major problems that will occupy much of our attention throughout this book. First of all it can be argued that to make a distinction between language—in this instance the rhetorical organization of language—and the pre-linguistic continuum of thought, objects and events involves a fundamental error.Without language our experience of anything is almost exclusively internalized and private: we can, of course, m ake physical gestures, non-linguistic sounds or draw pictures, but these do not come close to the vast and complex network of signs and meanings shared by language users. The most important consequence of this condition of language 6 RHETORIC dependency is that we can never be certain whether the private world, the set of private experiences or beliefs, that language enables us to mediate is, as Plato and Aristotle argue, entirely independent of its medium.The governing precondition for any exchange of views about the nature of existence and truth—a process perfectly illustrated by Plato’s Socratic dialogues—is that language allows us to disclose the true nature of pre-linguistic fact. However, for such an exchange to take place at all each participant must submit to an impersonal system of rules and conventions. Before any disagreement regarding a fact or a principle can occur the combatants must first have agreed upon the relation between the fact/principle an d its linguistic enactment.An atheist and a Christian will have totally divergent perceptions of the nature of human existence, but both will know what the word ‘God’ means. The twentieth-century alternative to Aristotle’s and Plato’s distinction between dianoia/pragmata and lexis/taxis has been provided by Ferdinand de Saussure, a turn-of-thecentury linguist whose influence upon modern ideas about language and reality has become immeasurable.Saussure’s most quoted and influential propositions concern his distinction between the signified and the signifier and his pronouncement that ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms’. The signifier is the concrete linguistic sign, spoken or written, and the signified is the concept represented by the sign. A third element is the referent, the pre-linguistic object or condition that stands beyond the signifiersignified relationship. This tripartate function is, to say the lea st, unsteady.The atheist and the Christian will share a largely identical conception of the relation between ‘God’ (signifier) and ‘God’ (signified) but the atheist will regard this as a purely linguistic state, a fiction sustained by language, but without a referent. For such an individual the signifier God relates not to a specific signified and referent, but to other signifiers and signifieds— concepts of good and bad, eternity, omniscience, omnipotence, the whole network of signs which enables RHETORIC 7 Christian belief to intersect with other elements of the human condition.In Saussure’s terms, the signified ‘God’ is sustained by the differential relationship between itself and other words and concepts, and this will override its correspondence with a ‘positive term’ (the referent). Plato and Aristotle shared the premise that it is dangerous and immoral to talk about something that does not exist, and that it is the duty of the philosopher to disclose such improper fissures between language and its referent. Saussure’s model of language poses a threat to this ideal by raising the possibility that facts and thoughts might, to an extent, be constructs of the system of language.The relation between classical philosophy/rhetoric and Saussurean linguistics is far more complicated than my brief comparison might suggest, but it is certain that Saussure makes explicit elements of the divisive issue of whether rhetoric is a potentially dangerous practice. And this leads us to a second problem: the relationship between language and literature. Plato in The Republic has much to say about literature—which at the time consisted of poetry in its dramatic or narrative forms.In Book 10 an exchange takes place regarding the nature of imitation and representation: the subject is ostensibly art, but the originary motive is as usual the determining of the nature of truth. By the end of the dialo gue Socrates has established a parallel hierarchy of media and physical activities. The carpenter makes the actual bed, but the idea or concept behind this act of creation is God’s. The painter is placed at the next stage down in this creative hierarchy: he can observe the carpenter making the bed and dutifully record this process.The poet, it seems, exists in a somewhat ambiguous relation to this column of originators, makers and imitators. Perhaps they [poets] may have come across imitators and been deceived by them; they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the 8 RHETORIC truth, because they are appearances only and not realities. (1888:312) In short, the poet is capable of unsettling the hierarchy which sustains the clear relation between appearance and reality.Poets, as Aristotle and Plato recognized, are pure rhetoricians: they work within a kind of metalanguage which draws continuously upon the devices of rhetoric but which is not primarily involved in the practical activities of argument and persuasion. As the above quote suggests, they move disconcertingly through the various levels of creation, imitation and deception, and as Plato made clear, such fickle mediators were not the most welcome inhabitants in a Republic founded upon a clear and unitary correspondence between appearance and reality.Plato’s designation of literature as a form which feeds upon the devices of more practical and purposive linguistic discourses, but whose function beyond a form of whimsical diversion is uncertain, has for two millenia been widely debated but has remained the dominant thesis. During the English Renaissance there was an outpouring of largely practical books on the proper use of rhetoric and rhetorical devices: for example R. Sherry’s A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes (1550), T. Wilson’s The Arte of Rhetorique (15 53), R. Rainolde’s A Book Called the Foundation of Rhetorike (1563), H.Peacham’s The Garden of Eloquence (1577) and G. Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589). These were aimed at users of literary and non-literary language, but a distinction was frequently made between the literary and the non-literary function of rhetoric. In George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie we find that there are specific regulations regarding the correspondence between literary style and subject (derived chiefly from Cicero’s distinction between the grand style, the middle style and the low, plain or simple style).The crossing of recommended style-subject borders was regarded as bad writing, but a far more serious offence would be committed RHETORIC 9 if the most extravagant rhetorical, and by implication literary, devices were transplanted into the serious realms of non-literary exchange. Metaphors or ‘figures’ are, according to Puttenham, parti cularly dangerous. ‘For what else is your Metaphor but an inversion of sense by transport; your allegorie by a duplicitie of meaning or dissimulation under covert and darke intendments’ (1589:158).Judges, for example, forbid such extravagances because they distort the truth: This no doubt is true and was by then gravely considered; but in this case, because our maker or Poet is appointed not for a judge, but rather for a pleader, and that of pleasant and lovely causes and nothing perillous, such as be for the triall of life, limme, or livelihood†¦they [extravagant metaphors] are not in truth to be accompted vices but for vertues in the poetical science very commendable. (ibid. : 161)Poetry does of course involve ‘perillous’ matters, but what Puttenham means is that the poetic function is not instrumental in activities concerned with actual ‘life, limme, or livelihood’. As a spokesman for the Renaissance consensus Puttenham shows that the P lato/Aristotle debate regarding the dangers of rhetoric, especially in its literary manifestation, has been shelved rather than resolved: in short, Puttenham argues that in literature it is permissible to distort reality because literature is safely detached from the type of discourse that might have some purposive effect upon the real conditions of its participants.What Puttenham said in 1589 remains true today: literary and non-literary texts might share a number of stylistic features but literary texts do not belong in the same category of functional, purposive language as the judicial ruling or the theological tract. This begs a question which modern stylistics, far more than rhetoric, has sought to address. How do we judge the difference between literary and non-literary discourses? We 10 RHETORIC ave not finished with rhetoric, but in order to properly consider the two issues raised by it—the relation between language and non-linguistic reality and the difference betwee n literary and non-literary texts—we should now begin to examine its far more slippery and eclectic modern counterpart. 2 STYLISTICS AND MODERN CRITICISM Two groups of critics have had a major influence on the identity and direction of twentieth-century English studies: the Russian and central European Formalists and the more disparate collection of British and American teachers and writers whose academic careers began during the 1920s and 1930s.The term New Criticism is often applied to the latter group. The objectives of the majority of individuals in each group were the same: to define literature as a discourse and art form and to establish its function as something that can be properly studied. Until the late 1950s the work of these groups remained within mutually exclusive geographical and academic contexts: the New Critics in Britain and America and the Formalists in Europe. During the 1960s New Criticism and Formalism began to recognize similarities and overlaps in the ir goals and methods.Since the 1960s their academic predominance has been unsettled by a much broader network of interdisciplinary practices: structuralism, poststructuralism, feminism and new historicism, are all significant elements of contemporary literary studies, and each draws its methodologies and expectations from intellectual fields beyond the traditional, enclosed realms of rhetoric and aesthetics. This, I concede, is a simplified history of twentiethcentury criticism, but it provides us with a framework for an understanding of how rhetoric has been variously transformed into modern stylistics.The New Critics and the Formalists are the most obvious inheritors of the disciplines 12 STYLISTICS AND MODERN CRITICISM of rhetoric, in the sense that they have maintained a belief in the empirical difference between literature and other types of language and have attempted to specify this difference in terms of style and effect. Structuralism at once extended and questioned these p ractices by concentrating on the similarities, rather than the differences, between literature and other discourses.Poststructuralism