Prensas de la Universidad

miscelánea

vol. 69

2024

I S C E E AL Á N

literature, lm and

cultural studies

language

and linguistics

vol. 70

2024

a journal of english

and american studies

miscelánea

Literatura, cine

y estudios culturales

Lengua y lingüística

miscelánea

revista de estudios ingleses

y norteamericanos

vol. 70

2024

Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies

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Vol. 70 - Diciembre 2024

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y estudios culturales)

Pilar Mur Dueñas (Lengua y lingüística)

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ISSN: 1137-6368

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Prensas de la Universidad

de Zaragoza

Departamento

de Filología Inglesa

y Alemana

miscelánea

a journal of english

and american studies

2024

Edición electrónica/

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Directoras/Editors:

Silvia Pellicer Ortín (literatura, cine y estudios culturales)

Universidad de Zaragoza

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8928-7295>

Pilar Mur Dueñas (lengua y lingüística)

Universidad de Zaragoza

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8966-1013>

Oana Maria Carciu (Reseñas). Universidad de Zaragoza

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5799-0461>

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miscelánea

Consejo Asesor/

Board of Advisors

Rosario Arias

Universidad de Málaga, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6252-3956>

Jean-Michel Ganteau

University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier III, Francia

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3147-0430>

Terttu Nevalainen

University of Helsinki, Finlandia

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3088-4903>

Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza

Ibáñez

Universidad de La Rioja, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1200-2850>

Consejo Cientíco y Evaluador/

Board of Referees

Annelie Ädel

Dalarn University, Suecia

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9706-0074>

Laura Alba Juez

Universidad Nacional de Educación a

Distancia, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3869-8494>

Eva Alcón Soler

Universitat Jaume I, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2261-5378>

Bárbara Arizti Martín

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8803-1308>

Sonia Baelo Allué

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1191-0160>

Antonio Andrés Ballesteros

González

Universidad Nacional de Educación a

Distancia, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3067-7712>

Gerd Bayer

University of Erlangen-Nurenberg, Alemania

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9831-0522>

Jesús Benito Sánchez

Universidad de Valladolid, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8819-3411>

Miguel Ángel Benítez Castro

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8514-5943>

Ana Bocanegra Valle

Universidad de Cádiz, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2856-0814>

Christoph Bode

Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich,

Alemania

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5006-5804>

Ruth Breeze

Universidad de Navarra, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8132-225X>

Joseph Brooker

Birkbeck College, University of London, Reino

Unido

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9245-010X>

Gert Buelens

Ghent University, Bélgica

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2683-0059>

David Callahan

University of Aveiro, Portugal

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4183-6691>

Javier Calle Martín

Universidad de Málaga, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1040-5979>

Johan Callens

Free University of Brussels, Bélgica

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1506-5942>

Mónica Calvo Pascual

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3846-468X>

Isabel Carrera Suárez

Universidad de Oviedo, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7121-6528>

Frederic Chaume Varela

Universitat Jaume I, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4843-5228>

María Rocío Cobo Piñero

Universidad de Sevilla, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3814-7799>

Francisco Collado Rodríguez

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2922-9194>

Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre

Universidad de Murcia, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6985-0036>

Stef Craps

Ghent University, Bruselas, Bélgica

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6720-1689>

Maria Josep Cuenca

Universidad de Valencia, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8606-713>

Rocío G. Davis

Universidad de Navarra, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1417-9702>

Celestino Deleyto Alcalá

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3087-4556>

Marc Delrez

University of Liège, Bélgica

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0817-8407>

Jorge Díaz Cintas

Imperial College, London, Reino Unido

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1058-5757>

Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova

Masaryk University, República Checa

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0378-7975>

Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6026-0184>

Maite Escudero Alías

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3116-3641>

Gibson Ferguson

University of Shefeld, Reino Unido

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5748-577X>

Javier Fernández Polo

Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1657-9323>

María del Mar Gallego Duran

Universidad de Huelva, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5518-7667>

María Luisa García Lecumberri

Universidad del País Vasco, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8651-7558>

Luis Miguel García Mainar

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3169-5920>

Cristina Garrigós González

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia,

España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8047-9733>

Rosa González Casademont

Universidad de Barcelona, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2038-0699>

Constante González Groba

Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0556-8362>

Pilar González Vera

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4919-8113>

Maurizio Gotti

University of Bergamo, Italia

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7203-4830>

Ignacio Guillén Galve

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5304-1290>

Christian Gutleben

University of Nice, Francia

Felicity Hand

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3766-6266>

Luc Herman

University of Antwerp, Bélgica

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6013-2900>

María Isabel Herrando Rodrigo

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3895-5534>

María Dolores Herrero Granado

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1363-0189>

Tamar Jeffers-McDonald

University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, Reino Unido

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4905-2525>

Deborah Jermyn

University of Roehampton, London, Reino Unido

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9261-9887>

Jane Jordan

Kingston University, London, Reino Unido

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2129-6504>

Enrique Lafuente Millán

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4783-3953>

Rosa Lorés Sanz

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5574-6182>

Hilaria Loyo Gómez

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4933-2199>

Zenón Luis Martínez

Universidad de Huelva, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5228-7822>

María José Luzón Marco

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0454-5457>

Ana Manzanas Calvo

Universidad de Salamanca, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9830-638X>

Belén Martín Lucas

Universidad de Vigo, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5660-1559>

Paula Martín Salván

Universidad de Córdoba, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8514-2670>

María Jesús Martínez Alfaro

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7335-7690>

Silvia Martínez Falquina

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8054-095X>

Sergio Maruenda Bataller

Universitat de València, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3041-0110>

Paul McDonald

University of Nottingham, Reino Unido

Arsenio Jesús Moya Guijarro

Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha,

España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6591-6680>

Laura Muresan

The Bucharest University of Economic

Studies, Bucharest, Rumanía

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5585-2863>

Silvia Murillo Ornat

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1369-3590>

Marita Nadal Blasco

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2902-7613>

Claus-Peter Neumann

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6950-9153>

Elena Oliete Aldea

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8197-1199>

Susana Onega Jaén

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1672-4276>

Beatriz Oria Gómez

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0663-0519>

Nieves Pascual Soler

Universidad Internacional de Valencia,

España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8962-5298>

Viorica Eleonora Patea Birk

Universidad de Salamanca, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3291-5574>

Beatriz Penas Ibáñez

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2418-4695>

Javier Pérez Guerra

Universidad de Vigo, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8882-667X>

Ramón Plo Alastrué

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1151-1661>

Juan Antonio Prieto Pablos

Universidad de Sevilla, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8912-2818>

Paula Rautionaho

University of Eastern Finland, Finlandia

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5239-8407>

Constanza del Río Álvaro

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3370-3020>

María Isabel Romero Ruiz

Universidad de Málaga, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8084-4865>

Miguel F. Ruiz Garrido

Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9647-1039>

Noelia Ruiz Madrid

Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9800-5624>

Manuela Ruiz Pardos

Universidad de Zaragoza, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9115-1020>

Dora Sales Salvador

Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6290-2013>

Lena Steveker

University of Luxembourg, Luxemburgo

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6234-6790>

Juan Antonio Suárez Sánchez

Universidad de Murcia, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8303-044>

Rubén Valdés Miyares

Universidad de Oviedo, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9564-595X>

Javier Valenzuela

Universidad de Murcia, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0007-7943>

Rafael Vélez Núñez

Universidad de Cádiz, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0405-7357>

Francisco Yus Ramos

Universidad de Alicante, España

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5276-3251>

Krystyna Warchał

University of Silesia, Polonia

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8422-4911>

Articles

Endophoric Signposting: A Contrastive

Study of Textual References in L2 Czech

Master’s Theses and Native English

Academic Writing

Marcadores endofóricos: un estudio

contrastivo de las referencias textuales

en el inglés académico de trabajos n

de máster escritos por estudiantes

checos en inglés como segunda lengua

y por hablantes nativos

MARIE LAHODOVÁ VALIŠOVÁ

(Masaryk University, Czech Republic)

table of contents

KATARZYNA MATLAS

(University of Silesia in Katowice,

Poland)

‘Feedback Means the World to Me’:

Constructing Proximity in Canon-

compliant Fanction

‘Feedback Means the World to Me’:

la construcción de la proximidad

en la fancción ajustada al canon

ROCÍO RIESTRA-CAMACHO

(Universidad de Oviedo)

Verbal and Non-verbal Realizations of

Persuasive Strategies in Video Resumes

Formas verbales y no verbales

de estrategias persuasivas en los

videocurrículums

Spaces of S(h)elf-Care: Therapeutic

Narrative Readings of Anorexia

Espacios de auto(cción)-cuidado:

lecturas narrativas terapéuticas en la

anorexia

117

Articles

MARÍA ÁNGELES MESTRE-SEGARRA

(Universitat Jaume I)

ANNA MICHELLE SABATINI

(Universidad Nacional

de Educación a Distancia, UNED)

Metempsychosis and Individual Identity

in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”

Metempsicosis e identidad individual en

“El gato negro” de Edgar Allan Poe

ENCARNACIÓN ALMAZÁN-RUIZ

(Universidad de Jaén)

AROA ORREQUIA-BAREA

(Universidad de Cádiz)

A Corpus Study of Brexit Political

Discourse: Exploring Modality through

Lexical Modals

Un estudio de corpus sobre el discurso

político del Brexit: la modalidad a través

de los modales léxicos

139

159

177

Articles

LUCÍA RAMÍREZ GARCÍA

(Universidad de Málaga)

AÍDA DÍAZ BILD

(Universidad de La Laguna) Reading Martin Amis’s Recreation of

the Perpetrator’s Gaze in The Zone of

Interest

La recreación de la mirada del

perpetrador en The Zone of Interest, de

Martin Amis

Static and Kinetic Utopianism in

Octavia Butler’s Parable of The Sower

Utopismo estático y cinético en La

parábola del sembrador de Octavia

Butler

197

FRANCISCO JOSÉ CORTÉS VIECO

(Universidad Complutense de Madrid) An Education for (Future) Health

Professionals and Literary Scholars:

Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals and

Marisa Marchetto’s Cancer Vixen

Una educación para (futuras/os)

profesionales de la salud y expertas/os en

literatura: The Cancer Journals de Audre

Lorde y Cancer Vixen de Marisa Marchetto

217

239 243

261

Acknowledgements

251

Notes for contributors

BEATRICE MELODIA FESTA

(University of Verona, Italy) Shadowing Femi(ni)cide, Madness and

the Politics of Female Control in Louisa

May Alcott’s “A Whisper in the Dark”

La sombra del feminicidio, locura y la

política de control femenino en “Un

susurro en la oscuridad” de Louisa May

Alcott

ANDREA VALEIRAS FERNÁNDEZ

(Universidade da Coruña)

Dimitra Fimi, Alistair J.P. Sims (eds.):

Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern

Fantasy. London: Bloomsbury

Academic, 2023

JAVIER FERNÁNDEZ-CRUZ

(Universidad de Málaga)

Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez, Michael Toolan

(eds.): The Discursive Construction Of

Economic Inequality: Cads Approaches to

the British Media. London and New York:

Bloomsbury Academic, 2020

Reviews

Articles

miscelánea 70 (2024): pp. 15-40 ISSN: 1137-6368 e-ISSN: 2386-4834

ENDOPHORIC SIGNPOSTING: A CONTRASTIVE

STUDY OF TEXTUAL REFERENCES IN L2 CZECH

MASTER’S THESES AND NATIVE ENGLISH

ACADEMIC WRITING

MARCADORES ENDOFÓRICOS: UN ESTUDIO

CONTRASTIVO DE LAS REFERENCIAS TEXTUALES

EN EL INGLÉS ACADÉMICO DE TRABAJOS

FIN DE MÁSTER ESCRITOS POR ESTUDIANTES

CHECOS EN INGLÉS COMO SEGUNDA LENGUA

Y POR HABLANTES NATIVOS

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249976

MARIE LAHODOVÁ VALIŠOVÁ

Masaryk University, Czech Republic

marie.lahodova@med.muni.cz

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6411-0012>

Abstract

The aim of this study is to contribute to cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary

discourse analysis, shedding light on English L2 learners’ metadiscursive practices.

Focusing on a specialised learner corpus of English-medium Master’s theses

written by Czech university students, the research explores the occurrence of

endophoric markers and their characteristics. To enable cross-linguistic and cross-

cultural comparison, a reference corpus of representative L1 English academic

discourse was compiled. A new taxonomy used here, which draws on Hyland’s list

of endophoric markers (2005) and an extensive literature review, categorises

endophoric markers into three groups: purely directional, markers using specific

words, and a category combining the first two. The study investigates the

occurrence and function of these markers, focusing on anaphoric, cataphoric, and

non-directional references. It also aims to identify differences in the usage of

endophoric markers in English between L2 novice writers and experienced L1

academic writers, providing insights into trends and patterns in the employment of

endophoric markers in academic writing in a way that accounts for disciplinary and

linguistic factors. The results reveal higher endophoric marker frequencies in the

Master’s Thesis Corpus, suggesting distinctive discourse patterns among Czech

learners using English as an L2, with a predominance of specific endophoric

markers and notable cross-disciplinary variation.

Marie Lahodová Vališová

miscelánea 70 (2024): pp. 15-40 ISSN: 1137-6368 e-ISSN: 2386-4834

Keywords: metadiscourse, endophoric markers, Master’s thesis, academic

discourse, cross-cultural analysis.

Resumen

El objetivo de este estudio es contribuir al análisis del discurso intercultural e

interdisciplinar, arrojando luz sobre las prácticas metadiscursivas de los estudiantes

de inglés como segunda lengua. La investigación, basada en un corpus especializado

de Trabajos de Fin de Máster en lengua inglesa escritos por estudiantes universitarios

checos, explora el uso de marcadores endofóricos y sus características. Para permitir

la comparación interlingüística e intercultural, se compiló un corpus de referencia

que representa el discurso académico en inglés de hablantes nativos.

Se utiliza una nueva taxonomía que, basada en la lista de marcadores endofóricos

de Hyland (2005) y en una extensa revisión bibliográfica, clasifica los marcadores

endofóricos en tres grupos: puramente direccionales, marcadores que utilizan

palabras específicas y una categoría que combina los dos primeros. El estudio

explora dónde cuándo y cómo aparecen estos marcadores y la función que tienen,

centrándose en las referencias anafóricas, catafóricas y no direccionales. También

pretende identificar las diferencias que hay en el uso de marcadores endofóricos

entre escritores noveles para quienes el inglés es su segunda lengua y escritores

académicos expertos para quienes el inglés es su primera lengua. Así mismo, tiene

como objetivo proporcionar información sobre tendencias y patrones en el empleo

de marcadores endofóricos en la escritura académica en lengua inglesa, teniendo

en cuenta la influencia en su uso de factores disciplinares y lingüísticos.

Los resultados revelan una mayor frecuencia de marcadores endofóricos en el

corpus de Trabajos de Fin de Máster, lo que sugiere patrones discursivos distintivos

entre los estudiantes checos que utilizan el inglés como segunda lengua, con

predominio de marcadores endofóricos específicos y notables variaciones entre

disciplinas.

Palabras clave: metadiscurso, marcadores endofóricos, Trabajos de Fin de Máster

(TFM), discurso académico, análisis intercultural.

1. Introduction

Over the past two decades, metadiscourse has received considerable attention in

English for academic purposes research. Metadiscourse markers in academic genres

have been analysed using Hyland’s (2005) classification scheme and in the models

Endophoric Signposting: A Contrastive Study of Textual References

miscelánea 70 (2024): pp. 15-40 ISSN: 1137-6368 e-ISSN: 2386-4834

published by Mauranen (1993) and Ädel (2006). Endophoric markers have been

examined alongside other features of metadiscourse across various genres,

languages, and disciplines, as well as over time. This study adopts Hyland’s (2005)

interpersonal model of metadiscourse, which distinguishes between the interactive

and interactional categories of metadiscourse. Interactional metadiscourse devices

aim to engage the reader with the text (e.g. hedges, boosters, attitude markers),

while interactive metadiscourse markers aim to guide the reader through the text

(e.g. frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials).

Endophoric markers play a crucial role as metadiscourse devices, enabling writers

to reference elements within the same text (e.g. as mentioned above, in Section 3

below). This, in turn, makes it easier for readers to make connections between

different parts of the text and comprehend the author’s argumentative structure.

As Hyland states, these markers “make additional ideational material salient and

therefore available to the reader” (2005: 51). By “referring to earlier material or

anticipating something yet to come”, writers help the reader “steer to a preferred

interpretation or reading of the discourse” (2005: 51).

It is widely acknowledged that endophoric markers are crucial metadiscourse

elements frequently employed in various forms of writing, such as books, research

articles (RAs), student essays, Master’s theses (MTs), and PhD dissertations. They

act as signposts, guiding readers to specific facts, examples, methods, and research

findings presented elsewhere in the text. However, endophoric markers are

typically studied in conjunction with other categories of interactive metadiscourse,

rather than as a distinct metadiscourse category.

Cross-linguistic variations in the use of metadiscourse including endophoric

markers have been studied in RAs, MTs and essays written in English and other

languages, such as Chinese (Kim and Lim 2013; Mu et al. 2015), Spanish (Mur-

Dueñas 2011; Lee and Casal 2014), Catalan and Spanish (Martín-Laguna and

Alcón 2015) and French and Norwegian (Dahl 2004), among others.

Several studies have explored metadiscourse use in learner academic writing in

English, comparing L1 and L2 users and various proficiency levels (e.g. Liao

2020). Ädel (2006) discovered that Swedish students tended to overuse

metadiscourse markers in their L2 English essays compared to American and

British university students, indicating potential issues with communicative

competence. In contrast, Burneikaitė’s (2008, 2009) study comparing L1 and L2

MTs in English by students in Britain and Lithuania produced different results.

The underuse of endophoric markers by L2 Lithuanian students was argued to be

a consequence of their “inexperience in structuring lengthy texts” (Burneikaitė

2008: 45). Kobayashi (2017) investigated the developmental patterns of

metadiscourse in L2 English essays by Asian learners with diverse L1 backgrounds,

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identifying varying frequencies of metadiscourse use across proficiency levels.

These differences were attributed to the learners’ L1 rhetorical strategies rather

than their lexical or grammatical competence or level of proficiency.

A wide range of cross-disciplinary studies have revealed varying frequencies and

uses of endophoric markers in complete RAs (Cao and Hu 2014; Hyland and

Jiang 2020) as well as in RA introductions (Del Saz Rubio 2011; Kawase 2015)

and abstracts (Khedri et al. 2013; El-Dakhs 2018). Cao and Hu (2014) studied

the use of endophoric markers in quantitative and qualitative RAs in three soft

disciplines (applied linguistics, education and psychology). Clear cross-disciplinary

differences were identified: the applied linguistics and education RAs employed

linear references (i.e. forward or backward references) more frequently than the

psychology RAs. Nevertheless, on the whole non-linear endophoric reference

dominated (e.g. see Table 1, in Fig. 2, as demonstrated in Excerpt 3). Hyland (2005)

noted that within soft disciplines, endophoric markers serve as a mechanism to

enhance discourse, with a primary goal of facilitating readers’ swift and direct

access to relevant information distributed across various sections of the text.

In recent years, there has been significant attention given to the evolving

understanding of interactive metadiscourse in academic writing, particularly in

RAs, with a focus on its use across diverse disciplines, both soft and hard. Khedri

et al. (2013) analysed 60 RA abstracts in applied linguistics and economics; Dahl

(2004) examined 180 RAs in medicine, economics, and linguistics; Khalili and

Aslanabadi (2014) studied 20 RAs in dentistry; and Celiešienė and Sabulyte

(2018) compared metadiscourse marker usage in RAs in informatics, energy, and

civil engineering. The results indicated that hard science texts employ more visual

elements, which accounts for the frequent use of endophoric markers and code

glosses. This practice ensures effective signposting and accurate interpretation by

the reader of the information provided. Another cross-disciplinary research study

compared Master’s and doctoral dissertations across six disciplines written in

English by L2 Hong Kong students (Hyland 2004). The results revealed that

students in the hard disciplines, particularly those in engineering, demonstrated a

relatively higher use of endophoric markers. This highlighted “the multi-modal

nature of scientific discourse” (Hyland 2004: 147) and the increased dependence

on arguments requiring frequent reference to elements such as tables, figures,

examples, and photographs. Hyland and Jiang (2020) conducted a diachronic

study analysing a corpus of 2.2 million words from articles in top journals across

four academic disciplines, aiming to explore changes in interactive metadiscourse

usage since 1965. The results indicate an increased usage of endophoric markers in

English across diverse disciplines over the past 30 years. This upward trend seems

to reflect a growing tendency for texts to become more explicit, employing

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techniques like exemplification, illustration, and referencing tables and graphical

data to clarify associations (Hyland and Jiang 2020).

Research into endophoric markers extends beyond RAs and includes other genres

such as undergraduate essays (Ädel 2006), MTs (Lee and Casal 2014), postgraduate

dissertations (Hyland and Tse 2004; Kawase 2015), and university textbooks

(Hyland 1999). Bunton’s (1999) study on postgraduate dissertations revealed

that higher level endophoric references, i.e. those referring to larger portions of

text or operating over greater distances, were more frequent. This phenomenon

was attributed to the length of the texts. However, considerable variations among

writers were also reported.

To date, research on Czech English-medium learner discourse has been limited to

a handful of studies that concentrate on individual metadiscourse markers, such as

sentence linkers (Vogel 2008; Povolná 2012), code glosses (Guziurová 2022),

attitude markers (Jančaříková 2023) and self-mention (Dontcheva-Navrátilová

2023). However, there have been no investigations into the use of endophoric

markers by Czech students in English.

As noted above, few studies to date have focused on metadiscourse in L2 MTs

across soft disciplines. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining endophoric

markers in L2 MTs written in English by Czech university students. Two corpora

were compiled for this purpose: the Master’s Thesis Corpus (MT_LLE) and the

Research Article Corpus (RA_LLE). These corpora were used to compare and

contrast the use of endophoric markers by English L2 and L1 writers, examining

differences across levels of writing expertise and linguacultural dimensions.

Additionally, the realisation of endophoric markers is compared across three

disciplines, i.e. linguistics, literary studies, and education. These disciplines are

integral to English studies at Czech universities, and the MTs included in the L2

corpus focus on these specific areas. A new taxonomy was devised and used in the

analysis (for more details concerning the taxonomy, see Section 2.4).

This study seeks to answer the following research questions:

1. What is the frequency of occurrence, realisation, and function of endophoric

markers in English-medium L2 (Czech) MTs and L1 published RAs?

2. What are the similarities and differences in the frequency of occurrence,

realisation, and function of endophoric markers in English-medium L2

(Czech) MTs and L1 published RAs?

3. What are the similarities and differences in the frequency of occurrence,

realisation, and function of endophoric markers in the three disciplines in

English-medium L2 (Czech) MTs and L1 (English) published RAs?

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2. Data and Methodology

2.1. Corpus Characteristics and Compilation

For the present study, two distinct corpora were compiled: the Master’s Thesis

Corpus (MT_LLE) and the Research Article Corpus (RA_LLE). Each of these

corpora will be discussed in the following section, accompanied by an explanation

of the selection criteria applied.

The analysis of endophoric markers was conducted on a specialised learner corpus of

English-medium MTs written by Czech university students majoring in English

language and literature, either at the Faculty of Arts or the Faculty of Education of

Masaryk University in Brno. The corpus comprises theses written and submitted

from 2010 to 2018. The following additional criteria were applied: the authors’

native/first language is Czech (L1), and only theses awarded high grades, that is, ‘A’

(‘Excellent’/‘Merit’), were included. A total of 48 MTs were included in the corpus,

distributed equally across three academic disciplines: linguistics, literary studies, and

education, with 16 theses drawn from each discipline. Prior to the analysis, all MTs

underwent a refinement process, which involved the removal of elements such as

abstracts, citations, tables, and figures. This approach ensured that the analysis

focused exclusively on the students’ written discourse in running text found within

the MT macrostructure. The corpus comprises a total of 948,000 words.

In order to investigate typical elements of metadiscourse in the MT corpus, it was

necessary to compile a reference corpus representing L1 English academic

discourse. Due to the fact that there is no corpus of English L1 MTs available, the

reference corpus (RA_LLE) comprises RAs authored by scholars who are native

English speakers and affiliated with universities in Britain or the United States. The

authors’ native speaker status (L1) is indicated by their names, affiliations, and

CVs. The selection process exclusively considered articles from the same three

fields or disciplines as in the MT corpus, i.e. linguistics, literary studies, and

education. These articles were single-authored, produced between 2010 and

2018, and published in widely recognised international journals indexed in the

Web of Science database. Linguistics articles were sourced from Discourse &

Communication, the Journal of Pragmatics, and Applied Linguistics. Literary

studies articles were selected from Eighteenth-Century Fiction, New Literary

History, and SEL: Studies in English Literature. Articles focusing on educational

themes were taken from Language and Education, Language Teaching Research,

and Language Learning. The corpus comprises 36 articles (12 articles per

discipline), all of which have undergone the same cleaning process applied in the

MT_LLE corpus. The total word count for this corpus is 243,000 words (see

Table 1 below).

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Corpus No. of texts Word count Disciplines

MT_LLE 48 948,000 Linguistics, literary studies, education

RA_LLE 36 243,000 Linguistics, literary studies, education

Table 1. Composition of the MT_LLE and RA_LLE

2.2. Corpus Comparison and ‘Tertium Comparationis’

Due to the unavailability of MTs authored by L1 English writers, no reference

corpus could be compiled. Flowerdew (2015) aligns with Tribble (2002) in

suggesting that in the absence of a directly comparable corpus, concessions must

be made, and an ‘analogue’ corpus can be used. This refers to a corpus that closely

resembles student writing in terms of genre and discipline (Flowerdew 2015: 60).

The approach adheres to the ‘tertium comparationis’ criteria advocated by Connor

and Moreno (2005: 155; see also Moreno 2008: 25). Therefore, the reference

corpus of RAs (RA_LLA) was carefully compiled to mirror the MT_LLE corpus as

closely as possible. Despite the differences between MTs and RAs in their aims,

scope, audience, and criteria (Paltridge 2002; Flowerdew 2015), it has been

argued that “there are significant overlaps in lexico-grammar and rhetorical

functions” (Flowerdew 2015: 60). As certain sections of MTs (or dissertations)

may eventually evolve into RAs (Swales 1990: 178), previous research on

metadiscourse has often juxtaposed MTs with RAs, serving as potential templates

for inexperienced writers (see, for instance, Koutsantoni 2006; Pujol Dahme and

Selfa Sastre 2015; Abdollahzadeh 2019; Qiu and Ma 2019).