took this a stage further by introducing the reader into the relation between literary and non-literary style, and posing the question of whether the expectations of the perceiver can determine, rather than simply disclose, stylistic effects and meanings. Feminist critics have examined style less as an enclosed characteristic of a particular text and more as a reflection of the sociocultural hierarchies—predominantly male—which control stylistic habits and methods of interpretation.Similarly, Marxists and new historicists concern themselves with style as an element of the more important agenda of cultural and ideological change and mutation. For the sake of convenience I shall divide these different approaches to stylistics into two basic categories: textualist and contextualist. The Formalists and New Critics are mainly textualists in t hat they regard the stylistic features of a particular literary text as productive of an empirical unity and completeness. They do not perceive literary style as entirely exclusive to literature—rhythm is an element of all spoken language, and narrative features in ordinary onversation—but when these stylistic features are combined so as to dominate the fabric of a text, that text is regarded as literature. Contextualism involves a far more loose and disparate collection of methods. Its unifying characteristic is its concentration on the relation between text and context. Some structuralists argue that the stylistic features of poetry draw upon the same structural frameworks that enable us to distinguish between modes of dress or such social rituals as eating.Some feminists regard literary style as a means of securing attitudes and hierarchies that, in the broader context, maintain the difference between male and female roles. STYLISTICS AND MODERN CRITICISM 13 The rem ainder of this Part is divided into three chapters. The first two will examine in basic terms how modern criticism has employed stylistics to evolve theories of poetry and fiction: these chapters will be concerned predominantly with textualist method and practice. Chapter 5 is more concerned with contextualism and will consider the ways in which the interface between text and context can unsettle textualist assumptions. TEXTUALISM I: POETRY The first part of this chapter will give brief definitions, with examples, of the devices and linguistic elements that constitute the stylistic character of post-medieval English poetry: prosody and poetic form; metre; rhyme and the stanza; the sonnet; the ode; blank verse; free verse; metaphor; syntax, diction and vocabulary. Following this is a section on critical methods, which will include examples of how the listed devices and linguistic elements are deployed by critics in their attempts to show how poetic style creates particular meanings a nd effects.PROSODY AND POETIC FORM The most basic and enduring definition of poetry is that the poem, unlike any other assembly of words, supplements the use of grammar and syntax with another system of organization: the poetic line. The poetic line draws upon the same linguistic raw material as the sentence but deploys and uses this in a different way. Our awareness of the grammatical rules which govern the way that words are formed into larger units of meaning is based on our ability to recognize the difference between individual words.Words are made up of sound and stress, identified respectively by the phoneme and the syllable. The function of sound and stress in non-poetic language is functional and utilitarian: before we understand the operative relation between nouns, verbs, adjectives and TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 15 connectives we need to be able to relate the sound and structure of a word to its meaning. Traditional poetry uses stress and sound not only as markers and indicator s of meaning but also as a way of measuring and foregrounding the principal structural characteristic of the poem: the line.In most poems written before the twentieth-century the line is constructed from a combination of two or more of the following elements: †¢ A specified and predictable number of syllables. The most commonly used example of this is the ten-syllable line, the pentameter. †¢ A metrical pattern consisting of the relation between the stress or emphasis of adjacent syllables. The most frequently used metrical pattern in English involves the use of the iambic foot, where an emphatic syllable follows a less emphatic one, with occasional variations, or ‘stress reversals’. †¢ Rhyme.The repetition of the phonemic sound of a single syllable at the end of a line. †¢ Assonance and alliteration. The repetition of clusters of similar vowel or consonant sounds within individual lines and across sequences of lines. The persistent and predictable d eployment of two or more of these features is what allows us to recognize the traditional line as an organizing feature of most pre-twentieth-century poems. METRE The iambic pentameter, consisting of ten syllables with the even syllables stressed more emphatically than the odd, is the most frequently used line in English poetry.It is the governing principle of Shakespeare’s blank verse; of nondramatic blank verse poems, including John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and William Wordsworth’s Prelude, and of the heroic couplet, the structural centrepiece of most 16 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY (from Milton’s Paradise Lost) (from Swift’s ‘Cassinus and Peter’) of the poems of