The MT_LLE corpus and RA_LLE corpus are fully comparable in terms of

disciplines (linguistics, literary studies, and education), as well as the time span in

which they were written (2010-2018). The analysis of the corpora thus incorporates

the concept of intercultural, cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary variation.

While it is worth noting that the sizes of these corpora vary, the primary focus of

this study is to explore the occurrence of endophoric markers in theses written in

English by Czech native speakers. To mitigate the discrepancies in corpus size, the

research findings were normalised to occurrences per 10,000 words, and the log-

likelihood ratio test was applied to account for size differences. This approach

allows for drawing reliable conclusions while acknowledging the inherent

limitations of the differing corpus sizes.

2.3. Procedure

Both corpora were compiled and searched using SketchEngine software (Kilgarriff

et al. 2004). Statistical significance was determined using the non-parametric log-

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likelihood test, following common practice in specialised corpus analysis. A

significance level of <0.05 was established, with very low p-values indicated as

<0.001.

Based on Hyland’s (2005) list of endophoric markers and a comprehensive review

of the relevant literature, a list of endophoric markers was compiled and searched

within the corpora. After this initial stage, additional items identified as potential

endophoric markers (e.g. extract, excerpt, here) were added to the list. It was

required that every instance of potential endophoric markers be examined in

context to ensure that they functioned as expected. According to Hyland and Tse

(2004), who drew on Bunton’s (1999) distinction between ‘research acts’ and

‘writer acts’, each potential discourse marker must be assessed to determine

whether it carries propositional value (Example 1) or metadiscoursal value

(Example 2) (Hyland and Tse 2004: 166).

(1) It was not enough for the teachers to value students’ voices in the

discussion; many of them felt they had to vanish completely, following

procedures for discussion that completely removed the teacher from

participation. (RA_EDU_04)

(2) The following extracts show other instances of Cherry’s praise of Canadian-

born ice hockey players while at the same time reiterating their Canadian

regional allegiance and affinity. (MT_LIT_03)

The token following is used as a metadiscoursal device in Example 2; however, in

the context of Example 1, it signals discourse-external relations.

Furthermore, within the dimension of interactive metadiscourse, careful attention

has to be given to certain markers, which could be assessed either as frame markers

or as endophoric markers, based on the context. Below are two examples of the

token analysis in context (Examples 3 and 4):

(3) I turn now to an analysis of what these contrasts mean in terms of language

use. (RA_LIN_12)

(4) Nevertheless, as demonstrated in the analysis, considerable attention to

the choice of lexico-grammatical items needs to be paid. (MT_LIN_09)

In Example 3, the word analysis introduces or frames the content that follows and

is typically categorised as a frame marker, labelling the stage of the discourse based

on Hyland’s theory of metadiscourse. In Example 4, the phrase in the analysis

functions as an endophoric marker, referring to the specific analysis within the

same text for content and clarification.

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2.4. Taxonomy

When analysing endophoric markers, authors typically provide a list of such

markers or offer a few examples (Hyland and Tse 2004; Hyland 2005). Bunton

(1999), influenced by Mauranen’s (1993) research on metatext and text

reflexivity and by Crismore and Farnsworth’s (1990) terms of reviews and

previews, created a taxonomy of endophoric markers. He referred to them as

‘text references’ and proposed a taxonomy that distinguishes between linear and

non-linear text references. Linear text references are explicit references to other

parts of the linear text. They are further categorised based on the direction of the

reference as reviews “looking back, repeating, summarising or referring to an

earlier stage of the text” (e.g. as noted earlier in the paper), previews “looking

forward, anticipating, summarising or referring to a later stage of the text” (e.g.

the next section), and overviews “looking in both directions, referring to the

current stage of the text in overall terms” (Bunton 1999: 45). It is worth noting

that ‘overviews’ in this context concern references that consider the text from a

broader perspective —e.g. “This was only used by X among the (subjects)

examined in this thesis” (Bunton 1999: 46). Bunton also showed the level of

reference (scope), which may refer to the written discourse as a whole or to a

specific chapter. Additionally, he explored the distance to the text segment being

referred to. Non-linear text references are explicit references to tables, figures,

charts, or appendices.

This taxonomy, expanded using Hyland’s (1999, 2005) theory of metadiscourse

to distinguish between endophoric and frame markers, served as a valuable

framework in Cao and Hu’s (2014) analysis of RAs. Burneikaitė (2009)

incorporated Bunton’s (1999) classification of metatext into her work, which

resulted in a classification that divides endophoric markers into non-linear and

linear text references. As with Bunton’s taxonomy, non-linear text references cover

elements like appendices, tables, figures, charts, graphs, and diagrams. Concerning

linear text references, the author classified them into several levels: thesis-level

markers (e.g. paper, study, thesis, analysis, dissertation, research (work), essay, article,

project), chapter/section-level markers (e.g. chapter, (sub)section, part, paragraph),

sentence-level markers (e.g. example, instance, illustration, sentence, case) and

vague markers (e.g. above, below, further, following, previously, what follows,

remainder) (Burneikaitė 2009: 13).

In an attempt to capture and categorise all instances of endophoric markers

identified in the corpora. I propose the following taxonomy. While it has some

similarities with Bunton’s taxonomy, it is primarily based on Hyland’s definition of

metadiscourse and the interactive dimension, taking into account additional

elements identified in the data.

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I partially agree with the decision to divide endophoric markers into linear and

non-linear elements. However, when analysing the corpora, I came across

instances of endophoric markers that might be classified as non-linear according

to existing taxonomies, although their context and function indicated otherwise.

For example, the marker table in the following sentences does not qualify as an

example of non-linear reference since it refers back or ahead (see Examples in 5).

(5) As we have seen, the focus on significance also leads researchers astray in

suggesting that nonsignificant findings should not even be reported, as in

Table 1 above; not reporting full findings only helps to further obscure

what was observed in the data and why patterns might or might not have

been statistically significant in the first place. (RA_EDU_11)

Table 1 below represents only a sample of relevant verbs (i.e. verbs related

to the issue of existence or appearance on the scene) as presented in the

book. (MT_LIN_02)

For that reason, I abandoned the distinction between linear and non-linear and in

its place propose the following taxonomy (see Table 2).

Endophoric markers are categorised into three groups: purely directional markers,

markers using specific words, and a category that combines the first two. Markers

using specific words can refer to the entire discourse (article, essay, here [non-

directional reference], paper, study, thesis, work), to individual parts of the discourse

(analysis, chapter/subchapter, conclusion, discussion, introduction, page, paragraph,

part, section/subsection) or to items incorporated into the discourse (appendix,

chart, diagram, example, excerpt, extract, figure, here [either as backward or

forward reference], table). These markers can refer back or ahead by the use of

tenses (Examples in 6) or immediate context (Example 7).

(6) In the examples analysed so far, I have shown how the interview is designed

to foreground the IE’s feelings and thoughts, to be collaborative rather

than confrontational, and to establish a version of events in terms of what

happened to her personally. (RA_LIN_01)

These key concepts will be applied in the analysis of online weight loss

advertising. (MT_LIN_13)

(7) The items in the FLCAS (Horwitz et al., 1986) reflect the above

mentioned characteristics of an anxious student, as we can see in these

examples: <EXAMPLE>, or <EXAMPLE>. (MT_EDU_09)

Moreover, they can also serve as non-directional endophoric markers, pointing to the

current discourse, section, or incorporated item itself (Examples in 8). When combined

with clearly directional markers, thus labelled as combined endophoric markers, they

can, of course, serve as anaphoric and cataphoric signposting markers (Example 9).

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categories

Subcategories

MT_LLE RA_LLE LL G2 p-value

n pttw n pttw

Purely

directional 608 6.4 60 2.5 64.6176 <0.001

Specific 2,079 21.9 509 21.0 0.8714 0.3506

Reference to the

entire written

discourse 234 2.4 132 5.4 47.8588 <0.001

Reference to

individual parts

of the written

discourse

927 9.8 69 2.9 140.9983 <0.001

Reference to

items

incorporated

into the written

discourse

918 9.6 308 12.7 15.9739 <0.001

Combined 1,256 13.2 128 5.3 127.0166 <0.001

TOTAL 3,943 41.6 697 28.7 89.3992 <0.001

Table 3. General frequency of endophoric markers across the corpora (Abbreviations: n:

number; pttw: per ten thousand words)

Comparing the three categories of endophoric markers (purely directional, specific,

and combined), the highest frequency of endophoric references in both corpora

was associated with specific endophoric markers. The frequency of specific markers

was nearly the same in the MT_LLE and RA_LLE corpora (21.9 and 21.0,

respectively; LL test, p-value 0.3506), which may indicate a genre-related trend in

research writing. This aspect will be examined further in a cross-disciplinary

analysis of specific endophoric references later in this section.

Another salient observation regarding specific reference and its three subcategories

is the frequency of referencing items integrated into the discourse. This referencing

frequency was notably higher in the RA_LLE corpus (12.7 occurrences) compared

to the MT_LLE corpus (9.6 occurrences), and this difference was found to be

statistically significant (p-value < 0.001). In contrast, combined endophoric

markers were more prevalent in the MT_LLE corpus (13.2) than in the RA_LLE

corpus (5.3), and again this difference was statistically significant (p-value <

0.001). Similar results have been found in engineering RAs, where a greater

density of lexical bundles occurred (e.g. is shown in Figure) (Hyland 2008). This

may suggest that Czech undergraduate students tend to be exceptionally clear or

meticulous when directing their readers to specific parts of their discourse in

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English-medium theses. They emphasise this by using multiple endophoric

markers simultaneously, as illustrated in Example 14.

(14) It has been mentioned in the opening paragraph of this section (see page 49)

that in his novel Ellis attributes the rampant indifference that leads to the

collapse of communication not only to the influence of television but also

of glossy magazines. (MT_LIT_05)

Within each category of endophoric markers (i.e. purely directional, specific, and

combined), endophoric markers can be categorised as anaphoric or cataphoric.

Additionally, specific reference markers can also be classified as non-directional

(see Table 2).

Concerning the overall distinctions among anaphoric, cataphoric, and non-

directional references, Table 4 provides a summary of the data in both the RA_

LLE and MT_LLE corpora. Anaphoric reference predominates over cataphoric

in both corpora, as authors tend to revisit previously mentioned content,

reinforcing the reader’s recollection of already presented knowledge. Anaphoric

reference occurs most frequently among Czech L2 English student writers, at a

rate of 16.3 occurrences per 10,000 words, while L1 English expert writers

predominantly use non-directional reference, with a frequency of 13.2 instances

per 10,000 words. This difference is statistically significant (p-value < 0.001).

However, the difference in the use of non-directional reference between the

MT_LLE and RA_LLE corpora was not found to be statistically significant

(p-value 0.0952).

MT_LLE

pttw

RA_LLE

pttw LL G2 p-value

Anaphoric reference 1,548 16.3 246 10.7 54.4399 <0.001

Cataphoric

reference 1,273 13.4 131 5.4 126.7413 <0.001

Non-directional

reference 1,122 11. 8 320 13.2 2.7844 0.0952

Table 4. Anaphoric, cataphoric and non-directional endophoric markers across the corpora

In Lee and Casal’s (2014) investigation of engineering MTs, the results indicated

that L1 English writers directed readers’ attention to previously and subsequently

discussed material equally. In contrast, Spanish L1 authors primarily included

vague anaphoric reference markers. It is worth noting that Czech students use all

three types of reference at comparable frequencies, ranging from 11.8 to 16.3

occurrences in their English-medium theses. Expert English L1 writers, conversely,

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exhibit a clear preference for non-directional and anaphoric reference, with

frequencies of 13.2 and 10.7 occurrences per 10,000 words, respectively.

Anaphoric markers, which were used both purely directionally and in combined

phrases, were counted collectively, and the comparison of their frequency across

the corpora can be seen in Figure 1. The most frequently used anaphoric markers

in all three corpora were the words above (frequency of 4.8 in MT_LLE and 2.0 in

RA_LLE) and previous/ly (2.0 in MT_LLE and 0.7 in RA_LLE). This aligns with

the findings of Hyland and Jiang (2020), who identified above as the most

frequently used linear marker in both 1965 and 1985. The third most frequently

used anaphoric marker in the MT_LLE corpus was already, occurring at a rate of

1.4, in contrast to its significantly lower incidence in the RA_LLE corpus, where

its frequency was 0.2. This vague anaphoric reference is not commonly used in

English; however, in Czech, the formal phrase “jak již bylo zmíněno” [as has

already been mentioned] is a frequently used anaphoric marker within academic

discourse. Therefore, the more frequent use of the marker already by Czech

students when writing in English might be attributed to cross-linguistic influence

from the Czech language.

Figure 1. Anaphoric reference markers (purely directional and combined, counted together)

Figure 2 illustrates the distribution of cataphoric reference markers across the

corpora. The two most commonly used cataphoric markers were consistent across

both corpora: following (frequency of 6.0 in MT_LLE and 2.2 in RA_LLE) and

below (1.8 in MT_LLE and 1.3 in RA_LLE). Czech students and expert writers

used next at a similar frequency (0.6 and 0.5, respectively). Czech students also

employed the marker further (on), but this marker did not appear in the RA_LLE

corpus. A similar pattern was observed with the marker subsequent/ly, which was

absent from the RA_LLE corpus.

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The following part of the results section will examine cross-disciplinary variations

regarding the occurrence, realisation, and frequency of endophoric markers. A

more in-depth exploration is provided for specific endophoric markers and their

three subcategories, as these markers were the most frequent form of endophoric

reference across both corpora.

Table 5 presents the distribution of references to the entire discourse, drawing data

from the category of endophoric reference using specific expressions. When

referencing their written discourse, authors predominantly employed terms such as

thesis and work in MTs, and article and study in RAs. The second most frequently

used term in the MT_LLE was here, which ranked third in the RA_LLE corpus.

However, it had a higher frequency than in MT_LLE, with 1.2 occurrences per

10,000 words. Here functioned as a self-reference word to denote the thesis or

article itself. In parts of the corpora it was challenging to discern whether the

reference pointed to the entire discourse or a specific part (e.g. a section) (see

Examples 15 and 16). Consequently, all instances of here referring to the entire

discourse or its parts were included in the count.

(15) The interview excerpts considered here come from a larger ethnographic

project involving individuals who immigrated to a small Midwestern city

in the US, which I have named Midtown, and who were enrolled in free

ESL classes offered by a social services agency. (RA_LIN_09)

(16) In conclusion I would like to say that I hope I have correctly grasped the

issues compiled in this section, however, I rather apologize here for any

prospective misinterpretation. (MT_LIT_04)

Figure 2. Cataphoric reference markers (purely directional and combined, counted together)

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Reference to the entire

written discourse

MT_LLE RA_LLE

n pttw n pttw

article 0 0.0 42 1.7

essay 0 0.0 8 0.3

here 41 0.4 29 1.2

paper 20 0.2 18 0.7

study 19 0.2 32 1.3

thesis 119 1.3 0 0.0

work 35 0.4 3 0.1

TOTAL 234 2.5 132 5.4

Table 5. Distribution of reference to the entire written discourse (in specific category only)

As mentioned above, endophoric reference to individual parts of the discourse and

to items incorporated into the discourse reveals similarities in the research-oriented

genre (theses and articles). Therefore, a closer examination of these two

subcategories, especially investigation of cross-disciplinary variations among the

three disciplines (linguistics, literary studies, and education), would be insightful.

Table 6 summarises the distribution of references to individual parts of the written

discourse, drawing data from the specific-only and combined categories and

counting them together. The relative frequencies clearly indicate that referencing

individual parts of the written discourse was significantly higher in MT_LLE than

in RA_LLE across all three disciplines, possibly explained by the length of the

research genre. While references to chapters and subchapters were the most frequent

endophoric markers across all three disciplines of MT_LLE, such references were

naturally absent in RA_LLE, as these are not part of the texts. Reference to sections

and subsections occurred across all three disciplines, with the incidence consistently

higher in MT_LLE than in RA_LLE.

Concerning frequency of references to specific parts of discourse across

disciplines, linguistics showed the highest occurrence of endophoric reference in

both MA_LLE and RA_LLE (19.7, 9.4 respectively). However, upon closer

examination of specific references to analysis and discussion, which appear in

both research genres and are considered core parts of each research study, clear

differences emerge.

Reference to analysis was more frequent in RAs than in MTs in linguistics and

education studies, highlighting the significance of analysis sections in RAs, as

recognised by expert writers. Reference to discussion was also more frequent in

RAs in linguistics, with the same frequency found in MTs and RAs in education.

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Reference to pages, frequently mentioned in lists of endophoric markers in

various studies of RAs (cf. Hyland 2005; Lee and Casal 2014), was absent from

RAs in all three disciplines, and in the MT corpus only 19 instances were

found.

Based on the description so far and the contents of Table 6, it is evident that

reference to individual parts of the discourse was lowest in literary studies MTs and

RAs. This is explained by the focus of the discipline itself; as analysis and discussion

are distributed throughout the discourse in literary studies, there is no clear

tendency to refer to them explicitly.

Reference to

individual parts of the

written discourse

Linguistics Literary studies Education

MT_LIN RA_LIN MT_LIT RA_LIT MT_

EDU RA_EDU

pttw pttw pttw pttw pttw pttw

analysis 3.3 4.0 1.1 0.0 0.2 0.4

chapter/subchapter 4.4 0.0 4.1 0.0 8.8 0.0

conclusion 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.0

discussion 0.6 0.8 0.4 0.1 0.2 0.2

introduction 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.0 0.1 0.0

page 0.2 0.0 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.0

paragraph 0.3 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.5 0.0

part 4.4 0.1 1.3 0.4 3.0 0.1

section/subsection 6.1 4.2 0.8 0.6 2.2 1.2

TOTAL 19.7 9.4 8.8 1.1 15.0 1.9

Table 6. Distribution of reference to individual parts of the written discourse (data taken from

specific and combined category, counted together)

Table 7 illustrates the distribution of references to items incorporated into the

discourse, with data taken from the specific-only and combined categories and

counted together. Once again, endophoric markers are used significantly less in

the discipline of literary studies in both MTs and RAs. The highest frequency

was identified in linguistics studies in both MTs and RAs (with the frequency

almost equal), while in the discipline of education, RAs displayed much higher

use of these markers than MTs (15.2 to 9.6, respectively).

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Reference to items

incorporated into

the discourse

Linguistics Literary studies Education

MT_LIN RA_LIN MT_LIT RA_LIT MT_EDU RA_EDU

pttw pttw pttw pttw pttw pttw

appendix 1.6 0.3 0.1 0.0 2.2 0.2

chart 1.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.8 0.0

diagram 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0

example 8.9 5.8 0.6 0.4 1.0 3.4

excerpt 0.5 4.9 0.6 0.0 0.0 1.9

extract 2.5 7. 9 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0

figure 2.3 4.8 0.0 0.4 2.6 2.0

here 3.0 1.0 0.3 0.4 0.4 1.6

table 7. 8 1.9 0.0 0.0 2.6 6.0

TOTAL 28.2 26.8 1.7 1.1 9.6 15.2

Table 7. Distribution of reference to items incorporated into the discourse (data taken from

specific and combined category, counted together)

Regarding the actual words used in the endophoric markers, the most frequently

used references to incorporated items in linguistics MTs were example, table, and

here, whereas in linguistics RAs, they were extract, example, excerpt, and figure. In

literary studies MTs and RAs, the most frequent references were example and here.

The endophoric marker here is used either as an anaphoric marker (Example 17) or

a cataphoric marker (Example 18), often substituting for words such as example,

extract, excerpt, etc.

(17) Initially putting laughter and tears together, Hazlitt soon adopts the

conventional approach of having tears signify pathos and laughter

embodying derision: <EXAMPLE>. While laughter is not a sign of pity

here, it is indicative of the sympathetic imagination since laughter reflects

our capacity to discern what is “unreasonable and unnecessary” in others

and act accordingly. (RA_LIT_10)

(18) Let me demonstrate it on a few examples here: <EXAMPLE>. Simple

structured compliments such as <EXAMPLE> or <EXAMPLE> are often

exploited by the characters as well (10.2%). (MT_LIN_11)

In the education MT corpus, the most frequently used reference words in this

subcategory were table, figure, and appendix/appendices, while in the education

RA corpus, they were table, example, and figure. In education RAs, references to

tables were twice as frequent as in MTs (6.0 and 2.6, respectively). References to

figures were almost the same in MTs as in RAs. Another distinction was that

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authors of MTs across all three disciplines made more references to appendix/

appendices. Once again, the variation is attributed to the structural norms of RAs

in different journals, where appendices are not common, while in MTs, use of

appendices is frequent.

The occurrence of endophoric reference to items incorporated into discourse,

especially to visual aids like figures and tables, is notably scarcer in literary studies

than in linguistics and education. This scarcity can be explained by the primary

focus in literary studies on descriptive analysis, introduction of and commentary

on quotes from literary works or secondary sources, and presentation of important

examples.

When combining references to examples, excerpts, extracts, and here in linguistics,

authors in both MTs and RAs relied on them more than authors writing within the

field of education (14.9 in MTs and 19.6 in RAs in linguistics compared to 1.4 in

MTs and 6.9 in RAs in education). In contrast, references to findings summarised

using visual materials (e.g. charts, diagrams, figures, and tables), the differences were

less pronounced. Authors of RAs in education showed a higher reliance on these

visual materials (8.1 in RA_EDU, 6.1 in MT_EDU), whereas in MTs this type of

reference was more frequent in linguistics (11.8 in MT_LIN, 6.7 in RA_LIN).

4. Conclusion

The extent to which endophoric markers are explicitly taught in academic English

writing courses varies. In many courses, the primary focus is on teaching students

to structure their writing, develop arguments, use evidence, and cite sources

properly. However, depending on the course’s curriculum, the instructor’s

approach, and the students’ proficiency levels, endophoric markers can be covered

to some extent. These markers are crucial for ensuring coherence and cohesion in

academic writing. Endophoric signposting helps readers understand the

relationships between different parts of the text and navigate the content smoothly,

making it particularly important in longer and more complex pieces of writing,

such as the MT.

The analysis of endophoric markers across the Master’s Thesis Corpus (MT_LLE)

and the reference corpus, the Research Article Corpus (RA_LLE), has revealed

distinctive patterns in how Czech university students majoring in English language

and literature use these markers compared to L1 English-speaking writers.

A new taxonomy of endophoric markers was developed for this study. The

taxonomy categorises endophoric markers into purely directional, specific, and

combined markers, enabling a more nuanced understanding of how these markers

Marie Lahodová Vališová

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function in different contexts. The overall findings revealed that the MT_LLE

corpus contained a significantly higher frequency of endophoric markers (41.6

per 10,000 words) as compared with the reference corpus (28.7 per 10,000

words in RA_LLE). This difference can be attributed to the respective length of

the two types of written discourse, as described in other research studies (cf.

Bunton 1999). However, discourse length cannot be the sole factor influencing

the use of endophoric markers. Crismore et al. (1993) suggest that the use of

metadiscourse is closely linked to socio-cultural contexts. This is consistent with

the findings reported in a study by Afzaal et al. (2021) on the use of metadiscourse

markers, comparing introductions of MTs written in Chinese and US universities.

The lower use of metadiscourse markers found in Chinese introductions was

attributed not only to the shorter length of the texts but also to socio-cultural

factors. In Chinese writing, readers are required to take on a larger role in

determining the relationship of specific sections within the text as a whole (Afzaal

et al. 2021: 12).

The more frequent use of certain types and realisations of endophoric markers in

RA_LLE suggests a clear link to the function of endophoric markers as used by

expert writers. Notably, combined endophoric markers integrating specific and

purely directional markers were more prevalent in the MT_LLE corpus, indicating

a comprehensive approach by Czech students in guiding readers within their

English written discourse, albeit suggestive of their inexperience. Conversely,

specific markers referring to the entire discourse, individual parts, or items

incorporated into the discourse were equally prevalent in both the MT_LLE and

RA_LLA corpora (21.9 and 21.0, respectively; LL test, p-value 0.3506), suggesting

a shared emphasis on signposting and guiding readers through research-genre

texts. Furthermore, within this category, referencing to the discourse itself or to

items incorporated into the written discourse prevailed in RA_LLE compared to

MT_LLE, and the results were found to be statistically significant.

The examination of anaphoric, cataphoric, and non-directional reference highlights

further differences between the corpora that cannot be explained solely by the

length of the texts that make up the corpora but rather by the function of particular

endophoric markers. Anaphoric reference dominates in Czech L2 English student

writing, whereas English-speaking expert writers primarily employ non-directional

reference, indicating a difference in the use of markers between Czech students

and experienced L1 English-speaking writers. Similarly, Cao and Hu (2014)

identified a prevalence of non-directional reference in their study. Therefore,

academic English courses that emphasise the significance of non-directional

reference, as observed in expert writing, can enhance students’ proficiency in the

use of English academic discourse.

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Cross-disciplinary analysis also revealed variations in the use of endophoric

markers. For instance, linguistics exhibited a higher occurrence of endophoric

reference in both the MT_LLE and RA_LLE corpora. On the other hand, MTs

in education displayed a significantly lower incidence of these markers than RAs

in the same discipline. This is something that can be addressed by instructors of

academic English by encouraging students to use more endophoric reference

when presenting their results in the discipline of education. They could reference

items integrated into their discourse, such as tables and examples, based on and

closely related to either the quantitative or qualitative methods of their research

study.

Academic writing instruction in English and coursebooks typically cover

metadiscourse and include exercises for practising specific structures. However,

endophoric markers are often treated as implicit knowledge that everyone is

expected to possess and use. Consequently, there tends to be a lack of exercises

with which to practice this aspect.

These findings highlight the potential for enhancing English academic writing

courses, enabling students to develop skills for effectively communicating their

ideas and arguments in written form. Additionally, students should be familiarised

with the conventions of English academic discourse in their discipline, including

the use of endophoric markers. One approach could involve students identifying

endophoric markers in samples of specific text genres, thereby making their implicit

knowledge about the use of endophoric markers explicit. Moreover, instruction on

metadiscourse, including endophoric markers, can be integrated with introductory

lessons on using corpus tools and building their own corpora. Awareness-raising

activities could be employed to compare the use of endophoric markers in expert

writing within their discipline with their own written output. Such activities can

facilitate their development as proficient and knowledgeable writers and corpus

users, which can later assist them in constructing their own corpora and conducting

research.

I acknowledge several limitations in this study. Firstly, there was a discrepancy in

the size of the corpora, suggesting a need for an increase in the size of the reference

corpus. To address this issue, the research findings were normalised to occurrences

per 10,000 words. Additionally, there is potential for further research, including

the addition of another reference corpus, such as one made up of PhD dissertations

written in English (L2) by Czech university students, to investigate developmental

patterns. Further research could also involve a broader range of disciplines, possibly

including the hard sciences. Despite these limitations, the corpus-based analysis

provided valuable insights into how Czech students use endophoric markers in

their MTs across three disciplines in the humanities.

Marie Lahodová Vališová

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Czech Science Foundation grant 21-12150S

Intercultural variation in writer-reader interaction in English-medium academic

discourse by Czech and Anglophone novice writers.

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Received: 10/12/2023

Accepted: 03/04/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

miscelánea 70 (2024): pp. 41-65 ISSN: 1137-6368 e-ISSN: 2386-4834

‘FEEDBACK MEANS THE WORLD TO ME’:

CONSTRUCTING PROXIMITY IN CANON-

COMPLIANT FANFICTION

‘FEEDBACK MEANS THE WORLD TO ME’:

LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE LA PROXIMIDAD

EN LA FANFICCIÓN AJUSTADA AL CANON

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202410256

KATARZYNA MATLAS

University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland

kmatlas@us.edu.pl

<https://orcid.org/0009-0001-8066-5525>

Abstract

This paper examines the linguistic strategies used in English to create proximity

within the online fandom community. The study applies close reading techniques

to analyse three works of fanfiction belonging to a canon-compliant subgenre. It

explores how authors from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds establish a

relationship with their readers by demonstrating their affiliation with fandom

(proximity of membership) and dedication to the source material (proximity of

commitment). To investigate these techniques, the study employs the model of

proximity defined by Hyland (2010), extended by the findings of Suau-Jiménez

(2019, 2020). The analysis includes both the main text and the metatext, revealing

similarities in the techniques used by the authors to establish proximity through

organisation, argument, credibility, stance and engagement.

Keywords: proximity, interpersonality, fanfiction, fan studies, genre.

Resumen

Este artículo examina las estrategias lingüísticas empleadas en inglés para crear

proximidad dentro de la comunidad de fan en línea. El estudio incorpora técnicas

de lectura atenta para analizar tres fanfictions o fanficciones pertenecientes a un

Katarzyna Matlas

miscelánea 70 (2024): pp. 41-65 ISSN: 1137-6368 e-ISSN: 2386-4834

subgénero que se ajusta al canon. Explora el modo en el que autores de diversos

orígenes socioculturales establecen vínculos con sus lectores demostrando su

afiliación al fandom o comunidad fan (proximidad de pertenencia) y su dedicación

al material original (proximidad de compromiso). Para investigar estas técnicas, el

estudio emplea el modelo de proximidad definido por Hyland (2010), ampliado

por los hallazgos de Suau-Jiménez (2019, 2020). El análisis incluye tanto el texto

principal como el metatexto y revela que hay similitudes en las técnicas empleadas

por los autores para establecer las facetas que constituyen la proximidad:

organización, argumentación, credibilidad, postura y compromiso.

Palabras clave: proximidad, interpersonalidad, fanficciones, estudios sobre

aficionados, género.

1. Introduction

This paper is an attempt to explore how reader interaction is encouraged by the

linguistic strategies used in English by fanfiction writers. The first section of the

article introduces fandom as a community with defined practices, such as the

creation of fanfiction. In the following parts, fanfiction will be described as a form

of communication between writers and readers. Furthermore, I will briefly present

research on fanfiction and introduce the notion of proximity, which may be

constructed within fanfiction to facilitate interaction and engagement among

members of the community, and present the analysis of the study data. In the last

section, I will discuss the results and attempt to determine how fanfiction writers

may construct proximity in canon-compliant fanfiction and how they use language

to present and justify their writing.

1.1. What is a Fandom?

The word “fan” comes from the Latin fanaticus, which describes a devotee

(Jenkins 1992). Fans participate in activities to express their deep affection for a

certain product or person; they form a community and create texts, art and music

based on their common interest. An online group that shares traditions, opinions,

perspectives and social norms is called a fandom (Kobus 2018). Each fandom has

its object of affection such as a video game, book or television series. A fandom is

characterised by their practices of “prosumption”, meaning consumption and

production. “Prosumer”, a term coined by Alvin Toffler (1980), was defined as an

agent who both consumes a product and produces it in remade form. These

practices of “prosumption” include critical reinterpretation (Silberstein-Bamford

2023), appropriation, immersion (Van Steenhuyse 2011) and creative output.

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Fans form groups and function as communities with defined practices, constituting

a participatory culture “inviting many forms of participation and levels of

engagement” (Jenkins 1992: 2). Fanfiction writing is one of the practices used for

initiating interaction and discussion among members of the community.

1.2. What is Fanfiction?

Fanfiction is one of the most popular forms of production within fandom. It allows

the writer to disaggregate and reorganise the source material and create a text

based on another text (Hellekson and Busse 2014). By reusing features from a

well-established universe, such as characters or settings, fanfiction develops a new

narrative which refines the source material and makes it flawless in the eyes of the

author (Oberc 2015). Fanfiction is the result of deep analysis of source material

and expands on certain scenes, plotlines and character personalities. It is a process

of “retelling” carried out in a participatory culture, which allows people to assume

multiple roles simultaneously, that is, author, receiver and critic. Online writing

allows everyone, regardless of their gender, age or social status, to express their

opinions, be creative or engage in discussion with the help of the story (Menise

2020).

Classifying fanfiction can be difficult because each fandom has its own set of terms

and conventions. Fanfiction is not a single uniform category; instead, we can only

identify certain patterns and trends within it. Several taxonomies have been

developed for fanfiction over the years (see Bacon-Smith 1992; Jenkins 1992;

Pugh 2005; Kobus 2018), although there is no official system of categorisation to

date. This study focuses on canon-compliant fanfiction, a type of fanfiction that

does not change the original storyline and whose main purpose is to explain and

elaborate on certain aspects of the plot (Kobus 2018). The story may be set before,

during or after the events of the original work. Writers often interpret the original

events and draw conclusions, which are then incorporated into the new text. In

canon-compliant fanfiction, any additions to the plot must be implemented

convincingly to ensure the reader understands how they improve upon the original.

These additions function in much the same way as arguments.1 An argument is a

new element of the plot which aims to enhance and complement the original

work, increasing the satisfaction of both the author and the readers.

A fandom has an in-group register, which is also a criterion for membership. It is

assumed that several genres of fanfiction coexist within a fandom, and members

employ specific terminology to refer to original material. To be a member of a

fandom, one must possess a satisfactory comprehension of the source material and

the related terminology. Similarly, discourse communities also require “a threshold

of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise”

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(Swales 1990: 27). A fandom may be considered a discourse community that uses

specialised terminology and tropes to achieve its communicative goals.

1.3. Interactions in Digital Fanfiction Writing

In participatory cultures, shared practices such as writing and reading fanfiction

serve as means of communication. Communicative events happen mostly in the

metatext (e.g. author’s notes, comments, tags) and across multiple websites

(author’s social media), where every fan may participate.

With the emergence of the Web 2.0, most fandom activities shifted to the

internet, and several websites were established to serve as repositories for user-

generated content and to facilitate interaction. In the context of fanfiction,

authors may either post their work all at once or release it in a serialised format,

with new chapters being published on a schedule or whenever they find time.

Some authors may choose to release their work in parts to gather feedback from

readers.

The most popular webpage for posting fanfiction, Archive of Our Own (AO3),

allows users to interact with fanfiction passively and actively through two levels

—textual and metatextual. The textual level concerns the story itself, while the

metatextual level allows for interaction between the author and readers. For

fanfiction to be published on AO3, it needs to have a proper description and

appropriate tagging, as the fans use tags to search for content. Tags are

metatextual markers that inform the reader of the type of content they may

anticipate. The AO3 syntax of tagging is not specifically regulated and may be

seen as a distinctive mode of communication, or a space where the author may

include their informal reflections. At the end of each chapter, readers can post

their comments. The comments section also enables the readers to engage in

conversation between themselves or with the author. When the format of

fanfiction is serialised, AO3 allows the user to subscribe to a particular piece and

be notified of new updates via email. Readers may give ‘kudos’ to a work

(equivalent to a ‘like’ on social media) or bookmark it, that is, save it to a user

account or private collection so they may return to the story without the fear of

forgetting the title or author. A comment section may be used as a means of

communication, but the author of fanfiction may also communicate with readers

using the author’s notes, which appear before the main text. The author’s notes

may give reasons why the story was written or explain certain cultural conventions,

but they are predominantly used to share the author’s thoughts, ask readers for

opinions and show gratitude to readers for reading the story. In the author’s

notes, writers may also provide links to their social media profiles so they can stay

in touch with readers outside AO3.

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Fanfiction may be divided into parts, although the lines separating them are often

blurred. Texts open with an introduction, which informs readers about when and

where in the source material’s timeline the fanfiction takes place, while the main

body presents the arguments (author’s additions) followed by the ending.

The participatory nature of a fandom allows everybody to be a creator. Fanfiction

writers post under pseudonyms and seldom disclose personal information such as

nationality, age or gender. A fandom may be considered a safe space, and fanfiction

writing encourages participants to explore their gender identity or sexual

preferences without revealing their identity to the public (see Dym et al. 2019;

Dym and Fiesler 2020). Fanfiction provides a means for writers to reflect on and

interpret the emotions evoked by the source material, as well as to modify and

enhance the story to make it more engaging and satisfying for both the author and

the reader.

AO3 is a platform for fans to exchange feedback. Public reviews are encouraged

and valued. Readers can choose to interact with the work of other fans by sharing

their opinions on the story or the writing. Feedback can reassure authors and lead

them to improve their writing by offering constructive criticism. As Cheng and

Frens noted, such exchanges improve interpretive skills, allowing for reflection on

both source material and fanfiction from different perspectives. The ability to

improve writing based on feedback applies to creative, professional and academic

writing (2022: 402). Furthermore, more dedicated writers of fanfiction often

collaborate with a ‘beta-reader’, who reviews their work before publication.

Fanfiction is part of an online gifting culture, which determines the amount and type

of interaction expected between members and the assumed reciprocity of

contributions. Metatext is used to perform various fan activities including criticism

and appraisals. Every individual may feel a need to engage with fan creations, whether

directly or indirectly, by liking a work of fanfiction or leaving a comment (Kobus

2018). Individuals give and receive fan products, resulting in the creation of social

relationships centred around a mutual object of affection (Hellekson 2009).

Reciprocity can deepen the bond between individuals and may increase the prestige

of good authors, earning them renown for their selfless creations (Kobus 2018).

To have their work assessed, writers need to establish a certain level of

interaction with the audience. This can be achieved through the use of

metatext, engagement markers and the organisation of the fanfiction itself,

which includes the effective portrayal of characters, a well-constructed narrative

and an emotional resonance with the reader that may prompt them to engage

with the text. It has been observed that fans tend to document their observations

and discuss any rejection or reinterpretation of the established material in the

metatext (Bennett 2014).

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1.4. Previous Studies on Fanfiction

One of the most prominent studies on fan behaviour is Henry Jenkins’s Textual

Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (1992), which uses De Certeau’s

(1984) notion of poaching to describe fans as meaning-makers while placing them

in a position of resistance to the publishing industry. At first, analyses falsely treated

fans as a homogenous group (Bronwen 2011) and focused heavily on feminist and

gender overtones found in fanfiction. Russ (2014) states that fanfiction is explicitly

feminist pornography, while Lamb and Veith (2014) argue that fanfiction is a

sphere where explicit sexual content must be understood as a woman’s desire for

equality in a relationship, which does not fall under societal hierarchies of gender

roles. Woledge (2006) observes that in fanfiction texts, a woman’s hidden desire

for intercourse is reshaped as the highest form of trust and emotional connection.

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of literature on power

dynamics within digitally-mediated communities, such as the work by Harris

(1998) and Jancovich (2002), who explored how fans’ migration to the internet

space has impacted their activity and their relationship with social hierarchies,

using theories developed by Foucault and Bourdieu. Furthermore, scholars studied

how fans are attached to media and how they interact with it in relation to fanfiction

(see Gray 2003; van Monsjou and Mar 2019). Fanfiction has been considered a

feminist genre (see Bacon-Smith 1992; Bury 2005; Woledge 2006) and a space for

activism (see Allred and Gray 2021), identity expression (see Dym et al. 2019;

Dym and Fiesler 2020) and communal literacy acquisition (see DeLuca 2018;

Rodriguez Aragon and Davis 2019).

The anthology The Fan Fiction Studies Reader (2014), edited by Karen Hellekson

and Kristine Busse, provides an overview of fan studies and situates this scholarly

work mainly within the realms of media and cultural studies. The book explores

fan creations and the ways they are written and distributed.

However, this existing research has been limited to fanfiction’s psychological,

social and cultural aspects, while its linguistic features have not been sufficiently

explored. Previous linguistic research into the genre has mostly contributed to

second language acquisition (see Black 2005, 2006), self-taught critical literacy

(see Edfeldt et al. 2012) or linguistic practices in mixed-language fanfiction (see

Leppänen 2012). What seems to be lacking is a thorough exploration of the

linguistic facets of fanfiction written in English. This paper aims to explore the

linguistic aspects of discourse within and around fanfiction.

Fanfiction is a reader-oriented type of writing. Fanfiction authors must convince

readers of the validity of their additions to receive a positive reception. This

behaviour is also present in other reader-oriented genres. In research articles,

writers establish proximity to enhance the credibility of their claims. Fanfiction

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authors may also use proximity to persuade readers, as this notion focuses on

positioning the author in relation to their text and community, which ought to

satisfy the reader’s expectations (Hyland 2010). Compared to other subgenres,

proximity may be most prominently visible in canon-compliant fanfiction due

to its purpose of enhancing the original work: authors may make specific

language choices to establish proximity, therefore increasing the validity of their

additions.

Proximity fosters reader-oriented writing, as the recipient needs to recognise the

structure and anticipate the writer’s purposes. Proximity has been applied to

academic writing (see Hyland 2010; Dressen-Hammouda 2014; Zhang and

Cheung 2018; Herrando-Rodrigo 2019) and is assumed to be part of the process

of negotiating authors’ claims in articles. Furthermore, proximity has been applied

to multimodal discourse (see Scotto di Carlo 2014; Tereszkiewicz and Szczyrbak

2022). Different facets of proximity (credibility and stance) portrayed in

promotional genres have been studied (see Suau-Jiménez 2019, 2020), but there

appears to be little or no research on proximity in fanfiction. Proximity may be a

crucial element in understanding the intrinsic reciprocity associated with writing

practices within fandom.

This article will seek to reveal ways in which fanfiction writers construct proximity

in canon-compliant fanfiction and how they use language to present and justify

their argument using Hyland’s (2010) framework of proximity as expanded by the

findings of Suau-Jiménez (2019, 2020).

1.5. Proximity

Proximity is a well-researched notion among academic, popular science and

educational genres (see Hyland 2010; Dressen-Hammouda 2014; Scotto di Carlo

2014; Zhang and Cheung 2018; Herrando-Rodrigo 2019; Luzón Marco 2019;

Hyland and Zou 2021; Tereszkiewicz and Szczyrbak 2022; Bocanegra-Valle 2023,

among others), whereas studies of proximity in other genres seem to be scarce (see

Suau-Jiménez 2016, 2019, 2020). Proximity has been chosen as the theoretical

framework for this research due to its applicability to reader-oriented writing such

as fanfiction. Whereas terms such as metadiscourse, interdiscursivity, interpersonality

and stance may also concern closeness between interactants, they touch upon

different relational aspects. Metadiscourse concerns linguistic resources that

organise the discourse, helping the reader interpret the text as intended by the

author (Hyland 2004). In contrast, proximity focuses on specific strategies within

metadiscourse. Interdiscursivity refers to connections between different texts. One

facet of proximity —credibility— may also draw on shared knowledge from other

texts. Both interpersonality, which concerns the relationship between the writer

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and the reader, and stance, which refers to the writer’s attitude towards the

information, are incorporated into the notion of proximity (Hyland 2010).

Therefore, proximity seems to be the most comprehensive notion with which to

analyse linguistic strategies used to model the relation between the author, the

reader and the presented content in the fanfiction genre.

In the context of academic discourse, Hyland argues that authors use a variety of

linguistic resources to represent themselves and their material while fulfilling the

audience’s expectations. Authors were observed to use meticulously chosen lexis

to establish readers as “interactants” (2010: 116) with whom they discuss

arguments within the norms of the community. Similar observations have also

been made outside strictly academic contexts. Both Wang and Csomay (2024) and

Scotto di Carlo (2014), using Hyland’s concept of proximity, studied how speakers

in TED talks pass their knowledge on to non-expert listeners through linguistic

strategies of engagement and persuasion. Various facets of proximity in promotional

discourse, such as stance and credibility, have been researched by Suau-Jiménez

(2016, 2019, 2020), who suggested that travel agencies and hotels construct

proximity to encourage customers to choose their services.

Proximity may be divided into proximity of membership and proximity of

commitment (Hyland 2010). Proximity of membership refers to the author’s use

of linguistic conventions to present themselves as knowledgeable members of the

community. In fandom, this is achieved through a deep comprehension of the

source material and a proficiency in the use of vocabulary and register that mirrors

the original. Proximity of commitment reveals the author’s attitude towards the

original text, that is, which elements they appreciate, which parts of the material

are in their opinion underdeveloped, and which elements should be elaborated

upon to derive more satisfaction from the reading. These two facets of proximity

are used to emphasise the “recipient design” of the text, which refers to the various

ways in which a writer may express respect and sensitivity towards other readers

through a carefully chosen lexicon and range of topics (Sacks et al. 1974: 727).

Fanfiction writers may need to establish proximity as an invitation to the reader to

enter the discourse and analyse the validity of their contributions.

Proximity is created through aspects such as organisation, argument, credibility,

stance and engagement (Hyland 2010). Here, it is worth noting that Hyland’s

model was originally proposed as applicable to English-language academic and

popular science genres. Suau-Jiménez (2016) argues that proximity is achieved

differently according to the genre in which it is constructed and is a result of at

least three variables: language, genre and discipline. These variables render specific

patterns of genre-related rhetorical functions. In later research, Suau-Jiménez et

al. (2021) proposed a new concept called discursive interpersonality. The notion of

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discursive interpersonality focuses on each text and its discourse as the starting

point for analysis. It encompasses a broader variety of strategies according to each

genre’s features, which include verbal, visual and lexical-grammatical markers (self-

nomination, evaluative adjectives, imperative verbs) not included in Hyland’s

previous model.

Organisation refers to the form of the presented argument (Tereszkiewicz and

Szczyrbak 2022), such as the structure of the text and the location of the main

argument. The argument adheres to the readers’ expectations, and it attempts to

show the author’s respect and engagement with the field of research. In fanfiction,

an author’s reinterpretation of elements from the original material can be

considered an argument. Arguments may include added scenes that seek to further

explore certain events not present in the source material, or they may elaborate on

abandoned or unresolved themes from the original text. Proper organisation

impacts the reader’s experience, as the reader may anticipate the parts in the

fanfiction where additions have been integrated to enrich the original narrative.

Organisation may also portray modifications as convincing and plausible for the

audience.

In research articles, credibility is established by demonstrating expertise in research

methods and meticulous work while maintaining objectivity. In popularisation,

credibility is maintained by using direct quotes and reporting verbs to attribute

statements to the scientist (Tereszkiewicz and Szczyrbak 2022). Suau-Jiménez

(2016) and Suau-Jiménez et al. (2021) highlight that in promotional genres, the

involvement of the reader is more marked. Writers may try to attain credibility

through direct allusions (you/the readers) or imperative verbs or personalised

agentive self-mentions (I, me, my, our) as they try to persuade the reader in a

friendly, trustworthy way. The same may be said for fanfiction: credibility may be

achieved through references to the source material and the author’s self-mentions

in the metatext.

Stance linguistically portrays the author’s perspective. Stance represents the

“attitudinal dimension” (Hyland 2005: 176), that is, how writers present

themselves and convey their opinions. In scientific writing, authors often use

modals (should, can) and hedging (seems, appear) to qualify their commitment and

present their arguments as plausible, opening up space for discussion, whereas in

popular science articles, this tentativeness is often removed, and the scientists are

presented as expert contributors through the use of boosters. Popularisations tend

to emphasise the ingenuity of research findings through evaluative adjectives like

great or crazy (Scotto di Carlo 2014: 600). In some genres, stance and engagement

markers (inclusive we) may overlap (Suau-Jiménez 2016), although they have

different functions. The authors may appear more persuasive if they personalise the

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text (through self-nomination), demonstrate membership (plural we) or use

attitudinal markers such as imposing or magnificent (Suau-Jiménez et al. 2021:

128). The research paper’s author responds to an ongoing discourse and anticipates

the reader’s response, who may only find particular arguments valid. Writers of

fanfiction also have to situate themselves within the existing discourse and

persuasively present their interpretation. As will be shown in the findings and

discussion sections, fanfiction is a highly affective and interaction-driven channel

of communication, full of evaluative adjectives and pronouns used to express the

author’s position and persuade readers.

Engagement is the direct address to readers to make them feel involved and inspire

interaction (Tereszkiewicz and Szczyrbak 2022). Engagement is reader-oriented,

as it uses inclusive pronouns, direct questions, personal anecdotes and references

to shared knowledge. In research articles, engagement is maintained by inclusive

we to indicate that the author is part of the same community and shares the same

area of interest, whereas in popular texts, inclusive we assumes solidarity. Xia and

Hafner (2021) observed that in the online popularisation process assisted by

audio-visuals, the speaker creates a participatory relationship between the speaker

and the audience through the use of the first person plural and its possessive

adjective. Furthermore, engagement can be increased by combining gestures,

humour, informality (lack of punctuation, slang, emoji) and visuals. In fanfiction,

these behaviours function on both the metatextual level (where authors may make

humorous remarks or directly ask readers for feedback) and the textual level (where

they may incorporate visuals) of fanfiction writing.

2. Methodology and Material

To conduct this study, a case study approach was adopted, and a corpus consisting

of three fanfictions was gathered from the Archive of Our Own website, the site of

choice for authors who write in English. Each is part of the subgenre known as

canon-compliant fanfiction and is based on different source material. AO3 allows

the writer to publish under a pseudonym; however, authors may refer readers to

their social media accounts in the metatext. In the present case, two of the three

authors studied have shared personal information on social media outlets (see

Table 1). Canon-compliant was selected as the subgenre studied due to its

restrictive form. Arguments or contributions have to be carefully crafted so they fit

the original narrative while being a valuable addition. Texts were selected based on

their tags (canon-compliant) or clearly established timeframe within source

material in the work’s description. To provide variety in the study, chosen texts are

based on different source materials and have been written by different authors. As

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the writer must assure the audience that they are a member of the community and

are knowledgeable of the original text through specific language cues, the texts

were analysed in search of proximity-creating linguistic techniques, which position

authors as competent colleagues who bring innovative contributions to the

community.

Title Author (gender, age,

nationality)

Type

of source

material

Number

of words

Date of

publication

online

Serialisation

“Whoops, I

Almost Killed

You Again 天

官赐苦，鬼拂

忌”

(WIAKYA)

TentativeWanderer

(unknown, 20+,

unknown)

Book 5,664 2020-12-11 Published

weekly over

a month

“hey son, i

killed your

daddy”

(HSIKYD)

MissingNoo

(nonbinary, 26,

American)

Manga 8,942 2021-06-07 Published

fully

“I Love You

the Same”

(ILYTS)

Yllirya (female, 26,

unknown) Video

Game 3,901 2023-11-10 Published

fully

This study adopts the concept of proximity (Hyland 2010) broadened by Suau-

Jiménez’s (2019, 2020) findings to demonstrate how different authors construct

proximity through organisation, argument, credibility, stance and engagement.

Using close reading techniques, linguistic features are identified for each of the five

facets that help the writer establish a connection with their readers, both in the

main text and in the metatext.

3. Findings

3.1. Organisation

In the context of fanfiction, organisation may refer to both the textual and

metatextual levels. On the textual level, each text starts with the introduction of

the time and space, locating the novel event on the canon2 timeline. Locating the

action within a timeframe requires knowledge about the chronology of the events

and specific nomenclature which situates the author as an expert with proper

qualifications, thus expressing membership in the fandom (Examples 1 and 2):

Table 1. Corpus presentation

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(1) When had it started? He wasn’t sure. The change seemed gradual. What

had changed over the past few months? Most notably, his acquisition of an

interesting new housemate in Puji Shrine, roughly five months ago.

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(2) It starts out as a deceptively nice day for this. […] The Kyoto exchange

event is over and a collective sigh has passed through the school, a deep

breath none of them even realized they were holding.

(HSIKYD, 2021)

Mentioning the important events from the source material (Example 1:

“housemate”; Example 2: “Kyoto exchange event”) confirms the author’s

expertise and belonging to the target community. Example 1 also uses rhetorical

questions to initiate interaction with the reader and represents the train of thought

of the main character, who in the original book often speaks to himself. Both

examples establish approximate location and time, shaping the spatio-temporal

characteristics of the argument in the context of important original situations.

Both examples use lexicon associated with the passing of time and motion

(“started”, “gradual”, “changed”, “over” in Example 1; “passed” in Example 2)

to enrich the dynamics of the narrative before the introduction of the argument

(additional scenes).

In the third fanfiction, which is based on a game, the introduction is placed in the

metatext. In the description and tags (Example 3: “Tag: After 4.2 AQ”), the author

specifies that this new scene takes place directly after an important plot line (called

AQ —archon quest). In the notes, the writer states that they attempt to explore the

emotional trauma that the characters endured during the events (Example 3: “fic

is the result of these. I couldn’t go by how Neuvi can feel in his old position”.)