John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Examples of its shorter version, the octosyllabic line or tetrameter can be found in many of the couplet poems of Swift, in Matthew Arnolds ‘Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse’ (1885), and in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850).The iambic pentameter consists of five iambic feet, its tetrameter counterpart of four. The following are examples of these, with ‘indicating the most emphatic and—the less emphatic syllables. These are examples of stress-syllabic metre, in which a consistent balance is maintained between the number of syllables of a line and its stress pattern. Alternative stresssyllabic lines include seven-syllable tetrameters (see William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’), which are comprised of three iambic feet and a single stressed syllable,Lines such as this, with an odd number of syllables, can also be scanned as trochaic The trochaic foot more frequently features as a substitute or variation in a line of iambic feet. This occurs in the first foot of Shakespeare’s line: Stress-syllabic lines consisting of three-syllable feet are generally associated with comic poetry and song. The threesyllable foot creates a rhythmic pattern that deviates from the modulati on of ordinary speech far more than its twosyllable counterpart; as in Oliver Goldsmith’s couplet, consisting of anapestic (––/)feet. TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 17Some poems vary the syllabic length of a line, while maintaining the same number of emphatic or stressed syllables in each. This is called pure stress metre. An early example of pure stress metre is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ (1816) and a more recent one occurs in T. S. Eliot’s ‘Ash Wednesday’ (1930), in which the differing length of each line is anchored to a repeated pattern of two major stresses. Lady of si ences Calm and distressed Torn and most whole Rose of memory The internal structure of the poetic line is only one element of its function as the organizing principle of poetry.RHYME AND THE STANZA Rhyme binds lines together into larger structural units. The smallest of these is the couplet, rhyming aa bb cc (as in the majority of poems by Dryden, Pop e and Jonathan Swift). More complex rhyme schemes enable the poet to create stanzas, the simplest of these being the quatrain, rhyming ab ab. (The octosyllabic quatrain is used by John Donne in ‘The Ecstasy and its pentameter counter-part in Thomas Grays ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’(1751). The stanza can play a number of roles in the broader structure of the poem.Narrative poems, which tell a story, often use the stanza as a way of emphasizing a particular event or observation while tying this into the broader narrative (as in Edmund Spenser’s long The Faerie Queene, John Keats’s The Eve of St Agnes and Lord Byron’s Don 18 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY Juan). Tennyson’s In Memoriam uses the socalled ‘envelope stanza (a b b a). This couplet within a couplet provides a formal counterpoint to the tragic or emotional focus of each stanza. Shorter, lyric poems which focus on a specific sensation, feeling or single event often use the stanza as a counterpoint to improvisation and spontaneity.Donne’s ‘The Relic’ consists of three very complicated stanzas. 8 8 8 8 6 10 7 10 10 10 10 syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables When my grave is broke up again Some second guest to entertain, (For graves have learned that woman-head To be to more than one a bed) And he that digs it spies A bracelet of bright hair about the bone, Will he not let us alone And think that there a loving couple lies, Who thought that this device might be some way To make their souls, at the last busy day Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?On the one hand the complex permutations of line length and rhyme scheme create the impression of flexibility and improvisation, as if the metrical structure of the poem is responding to and following the varied emphases of speech. But this stanzaic structure is repeated, with admirable precision, three times; an d as we read the poem in its entirety we find that the flexibility of the syntax is matched by the insistent inflexibility of the stanza. THE SONNET The sonnet resembles the stanza in that it consists of an ntegrated unit of metre and rhyme: the Shakespearian sonnet consisting of three iambic pentameter quatrains followed by an iambic pentameter couplet, its Petrarchan counterpart rhyming abba abba cdc dcd. It differs from the stanza in that TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 19 the sonnet is a complete poem. Most sonnets will emphasize a particular event or theme and tie this into the symmetries, repetitions and parallels of its metrical and rhyming structure. THE ODE The most flexible and variable stanzaic form will be found in the ode. Wordsworth’s ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality’ consists of eleven sections.Each of these has a pattern of metre and rhyme just as complex and varied as Donne’s stanza in ‘The Relic’, except that in the ‘Immortality Ode’ the same pattern is never repeated. The open, flexible structure of the ode is well suited to its use, especially by the Romantic poets, as a medium for personal reflection; it rarely tells a particular story, and it eschews logical and systematic argument in favour of an apparently random sequence of questions, hypotheses and comparisons. BLANK VERSE A form which offers a similar degree of freedom from formal regularity is blank verse, consisting of unrhymed iambic pentameters.Prior to Milton’s Paradise Lost blank verse was regarded as a mixture of poetry and prose. It was thought appropriate only for drama, in which language could be recognizably poetic (i. e. metrical) while maintaining realistic elements of dialogue and ordinary speech (without rhyme). Paradise Lost offered blank verse as an alternative to the use of the stanza or the couplet in longer narrative or descriptive poems. Milton’s blank verse creates a subtle tension between the iambic patt ern of each line and the broader flow across lines of descriptive or impassioned speech (see below, pp. 28–9, for an example).A similar balance between discursive or reflective language and the metrical undertow of the blank verse line is found in the eighteenth-century tradition of landscape poems (see James Thomson’s The Seasons and 20 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY William Cowper’s The Task) and in Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ and The Prelude. The most flexible examples of blank verse, where it becomes difficult to distinguish between prose rhythm and metre, are found in the poems of Robert Browning, particularly The Ring and the Book (1868– 9): So Did I stand question and make answer, still With the same result of smiling disbelief, Polite impossibility of faith.FREE VERSE Before the twentieth-century, poems which involved neither rhyme nor the metrical pattern of blank verse were rare. Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno (1756) and Wal t Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) replaced traditional metre with patterns redolent of biblical phrasing and intonation, and Blake in his later visionary poems (1789– 1815) devised a very individual form of free verse. It was not until this century that free verse became an established part of the formal repertoire of English poetry. Free verse (from the French vers libre) is only free in the sense that it does not conform to traditional patterns of metre and rhyme.The poetic line is maintained as a structural counterpoint to syntax, but is not definable in abstract metrical terms. Free verse can be divided into three basic categories: 1. Poetry which continues and extends the least restrictive elements of traditional poetry, particularly those of the ode and blank verse. T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917) is a monologue with an unpredictable rhyme scheme and a rhythmic structure that invokes traditional metre but refuses to maintain a regular beat or pattern. A similar effect is achieved in TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 21 W. H. Auden’s ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’.In The Four Quartets (1935–42) Eliot often uses an unrhymed form that resembles blank verse, of which the following, from the beginning of ‘Little Gidding’, is an example: M dwinter spr ng is its o n season Sempiternal though sodden towards s ndown, Suspended in ti e, between pole and tropic. The lines of the poem vary between 9 and 13 syllables. Regular metre is replaced by the distribution of three to five major stresses across each line. Although the lines cannot be scanned according to expectations of regularity they do create the impression that Eliot is giving special attention to rhythmic structure. . Poems in which the line structure reflects the apparent spontaneity of ordinary speech, where, unlike in ‘Little Gidding’, no concessions are made to a metrical undertow. Line divisions will often b e used as an imitation of the process through which we transform thoughts, impressions and experiences into language. Easthope (1983) calls this form ‘intonational metre’. A typical example of this is D. H. Lawrence’s ‘Snake’. A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. 3.Poems in which the unmetrical line variously obstructs, deviates from or interferes with the movement of syntax. In Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’ the two lines function as an alternative to the continuities of grammar. The apparition of those faces in the crowd Petals on a wet black bough. 22 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY The space between the lines could be filled by a variety of imagined connecting phrases: ‘are like’, ‘are unlike’, ‘remind me of’, ‘are as lonely as’. Individual lines offer specific images or impressions: the reader makes connections betw een them.In William Carlos Williams’s ‘Spring and All’ the line structure orchestrates the syntax and creates a complex network of hesitations and progressions, and for an example of this turn to pp. 154–7. The most extreme example of how the free verse line can appropriate and disrupt the structural functions of syntax will be found in the poems of e. e. cummings, where the linear movement of language is effectively broken down into visual units. The best, brief guide to the mechanics of prosody and metre is Hobsbaum’s Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form (1996).A more methodical survey of linguistics and poetic form is Bradford’s A Linguistic History of English Poetry (1993). T. V. F. Brogan’s English Versification 1570–1980 (1981) provides a comprehensive annotated bibliography of works on all types of metre and verse form. METAPHOR Metaphor is derived from the Greek verb that means ‘to carry over’. When words are used m etaphorically, one field of reference is carried over or transferred into another. Wordsworth (in ‘Resolution