Locating the event within the timeframe is done outside the text itself:

(3) Tag: After 4.2 AQ

Notes: 4.2 AQ left me with a lot of feelings and this fic is the result of

these. I couldn’t go by how Neuvi can feel in his old position —even

before the AQ— but especially now in the light of the new events and

truth. Knowing what is in his future. (ILYTS, 2023)

Considering the metatextual level of fanfiction, some visual tools may be used at

the beginning or end of a chapter to provide context and strike a less formal tone.

In the present case, visuals are only used in the first fanfiction, which is based on a

popular Chinese novel. They segment the text and provide humorous commentary

on the previous chapter, at the same time engaging the reader. As demonstrated in

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Example 4, the author uses intertextuality to reference both the internet-specific

mode of communication known as memes and the original source by creating a

comic image (as indicated by the watermark of the site where the original meme

was modified with text boxes —Kapwing). The author establishes a connection

between their work and the audience’s common knowledge by referencing the

important event from the source material (giving the ashes), which was originally

not fully developed. This also sets a humorous tone for the fanfiction.

(4)

(WIAKYA 2021)

In two fanfictions, the main addition is foregrounded on the metatextual level in

the tags. As tags appear before the main text, the reader may anticipate the

contributions and their purpose (“reasoning” in Example 3a; “Filling in the plot

hole of how Hua Cheng managed to ‘survive’ Xie Lian’s curse” in Example 4a).

3.2. Argument Presentation

Not all arguments are well-received. To conduct a proper discussion, arguments

must be negotiated as credible contributions to existing knowledge. In fanfiction,

an argument is a new addition that satisfies the audience’s needs and is relevant to

the established universe. If the source material is an ongoing series, the authors

often argue for innovations in the most topical fragments:

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(5) Renovations, that’s new. Wriothesley only nods, not seeing the need to ask

for more as he’s sure this will be explained soon. He trails along Neuvillette

as he leads them to the audience’s area —and it’s a smaller disaster. [...] To

sit in the empty Opera Epiclese’s partially ruined interior and [...] To look

at the stage that hosted their sufferings.

(ILYTS, 2023)

Example 5 is an excerpt from a fanfiction of a regularly updated video game and

refers to the newest events from the game’s story. The destruction of the theatre’s

interior is a significant event in the game’s story. However, the source material

does not mention the main characters’ reaction to the loss of the building. The

author presents their interpretation of possible reactions and links it to the original

event. This addition (argument) addresses the needs of the gamers who were

unsatisfied with the lack of continuity or coherence within the game itself.

Entextualisation may take different forms to meet the audience’s needs. As shown

by Examples 6 and 7, it may take the form of quotations from the source and

character-focused narrative (“‘In two or three years, my kid will get sold to the

Zen’in clan. Do whatever you want’” in Example 6 is a quote from the source

material) or references to the cultural aspects of the original material (in Example

7, “zhang” is a Chinese unit of length, varying depending on dynasty). Proximity

is also constructed by specific language choices, including terminology or

references to characters and objects from the original source, which establish a link

between the new text and the canon (“gege” and “san lang” in Example 8 are

official nicknames for the characters in the book). Shared knowledge also adds to

the readers’ engagement.

(6) Something flashes across Megumi’s expression. Whether it’s hatred or

hope, Gojo can’t quite tell. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

‘In two or three years, my kid will get sold to the Zen’in clan. Do whatever

you want.’

“Before he died, he told me he’d planned to sell you to the Zen’in clan”,

(HSIKYD, 2021)

(7) In the past, whenever he went fishing, there would hardly be any fish fit

for human consumption within a one-zhang radius of him.

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(8) Xie Lian confessed, “San Lang, I…I lost the ring you gave me”.

Hua Cheng said, “I know”. Before Xie Lian could feel properly mortified,

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Hua Cheng added, “Don’t worry, gege, nothing bad will happen to it, I

promise”.

(WIAKYA, 2021)

3.3. Credibility

Authors establish credibility in fanfiction by demonstrating knowledge of cultural

norms followed in the original story setting (Example 9: “hebao”) or by the proper

use of honorifics (Example 10: “Okkotsu-senpai”).

(9) Notes:

Drawstring pouch: hebao 荷包, for storing small objects, hung at the

waist. For pics, see https://ziseviolet.tumblr.com/tagged/hebao

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(10) Megumi cuts in, “[...] and tried to kill Okkotsu-senpai?”

(HSIKYD, 2021)

Credibility is also maintained when an author portrays commitment and deep

knowledge of the material. ILYTS is a fanfiction of a video game, with characters

inspired by particular nations and their cultures. The source material implies that,

in addition to the global language, constructed for the game, different nations

within the game use real-life languages, based on the culture they are inspired by.

This information is less known by casual fans, so the author may use this fact to

develop the characters further and portray them switching between the native and

the second language when under emotional turmoil (Example 11). The author

may also reference more obscure or hidden elements of the plotline, demonstrating

their expertise on the subject matter (Example 12: “usurper of his predecessor” or

“Mekas are still working”). Code-switching and recontextualisation of specific

terminology can signal to the reader that the writer is knowledgeable about the

source material and is not just a casual fan.

(11) “I am yours, Mon Chéri. I love you now and I will love you forever. You

have my word”.

(ILYTS, 2023)

(12) […] the byproducts of the usurper of his predecessor and him, the ones he

could, he should hate —that freed all of them. He, somehow, even made it

happen that the Mekas are still working in the city […]

(ILYTS, 2023, emphasis in original)

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In some genres, credibility may be increased if the reader is more directly

acknowledged (Suau-Jiménez 2020). This may be achieved by direct allusions

(Example 13: “few readers”), self-mentions (Example 14: “went straight to my

heart”; Example 15: “means the world to me”) or imperative verbs (Example 13:

“Talk to me”; Example 14: “happy reading!”; Example 15: “find me”), as in the

following passages:

(13) Talk to me [...] The first few readers might not have seen it ’cause I added

it later.

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(14) went straight to my heart [...] happy reading!

(HSIKYD, 2021)

(15) Feedback means the world to me [...] find me also on twt :)

(ILYTS, 2023)

3.4. Stance

Stance in fanfiction is almost unidentifiable on the textual level, but tags and

author’s notes are abundant in stance-taking expressions. Stance is mostly indicated

by attitude markers (Example 16: “I just love them” and “so much”; Example 17:

“IMPORTANT”; Example 18: “joyful enough”), self-nomination (Example 18:

“talk to me”; Example 20: “means the world to me”) and opening a space for

discussion (Example 20: “I’d love to read your thoughts”). Stance may also be

represented by a visual resource such as emojis (Example 22).

(16) Additional Tags: god. I just love them both so much.

(HSIKYD, 2021)

(17) IMPORTANT!!: AO3 is screwing with my upload time. [...] I’m writing

this to manage your expectations.

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(18) Dear people who were/are joyful enough to talk to me.

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(19) hey, i hope you enjoyed this! thank you so much for reading.

(HSIKYD, 2021)

(20) Feedback means the world to me, I’d love to read your thoughts, let it be

even just a few words or a bunch of emotes. I’m immensely grateful for all!♥

(ILYTS, 2023)

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(21) I think it’s so impractical of Hua Cheng to give Xie Lian his ashes. Probably

wouldn’t do it myself, because it looks like the set-up for a tragic Romeo-

and-Juliet death situation [...].

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(22) a Ghost King does not do take-backsies. 💍🔪💍💍💍💍🎭💍

(WIAKYA, 2021)

Example 17 directly acknowledges a framing of the argument to meet the

audience’s needs (“I’m writing this to manage your expectations”), representing

the author’s intent to avoid disappointing readers while contributing to the

fandom. Example 19’s lack of proper capitalisation indicates an informal tone,

highlighting the proximity of membership as a fellow fan. The author’s notes

may explain what was the motivation behind writing this work. As shown in

Example 21, the author wanted to explore the consequences of giving a

valuable possession (ashes) to another person (“it’s so impractical”, “set-up for

a tragic”).

3.5. Engagement

Engagement is essential to the reciprocal nature of fanfiction, as it directly

acknowledges readers and attempts to connect to them. In fanfiction, engagement

may only be seen in the metatext. While the second person pronoun you is the

most explicit way to bring the reader into the discussion, authors may use inclusive

we to introduce themselves as a member of a community with shared experience

(as in Example 23: “we saw some dust”):

(23) about the Opera: we saw some dust flying around when the Narwhal came

[…].

(ILYTS, 2023)

The second person pronoun you is also used in fanfiction as the preferred way of

engaging the community (Example 24: “If you want to, you can share”).

Engagement is also possible through directives (Example 25: “please go along”)

and questions (Example 26: “Attack until when/until what happens?”).

(24) If you want to, you can share the fic memes and info posted on my

accounts here!

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(25) […] please go along with my HC that it suffered some harm in the process.

(ILYTS, 2023)

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(26) [...] the way she phrased her order [...] “Attack Hua Cheng”? Attack until

when/until what happens?

(WIAKYA, 2021)

In the author’s notes, a number of engagement markers have been included. In

these fanfictions, the author’s notes appear to be structured similarly. First, the

writer may thank the reader for choosing their text to read (Example 28: “thank

you so much for reading”; Example 29: “Thank you for reading!”); then they try

to further establish a bond with the audience by sharing their social media accounts

(Example 27: “My Twitter:@TTTVWanderer”; Example 28: “you can also find me

on tumblr!”; Example 29: “find me also on twt”) while encouraging the audience

to leave comments regarding the accuracy of the fanfiction in relation to the canon

material (Example 27: “I welcome constructive criticism!”; Example 28:

“comments and kudos always make my day!”; Example 29: “Feedback means the

world to me”).

(27) Notes:

I welcome constructive criticism! Even stuff that’s not exactly criticism,

but suggestions or preferences. I like seeing different points of view, and

I’m not going to let them affect me unduly, so do me a favour and tell

me if you felt something was off.

🍜 Click kudos to feed me. Click comment to bless me. 󰁧Share this

fic to PURIFY. MY. SOUL! […]

My Twitter: @TTTVWanderer

My Tumblr: @tentative-wanderer

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(28) Notes:

hey, i hope you enjoyed this! thank you so much for reading. i think toji’s

such an interesting character [...]

in the meantime, i don’t really use twitter, but i’ve got an instagram

meme/shitpost page that’s mostly jjk right now. you can also find me on

tumblr!

comments and kudos always make my day! thanks again!

(HSIKYD, 2021)

(29) Notes:

Thank you for reading! Feedback means the world to me, I’d love to read

your thoughts, let it be even just a few words or a bunch of emotes. I’m

immensely grateful for all!♥

find me also on twt 😊

(ILYTS, 2023)

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The reader’s attention is attracted by the author’s notes which directly address them

and encourage them to interact through discourse markers (“in the meantime” in

Example 28), personal thoughts (“i think toji’s such an interesting character” in

Example 28) and non-verbal communication (emoji in Example 27; Example 29).

Additionally, engagement can be enhanced by referencing real-life events. In

fanfiction, the author’s notes may refer to personal or real-life events to facilitate

discussion (Example 30: “Happy Winter Solstice! [...] I bet many people are

celebrating it this weekend”). The use of appropriate register and slang can increase

the accessibility of the material, promoting open interaction (Example 31: “lonely

dawg. No-pressure”).

(30) Happy Winter Solstice! Technically it’s not here yet but I bet many people

are celebrating it this weekend

(WIAKYA, 2021)

(31) Or just come chat with this lonely dawg. No-pressure chats in which it’s

okay if you or I reply super late.

(WIAKYA, 2021)

In fanfiction metatext, there are numerous examples of informality, indicated by

colloquialisms, slang, emoticons and emojis. These elements may provide a sense of

genuineness and entertainment, which encourages author-reader communication.

4. Discussion and Concluding Remarks

The objective of this study was to determine ways in which fanfiction writers may

construct proximity in canon-compliant fanfiction and how they use language to

present and justify their argument. Interpersonality within the discourse community

is crucial; in the fanfiction genre, the relation between the writer and their audience

is reciprocal, as the author provides the fan with content, and the reader offers

their commentary or critique.

The study demonstrates that proximity may play a crucial role in facilitating

interaction and discussion among participants. Writers establish proximity of

membership by displaying their expertise within the area of shared interest, using

specific terminology, informality and proper organisation. Authors achieve

credibility in fanfiction through self-mentions, referencing obscure elements of the

original storyline, incorporating quotations and providing additional explanations

in metatext. The argument should be framed through cultural references, specific

language choices and overall recognisability to link the text with the original

material. Proximity of commitment is formed through stance and by displaying

personal attitudes. Addressing the audience directly and informally may increase

Katarzyna Matlas

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their engagement by reducing the tension of the interaction. Proximity is a means

for the author to encourage the reader to engage in discussion about the validity

of a particular addition.

Established proximity may result in interaction in the comment section, as fans,

encouraged by the authors’ direct address and requests for feedback, provide

commentary in the form of praise (as shown in Example 32: “this was beautiful”),

critique (as shown in Example 33: “you should add”) and discussions about

elements in the fanfiction (as shown in Example 34).

(32)

(HSIKYD, 2021)

(33)

(HSIKYD, 2021)

(34)

(ILYTS, 2023)

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The analysis of the collected data indicates that proximity seems to be present in

fanfiction text and metatext. Establishing proximity in canon-compliant fanfiction

may facilitate discussion through various tools, such as the comment section or

authors’ social media (only two of three writers shared their social media profiles

in author’s notes):

(35)

(X account of ILYTS author – yllirya)

(36)

(Tumblr account of HSIKYD author – MissingNooo)

However, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study. The corpus

analysed is relatively small, consisting of only three fanfictions, totalling 18,507

Katarzyna Matlas

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words and representing only one subgenre. Furthermore, full information about

the authors’ background was inaccessible.

Nevertheless, the texts were written by different authors and were based on

different materials, each representing a different medium, that is, a book, a manga,

and a video game. It is worth noting that these fanfictions were published in

different years and reflect different stages of the source material. While the book is

complete, the manga and video game are ongoing franchises that are constantly

evolving. Despite these differences, proximity was achieved through similar means,

facilitating further discussion and engagement.

Further research is needed to investigate the creation of proximity in different

subgenres of fanfiction and textual contexts. Additionally, methods for creating

proximity in fanfictions about real-life people or historical figures should be

explored. As fanfiction is a hybrid genre, proximity may be achieved differently

according to the tags and subgenres, which may also be taken into consideration.

Notes

1. Arguments in academic writing

are additions to the existing knowledge that

the author wants the readers to accept. They

need to adhere to readers’ expectation and to

be adequately justified (Hyland 2005).

2. Source material which serves

as the foundation for fan creations and is a

unifying force within the fandom community.

May be used as an adjective to mean “original”.

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miscelánea 70 (2024): pp. 67-92 ISSN: 1137-6368 e-ISSN: 2386-4834

A CORPUS STUDY OF BREXIT POLITICAL

DISCOURSE: EXPLORING MODALITY THROUGH

LEXICAL MODALS

UN ESTUDIO DE CORPUS SOBRE EL DISCURSO

POLÍTICO DEL BREXIT: LA MODALIDAD

A TRAVÉS DE LOS MODALES LÉXICOS

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249837

ENCARNACIÓN ALMAZÁN-RUIZ

ealmazan@ujaen.es

Universidad de Jaén

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8724-6596>

AROA ORREQUIA-BAREA

aroa.orrequia@uca.es

Universidad de Cádiz

<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1478-7847>

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the lexical modals used in the political speeches given

by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn during the final months of the Brexit process.

This study explores whether lexical choice shows the politicians’ commitment to

their constituents, particularly to determine which lexical modals each politician

uses and which semantic implication(s) these modals convey. The study is

descriptive-interpretative and uses the corpus-assisted discourse studies approach.

It contributes to research on modality in the English language by examining parts

of speech other than (semi)auxiliary modal verbs. As the corpus analysis shows,

lexical modals are a prominent resource employed by politicians to present facts to

their audience.

Keywords: modality, lexical modals, corpus-assisted discourse studies, political

discourse, Brexit.

Resumen

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar los modales léxicos utilizados en los discursos

políticos de Boris Johnson y Jeremy Corbyn durante los últimos meses del proceso

del Brexit. Este estudio se centra en investigar si la elección léxica muestra el

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compromiso de los políticos con sus votantes, determinando qué modales léxicos

utiliza cada político y qué implicación o implicaciones semánticas transmiten. El

estudio es descriptivo e interpretativo y se ha realizado mediante la metodología

del análisis del discurso asistido por corpus. Este artículo, al examinar otras clases

de palabras diferentes a los verbos modales, contribuye a la investigación sobre la

modalidad en la lengua inglesa. Como muestra el análisis del corpus, los políticos

emplean los modales léxicos como un recurso destacado para presentar los hechos

a la audiencia.

Palabras clave: modalidad, modales léxicos, estudios del discurso asistido por

corpus, discurso político, Brexit.

1. Introduction

After the United Kingdom (UK) held a referendum on June 23, 2016, to

determine whether the country should remain a member of the European Union

(EU) or leave it, a process known as Brexit was initiated. Although the referendum

result was fairly close —52% vs 48%—1 more than half of voters chose to leave the

EU. From the time the referendum was held until the withdrawal took effect, a

few years went by in which the political confrontation between the leaders of the

country’s two main parties, Boris Johnson of the Conservative Party and Jeremy

Corbyn from the Labour Party, drew wide attention.

As language is the main instrument at the disposal of politicians, it is relevant and

worthwhile to analyse political discourse, since linguistic traces can uncover

political stance. Speakers may have different opinions on the same issue, leading to

the presentation of facts in one way or another; therefore, the speaker’s attitude

towards a given proposition is very significant from a linguistic point of view and

is related to so-called modality.

The semantic category of modality is mainly associated with the speaker’s attitude

towards the situation or facts expressed in the clause. Apart from including a

(semi)auxiliary modal verb in the verb phrase, there are other linguistic devices

that the speaker can use to express modality. According to Huddleston and Pullum,

“lexical modals” are other word classes (i.e. adjectives, adverbs, nouns, lexical

verbs) that can also convey the same meaning as (semi)auxiliary modal verbs

(2002: 173). Depending on the meaning expressed in the utterance, modality is

classified as either epistemic or deontic (Huddleston 1988a: 78-80).

Therefore, this paper aims to compare and analyse the lexical modals used in the

political speeches of both politicians during the last months of the Brexit process.

As most studies on modality have focused exclusively on (semi)auxiliary modal

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verbs, we intend to study the connections between modality expressed through

lexical modals and the political context in which it occurs, namely the Brexit

process (Paltridge 2012: 186). This analysis thus fills a gap in the research on

modality and seeks to shed light on the nuances and intricacies of modality, further

expanding the scope of modal research by exploring the concept beyond the realm

of (semi)auxiliary modal verbs. In this sense, the study extends a previous analysis

of (semi)auxiliary modal verbs in the Brexit political discourse (Orrequia-Barea

and Almazán-Ruiz 2021), as there is relatively scarce literature on the topic and a

lack of case studies. These two studies examine how modality might influence the

public’s perception of facts since politicians use it, for instance, to present facts as

possible or necessary.

This descriptive-interpretative study uses Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies

(CADS) as its methodology (Baker 2020). It describes lexical modals using data

from political discourse on Brexit. The study seeks to answer three main research

questions: (RQ1) Which parts of speech —other than (semi)auxiliary modal

verbs— are more commonly used to express modality in the political speeches of

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on Brexit? (RQ2) Are lexical modals more

frequently used than (semi)auxiliary modal verbs? (RQ3) Which politician uses

lexical modals more frequently in his discourse and what does this reveal?

After this introductory section, this paper is organised as follows. Sections 2 and 3

provide the political and theoretical background, focusing on political discourse

on Brexit, and on modality and lexical modals, respectively. Section 4 describes the

data and methods used to analyse the corpus. Sections 5 and 6 include the results

and the discussion. Finally, some conclusions are drawn in Section 7.

2. Language, Politics and Brexit

Language is a distinctive feature of human beings, which becomes particularly

relevant in politics. In political contexts, language is used to persuade the audience

to take a particular political position. According to Ananko, communication in

politics is essential as it helps political processes advance (2017: 128). Furthermore,

communication can contribute to politicians’ ability to influence society and make

it more cohesive. In this vein, Chilton and Schaffner state that “politics cannot be

conducted without language, and it is probably the case that the use of language

in the constitution of social groups leads to what we call ‘politics’ in a broad sense”

(in Dunmire 2012: 735). Likewise, Fairclough highlights that politics is language

since it “consists in the disputes and struggles which occur in language and over

language” (1989: 23).

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Political language functions as an index of the speaker’s current view of reality, just

as the audience’s interpretation of the same language may indicate an entirely

different perspective (Edelman 1985: 10). Discourse interpretation and the

possible implicit message underlying the words uttered become crucial in the

political context, because expressing thoughts and conveying ideas is not neutral,

and language always carries a purpose and meaning. Still, language simultaneously

represents the intended meaning of the utterance (Ekawati 2019: 6). In this

regard, the context and the timing of political discourse must be considered, as

they will determine the interpretation of the particular language aspects analysed.

Furthermore, the linguistic devices used to reach the electorate can reveal how

politicians present facts.

As is well known, the UK has been notably ambivalent to EU membership. Only

two years after joining the EU, the country held its first referendum to determine

whether to remain in the European alliance, and two-thirds of voters chose to

maintain membership in 1975 (Somai and Biedermann 2016: 139). Several

decades later, the British nation again faced a choice between remaining or

embracing an uncertain future shaped by a new reality (Torrecuadrada García-

Lozano and García Fuente 2017: 5), as numerous socio-economic and political

aspects would have to be decided if the UK ultimately split from the EU. In the

so-called Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016, Britons voted to leave the EU.

The Brexit movement demanded the UK’s exit from the EU, primarily to restore the

nation’s control. In an attempt to please Euroskeptics, the Prime Minister at the

time, David Cameron, negotiated a deal with the EU to improve the UK’s economic

governance, competitiveness, sovereignty and control over the welfare state, and the

free movement of people (Torrecuadrada García-Lozano and García Fuente 2017:

14). The unexpected result of the referendum led to Cameron’s resignation, and a

particularly troubled period in the UK political scenario began. After two years of

negotiating with the EU to make Brexit take effect, his successor, the Conservative

Theresa May, also resigned as Prime Minister. Then, the former Mayor of the City

of London, Boris Johnson, clearly in favour of Brexit, became Prime Minister.

3. Mood, Modality and Lexical Modals

In a broad and traditional sense, the distinction between mood and modality is

established by defining the former as a grammatical category that, in English, can be

expressed in different ways. The latter, in contrast, is a semantic category related to the

different implications expressed in the sentence. As Nuyts states, these two concepts

have been the subject of numerous linguistic studies, both synchronic and diachronic

(2016: 2). However, although mood and modality often appear together, the scholar

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points out that while “mood is the older term”, “modality […] has become the

absolutely dominant concept in the last several decades” (Nuyts 2016: 1).

According to Huddleston (1988a; 1988b), mood is a grammatical property of the

verb phrase, similar to tense or aspect, and can be marked analytically by the

presence of (semi)auxiliary modal verbs. In addition, the subjunctive and the

imperative are considered inflectional mood-related forms. Nuyts (2016) remarks

that the term mood has been used in the literature to refer to three linguistic

domains: the domain of the grammatical characteristics and formal realisations in

the verb phrase, the dichotomy of indicative and subjunctive, and the domain

between the distinction of sentence types and their illocutionary classification.

Nevertheless, it could be said that mood is “the grammatical coding of modal

meaning in verb inflections” (Depraetere and Reed 2020: 207). As Khomutova

concludes, mood is also considered “the morphological means of expressing

modality” (2014: 400).

Modality is defined as a semantic category related to different meanings or

functions, which, as Huddleston et al. point out, “express certain kinds of alteration

in the relation of clause contents to reality” (2021: 70). The authors state that

“modality relates to the ways in which the possible situations described in a clause

can relate to reality” (2021: 69). In this regard, a given situation can be expressed

in various ways, which affect and determine the sense and meaning of what is

described in the clause. Although modality is mainly expressed in English by non-

inflectional resources such as modal verbs, other lexical categories such as adverbs,

adjectives or nouns can be related to the expression of modality.

Since modality relates to how events are presented in an utterance, the speaker’s

perspective and involvement in these events become particularly meaningful.

Accordingly, a distinction is made in the literature between what is considered

modal and non-modal, and this distinction is associated with the dichotomy

between factual and non-factual (Palmer 2001: 1). As Traugott states, “modal

utterances are non-factual and […] involve speaker’s comments on the necessity or

possibility of the state of affairs” (2011: 382).

The concepts of possibility and necessity become particularly relevant in the

context of modality, since the traditional and most widely used classification among

scholars (Quirk et al. 1985; Huddleston 1988a and 1988b; Bybee and Fleischman

1995; Palmer 2001) is to determine whether events are presented as something

that may happen or as something necessary. Although there is no agreement in the

literature when it comes to establishing a taxonomy of types of modality (Nuyts

2016), in a traditional and general sense, modality can be epistemic and deontic.

There is also a lack of consensus regarding terminology and the typology used to

distinguish modals. However, the two most widely accepted terms in the literature

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are epistemic and deontic. Scholars (e.g. Rozumko 2019; Huddleston and Pullum

2002) use the etymology of both terms to clarify them. Both terms, epistemic and

deontic, are derived from the Greek knowledge and binding, respectively. That is

the reason why epistemic modality is related to “qualifications concerning the

speaker’s knowledge”, and deontic modality is connected to “a matter of imposing

obligation or prohibition, granting permission, and the like” (Huddleston and

Pullum 2002: 178).

Therefore, establishing the differences between the two types of modality2 entails

determining the speaker’s viewpoint on the events conveyed in the utterance.

According to Palmer, “with epistemic modality, speakers express their judgements

about the factual status of the proposition” (2001: 8), whereas “deontic modality

relates to obligation or permission, emanating from an external source” (2001: 9).

Palmer’s words can be used to determine a broad distinction between the two

types of modality. Nevertheless, more significant traits are worth mentioning.

As Rozumko states, it is necessary to consider that linguistic communication

involves not only the speaker but also the addressee and the social context in which

communication takes place (2019: 19-20). Hence, when analysing modality, it is

important to consider that events or what is said by the speaker are rarely intended

to express their viewpoint. Moreover, Nuyts points out that in both types of

modality, a scale can be established to determine the degree of certainty or

possibility in the case of epistemic modality and the level of obligation regarding

deontic modality (2016: 36-39).

Even though modality in English is mainly expressed by the presence of (semi)

auxiliary modal verbs in the utterance, Huddleston and Pullum state that there are

other “items expressing the same kind of meaning as the modal auxiliaries, but

which do not belong to the syntactic class of auxiliary verbs” (2002: 173). The

scholars use the term “lexical modals” to refer to these items and include “adjectives

like possible, necessary, likely, probable, bound, supposed, adverbs like perhaps, possibly,

necessarily, probably, certainly, surely, verbs like insist, permit, require, and nouns

like possibility, necessity, permission, and similar derivatives” (2002: 173).

Modal meanings are “understood to involve subjectivity or grounding in the

speaker’s perspective” (Traugott 2011: 390), and including modal words in the

proposition may reveal the speaker stance. Accordingly, Simon-Vandenbergen

claims that modal choices unveil “the speaker’s position in the discourse” and that

a high degree of commitment to a specific position reflects the speaker’s aim to

convince others of a questionable standpoint (1997: 353). Therefore, it is worth

studying the use of lexical modals to determine whether the political protagonists

of this study present facts or whether they try to avoid positioning themselves

clearly in revealing the truth value of a given argument.

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4. Data and Methods

4.1. Procedure of Analysis

The first step of our study was to compile the data. Both politicians’ speeches

were downloaded from the internet using the programming language R.3 Boris

Johnson’s corpus was extracted from the British Government’s official website.4

We restricted the query using the different options the website displayed.

Firstly, we selected the dates from 24 June, 2019, until 31 January, 2020.

Secondly, we set some keywords as filters, namely ‘PM’ (Prime Minister) and

‘speech’. Additionally, we restricted the query to search for speeches delivered

only by the Prime Minister. Once downloaded, we checked that the word

‘Brexit’ was mentioned to avoid those in which it did not appear. Eleven

speeches were retrieved in this case, which together made for a corpus of

16,869 tokens.

The Labour Party’s official website allows users to download their leader’s speeches

from “The Jeremy Corbyn Archives”.5 In this case, the same criteria were followed:

we set the dates from June 24, 2019 to January 31, 2020, downloaded all the

speeches retrieved by the query, and checked whether the word ‘Brexit’ was

mentioned in each speech, discarding the ones in which the word did not appear.

The corpus comprises 35,251 tokens from 28 speeches.

In the second stage, we compiled an exhaustive list of lexical modals using

Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002) classification as a foundation. Following their

criteria, our classification also incorporated “similar derivatives” (Huddleston and

Pullum 2002: 173) regarding morphology and semantics; the researchers’

proficiency in the English language, their intuition and the use of English

dictionaries were essential at this stage. Table 1 shows the classification of lexical

modals in terms of word class and ordered alphabetically.

Adjectives Adverbs Nouns Verbs

(un)bound

(un)certain

(un)clear

convinced

(un)likely

(un)necessary

(im)possible

(im)probable

supposed

(un)sure

actually

(un)certainly

(un)clearly

indeed

maybe

(un)necessarily

perhaps

(im)possibly

(im)probably

surely

truly

assurance

(un)certainty

intention

necessity

permission

possibility

promise

proposal

reassurance

request

requirement

allow

assure

convince

ensure

intend

let

permit

promise

propose

require

Table 1. Compilation of lexical modals classified by word class

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The analysis was conducted using the software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al.

2014). This tool was used to manage the two sub-corpora analysed in this paper.

We used the concordance function to query the items in Table 1 and checked

whether they appeared in the corpora. Secondly, the concordance lines were

downloaded, and the authors manually annotated these stretches of text for the

type of modality according to the distinction made in Section 2, namely epistemic

and deontic. The small size of the corpus also allowed us to annotate each lexical

modal in terms of degree of certainty: strong, medium or neutral modality. Then,

a comparison was made between the two annotations, and an agreement was

reached between the annotators in cases of doubt.

The statistical test used to carry out the analysis was the log-likelihood measure.

The cut-off point for the p-value was established at p<0.05 “to reject the null

hypothesis and conclude that the observed difference is unlikely to be due to

chance and therefore is statistically significant” (Brezina 2018: 12). Thus, if the

result is larger than 3.84 (the cut-off point for significance at p<0.05), it is

statistically significant (Brezina 2018: 84). To calculate such a test, we used Paul

Rayson’s online Log-Likelihood Calculator.6

The last step was to look up the lexical modals in a reference corpus. CPQWeb

software (Hardie 2012) was used to perform the comparison with a reference

corpus, that is, the British National Corpus (BNC). The use of this tool instead of

Sketch Engine was motivated by the part-of-speech tagging available in the former,

as CPQWeb allows the user to specify word class using tags, particularly the UCREL

CLAWS C6 tagset.7 The verbs were queried using the lemma search. Verbs and

nouns that coincide in form, e.g. promise, were looked up using tags, i.e. NN0 for

nouns, which refers to neutral for number, such as in aircraft; and VVB for verbs,

which stands for the base form of lexical verbs, except the infinitive, such as in take

or live. Finally, for the (semi)modal auxiliaries, two different tags have been

employed, namely VM0, which refers to modal auxiliary verbs such as can, could

or will and VMK for modal catenative (ought to, used to).

4.2. Corpus Description and Analytical Framework

The corpus consists of transcribed speeches delivered by Johnson, Prime Minister

of the Conservative Party, and Corbyn, the leader of the opposition at that moment,

of the Labour Party8. Table 2 shows the distribution of the two sub-corpora.

Tokens Types

Boris Johnson 16,869 2,926

Jeremy Corbyn 35,251 4,149

TOTAL 52,120 7,075

Table 2. Distribution of the corpora

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The methodology used to carry out this study is CADS, as it combines corpus

linguistics and discourse studies, which are two methods commonly considered

quantitative and qualitative, respectively (Arcano 2020; Partington 2004). CADS

aims to uncover meanings that are not obvious (Partington et al. 2013) but not in

a “particular language or linguistic variety but rather a particular situation, purpose

or function repeatedly enacted within a speech community” (Taylor and Marchi

2018: 61).

According to Morley, combining these two methods “increases the researcher’s

analytical capacity to an extent greater than would be predicted from the sum of

the two” (2011: 10). On the one hand, corpus linguistics allows researchers to

manage huge amounts of texts using digital technology to study language,

providing objectivity to the research since patterns that are not visible at first

glance can be uncovered (Taylor and Marchi 2018: 2). On the other hand,

discourse studies aims to analyse how language is employed, revealing subtle or

underlying discourse. The corpus becomes a valuable tool for discourse analysts,

allowing researchers to explain how language constructs discourses or reality

(Baker 2006: 183). Researchers must account for the patterns found in the text,

as “interpretation is also an essential step in any corpus-based analysis” (Biber in

Baker 2006: 2). In addition, to carry out the statistical analysis intended,

descriptive statistics have been employed, with a specific focus on frequency

distribution. This method aims to determine the frequency of occurrence in the

dataset.

5. Results

This section aims to answer the first two research questions. RQ1 explores how

modality is conveyed through lexical modals in the speeches of the two politicians

from a quantitative perspective. As mentioned previously, lexical modality is

expressed using items with the same meaning as (semi)auxiliary modal verbs but

that are not classified as such. Therefore, modality can be expressed through

nouns, adjectives, adverbs and other lexical verbs. To answer this first research

question, we thoroughly searched each sub-corpus for every lexical modal listed in

Table 1 of Section 4.1. The results are depicted in Figure 1.

As Figure 1 shows, both politicians rely on verbs and adjectives to express modality.

However, the least frequently used word class to express modality differs between

the two politicians. Johnson uses nouns less frequently (10.11 per cent), while

adverbs were the least used category by Corbyn (9.2 per cent). However, Corbyn

used more nouns (19.54 per cent vs 10.11 per cent) and verbs (46.36 per cent vs

40.43 per cent) than his counterpart.

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In the following lines, the use of each word class will be explained.9 Table 3 shows

the results of modal verb use by Johnson and Corbyn.10

Boris Johnson Jeremy Corbyn

Verb Hits NF LL Hits NF LL

let 23 13.6 253.16 52 14.8 580.50

ensure 20 11. 9 250.68 24 6.9 221.23

allow 15 8.9 154.81 17 4.9 154.71

promise 6 3.6 70.77 10 2.9 113.43

propose 4 2.4 42.49 5 1.4 47.98

insist 21.2 24.52 0 0 0.01

assure 21.2 22.15 3 0.9 31.23

intend 21.2 1 7. 1 0 0 0.04

require 21.2 13.12 10 2.9 82.91

Figure 1. Percentages of lexical modals used by each politician

Table 3. Number of hits, normalised frequency and log-likelihood results of lexical modal verbs

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As shown in Table 3, let is the most frequently used verb in both sub-corpora

(253.16 in Johnson’s sub-corpus and 580.5 in Corbyn’s), followed by the verbs

ensure (250.68 and 221.23, respectively) and allow (154.81 and 154.71,

respectively). The next most significant verb in both sub-corpora is promise (70.77

in Johnson’s and 113.43 in Corbyn’s). Another frequent verb in Johnson’s sub-

corpus is propose (42.49), and in Corbyn’s, it is require (82.91). It is also

noteworthy that some verbs occur in one sub-corpus but not in the other. For

instance, the verbs insist and intend were employed in Johnson’s speeches but not

in Corbyn’s.

Adjectives are the second most prevalent grammatical category used by Johnson

(31.91 per cent) and Corbyn (24.9 per cent). Table 4 shows the adjectives retrieved

from both sub-corpora.

Boris Johnson Jeremy Corbyn

Adjective Hits NF LL Hits NF LL

possible 23 13.7 254.48 5 1.4 32.82

clear 14 8.3 144.69 34 9.8 361.57

sure 7 4.2 65.65 6 1.7 45.64

necessary 6 3.6 57.88 6 1.7 49.08

impossible 4 2.4 43.03 1 0.3 6.54

convinced 31.8 37.45 0 0 0.01

certain 21.2 14.14 1 0.3 4.28

likely 1 0.6 5.59 7 2 55.87

supposed 0 0 0.01 1 0.3 7. 1 2

bound 0 0 0.01 1 0.3 6.82

uncertain 0 0 0.00 1 0.3 9.01

unlikely 0 0 0.01 1 0.3 6.94

unnecessary 0 0 0.00 1 0.3 9.16

Table 4. Number of hits, normalised frequency and log-likelihood results of lexical modal

adjectives

The analysis reveals that possible is the most frequently used adjective by Johnson,

with a log-likelihood result of 254.48. In addition, Johnson employs other

adjectives with regularity, including clear (144.69), sure (65.65), necessary

(57.88) and impossible (43.03). In contrast, clear is the adjective with the greatest

log-likelihood result in Corbyn’s sub-corpus (361.57). It may be worth noting

that the use of likely (55.87), necessary (49.08) and sure (45.64) are also

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significant. Another remarkable aspect of Corbyn’s speech is that certain

adjectives are absent from Johnson’s sub-corpus, such as supposed, bound,

uncertain, unlikely and unnecessary. In the same vein, impossible, certain and

convinced, though retrieving hits in Corbyn’s sub-corpus, are not statistically

significant, as the result is less than 6.63 in the first two cases and less than 3.84

in the last one.

Adverbs are the third most frequently used word class in Johnson (17.55 per

cent) but the least used in Corbyn (9.2 per cent). Therefore, Corbyn infrequently

uses adverbs to express modality in his speeches. The results can be seen in

Table 5.

Boris Johnson Jeremy Corbyn

Adverb Hits NF LL Hits NF LL

indeed 14 8.3 157.89 0 0 0.07

perhaps 6 3.6 50.36 3 0.9 16.70

truly 4 2.4 49.29 10 2.9 126.78

actually 5 3 42.9 7 2 54.49

necessarily 21.2 19.54 0 0 0.00

certainly 21.2 14.87 1 0.3 4.63

maybe 0 0 0.02 2 0.6 14.29

surely 0 0 0.01 1 0.3 6.78

Table 5. Number of hits, normalised frequency and log-likelihood results of lexical modal

adverbs

Table 5 shows that, although Corbyn uses this resource less, the variety of adverbs

is more extensive than in Johnson’s case. The most widely used modal adverbs in

Johnson’s sub-corpus are indeed (157.89), perhaps (50.36) and truly (49.29).

However, in the case of Corbyn, the most prevalent are truly (126.78) and actually

(54.49). As in previous categories, some adverbs do not retrieve hits in either

corpus. For instance, maybe and surely do not appear in Johnson’s sub-corpus,

whereas indeed and necessarily do not appear in Corbyn’s. The case of indeed is also

remarkable, as it is the most significant item in Johnson’s adverbs, but does not

occur in Corbyn’s sub-corpus.

The last word category to comment on is lexical modal nouns. As previously

stated, these nouns are the least used resource by Johnson (10.11 per cent), but

they are used by Corbyn more than his opponent (19.54 per cent). Table 6

summarises the results of both sub-corpora.

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Boris Johnson Jeremy Corbyn

Nouns Hits NF LL Hits NF LL

promise 6 3.6 77.85 12 3.5 154.63

proposal 5 3 51.24 18 5.2 203.98

permission 31.8 34.8 0 0 0.01

certainty 21.2 24.83 3 0.9 35.26

possibility 21.2 17.48 2 0.6 14.55

uncertainty 1 0.6 9.92 7 2 86.34

intention 0 0 0.01 4 1.2 37.93

assurance 0 0 0.00 2 0.6 21.11

reassurance 0 0 0.00 2 0.6 26.02

necessity 0 0 0.00 1 0.3 8.96

Table 6. Number of hits, normalised frequency and log-likelihood results of lexical modal nouns

As Table 6 shows, the noun proposal (203.98) is Corbyn’s most frequently used

noun, whereas promise is the most used by Johnson (77.85), making his

political commitment explicit. Although Corbyn also uses the noun promise

(154.63) to express modality, Johnson, on the other hand, favours the use of

proposal (51.24) and permission (34.8). As expected, Corbyn makes use of a

wider variety of nouns. For this reason, many nouns do not retrieve hits in

Johnson’s sub-corpus: intention, assurance, reassurance and necessity. Similarly,

the noun permission, which occurs in Johnson’s texts (34.8), does not appear

in Corbyn’s.

RQ2 compares the frequency of lexical modals to (semi)auxiliary modal verbs. For

this question, the results of each word class will be compared with a previous study

on (semi)auxiliary modal verbs using the same corpus (Orrequia-Barea and

Almazán-Ruiz 2021). In addition, results for each politician regarding the

expression of modality will be contrasted with how modality is expressed in a

reference corpus such as the BNC. The results of this analysis will provide

information about whether modality is a resource typically used by politicians in

their speeches.

Results were similar in both politicians in the case of (semi)auxiliary verbs. Whereas

Johnson’s most frequently used (semi)auxiliary modal verbs are will, can, going to,

would and should, Corbyn coincides in the first two, will and can, but the following

ones are would, should and could. Regarding the semantic implications, both

politicians use the modal verbs similarly: the epistemic readings of will and can and

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the deontic use of will. It makes sense that the most recurrent meaning is epistemic

rather than deontic since the former implies possibility, whereas the latter,

obligation. Politicians are not expected to place obligations on their electorate if

they want to win votes. As previously stated, will is also used in this reading to

express promises regarding the deontic modality (Orrequia-Barea and Almazán-

Ruiz 2021).

In this context, (semi)auxiliary modal verbs are used more commonly by politicians

than lexical modals. Johnson’s use of (semi)auxiliary modal verbs represents 14.55

per cent of the words in the corpus, whereas the one referring to lexical modals is

1.11 per cent. In this regard, Corbyn uses (semi)auxiliary modal verbs slightly

more than Johnson, with a result of 15.2 per cent, while he uses lexical modals less

than his opponent, 0.74 per cent (Orrequia-Barea and Almazán-Ruiz 2021). As

can be seen, in the political arena of Brexit, (semi)auxiliary modal verbs are the

most widely used resource to express modality. This result was expected, as (semi)

auxiliary modal verbs are the words expressing modality par excellence in the

English language.

Nevertheless, the comparison is not complete unless we check how modality is

expressed in a reference corpus, that is, how frequently speakers use the different

ways of expressing modality. To do so, (semi)auxiliary modal verbs and lexical

modals have been queried in the BNC.

The results retrieved in the reference corpus show that (semi)auxiliary modal

verbs are used less frequently (1.3 per cent). As mentioned above, Johnson’s and

Corbyn’s percentages were 14.55 and 15.2 per cent, respectively. Therefore, we

can see that (semi)auxiliary modal verbs as a resource to express modality are

overused in the context of Brexit, as politicians used this strategy twice as much

as the language speakers, showing their stance, against or in favour, in the

discourse.

Concerning lexical modals, it is unsurprising that these items (1.11 vs 0.74 per

cent) are not used as frequently by politicians as (semi)auxiliary modal verbs. As

previously mentioned, the latter has been traditionally considered the resource

used to express modality par excellence. However, when comparing the lexical

modal results obtained in this study with the BNC occurrences, the BNC results

are closer to Corbyn’s use of lexical modals than Johnson’s. In fact, lexical

modals have a 0.28 per cent presence in the BNC, whereas Cobyn’s is 0.74 per

cent. In the case of Johnson, the use of lexical modals is 1.11 per cent. The data

indicate an overuse of lexical modals by Johnson. Table 7 summarises the

comparisons.

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Boris Johnson Jeremy Corbyn BNC

(Semi)auxiliary modal verbs 14.55 15.2 1.3

Lexical modals 1. 11 0.74 0.28

Table 7. Use of (semi)auxiliary modal verbs and lexical modals expressed in percentages

The data in Table 7 answer the third research question, which will be discussed in

more detail in Section 6. As can be seen, Johnson uses modality more frequently

in his discourse. Even though Corbyn uses (semi)auxiliary modal verbs more than

the Conservative leader, lexical modals are more recurrent in Johnson’s discourse.

It is noteworthy that modality occurs more frequently in the analysed corpus than

in the BNC. As shown in Table 7, lexical modals are a more prominent resource in

the political discourse than in general language. However, in the literature, more

attention has been given to (semi)auxiliary modal verbs than to this linguistic

device. In this sense, this study contributes to emphasising their importance in

presenting facts to the audience.

6. Modelling Lexical Modals

This discussion section presents concrete examples from both sub-corpora and

describes the modality types established in the theoretical framework used. Thus,

this section aims to answer RQ3 from a qualitative perspective, considering the

different degrees of modality and the various lexical modals used to express it. In

the political context under discussion, lexical modality can reveal framing strategies,

that is, the speaker’s stance and viewpoint in presenting events and arguing for or

against them (Cheng 2016).

As described in section 3 above, epistemic modality connects the speaker’s

knowledge and the referenced facts or actions presented in the discourse. According

to Rozumko, certainty is not an absolute category but can be expressed according

to a scale which establishes the degree of certainty (2019: 37); therefore, a

distinction can be made between strong, medium and neutral modality. Thus,

examples from the corpus will be used to discuss their semantic implications and

politicians’ viewpoints when presenting facts regarding Brexit.

The adverb necessarily mainly expresses the epistemic meaning of necessity.

However, the syntactic polarity changes when combined with not, and it is used to

express that what is said is possibly but not definitely true. This adverb falls within

the strong modality scale according to Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 207), and

in the corpus, only Johnson uses this formula, as shown in Examples 1 and 2.

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(1) That is not necessarily the case in the digital age.

(BJ - epistemic necessity)

(2) When I fully intend to be around, though not necessarily in this job, we

will look back on this period, this extraordinary period, as the beginning

of a new golden age for our United Kingdom.

(BJ - epistemic necessity)

Other adverbs, such as certainly, are also used to express necessity. As seen in the

following examples, both politicians use the word to indicate that what is stated

must necessarily be so. Besides, it should be considered that even though “epistemic

certainly belongs with the strong modals”, it “does not suggest any reasoning

from evidence” (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 207).

(3) It isn’t really the fault of the places and it certainly isn’t the fault of the

people growing up there.

(BJ - epistemic necessity)

(4) That must be followed by radical and decisive action that will only be

delivered by a Labour government. It certainly won’t come from the

Tories.

(JC - epistemic necessity)

As Rozumko points out, this epistemic adverb implies a restricted knowledge of

the facts on the speaker’s behalf (2019: 440). Despite this, it is used to emphasise

what appears true from their perspective, as demonstrated in Examples 3 and 4.

According to Simon-Vandenbergen, expressions of certainty are a “tactic strategy”

to “persuade the audience of the essential rightness of their claims” (1996: 408).

Through this adverb, both politicians establish the essential accuracy of their

assertions, communicating their confidence in the validity of their arguments.

Similarly, the speaker’s degree of conviction is made evident by the adjective

certain, which determines their position on the events described. The meaning of

Examples 5 and 6 are closely related to the use of the modal verb must when

expressing logical necessity, since the speaker expresses that given the evidence, no

other conclusion can be inferred from it.

(5) I’m absolutely certain there will be displays celebrating the dawn of a new

age of electric vehicles, not just cars or buses, but electric planes, made

possible with battery technology being developed now in the UK.

(BJ - epistemic necessity)

(6) That is why Labour will not support this Bill, as we remain certain there

is a better and fairer way for this country to leave the EU.

(JC - epistemic necessity)

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It is important to note that the use of these linguistic devices indicates a high level

of confidence in the speaker’s position, which is clearly emphasised in Example 5

through the adverb absolutely. Johnson uses this adverb to add force to his degree

of certainty. In fact, the degree of certainty becomes clearer and more assertive

when the noun category is used because the noun certainty formulates the facts in

the utterance, indicating confidence and assertiveness in the speaker’s perspective.

“It creates the image of a knowledgeable person who knows what he or she is

talking about and who therefore deserves public trust and political power” (Simon-

Vandenbergen 1996: 390). Thus, it inspires confidence, as the speaker seems to be

committed to the truth of their claims (Simon-Vandenbergen 1996: 390).

(7) I can assure them that under this government, they will have the absolute

certainty of the right to leave and remain.

(BJ - epistemic necessity)

Once more, the Conservative leader emphasises his speech by highlighting the

degree of certainty with the premodifying adjective absolute. This strategy makes his

discourse more assertive, making it easier for him to influence the audience,

persuade them to trust his arguments and establish a greater sense of credibility and

authority. Interestingly, the Tory leader is the only one who introduces the adjective

convinced in his speech, thus demonstrating that he is entirely certain about the

facts to which he refers, which must necessarily be so, as Example 8 shows.

(8) I am convinced that an overwhelming majority in this House, regardless of

our personal views, wishes to see Brexit delivered in accordance with the

referendum.

(BJ - epistemic necessity)

Likewise, the certainty of what is expressed in a statement can be shown using the

adjective clear and the adverb clearly. In any context, the speaker could denote a high

level of confidence in a statement when using them. This linguistic strategy can be

considered a means of emphasising one’s conviction and conveying a sense of clarity

in the message. The speaker can enhance the persuasiveness of their argument and

establish a greater sense of credibility and authority, as the following examples show:

(9) If an agreement is to be reached, it must be clearly understood that the

way to the deal goes by way of the abolition of the backstop.

Our vision is clear: to unite and level up across the whole United Kingdom.

(BJ - epistemic necessity)

(10) It is becoming increasingly clear that this reckless government only has

one plan, to crash out of the EU without a deal.

It is clear they have tried to hide the truth of a no deal Brexit.

(JC - epistemic necessity)

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Nevertheless, the adjective necessary can also be interpreted from the perspective

of deontic modality, as it presents the facts as requirements. According to

Huddleston and Pullum, deontic necessity is very close to obligation, and the

adjective mentioned above usually “takes a mandative or infinitival complement”

(2002: 207). In Example 11, the Labour leader steadfastly commits himself to take

all necessary measures to avoid a no-deal departure from the EU.

(11) We will do everything necessary to stop a disastrous No Deal for which this

government has no mandate.

(JC - deontic necessity)

Deontic necessity is also expressed in the corpus by means of lexical verbs such as

require, which is more recurrent in Corbyn’s speeches than in Johnson’s. From

Corbyn’s point of view, the country requires and demands certain conditions

regarding Brexit, as shown in Example 12.

(12) The office of the Prime Minister requires integrity and honesty.

This inequality is unsustainable and immoral. Ending it requires

government action.

(JC - deontic necessity)

While necessity and certainty correspond to strong modality, the medium degree

corresponds to the meaning of probability (Huddleston and Pullum 2002).

However, in the corpus analysed in this study, there were no hits for uncertain

terms such as probably or probable. As a result, politicians presented their discourse

as factual. This absence indicates that both leaders were confident in their assertions

and did not feel the need to rely on speculative language. Nevertheless, it is worth

mentioning that weak modality does appear in the corpus through lexical modals

such as possible, perhaps or maybe.

The adjective possible presents events as likely to occur. Both politicians use this

item in the analysed corpus, though Johnson does so more frequently. When a

statement expresses the possibility of a fact, the speaker presents it as potentially

happening but not entirely certain of its fulfilment. In Example 13, Johnson

presents the facts as a probable occurrence that is further emphasised by the

comparative form. This construction makes him add emphasis and significance to

the possibility, lending greater credence to the argument presented. Using the

comparative form highlights the likelihood of the event, resulting in a more

compelling and impactful presentation than when using only the adjective in its

base form. Overall, Johnson’s linguistic choice in this example appears to be

discoursally effective in conveying the importance of the presented information.

(13) By 2050, it is more than possible that the United Kingdom will be the

greatest and most prosperous economy in Europe.

(BJ - epistemic possibility)

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Similarly, in Example 14, Corbyn expresses his factual appraisal. In his view, the

achievement of a positive goal, such as reducing carbon emissions, would imply

a necessary increase in public spending, which he perceives as an unfavourable

outcome, explicitly manifest with the premodification (massive) of the head

noun.

(14) Bringing our carbon emissions down [...] will only be possible with massive

public investment in renewable energy and green technology.

(JC - epistemic possibility)

The adverbs perhaps and maybe are used when the speaker intends to express that

events are possible despite their uncertainty about them (Rozumko 2019: 443).

According to the author, the use of perhaps “signals that an opinion or interpretation

is offered to the addressee(s) for consideration” (444). The following example

illustrates how the Tory leader presents the possibility that what is stated can be

considered from a different perspective.

(15) They can see that we have a clear vision for our future relationship with the

EU - something that has perhaps not always been the case.