and Independence’) states that ‘The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth. ’ He carries over two ery human attributes to the non-human phenomena of the sky and the morning: the ability to rejoice and to give birth. I. A. Richards (1936) devised a formula that enables us to specify the process of carrying over. The ‘tenor’ of the metaphor is its principal subject, the topic addressed: in Wordsworth’s line the tenor is the speaker’s perception of the sky and the morning. The ‘vehicle’ is the analogue or the subject carried over from another field of reference to that of TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 23 the subject: in Wordsworth’s line the activities of rejoicing and giving birth.Metaphor is often referred to as a poetic device but it is not exclusive to poetry. Metaphors will be found in newspaper articles o n economics: ‘The war [vehicle] against inflation [tenor]’; in ordinary conversation: ‘At yesterdays meeting [tenor] I broke the ice [vehicle]’; in novels: ‘He cowered in the shadow [vehicle] of the thought [tenor]’ (James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man); and in advertisements: ‘This car is as good on paper [vehicle] as it is on the road [tenor]’. The principal difference between Wordsworth’s metaphor and its non-poetic counterparts is its integration with the iambic pentameter.We could retain the metaphor and lose the metre; turn it into the kind of unmetrical sentence that might open a short story or a novel: ‘I watched the sky rejoice in the birth of the morning. ’ One thing lost is the way in which the pentameter organizes and emphasizes the tenor and vehicle of the metaphor—sky r joic s and mor ing’s bi th. In order to properly consider differences between poetic and no n-poetic uses of metaphor we should add a third element to tenor and vehicle: the ground of the metaphor (see Leech, 1969:151).The ground is essentially the context and motivation of the metaphor. For the journalist the ground of the metaphor is the general topic of economics and inflation and the particular point that he/she is attempting to make about these issues. For the conversationalist the ground is the awareness, shared with the addressee, of yesterday’s meeting and his/her role in it. For the advertiser the ground involves the rest of the advertisement, giving details of the make, price and performance of the car, and the general context in which cars are discussed and sold.In non-poetic uses of metaphor the ground or context stabilizes the relation between tenor and vehicle. The metaphor will involve a self-conscious 24 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY departure from the routine and familiar relationship between language and reality. It would be regarded as bizarre and mildly d isturbing if the conversationalist were to allow the original metaphor to dominate the rest of his/her discourse: ‘I sank through the broken ice into the cold water of the boardroom. There we all were: fishes swimming through a dark hostile world†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢.In poems, however, this relation between ground, tenor and vehicle is often reversed. It is the language of the poem, as much as the reader’s a priori knowledge, which creates its perceived situation and context. It constructs its own ground, and metaphor becomes less a departure from contextual terms and conditions and more a device which appropriates and even establishes them. In John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ the tenor is the insect itself and the bite it has inflicted on the male speaker and the female listener.The speaker carries over this tenor into such an enormous diversity of vehicles that it becomes difficult to distinguish between the ground outside the words of the text and the ground whi ch the text appropriates and continually transforms. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed and marriage temple is. We know that ‘this flea is the tenor, but the relation between tenor and ground becomes less certain with ‘is you and I’. On the one hand it is literally part of them since it has sucked and mixed their blood.On the other the speaker has already incorporated this image of physical unity into a vehicle involving their emotional and sexual lives. He builds on this with the vehicle of the ‘marriage bed’ and extends it into an image of spiritual, external unity in the ‘marriage temple’. Throughout the poem the flea and the bite become gradually detached from their actual context and threaded into a chain of speculative and fantastic associations. In ordinary language metaphor usually stands out from the rest of the discursive or factual nature of the statement. In TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 25 oetry a particular use of meta phor will often underpin and influence the major themes of the entire text. Donne’s ‘The Ecstasy’ opens with a simile (the bank ‘is like’ a pillow, rather than ‘is’ a pillow) but thereafter maintains a close, metaphoric, relation between tenor and vehicle, Where, like a pillow on a bed, A pregnant bank swelled up to rest The violet’s reclining head Sat we two, one another’s best; The tenor is the garden in which ‘we two’ are situated; the vehicle is a combination of images denoting intimacy and sexuality: pillow, bed, pregnant, swelled up, the violets (flower, denoting female) reclining head.This opening instance of the carrying over of rural horticultural images into the sphere of human sexuality becomes the predominant theme of the entire