(BJ - epistemic possibility)

However, this epistemic adverb is also used from a concessive perspective; when it

is uttered, the speaker presents a counterpoint to the facts stated. This use of

perhaps can be observed in Example 16 and, as Rozumko notes, “the concessions

marked by perhaps emphasise the positive aspects of the situations, and signal

solidarity with the addressee” (2019: 445).

(16) I don’t think I’ve heard a single member call for an ever closer union or

ever deeper integration or a federal destiny [...] perhaps I’ve missed it but

I don’t think I’ve heard much of it Mr Speaker.

(BJ - epistemic possibility)

The adverb perhaps is also used to express a polite request. In the corpus, Corbyn

uses it to indirectly invite the Prime Minister to explain some issues he does not

consider entirely clear, as the examples in 17 show. This adverb leaves open the

possibility that Johnson is not, in fact, capable of explaining what Corbyn is

demanding of him. Through this discursive strategy inherent to the engagement

system (Martin and White 2007: 105), Corbyn adeptly aligns with a section of the

audience that echoes his doubts about Johnson’s inability to offer a satisfactory

response.

(17) Perhaps he’d like to explain why these documents confirm the US is

demanding the NHS is on the table in the trade talks?

Perhaps he can tell us what has changed?

(JC - deontic possibility)

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Huddleston and Pullum also observe that certain lexical verbs such as allow and

permit “can express deontic possibility, permission” (2002: 208). In the analysed

corpus, the verb ‘allow’ is one of the most frequent lexical modal items used by

both politicians. As Examples 18 and 19 show, both politicians use it to present a

plausible situation:

(18) A deal that allows us to create a new shared destiny with them.

(BJ - deontic possibility)

(19) We can create natural solutions to bring down emissions and allow our

wildlife to flourish, because currently wildlife is in crisis.

(JC - deontic possibility)

However, the verb allow is also used to clarify what both leaders are reluctant to

accept. The following examples show that the two politicians’ clashing positions

express a lack of permission from a deontic perspective.

(20) Leaving the EU is a massive economic opportunity - to do the things

we’ve not been allowed to do for decades.

(BJ - deontic permission)

(21) They’re not allowed to pledge not to sell out our NHS in a trade deal with

Donald Trump.

(JC - deontic permission)

In both cases, allow is used in passive structures, thus emphasising that the patient

subjects of the sentence receive the action of the verb and avoid mentioning the

agent subject. However, while Johnson focuses on things the UK has been unable

to do because of the EU, Corbyn highlights the aspects his party will not permit

the government to do.

As previously mentioned, deontic modality is also concerned with expressing other

meanings such as prohibition, desires or promises. In the political context analysed

here, Johnson’s most frequent noun is promise. As is known, a promise entails that

one will certainly do something for somebody else, and frequently, politicians

show the audience their intentions as promises, as Johnson does in Example 22.

(22) We are going to fulfil the repeated promises of parliament to the people.

We will not accept any attempt to go back on our promises or scrub that

referendum.

(BJ - deontic volition- promise)

As observed, the Prime Minister combines the lexical modal promise with (semi)

auxiliary modal verbs —be going to and will— which allows him to emphasise and

reinforce the idea of volition and his implication of acting. However, this noun

allows Corbyn to criticise his opponent by mentioning all the promises the Tory

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government has failed to keep regarding Brexit. The political confrontation is

evident in the Labour leader’s statements, as observed in Examples in 23:

(23) Johnson’s deal will be just the beginning of years more painful negotiations

and broken promises.

Who cannot tell the truth about the Brexit negotiations that he has so far

failed to deliver on, or one who keeps on making promises that turn out to

be a mirage the following day.

(JC - deontic volition - promise)

Although both politicians use the verb promise, it is worth mentioning that when

this happens, the Conservative leader commits to doing what they say they will do

and will give the people what they commit to. This is part of the framing strategy

of Brexit, as Examples in 24 illustrate:

(24) Mr Speaker, we promised the people we would get Brexit done.

So I have promised to find a long term solution to social care once and for

all. And that is what we will do.

(BJ - deontic volition- promise)

Once again, Corbyn uses this lexical modal verb —promise— to criticise the

Conservative government’s performance and directly accuses its leader of failing to

deliver on his promises. In the examples in 25, Corbyn highlights the Conservative

government’s failure to uphold their promises and fulfil their commitment. From

them, it can be inferred that such inconsistency can lead to a loss of confidence and

trust from the British people.

(25) His predecessor promised to end austerity but spectacularly failed to

deliver.

Friends, today is the 31st of October, the day Boris Johnson promised we

would leave the EU. [...] But he has failed. And that failure is his alone.

(JC - deontic volition - promise)

Interestingly enough, the Labour leader prefers to introduce the noun proposal in

his speeches and uses this noun more frequently than Johnson. The difference in

meaning between the two nouns —promise and proposal— is rather evident since a

proposal should be understood as a plan or idea that is suggested. Corbyn uses this

noun to criticise the Tory government’s actions again and question whether its

ideas for a successful Brexit could be effective, as shown by examples in 26.

(26) These proposals are nothing more than a cynical attempt by the Prime

Minister to shift the blame for his failure to deliver.

Mr Speaker, the Government’s proposals are neither serious nor credible.

(JC - deontic volition - suggestion)

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In Example 27, the Labour leader shows his sharpest criticism when he emphasises

that the Conservative government’s proposals are unrealistic and will, therefore,

be rejected in Brussels. The tone of the speech becomes more assertive when he

alludes to the Prime Minister to criticise his lack of involvement even though he is

aware of the facts.

(27) The current proposals would damage the whole UK economy.

The proposals are unrealistic and damaging and will —as I think the Prime

Minister knows— be rejected in Brussels, in this House, and in the

country.

(JC - deontic volition - suggestion)

The empirical data and corpus analysis illustrate how modality is strategically

employed as a “linguistic and ideological tool” to “frame their argument in a purpose

of persuading the electorate and soliciting their support” (Cheng 2016: 172). In this

sense, it can be seen how lexical modals are as effective as (semi)auxiliary modal verbs

when conveying modality. The speaker reveals his position to the audience through

modality since epistemic modality presents the facts as necessary or likely to happen.

On the other hand, deontic modality, which is much more complex because it

involves the speaker’s perspective on what is to be done, allows them to suggest,

recommend or propose something. Either type of modality shows the speaker’s

perspective and degree of involvement in the events expressed in the statement.

7. Conclusions

This corpus-based study has analysed the Brexit political discourse of the then UK

Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn,

from the Labour Party. The results have been shown from two perspectives:

quantitatively, we have presented the data regarding the frequency of occurrences

of lexical modals of both politicians when discussing Brexit in the corpus. On the

other hand, qualitative interpretation has made it possible to show a semantic

analysis of the lexical modals found in the corpus, thus distinguishing between

epistemic and deontic modality.

As far as RQ1 is concerned, the corpus analysis has shown that lexical modals are a

prominent resource employed by politicians. Adjectives and verbs are the most

common words used by both politicians. However, nouns are Johnson’s least

frequently used word class, and adverbs are the least frequently used by Corbyn.

In the case of Brexit, as illustrated, this strategy has been used more frequently

than in other contexts of the English language, which reveals the significance of

lexical modals in political discourse.

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However, when comparing lexical modals with (semi)auxiliary modal verbs (RQ2),

the latter are still the items used par excellence when expressing modality, as the

answer to the second research question has shown. The quantitative analysis has

revealed that politicians employ lexical modals as a prominent resource. When

compared with a reference corpus, Johnson and Corbyn use lexical modals with a

higher frequency than in the BNC. (Semi)auxiliary modal verbs are used twice in

the discourse of Brexit. In contrast, lexical modals are used similarly in Corbyn’s

case but are far more frequent in Johnson’s corpus.

Finally, the qualitative analysis has focused on a semantic analysis of the lexical

modals found in the corpus. The discussion to answer RQ3 has revealed that

politicians employ lexical modals to present factual information with high

assertiveness. In a sense, lexical modals help politicians to establish a tone of

confidence in their statements. This is evident in Johnson’s use of the (semi)

auxiliary modal verb will or the lexical modal promise to discuss Brexit, which

effectively enhances the credibility of his claims to voters. The analysis demonstrated

that the use of lexical modals is more common in Johnson’s speech than in

Corbyn’s. This linguistic resource serves as an effective tactic to obscure a clear

position regarding the facts. Thus, it becomes an advantageous strategy for the

speaker to refrain from (not) subtly committing himself. As a result, this article

contributes to research on modality in the English language, as it delves into

examining parts of speech other than (semi)auxiliary modal verbs in political

discourse. This study sheds light on the complexity of modality and its expression

through various lexical words and their use in the political context.

So far, lexical modals have been neglected in the literature, as studies on this

phenomenon are rather scarce as opposed to (semi)auxiliary modal verbs. However,

as this study shows, lexical modals are another resource used by politicians, which

should also be explored since they serve to convey the meanings of modality. This

study is original not only in highlighting the importance of these particular words

but also in encouraging other researchers to look into modality from this

perspective and the implications these lexical modals may have when expressing

modality.

Contribution of the Authors

The present paper is the outcome of the coordinated and collaborative work by the

two authors. Author 1 was in charge of the theoretical part of the work, while

Author 2 was responsible for compiling the corpus as well as quantitative analysis

and processing. Both authors actively participated in the study planning, manuscript

writing, and qualitative analysis, as well as reviewing and revising the entire work.

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Notes

1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

politics/eu_referendum/results

2. In the literature (Palmer 2001;

Nuyts 2016), a third type associated with

ability is distinguished: dynamic modality;

however, since it is not related to the speaker’s

attitude to a given situation or event

(Huddleston and Pullum 2002; Gisborne

2007), this type of modality lies beyond the

scope of this study.

3. We used the script by Fradejas

Rueda (2019) that can be accessed at: https://

www.aic.uva.es/cuentapalabras/cosechar-

textos.html

4. Accessible at: https://www.gov.uk/

5. Accessible at: https://labour.org.uk/

6. Accessible at: http://ucrel.lancs.

ac.uk/llwizard.html

7. For more information see: https://

ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws6tags.html

8. Corbyn announced his plans to

resign as leader of the Labour Party on

December 12, after the 2019 election results.

https://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-

corbyn-resigns-as-labour-party-leader-after-

election-defeat-2019-12

9. Results in the tables are ordered

according to Johnson’s result in the likelihood

test.

10. Items which did not retrieve any

hits in the corpora have not been included in

the tables due to space limitations.

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Received: 02/11/2023

Accepted: 27/05/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

miscelánea 70 (2024): pp. 93-116 ISSN: 1137-6368 e-ISSN: 2386-4834

VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL REALIZATIONS

OF PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES IN VIDEO RESUMES

FORMAS VERBALES Y NO VERBALES

DE ESTRATEGIAS PERSUASIVAS

EN LOS VIDEOCURRÍCULUMS

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249817

MARÍA ÁNGELES MESTRE-SEGARRA

Universitat Jaume I

mamestre@uji.es

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8948-6507>

Abstract

With the rapid shift from print to digital modes of communication, new genres

have emerged. One example is the video resume (VR). This novel professional

digital genre enables job seekers to enhance their visibility and connect with

broader audiences through various semiotic modes. The VR has a clear

communicative aim based on a strong persuasive component: to secure a job by

convincing the audience of their qualities. The premise of this paper is that VRs are

not only informative but also inherently persuasive. Accordingly, the study aim is

to explore the use of multimodal semiotic modes as a way of realizing persuasive

strategies (i.e. attention-getting, anticipation and control of responses, rapport,

emphasis and processing aids). The methodological approach uses video-based

analysis and computer-aided Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) to analyze a

dataset of 8 VRs from the online platform YouTube, considering the following

criteria: limited duration, impact, year uploaded and editing. The results suggest

that verbal and non-verbal realizations of persuasive strategies are present in the

fragments analyzed, and such strategies are encoded by heterogeneous

combinations of semiotic modes. Although the strategies and modes are not

always consistent, they contribute to achieving the communicative purpose of the

genre. As for pedagogical implications, this genre and its features can be

incorporated into English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teaching materials,

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enhancing learners’ persuasive strategies and developing their multimodal

communicative competence.

Keywords: digital genres, video resumes, persuasion, multimodality, MDA

(Multimodal Discourse Analysis), ESP (English for Specific Purposes).

Resumen

Con la rápida evolución de los modos de comunicación de impresos a digitales,

han surgido nuevos géneros. Un ejemplo es el videocurrículum (en adelante VC).

Su aparición como género digital profesional ha permitido a los profesionales

aumentar su visibilidad y relacionarse con un público más amplio utilizando una

gran variedad de modos semióticos. Conlleva un claro objetivo comunicativo

basado en un fuerte componente persuasivo: convencer a un público concreto para

obtener un puesto de trabajo. Este artículo parte de la idea de que los VCs no sólo

son informativos, sino también intrínsecamente persuasivos. En consecuencia, el

objetivo es explorar el uso de modos semióticos multimodales como forma de

implementar algunas estrategias persuasivas (captación de la atención, anticipación

y control de las respuestas, compenetración, énfasis y ayudas al procesamiento). El

proceso metodológico se centra en un análisis basado en vídeo y en un enfoque de

Análisis del Discurso Multimodal (ADM) asistido por ordenador con un conjunto

de datos de 8 videocurrículums tomados de la plataforma en línea YouTube,

teniendo en cuenta los siguientes criterios: duración, impacto, año de publicación

y edición. Los resultados sugieren que las realizaciones verbales y no verbales de

estrategias persuasivas están presentes en los fragmentos de los vídeos analizados,

y que van acompañadas de combinaciones heterogéneas de modos semióticos.

Aunque las estrategias persuasivas y los modos no siempre actúan de forma

coherente entre sí, sí contribuyen a alcanzar el propósito comunicativo del género.

En cuanto a las implicaciones pedagógicas, este género y sus características pueden

incorporarse a los materiales de enseñanza del Inglés con Fines Específicos (IFE),

mejorando las estrategias persuasivas de los alumnos y desarrollando su competencia

comunicativa multimodal.

Palabras clave: géneros digitales, videocurrículums, persuasión, multimodalidad,

ADM (Análisis del Discurso Multimodal), IFE (Inglés con Fines Específicos).

1. Introduction

1.1. Professional Genres in the Digital Era

In the digital age, professional genres have undergone significant transformation,

shaped by the influence of technology and the internet (Luzón and Peréz-Llantada

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2022). One of the key aspects of digitalization in professional genres is the shift

from traditional, paper-based formats to electronic ones (Hafner 2018).

In today’s highly competitive job market, the traditional curriculum vitae (CV)

is no longer the sole means for individuals to showcase their skills and

qualifications (Teixeira da Silva et al. 2020). As technological advances take root

globally and digital tools become increasingly integrated in the professional

sphere, novel digital genres have appeared and are now employed. A new

professional digital genre has emerged —the video resume (VR). The present

study understands the VR as a clear example of a remediated genre, which means

that there is a deep transformation of the medium from printed to electronic

formats (Brooks et al. 2004). Hiemstra et al. describe a VR as “a short video-

taped message in which applicants present themselves to potential employers on

requested knowledge, skills, abilities, motivation, and career objectives” (2012:

11). Nonetheless, research into this genre is rather scarce and has mostly focused

on paper-based genres in professional contexts (Hiemstra and Derous 2015). A

search conducted of the Web of Science database and conference proceedings

(February, 2017) revealed a scant number of studies addressing the topic of VRs

since 2010. Half of these studies emerged within the digital era, suggesting a

growing interest among researchers. Yet, this growth is still modest, and VR is

not as widely present in academia as in professional settings. For instance, data

from a survey conducted in June 2011 produced 174,000 hits for the term

“video resume” on YouTube (Gissel et al. 2013), and by February 2017 that

figure had risen to 5.53 million. Although several studies (Hiemstra et al. 2012;

Hiemstra and Derous 2015; Waung et al. 2015; Nguyen and Gatica-Perez 2016)

suggested its popularity among job seekers, scholarly exploration of VRs remains

limited (Ryan and Derous 2016). However, VRs come with a set of challenges

since they require a certain degree of digital literacy and essential communicative

skills. Applicants who use the genre to search for employment need to

demonstrate creativity and incorporate technical elements, such as lighting,

sound quality and video editing, with the aim of creating engaging and persuasive

presentations and set themselves apart from other applicants. This is the reason

why job seekers must strike a balance between professionalism and creativity,

ensuring that their videos reflect their competence while maintaining conciseness

and adherence to a standardized format.

As technology continues to evolve, the VR is likely to become even more

prevalent, reshaping the way candidates market themselves and how employers

evaluate talent. The VR is not only conceived as a digitized version of the paper-

based CV or resume, but also as an opportunity to present the candidate in a

dynamic, authentic and creative manner, capturing the attention of potential

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employers and standing out among competitors. Even though paper- and video-

based resumes have the same communicative aim (i.e. to persuade the audience to

offer them a job), the two ways in which the two genres pursue this end differs

significantly in the use of added semiotic modes intertwined with linguistic

elements.

1.2. Multimodality and Persuasion in Digital Genres

The integration of digitality in genre studies is inherently connected to the use of

multimodal and persuasive elements. Specifically, present-day professional

communication is regarded by the field as multimodal, meaning that speakers call

on a wide range of semiotic modes, including image, animations, gestures, or even

language (among others) orchestrated by speakers to make meaning (Jewitt and

Kress 2010).

A salient feature of VRs is their multimodal nature, given the fact that speakers

need to employ a variety of semiotic modes to convey meaning. In this context,

modes are understood as semiotic systems with rules and regularities —such as

images, gestures, speech, music, layout, writing, proxemics, and posture (Kress

and van Leeuwen 2001). Norris (2004) categorizes the use of modes as

embodied and disembodied. The former consists of resources produced by the

human body (e.g. facial expressions), and the latter refers to external elements

that cause an impact on the audience (e.g. clothing). This paper considers an

additional mode, called filmic, as a subset of the disembodied mode and one

that is only possible in the digital medium (e.g. music). It refers to significant

elements added in the postproduction process (Valeiras-Jurado and Bernad-

Mechó 2022).

Multimodal studies allow analysts to view communication holistically, since every

single semiotic mode, verbal and non-verbal, is intentional to the same degree

(Jewitt and Kress 2010). In particular, the Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA)

approach conceptualizes language as the result of a combination of semiotic

resources to convey meaning (O’Halloran 2011; Ruiz-Madrid and Fortanet-

Gómez 2016). Within this approach, every verbal and non-verbal mode is

considered on equal footing, aiming at fully understanding any communicative

process. As a result, language becomes part of a multimodal ensemble (Kress and

van Leeuwen 2001). Ruiz-Madrid and Valeiras-Jurado define multimodal

ensemble as “the orchestration of different modes to produce a specific meaning

that is inferred based on the interrelation among them” (2020: 30). Moreover,

this orchestration of modes can be used consistently, although the individual

modes do not always interact logically. This interrelationship among modes is

defined as modal coherence (Valeiras-Jurado 2019).

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The aforementioned multimodal ensembles can be especially decisive in

achieving persuasive oral communication (Valeiras-Jurado et al. 2018).

Persuasion research has typically focused on linguistic aspects; nonetheless,

studies on persuasion are becoming broader, deeper, and more complex since

nonlinguistic elements may also contribute substantially to any persuasive

message (O’Keefe 2004).

Previous studies on persuasion (O’Keefe 2015; Perloff 2020) pointed out that

persuasive messages tend to be more effective when i) speakers have credibility, ii)

the audience can identify with speakers, iii) the message is made memorable, easy

to understand, innovative, and surprising and iv) it is perceived as not imposed,

but inferred. Additionally, particular attention is also paid to the fact that persuasion

has non-verbal realizations, which supports the multimodal connection. Taking

into consideration previous studies on persuasion in digital professional and

academic genres, such as TED talks (Valeiras-Jurado 2019), YouTube videos

(Luzón 2019), research dissemination talks (Ruiz-Garrido and Palmer-Silveira

2023) and research pitches (Ruiz-Madrid 2021), it can be hypothesized that the

combination of modes and persuasive strategies may influence the extent to which

these genres achieve their communicative aims. Therefore, the concept of

persuasion is a defining trait in oral academic and professional genres and the

orchestration of different modes brought together through persuasive strategies

can be decisive in oral communication.

Taking into consideration that persuasion is inherently multimodal, the research

questions (RQs) guiding the present paper are as follows: RQ1. What verbal and

non-verbal realizations of persuasive strategies are identified in VRs? RQ2. How

do multimodal ensembles and persuasive strategies cohere with each other?

2. Methodology

2.1. Dataset

The analysis in the present study is based on a detailed examination of short

excerpts of audiovisuals to understand how semiotic resources and persuasive

strategies are employed coherently to deliver a message. Previous studies (Bernad-

Mechó 2022) have already explored videos which easily deploy multimodal

content.

The dataset consists of a total of 8 VRs, all of them in English, taken from the

online platform YouTube.1 In the initial stage, I established a set of criteria to

collect the data of the study, that is, duration, professional or academic activity,

gender, impact, year of publication, editing, type of camera shots (see Appendix 1

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for a description of the data). The dataset was then restricted to videos that

complied with the following guidelines: limited duration (less than 3 minutes),

impact as expressed by number of views (although the number of views is irrelevant

for the purpose of the present study), year of publication (all between 2010 and

2020), and, to enrich the multimodal analysis, whether or not the videos used

editing strategies as indicated by camera shots.

Once the eight videos were selected, I opted to extract one excerpt from each,

the function of which was to urge the addressee to take action. The combined

length of these clips was 179 seconds. Table 1 shows the exact time intervals and

excerpts in which the speaker emphasizes their strengths and potential aptitudes

as evidence that they are the most suitable candidate for the position. Therefore,

the selection of the segments was made on the basis of their persuasive

communicative aim and their multimodal nature. I hypothesized that these

fragments, interpreted as using pressure tactics, would be modally dense (Norris

2004), since they would use a greater variety of semiotic modes and more

complex interrelations among them.

8 VRs Time

interval

Length in

seconds Excerpts

VR19 from 1’27’’

to 1’56’’

29 sec “Why should you pick me out of seven billion people living on

this planet?

Well, as a strong communicator and negotiator who can build

effective relationships, I specialize in finding creative and

innovative solutions to the toughest problems. I also happen to

speak English, French and Spanish and have been involved in

very exciting stuff for the last few years. I truly believe that I

can bring a real and positive impact to the organization from

day one. I’d love to join a creative agency, working to put my

skills and experience to good use and apply my entrepreneurial

principles to foster social transformation”.

VR20 from 1’46’’

to 2’12’’

66 sec “Why should you pick me?

Well, I’m very interested in digital trends, new ways to sell

products and services and how to build strong marketing

strategies for companies around the world. I’m also able to

speak English, French, Arabic and Spanish. I’m a fully creative,

strong communicator and extremely motivated to build

effective relationships with the ability to fit in with any group,

any service, any company. I’m sure I can bring a really positive

energy to the organization from day one”.

VR21 from 1’18

to 1’32’’

14 sec “As a recent graduate from the Iron Yard, I’m an excellent

candidate for a company or team looking to capitalize a lot and

blow me into what they specifically need. I’m always up for a

challenge, and I’m looking for a place where I can continue to

grow and learn”.

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8 VRs Time

interval

Length in

seconds Excerpts

VR22 from 1’21’’

to 1’29’’

08 sec “I believe I am your perfect candidate for your company and

will become a great future employee”.

VR23 from 2’18’’

to 2’35’’

17 sec “I’m looking for a company that believes in getting stuff done,

low bureaucracy, and empowering the staff to use their skills

and talents for the better at a business. I’d prefer to be used for

my brainpower and skills, but I’m willing to crush whatever is

put in front of me. I hope that this is interesting to you or

someone that you might know”.

VR24 from 2’34’’

to 2’44’’

10 sec “I am convinced that you are looking for a young, creative,

hard-working, reliable and committed employee who will do

their best. I’m one of those!”

VR25 from 1’26’’

to 1’56’’

30 sec “Why should a company employ me?

I have all these skills that I feel are very transferable: soft skills

that are necessary in job roles when I apply for jobs. I feel like

companies are looking for this. Alongside being very good at

communicating, a good problem solver. I find that I’ve learned

from my Project Management how to be very organized, how

to plan better, and I’m just good at time management as well,

and I think this works in the role I’m looking for”.

VR26 from 0’41’’

to 0’46’’

05 sec “If you’re looking to increase sales production, develop your

employees and retain them, I’m the person for the job”.

Table 1. Time intervals and excerpts from the dataset

2.2. Annotation and Analysis

The analytic strategy employed in this paper relies on a specialized software

package designed to carry out computer-assisted multimodal analysis

complemented by manual analysis. This application is known as Multimodal

Analysis-Video (MAV) (O’Halloran et al. 2012), and it “provides the necessary

tools for investigating the use of semiotic resources and the ways in which semiotic

choices interact to fulfill particular objectives in a multimodal video” (O’Halloran

et al. 2017: 22). Appendix 2 contains an image of the interface and further

explanation of the tool.

Other linguists have also found the support of the software to be useful, arguing

that “an MDA approach requires the use of different specialized software packages

to look into the data” (Valeiras-Jurado et al. 2018: 99). According to Ruiz-Madrid

and Valeiras-Jurado, “an MDA offers a comprehensive approach for the fully [sic]

understanding of the multimodal nature of genres” (2020: 28). Therefore, to

explore the connection between the semiotic modes and the persuasive strategies,

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following an MDA approach, a fine-grained framework for the multimodal

annotation has been adapted from prior studies on multimodal analysis (Bernad-

Mechó 2022), as Table 2 below shows.

SEMIOTIC MODES

EMBODIED DISEMBODIED FILMIC

1. Gestures 1. Clothing 1. Image

1a. Iconic

1b. Metaphoric

1c. Deictic

1d. Beat

2. Background 2. Music

3. Objects 3. Writing (words)

4. Proxemics (disposition)

4a. Lateral

4b. Frontal

2. Head movements

2a. Iconic

2b. Novel

2c. Deictic

2d. Beat

5. Camera shot

5a. Frontal

5b. Lateral

5c. Close-up

5d. Middle

5e. Foot

3. Facial expressions

3a. Eyebrow-raising

3b. Frowning

3c. Laughter

3d. Smile

3e. Swallowing

3f. Lip-licking

6. Sound effect

7. Moving image

4. Posture

4a. Standing upright

4b. Standing by a table

4c. Sitting on table/chair

(cross-legged)

4d. Sitting on table/chair

(legs stretched)

4e. Swaying

5. Speech (spoken language)

For the purpose of the current study, I built upon preceding investigations into the

use of semiotic modes and persuasion in alternative formats (Valeiras-Jurado

2019), and I focused on five salient persuasive strategies, which are explained in

the following paragraphs and briefly presented in Figure 1. Both the persuasive

strategies and the semiotic modes contribute to achieving the communicative aim

of the VR (Figure 2).

Table 2. Framework for the multimodal analysis of VRs (based on Bernad-Mechó 2022)

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The first strategy, ‘attention-getting’, is employed to establish and maintain

contact with the audience. It is mostly based on attracting the interest of the

audience so as to make them listen and invite the speaker for a job interview.

‘Anticipation and control of responses’ consists of the way the speaker adapts their

speech and the way they deliver the message, taking into consideration the

audience’s anticipated reactions, with the aim of obtaining a desirable response

(Brazil 1997; Carter 1997; Kendon 2004). Additionally, the speaker intentionally

heads off certain responses, redirecting communicative intent according to their

own aims. Valeiras-Jurado and Bernad-Mechó (2022) determined in their study

that certain embodied modes (i.e. speech, intonation, gestures) and filmic modes

can elicit certain reactions in the audience. The third strategy, ‘rapport’, refers to

moments of mutual understanding and empathy with the audience. This strategy

can also be expressed verbally (i.e. use of inclusive pronouns) and non-verbally

(e.g. bodily postures, smiling, nodding). ‘Emphasis’, as the name implies, occurs

when the speaker highlights parts of the message to make them more salient. For

example, rhetorical devices (i.e. three-part lists, parallel structures, among others,

in combination with intonation, gestures, head movements or filmic modes) are

commonly used to cause a long-lasting effect and make the text more memorable.

The last strategy, ‘processing aids’, refers to resources used to facilitate the

Figure 1. Taxonomy of persuasive strategies (Valeiras-Jurado 2019: 92-93)

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understanding of the message in real time. Specific embodied modes, such as

gestures or intonation, are prominent to clarify aspects or structures of a message.

Figure 2. Persuasive strategies and semiotic modes in VRs

The 8 VRs were viewed several times, during which initial observations were made

regarding the sort of embodied, disembodied, and filmic modes employed, and

observing how the nature of multimodal ensembles configured through the use of

persuasive strategies contribute to achieving the communicative aim of the VR.

For the present research, the dataset was constructed to be gender-balanced (4

female and 4 male candidates) and two more scholars in a related research field

were consulted until a consensus was reached regarding which multimodal semiotic

modes were employed to realize persuasive strategies, thus ensuring interrater

reliability.

3. Results and Discussion

The main aim of the present study is to identify the verbal and non-verbal

realizations of persuasive strategies speakers use in VRs (RQ1). Additionally, this

article accounts for the notion of coherence among multimodal ensembles and

persuasive strategies to achieve the persuasive effect in VRs (RQ2).

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Out of the eight excerpts shown in Table 1, 6 figures are supplied below (Figures

3-8) to show a precise explanation of the most noteworthy verbal and non-verbal

realizations of persuasive strategies by the presenters in their videos. Each of these

videos makes use, in most instances, of a coherent multimodal ensemble that

effectively interacts with the most frequent persuasive strategies.

Figure 3. Multimodal and persuasive resources from VR19

Figure 3 provides an example of a coherent multimodal ensemble, enabling the

speaker to capture the audience’s attention and present himself as a strong

candidate for the job. Through a blend of verbal and non-verbal multimodal cues,

he introduces the section interpreted as using pressure tactics with a direct question

aimed at steering the audience’s interpretation toward his desired outcome. For

instance, he poses the direct question, “Why should you pick me out of seven

billion people living on this planet?” [VR19], a persuasive tactic intended to

anticipate and control the audience’s response. This strategy is accompanied by a

metaphoric gesture (i.e. an open hand facing upward) conveying candor and

truthfulness, and seeking rapport. These persuasive strategies are depicted in the

upper images of the ensemble.

Furthermore, the applicant appears to purposefully use different embodied modes

in order to captivate the audience’s attention, employing them as a persuasive

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tactic. For example, he often incorporates head movements, such as bobbing of

the head when shifting his gaze to the left side of the frame, along with a range of

facial expressions to emphasize his points. Particularly notable is the use of an

eyebrow-raising gesture in conjunction with the sentence “I truly believe that I

can bring a real and positive impact to the organization from day one” (lower right

image). These resources, combined with different filmic modes, enhance the

effectiveness of the candidate’s message and the way it is delivered. For instance,

the excerpted footage opens with the speaker in frontal orientation (i.e. proxemics)

and shifts to a lateral orientation to introduce a new topic (lower left image).

Additionally, there is a shift in camera angle, starting with a medium shot of the

speaker and then transitioning to a close-up shot to highlight his message and

establish rapport as a persuasive strategy.

In short, this speaker utilizes semiotic resources such as speech, head movement,

facial expressions, proxemics and camera shots to emphasize, capture attention,

anticipate a response from the audience, and seek rapport with them as persuasive

tactics.

The message delivered by the speaker in Figure 4 is, to some extent, coherent from

a multimodal perspective, and his presentation predominantly relies on embodied

modes to accomplish the communicative aim of the genre. There is a noticeable

variation in the way gestures are performed, for example, when the speaker uses his

fingers to enumerate points: his intention seems to be to emphasize information

he considers significant (persuasive strategy) and at the same time he is making the

message easy to understand (processing aids as a persuasive strategy in the lower

right image) by visually showing with a gesture the number one, since the speaker

later remarks, “I’m sure I can bring a really positive energy to the organization

from day one” [VR20].

Regarding posture, throughout the excerpt, he remains seated in a stretched-out

position, employing the persuasive strategies of attention-getting and rapport to

create a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Moreover, the camera captures frontal

shots from a medium distance to build further rapport. However, at some points

his posture, for example, in the upper right image with his arms inward and

directing his body to the side does not project the message in the same way and

rather minimizes his physical presence. Therefore, there is an incoherence between

both embodied modes (speech and posture) in this case.

In sum, this example shows the orchestration of gestures, posture and camera

shots, mainly contributing to developing the following persuasive strategies:

emphasis, processing aids, attention-getting and rapport. However, it should be

noted that they do not act in isolation. Instead, they are interconnected to fulfill

the communicative purpose of the genre.

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Observing the performance of the speaker in VR20 (Figure 4) alongside that of

the speaker in VR23 (Figure 5), certain similarities can be noted, particularly in the

frequent use of embodied modes. Specifically, both speakers employ the iconic

gesture of enumerating with their fingers, along with the eyebrow raise (observed

in the facial expression in the upper left image), enacting the persuasive strategy of

attention-getting (i.e. when the speaker raises his eyebrows, he conveys surprise or

extreme attention and expects the audience to align with this feeling and be

surprised and attentive as well). However, the speaker in Figure 5 closes his eyes

momentarily to pause and consider his next words. This action can be interpreted

as a metaphoric representation of silence and a sign that he is now concentrating

on remembering the message rather than on the audience (lower right image).

In this sense, the embodied mode does not contribute to the persuasive message

he aims to deliver, or, in other words, gaze is not part of the persuasive multimodal

orchestration in this specific example. Nevertheless, the speaker uses the persuasive

strategy of attention-getting, realized through gestures, facial expression and

speech, which act as a whole.

Figure 4. Multimodal and persuasive resources from VR20

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Figure 5. Multimodal and persuasive resources from VR23

Three speakers [VR19, VR20 and VR23] in Figures 3, 4 and 5 are observed wearing

light-colored shirts, interpreted as a disembodied mode to deliberately convey

reliability and politeness. Indeed, in any online performance, the selection of an

appropriate outfit is crucial for making a strong impression and signaling personality

(Ruiz-Garrido and Palmer-Silveira 2023). Nonetheless, a particularly notable

instance of a disembodied mode is the T-shirt of a technology-education company

(i.e. clothing) worn by the speaker in VR21 (Figure 6), seemingly chosen intentionally

to demonstrate pride in the training in technology she received at the institution

(upper right image). This coincides with the statement “As a recent graduate from

the Iron Yard, I’m an excellent candidate for a company”. Moreover, she shows

expressiveness by using facial expressions, with eyebrow raises aimed at capturing

attention (lower left image) and smiles, fostering rapport as a persuasive strategy.

A similar example is found in VR24 (Figure 7), where the speaker opts for a ‘bow

tie’ as a means of setting herself apart from the other candidates (attention-getting

strategy). She maintains an eloquent manner, employing facial expressions

throughout the video, including eyebrow raises and smiles (lower right image), to

establish rapport as a persuasive tactic. Additionally, she strategically emphasizes

certain aspects of her message over others, employing embodied modes through

gestures (iconic and beat) and speech (“I’m one of those”). She employs her

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fingers coherently as well as a persuasive strategy (processing aids in the upper and

lower left images), orchestrating the presentation of concepts in a specific sequence

while listing her strengths (“I am convinced that you are looking for a young,

creative, hard-working, reliable, and committed employee who will do their best”).

It should be highlighted that, despite the fact that both speakers use their fingers

to point to themselves for attention-getting (persuasive strategy), they do so in

different ways and achieve different effects. The first speaker is pointing to herself

with her thumb (upper left image in VR21 in Figure 6), which is a more specific

way of pointing, which makes the gesture more aggressive. With this gesture, the

speaker controls the response of the audience (persuasive strategy) by explicitly

directing their gaze to her. On the other hand, the second speaker touches her

shoulders with her open hands to point to herself in a subtler and more affectionate

way, building rapport (upper left image in VR24 in Figure 7).

To conclude, in both examples, the multimodal ensemble is established by

disembodied modes (i.e. clothing) and embodied modes (i.e. facial expression,

gestures, speech). The verbal and non-verbal realizations of persuasive strategies

that contribute most to both excerpts are attention-getting, rapport, emphasis,

processing aids and controlling the response of the audience.

Figure 6. Multimodal and persuasive resources from VR21

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In VR25 (Figure 8), the speaker makes use of the text overlaid onto video (upper

left image) as filmic modes. In this specific example, the speaker employs the direct

question “Why should a company employ me?” to support her speech (emphasis).

Additionally, she provides the audience with visual support (processing aid) to

anticipate and control responses, since the audience is prompted to interpret her

speech as the answer to her question when they read it. She presents her speech in

a somewhat emotionless way, although certain facial expressions, such as eyebrow

raises (upper right image), a subtle smile (lower right image) and closed eyes

during pauses (lower left image), can also be discerned. Once again, the pause in

her speech while she closes her eyes may suggest that she needs time to think about

her message and, in turn, seems not to contribute to the multimodal coherence.

In sum, the ensemble is orchestrated by the combined use of filmic (i.e. written

words) as well as embodied modes, such as facial expressions, which lead to the

realization of different persuasive strategies (i.e. emphasis, processing aid, control

of responses) but in an apparently insufficient way.

To conclude, all the multimodal ensembles orchestrated by the speakers produce a

suitable and comprehensible message, fostering persuasion through a variety of

embodied, disembodied and filmic modes (e.g. facial expression, gestures, head

movements and clothing as the most salient ones). The eight excerpts use a similar

choice of persuasive strategies (rapport, emphasis and processing aids) realized

Figure 7. Multimodal and persuasive resources from VR24

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through several modes (mainly gestures, facial expressions, head movements and

speech). However, when there is a lack of coherence across modes (i.e. modes do

not cohere with each other), the persuasive effect can be diminished. Three

excerpts (VR20, VR23 and VR25 in Figures 4, 5 and 8) seem incoherent in their

use of modes. Their speech as well as their facial expression is flat at certain points,

showing no emotion, and it may reveal disengagement from the communicative

situation, which is to persuade the audience. As a result, the use of modes becomes

less coherent and, consequently, less effective with regard to the communicative

aim of the genre. The rest of the excerpts (VR19, VR21 and VR24 in Figures 3, 6

and 7) orchestrated the multimodal ensemble in a more coherent way. The

persuasive strategies in the excerpts are deployed through a series of semiotic

modes, which consistently contribute to achieving the communicative intention of

the genre.

In order to visually show the observed features that foster the persuasive nature in

VRs, a summary table (Table 3) is presented as follows:

Figure 8. Multimodal and persuasive resources from VR25

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PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL REALIZATIONS

Attention-getting Head movement (i.e. beat) [VR19]

Gesture (i.e. iconic) [VR20] + [VR23]

Facial expression (i.e. eyebrow-raising) [VR20] + [VR23]

Clothing + speech [VR21]

Clothing [VR24]

Gesture (i.e. iconic) [VR21] + [VR24]

Anticipation and control of response Speech (i.e. direct question) [VR19]

Speech (i.e. direct question) [VR25]

Rapport Gesture (i.e. metaphoric) [VR19]

Proxemics (i.e. lateral and frontal) [VR19]

Camera shot (i.e. middle and close-up) [VR19]

Proxemics (i.e. lateral and frontal) [VR20]

Camera shot (i.e. middle and frontal) [VR20]

Facial expression (i.e. eyebrow-raising) [VR21]

Facial expression (i.e. eyebrow-raising and smile) [VR24]

Emphasis Facial expressions (i.e. eyebrow-raising) + speech [VR19]

Gesture (i.e. iconic and beat) + speech [VR24]

Facial expressions (i.e. eyebrow-raising and smile) [VR25]

Processing aids Gesture (i.e. iconic) + speech [VR20]

Gesture (i.e. iconic) + speech [VR24]

Writing (i.e. visual support) [VR25]

Table 3. Features that foster persuasiveness in VRs

4. Conclusion

This study has explored the presence of persuasive strategies via the interplay of

multimodal realizations in VRs. In professional settings, multimodality has become

essential due to the need to effectively transmit information as well as convince

audiences across a range of digital platforms (Jewitt and Kress 2010). Digitality has

also developed into a pervasive force in professional genres, influencing how

individuals present themselves, connect with others, communicate and conduct

business (Hafner 2018). Embracing digital elements and practices is now

fundamental for professionals to stay competitive in today’s evolving landscape.

To answer the research questions posed, I closely examined the verbal and non-

verbal realizations of persuasive strategies in VRs from a multimodal perspective

using the software MAV. Considering that the fragments selected for analysis are

part of a section that uses pressure tactics to convince the audience to take action,

a wide range of verbal and non-verbal realizations of the five persuasive strategies

identified are explored in the digital genre of the VR. For instance, raising and

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maintaining the interest of the audience, as a persuasive strategy, is mainly realized

by gestures, head movement and facial expressions (e.g. embodied modes), and

clothing is the only element identified as disembodied mode. In addition, in order

to prompt desirable responses from the audience, it is noteworthy how the speaker

poses a direct question (e.g. disembodied mode). The findings of this research

reveal that the attempt to engage with the audience and build a relationship of

empathy and mutual understanding as a persuasive strategy requires a substantial

number of embodied modes (i.e. gestures and facial expressions) and filmic modes

(i.e. lateral, frontal proxemics and middle and close-up camera shots). To highlight

parts of the message so that they become more salient, most of the speakers employ

the eyebrow-raising gesture, smile, gestures and speech. Lastly, speakers process

the message in real time to make it easy to understand by employing a significant

element added in the postproduction process (i.e. text overlaid onto the video for

visual support). This filmic mode is supported by the embodied one, mainly

through gestures and speech.

Interestingly, the embodied modes play a relevant role concerning the

communicative intention of the speaker since they are present in all the fragments

selected. Furthermore, the most prevalent embodied modes are gestures, facial

expressions and speech. Nonetheless, even though the disembodied modes are not

always present in all the excerpts, the most frequent one is clothing. External

elements such as background and objects do not seem decisive to achieve the

communicative aim of the fragments analyzed. The most prominent filmic modes

are proxemics, camera shots and visual support. Likewise, images, music and sound

effects are missing in these fragments.

The findings of the current study indicate that VRs have marked persuasive

function, which is enhanced by the use of multimodal ensembles considering the

excerpts analyzed. Waung et al. (2014) claim that VRs constitute a rich medium

because multiple verbal and non-verbal cues are employed. Nonetheless, in certain

instances (e.g. VR20 and VR25) multimodal ensembles do not cohere with

persuasive strategies and, as a consequence, the communicative intention may be

altered. In both fragments, the pause in their speech while they close their eyes can

be interpreted as time needed to think about their message; as a result, these VRs

may not be fully persuasive. In turn, coherence in the use of semiotic modes and

persuasive realizations is paramount to this purpose.

As a conclusion, the interrelation between the various semiotic modes identified

in the MDA approach presented in this paper along with the persuasive

strategies introduced in the methodology section can pave the ground for

further genre studies. Due to their potential impact on both the professional

community and the general audience, individuals can take advantage of the

María Ángeles Mestre-Segarra

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1. The present article is part of a

wider study approved by the Ethics Committee

of Universitat Jaume I, with the file number

“CD/41/2022”, which allows the use of the

videos and images extracted for academic

purposes.

power of audiovisual communication to convey their professional achievements,

non-verbal communicative skills and overall suitability for a desired position

(Flannery et al. 2014).

As for pedagogical implications, the analysis presented in this paper provides

valuable insights applicable to the creation of teaching materials for English for

Specific Purposes courses. Here, the VR could serve as a teaching resource for

honing multimodal skills and mastering essential persuasive strategies for effective

communication in professional settings. The teaching of VRs appears to be

pedagogically beneficial, as it can help refine the inclusion of oral and digital genres

in higher education curricula (O’Halloran et al. 2017).

Given the limited size of the dataset, further analysis is required to enlarge and

refine the methodological framework of multimodal realizations and persuasive

strategies, especially by including other types of remediated digital genres. In

addition, it should be noted that there has been no real check of the candidates’

effectiveness, that is, no information is provided about whether they were

ultimately hired. However, it is my hope that this paper provides a flexible and

easily adaptable analytical framework for future digital genre studies in video

formats.

Notes

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Received: 02/11/2023

Accepted: 27/05/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Appendix . Description of the dataset

VRs Duration

Professional/

academic

activity

Gender Impact

(Views)

Year of

publication

Video type

(Edited video)

Camera

shot

VR19 2’ 10’’ Publicist M 977,826 2012 person + audio face, half,

full body

VR20 2’ 34’’ Salesman M 16,652 2019 image + music +

audio + person half body

VR21 1’ 52’’ Web developer F 124,584 2016 image + music +

audio + person half body

VR22 1’ 38’’ Student M 22,871 2020 image + music +

audio + person half body

VR23 2’ 50’’ Travel

manager M 5,655 2020 image + music +

audio + person half body

VR24 2’ 57’’ Student F 293,152 2014 image + music +

audio + person half body

VR25 2’ 02’’ Project

manager F 865 2019 person + audio half body

VR26 0’ 46’’ Sales manager F 202,454 2010 person + audio half body

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Appendix 2. MAV interface for multimodal and persuasive annotations

The left corner contains a video window where the clips can be played; the right

corner of the interface leaves space for verbal transcriptions as well as a list of strips.

These strips are divided into the sound strip, which displays a waveform of the

audio in the clip, and supplemental strips, created manually with the aim of

annotating all relevant semiotic modes employed in the excerpts selected (Bernad-

Mechó 2022).

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Abstract

This paper delves into the realm of art therapy, offering tentative evidence of

the effectiveness of reading in anorexia nervosa (AN) recovery based on an

analysis rooted in three theoretical frameworks: cognitive literary criticism,

space studies and the perspective of care. In the first part, AN is discussed as a

spatial disorder and one which compromises practices of care. The second part

of the paper explores narrative transportation theory, a cognitive literary

studies paradigm that explores the various psychological effects of reading, and

on mental imagery, a concept that focuses on the mental effects of descriptions

and imagery in books. By drawing on research from these spheres, this

theoretical framework serves as a valuable lens to frame the third part of the

paper, which addresses the pivotal role played by reading in Laura Freeman’s

journey toward overcoming anorexia, as depicted in her autobiographical work

The Reading Cure: How Books Restored my Appetite (2018). In particular, the

study offers a close reading of some of the narratives Freeman addresses in her

work, meaning the fiction and non-fiction texts she found inspiring, which

exclude poetry and drama, and which stimulated her appetite through vivid

descriptions of food.

Keywords: British autobiography, anorexia, space, bibliotherapy, care.

SPACES OF S(H)ELF-CARE: THERAPEUTIC

NARRATIVE READINGS IN ANOREXIA

ESPACIOS DE AUTO(FICCIÓN)-CUIDADO:

LECTURAS NARRATIVAS TERAPÉUTICAS

EN LA ANOREXIA

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249736

ROCÍO RIESTRA-CAMACHO

Universidad de Oviedo

riestrarocio@uniovi.es

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1791-9297>

Rocío Riestra-Camacho

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Resumen

Este artículo se adentra en el ámbito de las terapias artísticas ofreciendo evidencia

de la potencialidad de la lectura en la recuperación de la anorexia, abriendo paso a

un enfoque novedoso enraizado en tres marcos teóricos principales: los estudios

literarios cognitivos, los estudios del espacio y la perspectiva del cuidado. En la

primera parte del artículo, se discute la anorexia como un trastorno del espacio y

como una condición que compromete las prácticas de cuidado. La segunda parte

del artículo se adentra en la teoría narrativa del transporte, un paradigma de los

estudios literarios cognitivos que explora los efectos psicológicos de la lectura, así

como en la imaginación mental, un concepto que se centra en los efectos mentales

de las descripciones e imágenes en los libros. A partir de investigación proveniente

de estos campos, este marco teórico da paso a la tercera parte del artículo, que

aborda el papel crucial que desempeña la lectura en el viaje de Laura Freeman hacia

la superación de la anorexia, tal como se describe en su obra autobiográfica The

Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite (2018). En concreto, este estudio

hace una lectura atenta de algunas de las narrativas que Freeman aborda en su

obra; es decir, los textos de ficción y no ficción que la inspiraron, y que excluyen

poesía y teatro, a estimular su apetito a través de imaginativas descripciones de

alimentos.

Palabras clave: Autobiografía británica, anorexia, espacio, biblioterapia, cuidado.

1. Introduction

Individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) think obsessively and negatively about

food. Time is spent ruminating about food or meal times (Vitousek and Brown

2015: 224), and relationships are constituted by people with whom to go out and

avoid eating (Warin 2010: 54-59). Similarly, the experience of space is mediated by

a constant threat of food encounters. Centering the attention on space, when a

person with AN perceives places in relation to eating, she experiences the process

as incredibly threatening and anxiety-causing, which mediates her motivations to

eat or not (Augustynowicz 2015).

Motivations to eat in AN are related to the question of care (Lavis 2015). To eat

and to be fed have to do with basic self-care and other care practices. But in AN,

people display extreme reluctance to eat and, as a result, to recover from their

illness. Resistance to treatment is sustained by ego-syntonic symptoms, that is, by

a frequent wish to maintain their eating disorder (ED) (Fassino and Abbate-Daga

2013). As a result of ego-syntonic features, motivation to change the behaviors

associated with the condition diminish. This is one reason why AN is a uniquely

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treatment-resistant condition, and one in which people are highly prone to relapse.

Nevertheless, the question of what constitutes full recovery from AN is elusive, as

systematic criteria are not universally agreed upon.

Modifying the negative perception of space in relation to eating can contribute to

the decision to engage in practices of (self-)care, and therefore, to recover from

AN. Reading could promote this change in perception thanks to the inclusion of

descriptions of spaces that evoke positive connotations of food and the act of

eating. In the first part of this article, I will examine AN as a spatial condition, then

I will analyse the idea of “s(h)elf-care”, a concept that will relate narrative reading

to therapeutic effects. In the subsequent sections of this study, I will examine

evidence and discuss certain limitations derived from the experience of Laura

Freeman, a writer formerly diagnosed with AN who insists that it was through

reading “wonderful descriptions of food in books” that she had her “appetite

stirred” and thus began to “eat again” (2018a).

2. AN as a Spatial Condition

1.1. Physical Spaces of AN

The space that our bodies occupy influences our sense of body perception (Espeset

et al. 2012). A balanced bodily perception is one in which the person is, overall,

satisfied with the way her body looks and how she imagines others perceive it. But

several conditions can alter a person’s perception of their body. A person with a

restrictive ED may believe they are too fat, either temporarily or sustainedly in

time. In AN specifically, public displays of the body (at a swimming pool or a

changing room, for example) create a context-dependent sense of being fat, while

looking at themselves in a mirror can make the individual see their emaciated state

(Espeset et al. 2012).

From a phenomenological perspective, AN may be understood as a spatial disorder.

This ED was in fact defined by Orbach as “an expression of a woman’s confusion

about how much space she may take up in the world” (1986: 14). Refraining from

eating is the most evident behavior in AN. It is a direct attempt to lose weight, but

it is also related to subtler components of the condition, such as the sense of

disgust prompted by the act of eating or the fear of contaminating the purity of the

body via food intake (Warin 2010).

In AN, motivations to avoid eating and lose weight can also be seen as an attempt

to minimize “the consumption of space in an attempt to appear physically smaller

and disappear” (Warin 2005: 104). Thus, refraining from eating is self-reinforcing

as a consequence of its correlation with weight loss and dis-occupation of space.

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Interviews with people with AN support this view of the condition as one sustained

by a desire to have a body that increasingly takes up less and less space in the world.

The medical anthropologist Lavis found that for the group that she interviewed,

AN was seen as “a space to zone into” (2015: 11). For example, she highlights

that, for one participant, AN was described as “my space” and for another as “my

little bubble” or even as “a safety net” (2015: 11-12). In her spatial analysis of AN,

anthropologist Warin showed how the participants she interviewed repeatedly

spoke of a need to “fade away”, “dissolve into thin air” or “fit into a matchbox”

(2005: 103).

1.2. Social Spaces and Careful Eating in AN

Central to the relationship between eating and space is the understanding that

places need not only be understood as geographical spaces, but as “spaces of

relatedness” (Warin 2006). Although eating is an act that can be performed alone

or in groups, eating in the company of others is certainly a popular social activity.

When there is no pathology involved, group eating normally involves a higher

consumption of food in comparison to when the person eats on her own.

Furthermore, we also tend to eat more when we go out, merely because there are

more choices to select from than normal. This phenomenon is known as “sensory-

specific satiety”.