poem, underpinning more adventurous speculations on the nature of the soul. Again the dynamics of contrasting and associating verbal images has unsettled the stabilizing fun ction of ground or context.Donne is one of the so-called metaphysical school of poetic writers whose taste for extended metaphor is a principal characteristic of their verse, but the practice of creating tensions and associations between the words and images of the poem at the expense of an external context transcends schools, fashions and historical groupings. In Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ the image of the real bird becomes a springboard for a complex sequence of associations and resonances: song, poetry, immortality, age, youth, death.The sense of there being a specific place and time in which Keats saw the bird and heard its song is gradually replaced by the dynamics of Keats’s associative faculties: the relation between the vehicles unsettles the relation between vehicle and tenor. The following is from the beginning of stanza 3: 26 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weari ness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; The principal vehicle is Keats’s transformation of the bird into an apparently ratiocinative, cognitive addressee, who understands his words.This at the same time is unsettled by his constant return to the commonsense tenor of a bird without human faculties. The dynamic tension here becomes evident in Keats’s contradictory request that the nightingale should ‘forget’ those human qualities or frailties which, as he concedes in the next line, it had never and could never have known. A classic case of vehicle undermining tenor occurs in T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (lines 15–22).This begins with the tenor (the city fog) being carried over into the vehicle of an unspecified animal which ‘rubs its back upon the window-panes’, ‘rubs its muzzle on the window-panes’, ‘Licked its tongue into the corners of the eveni ng’. By the end of the passage the actual vision of city streets which inspired the comparison has been overtaken by the physical presence of this strange beast, which ‘seeing that it was a soft October night,/Curled once about the house, and fell asleep’. Metaphor is the most economical, adventurous and concentrated example of the general principle of ‘carrying over’.Samuel Johnson defined metaphor in his Dictionary (1755) as ‘a simile compressed in a word’. Donne’s metaphor (from ‘The Relic’), ‘a bracelet of bright hair about the bone’, would, as a simile, be something like: ‘the brightness of the hair about the bone reminds me of the difference between life and death’. Simile postulates the comparison: X is like Y. Metaphor synthesizes the comparison: X is Y. Metonymy is logical metaphor, in which the comparison is founded upon an actual, verifiable relation between objects or impressions: ‘crown is used instead of TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 27 ‘king’, ‘queen’ or ‘royalty’.Allegory involves an extended parallel between a narrative and a subtext which mirrors the relation between the text and reality. Spenser’s The Faerie Queen (1590–6) is a medieval fantasy with allegorical parallels in the real world of the Elizabethan court. Simile, metonymy and allegory establish a balanced relationship between the use of language and conventional perceptions of reality, and occur as frequently in non-poetic discourse as in poetry. Metaphor involves language in an unbalancing of perceptions of reality and is more closely allied to the experimental character of poetry.SYNTAX, DICTION AND VOCABULARY The terms ‘poetic diction’ and ‘poetic syntax’ should be treated with caution. Any word, clause, phrase, grammatical habit or locution used in non-poetic language can be used in poetry. But their presence with in the poem will subtly alter their familiar non-poetic function. For example, in Donne’s ‘The Flea’ the speaker reflects upon the likely objections to his proposal to the woman: Though parents grudge, and you, we are met And cloistered in these living walls of jet. We might explain the use of the phrase ‘and you’ as a result of hurried and improvised speech. ‘Though you and your parents grudge’ would be a more correct form. ) But the fact that the placing of the phrase maintains the movement of the iambic metre and the symmetry of the two lines of the couplet shows us that the speech is anything but improvised. The metrical structure of a poem can accommodate the apparent hesitations and spontaneities of ordinary speech, but at the same time fix them as parts of a carefully structured artefact. Consider what happens when syntax crosses the space between two poetic lines, an effect known 28 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY s enjambment. A classic ex ample of this occurs in the opening lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste The implied pause at the line ending might suggest, on Milton’s part, a slight moment of indecision: is he thinking of the figurative ‘fruit’ (that is, the result and consequences) of man’s disobedience, or the literal fruit of the act of disobedience? He chooses the latter. The placing of the word might also be interpreted as the complete opposite of fleeting indecision.The tension between the actuality of the fruit and the uncertain consequences of eating it is a fundamental theme of the poem, and Milton encodes this tension within the form of the poem even before its narrative begins. In non-poetic language the progress of syntax can be influenced by a number of external factors: an act or verbal interruption by someone else, the uncertainty of the speaker or the fraught circumstances of the speech act: known in stylistics as the pragmatic or functional registers of language.For example, conversations often consist of broken, incomplete syntactic units because both speakers are contributing to the same discourse, which will also involve a shared non-verbal frame of reference: ‘Look at this, its†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ ‘Well, it’s big enough’, ‘Whoa, sorry. ’ ‘It’s OK, it’ll clean up. ’ In poetry apparent hesitations or disturbances of syntax are a function of the carefully planned, integrated structure of the text. The ability of poetry to absorb and recontextualize the devices and registers of non-poetic language is evident also in its use of diction, vocabulary, and phrasing.The social or local associations of particular words or locutionary habits TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 29 can be carried into a poem but their familiar context will be transformed by their new structural framework. In Tony Harrison’s V ( 1985) the poet converses in a Leeds cemetery with an imagined skinhead whose hobbies include the spraying of graffiti on to gravestones: ‘Listen cunt! ’ I said, ‘Before you start your jeering The reason why I want this in a book ’s to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing! ’ A book, yer stupid cunts not worth a fuck.The diction and idiom of both speakers is working class and Northern, but this specific, locative resonance is itself contained within a separate language, with its own conventions: each regional idiomatic flourish is confidently, almost elegantly, reconciled to the demands of the iambic pentameter and the quatrain. The realistic crudity of the language is juxtaposed with the controlled irony of Harrison’s formal design: the skinhead’s real presence is appropriated to the unreal structure of the poem, involving the internal and external rhymes, ‘book’ and ‘fuck’.In a broader context, the language of working-class Leeds is integrated with the same stanzaic structure used by Gray in his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, in which the poet similarly appropriates the voice of a ‘hoary-headed swain’. Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, ‘Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.Gray’s and Harrison’s language and experience are centuries and worlds apart—the diction of the hoary-headed individual is rather more delicate than that of his skinheaded counterpart—but their differences are counterpointed against their enclosure within the same ahistorical stanzaic framework. 30 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY This tendency for poetry to represent and at the same time colonize the habits of non-poetic discourse is a paradox that has taxed poets and critics—most famously in Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798).Wordsworth rails agai nst the stultifying poeticization of ordinary language, of how the conventions and style of eighteenth-century verse had dispossessed poetry of the ‘real language of men’. But while he advocates a new kind of poetic writing he concedes that poetry must announce its difference in a way that will ‘entirely separate the composition from the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life’. In short, although poetry should be about ‘ordinary life’ it must by its very nature be separate from it. D. H.Lawrence’s poems in the Nottinghamshire dialect, Robert Burns’s and Hugh MacDiarmid’s use of Scots idiom, grammar and diction emphasize region and very often class, but no matter where the words come from or what social or political affiliations they carry, they are always appropriated and acted upon by the internal structures of poetry. Wordsworth’s desire to separate poetry from the Vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life’ s ounds suspiciously elitist and exclusive, and there is evidence of this in the work of a number of our most celebrated poets.In Part II of The Waste Land (1922) Eliot represents the speech patterns and, so he assumes, the concerns of working-class women: Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. We will be expected to note the difference between this passage and the sophisticated command of metre and multicultural references of the poem’s principal male voice, Tiresias. With whom would we associate T. S. Eliot? Tiresias or the women?The sense of poetry as carrying social and political allegiances (principally male, white, English, middle class, TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 31 educated) has prompted acts of stylistic revolution. William Carlos Williams in the free verse of Spring and All and Paterson (1946–58) effectively discards those conventions of rhyme and metr e that restrict his use of ordinary American phrasing and vocabulary (see pp. 154–7 for examples). Linton Kwesi Johnson makes the structure of his poems respond to the character of his language. But love is just a word; give it MEAN IN thruHACKSHAN. ‘MEANIN’ and ‘HACKSHAN’ are words appropriated from ‘standard’ English by West Indians, and the fact that Johnson has used poetry to emphasize their ownership is significant. The unusual concentrations and foregroundings of poetry can unsettle just as much as they can underpin the allegiances and ideologies of diction and vocabulary. CRITICAL METHODS So far I have considered three principal characteristics of poetry and the