In AN, eating in the company of others poses two difficulties. For one, eating is

problematic in itself, because AN is characterized by an aversion to food and

weight gain, and therefore to the act of eating. On the other hand, AN is usually

isolating, since social occasions and contact with people are often avoided. Lavis

remarks how one of her participants described AN as “a world that you live in,

that’s separate from everybody else” (2015: 11). People with AN can find it

difficult to engage in intimate romantic or intimate friendship relationships despite

having a desire to have such connections (Warin 2010: 82-83). Moreover,

individuals with AN may also keep away from family members. One major reason

to avoid social contact in AN is precisely that meetings with people are frequently

centered around food. As Warin notes, “social gatherings around food such as

meal times, drinks with friends or any social event present a level of anxiety that can

only be circumnavigated by withdrawal” (2005: 9).

Someone with AN will therefore commonly try to eat alone. This allows them to

control the act of eating, letting them choose what and how much to eat. In order

to eat alone, people with this ED adopt various strategies. For example, they might

lie about having already eaten when it is not the case. Furtive eating is a classic

feature of binge ED, bulimia or obesity, but people with AN also eat secretively

(Warin 2010: 87), for instance, at night.

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Warin discusses interesting findings about how her participants negotiated space in

order to maintain eating-withdrawal behaviors. For example, she points to the fact

that participants decided to only share food time with a few “privileged”

acquaintances and that “negotiating the commensality around food was a constant

dilemma for participants” (2010: 59). As such, she could only share a “coffee or a

diet Coke” (2010: 59) with them, but never a full meal. When talking about the

family home, participants in Warin’s observation referred to how they “retreated

to bedrooms, toilets (water closets) and bathrooms” (2005: 19) to eat on their

own. Warin’s research sheds light on the ways in which individuals who engage in

eating-withdrawal behaviors negotiate and maintain their habits. Overall, Warin’s

findings highlight the deliberate actions taken by individuals to uphold their

withdrawal behaviors and the impact it has on their social interactions within and

outside of the home.

The above only applies to individuals in outpatient care, which is the preferred

treatment modality in AN (NICE 2004). However, there is still a substantial

minority who receive inpatient care, where eating behaviors are monitored.

Health regulations determine that “patients may require inpatient care if they

are suicidal or have life-threatening medical complications […] or weight

below 85 percent of their healthy body weight” (Williams et al. 2008: 187).

Given the clinical risks of severe emaciation, inpatient treatments focus on

refeeding the patient. For Lavis, this makes food “a central vector of care”

(2015: 5).

Feeding in the context of in-hospital AN treatment is, however, a highly

controversial issue as well as a problematic imposition for patients. Feeding patients

is considered the main practice of care in AN treatment, but ego-syntonic

symptoms may mean that patients need to be compelled to eat (or even force-fed

via tube-feeding). Despite being “only one outcome of interest” (NICE 2004),

AN treatment is focused on weight gain but not on learning to eat more

autonomously. Thus, a hospital experience does not prepare someone with AN to

care for herself and continue eating after being discharged.

Another problem about inpatient care in AN is that hospital rooms “conflate all

spaces” (Warin 2005: 111), since they function simultaneously as bedroom,

bathroom and the place where patients eat, alone. The result of being confined to

a hospital bed is the reinforcement of maladaptive “closeted” behaviors in AN.

The hospital room becomes the space where patients avoid social networks and the

relatedness of eating, which is precisely one of the factors sustaining the ED. Even

more, the re-configuration of private spaces in hospital treatment might allow

patients to outwit personnel and avoid food consumption, since patients spend

most of their time alone.

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1.3. The Mental Space of AN

For someone with AN, food does not only take up physical space in the literal

sense of the word; rather, food, eating and weight dominate patients’ train of

thought. This creates attentional and memory biases: people with AN pay more

attention to and evoke more memories about food-related stimuli than cohorts

without the ED (Vitousek and Brown 2015).

To constantly think about food may seem contradictory for someone who arranges

her life around food avoidance. The short explanation is that people with AN

experience a rebound effect, and the more they try not to eat and think about food,

the more they will experience invasive thoughts and the urge to eat. These ruminations

are, however, perceived as consistent with the individual’s aims, since such level of

preoccupation with food is necessary to achieve precisely the “right” amount of intake.

From a discourse perspective, the disorder is described by patients as an illness

which literally occupies mental space. As Maddy, a recovered AN patient who took

part in Warin’s study, stated, “[t]he place where anorexia is, it’s a very narrow

space, and there is little room for anything else” (2010: 7). Laura Freeman, the

author whose work is the focus of this article, complains that AN made her feel

“trapped” and that she “needed to find something that would take me out of my

thoughts” (2018b: 145, emphasis added).

To fully understand the disorder, it is then essential to examine it from a

cognitive perspective, which offers evidence not only with regard to what a

person with AN thinks about but also how they think. In short, a framework of

AN needs to explain how people with AN think and feel about food. On a

general level, AN reduces cognitive flexibility, which means that it is difficult for

them to change their thoughts (Vitousek and Brown 2015). Some of the

emotions that food and eating conjure in AN are fear, disgust, shame or guilt,

whereas food avoidance generates pleasure, a sense of control or feelings

associated with purity and cleanliness. However, people with AN often find it

difficult to assess and express their emotions (Esplen 2013), which in psychology

is known as “alexythimia”.

A comprehensive model for understanding AN could be based on Fairburn and

Beglin’s famous Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q), a

structured clinical interview that assesses the main features and associated

psychopathology of EDs. The EDE-Q has shown high reliability, internal

consistency and validity across multiple studies (Lev-Ari et al. 2021). The

questionnaire comprises questions related to restraint, eating concerns, weight

concerns and shape concerns. Below I illustrate the questionnaire items that are

relevant for AN from a cognitive-affective perspective, specifically.

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In AN, restraint concerns appear in the form of thoughts related to a wish to limit

or avoid intake of specific foods to influence shape or weight, as well as strict eating

rules and a desire to have an empty stomach. Purgative behaviors are also adopted,

such as spitting out or throwing away food, vomiting or evacuating meals through

the abuse of laxatives. Eating concerns cause thoughts to be focused on foods,

eating or calories as well as fearful thoughts of losing control over one’s eating or

being seen eating by others. Weight concerns include feeling fat and the desire to

lose weight, and thoughts of dissatisfaction with current weight. Finally, shape

concerns have to do with equivalent trains of thought and emotions, but focused

more specifically on shape, for example experiencing fear about the stomach’s

outline after eating.

It can be said that AN literally constricts the mind of the those with the illness,

limiting their psychological horizons and life possibilities: preoccupations with

food, eating, and weight permeate thoughts and mental processes, creating

attentional and memory biases toward food-related stimuli. Conceptualizing this

model through the concept of the “mental space of AN” enhances comprehension

of its phenomenology, since the idea aids in linking the cognitive overload induced

by AN to the corresponding rigidity of behavior and emotions related to food and

eating that characterize the disorder.

2. Spatial Reading and Caring

Fiction organizes a sequence of events according to different dimensions which

essentially include time, space and causality. Descriptions serve to capture the

spatial dimension, and when we read a description of a place in a story, this

information activates representations of mental spaces in our imagination

(Speer et al. 2009). One way to approach the representation of spaces in

literature is to examine narrative transportation theory, where the term

“transportation” is defined as the “feeling of being lost in a story”, that is to

say, the moment when readers get “immersed” in a narrative world (Green

2021: 87). This process can arouse pleasant or unpleasant feelings, exactly

because spaces can be positively or negatively perceived and pictured. The

theory of therapeutic landscapes explores the beneficial properties of being and

imagining oneself in certain spaces. Both narrative transportation theory and

the theory of therapeutic landscapes are useful to understand how narratives

can lead to therapeutic appraisals of space, and, uniquely, to therapeutic

readings of eating spaces in AN.

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2.1. Therapeutic Spaces

People with AN may benefit from modifying their perceptions of eating contexts,

causing these to evolve from sources of dread to safe spaces. In AN cognitive

behavioral therapy, patients are helped to change their behaviors and negative

concept of food and eating so that they can start feeding again (Vitousek and

Brown 2015: 225-226). However, no AN therapy program has ever specifically

focused on the therapeutic possibilities that spaces, landscapes or geography have

to offer despite their potential to alter eating behavior and food perceptions.

Since the 1990s, the idea of therapeutic spaces has been gaining momentum.

Particularly, the publication of Gesler’s article on therapeutic landscapes in 1992

established medical geography as a discipline of inquiry. Gesler argued that it was

crucial to “explore why certain places or situations are perceived to be therapeutic”

(1992: 735). In his theory, Gesler employed the notion of therapeutic landscapes

as a geographical metaphor to facilitate the exploration of the beneficial properties

of space.

Early publications in this area focused on the idea of health geographies as referring

to physical spaces, despite Gesler’s figurative theorization of the notion of

landscape. At the beginning, scholars mostly researched people’s spatial perceptions

of sites considered sacred, such as Lourdes, or health facilities like hospitals and

clinics. Health geographers later expanded their conceptualization of healing

spaces to incorporate therapeutic “networks”; that is, informal social systems

through which people gain support and establish practices of care. For Smyth,

therapeutic networks include “kinship groups and networks of care provided by

family, friends, therapists and other agents of support” (2005: 490). In therapeutic

networks, practices of care are enacted in settings that are more casual than clinical

care, including care delivered in the home, the community as well as “bookstores”

(Smyth 2005: 493).

Andrews adds another layer of complexity to the notion of therapeutic space,

insisting that the concept should account for the idea that “therapeutic associations

and effects may be experienced somewhere other than in physical locations and,

specifically, in spaces and places created by the mind” (2004: 304). “Mental imagery

of place” is the area of psychological research that explores this phenomenon.

Psychoanalytic therapists (Philo and Parr 2003; Callard 2003) are early proponents

of the therapeutic potential of a mental imagery of place. In a nutshell, they suggest

that instructing patients to evoke pleasant spaces in their imagination can be

beneficial in the processing and treatment of phobias and trauma.

A problem Andrews identifies in psychoanalytic analyses of therapeutic landscapes

is that “imagination can be an elusive and slippery human capacity to access and

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manipulate, even for experienced therapists” (2004: 308). Moreover, in the

context of current research into mental imagery, it remains difficult to measure the

overall contribution that mental imagery therapy has with regard to health.

Methodological difficulties of this kind are in fact the main reason why

psychoanalytic theories have become largely discredited. Despite these drawbacks,

evoking unpleasant simulations of space constitutes a distressing experience, but

the opposite remains true as well. Andrews concludes that “the current lesson

learned from psychoanalytic geographies is straightforward; a recognition that

therapeutic places may not necessarily exist in ‘real’ (linear) time and in physical

space. Rather, they could exist as spaces and places created by, and located in, the

mind” (2004: 309).

I suggest that medical geography could open up the research field to include not

only physical or even self-imagined spaces, but also therapeutic spaces created by

reading fiction. After all, when we engage with a story, we have to create an

imagined space in which the narrative events take place. In other words, fiction

causes readers to evoke mental imagery, including powerful spatial imagery (Speer

et al. 2009). This effect of reading works of fiction is more natural than the artificial

manipulation of imagination by psychotherapists, and it also opens up the

possibility of controllably measuring mental imagery, as it becomes elicited by an

input stimulus. In particular, mental imagery effects and, more specifically, spatial

imagery, have been assessed in narrative transportation theory, the field which

examines the psychological feeling of losing oneself in a story.

2.2. Narrative Transportation Theory

Using a metaphor of traveling, transportation theory postulates “that experiences

of narrative […] create a mental state in which the experiencing subjects […] ‘lose

themselves’ in the story they encounter” (Schleifer and Vannatta 2019: 5). The

process of narrative transportation can occur across different types of media,

including books, cinema, drama or videogames. Both factual and fictive stories

create transportation effects. In the case of fiction, events need not be real, but

consistent in the storyworld created. Researchers have identified four major effects

constituting the phenomenon of narrative transportation that result from reading

fiction: identification, reduced counterarguing, emotional engagement and mental

imagery.

Identification and transportation are related but separate concepts. Identification

has to do with character, whereas transportation has more to do with the

dimensions of time and space. Identification takes place when readers see their

values aligned with those of a character in the story, usually the protagonist.

Succinctly, it refers to the process by which readers project themselves into the

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experiences and emotions of characters, often those with whom they share

similarities, to create a sense of connection. This phenomenon is crucial in shaping

reader response and engagement with a text (Tukachinsky 2021). Transportation,

on the other hand, refers to “the feeling of being immersed in a narrative, a state

of cognitive, affective, and mental imagery engagement” (Fitzgerald and Green

2017: 49). It involves a combination of attention, imagery, and the feeling of

becoming immersed in the narrative world. The potential of narratives to effectively

make audiences feel “absorbed” is proposed as the main mechanism through

which readers identify with characters, making them more likely to adopt the

beliefs, attitudes and, ultimately, the behaviors expressed in the story (Murphy et

al. 2013).

Reduced counterarguing is explained by the fact that fiction is not intentionally

persuasive. As a result, readers spend less time and effort establishing counterfactuals

to the narrative. If they identify with a character, it is likely that they will be

persuaded by her values, as the effect is not perceived as being externally imposed.

This effect, which is particular to fictional narratives, has been found to increase

over time, because the ideas become integrated into real-life knowledge, a

circumstance known as “absolute sleeper effect” (Appel and Richter 2007: 113).

Therefore, reduced counterarguing is useful to self-generate motivation to change

behaviors in the long-term (Murphy et al. 2013). Lastly, emotional engagement is

the evocation of feelings and affect that takes place when readers are immersed in

a story. The stronger the emotions the story conjures, the easier it is for a reader

to feel moved by it (Green and Brock 2002).

2.2.1. Mental Imagery and Mental Health

As argued above, narratives inspire the formation of mental images. These can be

presented to subjects in the form of drawings or moving images if we think about

comics or cinema, respectively. But mental images can also be created by

descriptions in the text that readers need to visualize on their own. In Healing

Images: The Role of Imagination in Health (2013), Sheikh, a Professor of

psychology, reviews the state of knowledge concerning the health consequences of

using imagery in a range of fields, including pain management, trauma or

emergency department care, among others. One of the most compelling forms of

evidence is derived from the physiological impacts of using imagery within clinical

environments. Mental images, in particular, have been shown to regulate

physiological arousal in patients dealing with various health conditions, increasing

their capacity for affective regulation.

From the point of view of narrative persuasion studies, Green and Brock’s

transportation-imagery model (2002) highlights the role of visual imagery in

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transportation-based belief change. The authors demonstrate how narratives that

evoke rich mental imagery are highly persuasive. Using a short story rich in

descriptive imagery, they showed that this narrative produced high transportability

and that this effect mediated belief change, positive evaluation of protagonists and

persuasiveness of story content, concluding that transportation imagery is a key

mechanism in narrative-based belief change (2002: 319). Mental imagery of space

can be assessed through the notion of “spatial presence”, defined as the feeling of

having moved to “an alternative space” in the context of narrative engagement

(Lyons, Tate and Ward 2013: 2). This concept of spatial presence is useful to

explore how reading elicits spatial mental imagery with relevant therapeutic effects

for readers.

From a psychosocial intervention perspective, Glavin and Montgomery emphasize

the role that spatial presence effects plays in mental health, when they argue that

stories allow patients to distance themselves from psychological disorder or trauma

(2017: 98). They propose that this kind of transportation into fictive worlds

mediates some of the beneficial effects that reading has for war veterans with post-

traumatic stress disorder.

In AN, this distancing effect of narrative reading can be overshadowed by ego-

syntonic symptoms. Individuals with AN are commonly motivated to aggravate

their disorder, and it has been shown that they purposefully seek to immerse

themselves in the fictive worlds of characters with EDs. For instance, AN memoirs

have been shown to be abused by patients “to exacerbate their anorexic thoughts

and behaviours” (Seaber 2016: 488). Troscianko provides additional evidence of

this phenomenon from the perspective of cognitive literary studies. In her survey,

Troscianko showed how literature on EDs is often used to “deliberately exacerbate

an eating disorder” (2018: 1).

Obtaining a distancing effect such as that provoked by narrative mental imagery

could be therapeutic in AN. People with the condition could benefit from

transporting themselves to story worlds that are unrelated to the ED framework.

In fact, a few controlled studies show modest to significant improvements in AN

using guided mental imagery. For instance, imagery has been used to improve

body image distortions or to identify stimuli precipitating disordered behaviors

(Esplen 2013: 281-282). It would be useful if readers with EDs became absorbed

in narratives rich in descriptions of characters eating and set in positive scenarios.

Transportation to this kind of scenes seems even more relevant in the case of AN

given that readers with the disorder might think that characters do not eat unless

mealtimes are specified in books (Troscianko 2018). By exposing themselves to

such explicit descriptions, people with AN may begin to challenge their belief that

not eating is conventional or a practice to align with.

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2.3. Practices of Care and Reading Therapy

Care can be provided to people or it can be practiced in the form of self-care. In

effect, care has been ideally defined as a “voluntary” practice. If we focus on self-

care, understood as “the provision of daily, socio-psychological, emotional, and

physical attention” (Kremer 2007: 17) we deliver to ourselves, it is not difficult to

imagine why illness compromises practices of self-care. In depression, patients can

be very lethargic, disabling them from getting out of bed, cleaning and dressing

themselves. In AN, social withdrawal, depressive symptoms and food avoidance

make it impossible to comply with basic forms of self-care.

Focusing on the question of eating in AN, there are different conceptualizations

of the relationships between feeding and caring. “Caring through food”, “caring-

as-feeding” or “food as care” (Lavis 2015) are some of the ways in which food can

be approached as a central vector of care. In AN, “refusal to eat […] comes to be

seen as a refusal of their care” (Lavis 2015: 6). Given that most people with AN

struggle with ego-syntonic symptoms but are treated on an outpatient basis,

recovery can thus be articulated as the capacity to engage in acts of self-care.

Periods of AN care (and therefore AN recovery) can be reduced when patients

receive complementary therapies, including reading therapy, which can be

prescribed in the form of self-help books. In self-therapy, which is one of the main

branches of bibliotherapy, patients are given self-help books normally to

complement psychological assistance. Self-help works normally used in

bibliotherapy interventions are non-fiction books written by psychologists and

trained psychotherapists that focus on motivating patients to change their

maladaptive behaviors and substitute them with more adaptive ones.

In AN, self-help books have been the norm in bibliotherapeutic interventions

(Troscianko 2017). Freeman, however, is skeptical of their usefulness when she

complains that “[t]here are too many self-help guides that say: get fit, lose weight,

make friends, find a hobby, revamp your wardrobe. […] Eat right —and right is

always avocado, chia and other whatnot” (2018b: 188-189). There is also some

evidence of the potential of memoirs about EDs in AN self-help therapy. In particular,

there is qualitative evidence of a recovery continuum whereby the influence an ED

memoir has on an individual depends on their recovery stage and will to recover

(Shaw and Homewood 2015). Given the results of this study, ED memoirs might be

therapeutic only when people with AN are already willing to attempt recovery. This

notion is consistent with the fact that AN is an ego-syntonic condition.

Fictional works remain an untapped resource in bibliotherapy, while they are

convenient and quite accessible candidates. According to Ellmann’s study, reading

is a common favorite pastime in AN (1995: 58). It has already been mentioned

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that people with AN deliberately read literature about EDs to exacerbate their

condition. But just as they read to worsen their state, reading could also be a form

of therapy. I have coined the expression “shelf-care” to refer to this idea of reading

books as a part of a self-care routine.

According to Cook-Cottone, self-care “is a set of active, daily behaviors that

operationalize what it means to take care of and appreciate the self” (2015: 102),

covering both the internal and external dimensions of the self. Practices that focus

on the internal experience include self-awareness, self-compassion as well as four

basic physical practices: eating, hydrating, moderate exercise and rest. In turn, self-

care practices that focus on the internal dimension of the self include the cultivation

of supportive relationships, the creation of “a body positive environment” and

“setting personal boundaries” (2015: 4).

Although the use of complementary therapies has been the subject of debate, self-

help books, dramatherapy or poetry therapy, among others, have also been shown

to play a role in AN care and recovery (for a review, see Riestra-Camacho et al.

2023). On the other hand, narrative reading has been scarcely used in AN therapy,

although this genre has untapped potential as a valuable resource in bibliotherapy

and as part of a self-care routine.

3. A Spatial Reading of Freeman’s AN Recovery Memoir

We shall now turn our attention to Freeman’s memoir and the notion of “spaces

of shelf-care”. The concept can be defined as the process by which reading may

broaden the spaces in which one can imagine oneself, resulting in therapeutic

outcomes. With this concept, I will focus on the role that fictional spatiality played

in Laura Freeman’s attempts to recover from her ED, which should not be

regarded as a straightforwardly successful or complete experience. Thus defined

and with this caveat in mind, the following section will examine selected extracts

from Freeman’s AN recovery memoir The Reading Cure: How Books Restored my

Appetite (2018). This book was chosen because it illustrates the role of narrative

transportation to potentially therapeutic eating spaces. I have divided the analysis

into three sections, each dedicated to a figurative type of space, rather than

structuring the sections according to literary genre, as Laura Freeman

simultaneously engaged with fiction books alongside other works.

3.1. Rural Spaces

A recurring motif in The Reading Cure is the idealized portrayal of natural eating

spaces. Andrews argues that in mental imagery therapy, “connecting with nature

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plays a significant part” (2004: 313). As Esplen has noted, nature imagery is used

in AN guided imagery therapy to attain relaxation and soothing (2013: 282). This

feature can be seen at the beginning of Freeman’s attempt at recovery, which was

sparked by reading descriptions of breakfast in the memoirs of the English war

poet Siegfried Sassoon. As the author notes, “[i]t began with Sassoon’s eggs. His

ham sandwiches eaten perched on a country gate. His slice of cherry tart at a very

good cricket area. My curiosity was piqued. Dare I say my stomach rumbled?”

(2018b: 14). This quote focuses on the description of food eaten in the countryside.

The foods are presented as tempting precisely because they are part of a picnic

context, with the “country gate” and “cricket area” evoking expansive fields of

grass in a romanticized English countryside.

As Freeman relates in the book, the solitude of her house was making it difficult

for the author to feel encouraged enough by Sassoon’s descriptions to move

herself to eat. This block gradually improved when Freeman started reading

about more fictional characters eating al fresco, like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry

Finn’s berries “over a campfire” and Kenneth Grahame’s “riverbank picnic” of

cold tongue and sandwiches in The Wind in the Willows (2018b: 171). As a result

of reading passages focusing on food and food baskets, Freeman herself tried

eating outdoors during visits to different villages. One of the most blissful

moments in the memoir is when she describes eating “on a boulder high on the

cliffs” at St. Ives and how, together with her partner, they “shared out the

crumbling, saffron dyed buns” (81).

Freeman describes how she overcame her fear of dairy products in the bucolic

descriptions of milk in Thomas Hardy’s Tess: “He painted milk in the sweetest,

palest, colours, made it something quite lovely, a cool, marble-white balm for a

dairymaid’s soul”, and, as a result, “I could see the dairy cows in my mind’s eye”

(2018b: 59). Thanks to this idealized spatial imagery, “the dairy papers in Tess

finally weaned me off soya”, assures Freeman, making her feel “not that I ought to

drink true, court-beauty milk, but that I wanted to” (60).

Adopting a medical humanities perspective, Bates states that “therapeutic

landscapes always operate in relation to another imagined place and —even more

powerfully— an imagined self who exists outside of the hospital” (2019: 15). For

Freeman, it was not the hospital but her own family house that was blocking her

willingness to eat. In this regard, Paddy’s meals “in the hollow of a willow trunk”

or “on top of a hayrick” and “a pebble beach near Varna” in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s

The Broken Road led Freeman to believe that it was possible to conceptualize

eating beyond “the awful sense of confinement at a table” and its “captive ways:

supervised at dinner, following a meal plan, compelled to stay at the table until I

had at least tried what was on the plate” (2018b: 84).

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Freeman insists that learning that meals could be enjoyable was made possible by

reading fictionalized acts of eating outside of walled spaces, a reading experience

not entirely valued because of the “contents” described, but because food

descriptions “taste[d] of new liberty” (2018b: 172). Freeman’s “sense of

confinement” should not be understood in a metaphorical sense. In her narrative,

the author draws a connection between starting to eat and becoming able to walk.

Specifically, she refers to the following experience: “I remembered what it had

been like, at fifteen, to be too thin to walk” (35). This recollection emphasizes the

significance of finding the necessary energy to regain mobility, which served as a

driving force for her ongoing efforts to recover, along with her growing interest

in rural aspects of life. This desire to escape those feelings of confinement played

a significant role in her motivation to persist in her journey toward recovery,

which she further strengthens as she struggled to find a new sense of “home”.

3.2. Home, Sweet Home

The preceding section analyses Freeman’s perspective on her family household as

a hostile environment. The feelings of confinement within this space can be largely

attributed to the negative social dynamics she associated with it. Specifically, it was

her family members who strictly controlled her meals (“supervised”, “compelled

to stay at the table”), which resulted in her dreading this physical space. This

rationale is consistent with the explanation of withdrawal behaviors in AN, which

influence behaviors of eating away from friends or even relatives as a way to obtain

calorie and intake control (see section 1.2).

However, therapeutic environments often develop in the imagination of readers in

connection with a “feeling of homeliness”. Homeliness, specifically, “symbolises

leaving illness behind, and an imagined healthy self” (Bates 2019: 19). The

function of an imagined “home” is to provide a distancing effect similar to that

implied by spatial presence (Glavin and Montgomery 2017), so that it becomes

easier “to forget the illness” (Bates 2019: 19). Returning to the memoirs and

letters of the war poet, Laura Freeman was inspired to feed herself more based on

the “friendliness of food […] for men at the front”, because eating signified

“comfort, warmth, a taste of home, a reminder that you were still alive when the

batman returned from Givenchy with beer and chocolate” (2018b: 44). This new

sense of homeliness differs from Freeman’s negative perception of her family

house, as from here on she is able to envision new connotations for the word

“home” as a place of relief and solace.

Reading English children’s books further strengthened Freeman’s associations

between food and homeliness. The author stops carefully to review more effects that

Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows had on her. She in particular describes

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the sardines that Toad takes after a long trip home, noting “that is why the sardines

were worth remembering. Not because they are sardines, but because of what they

signify: home, comfort, the beginnings of a brightening, beaming winter supper”

(2018b: 173). Further on, the author elaborates on the idea of home as a place of

companionship when she re-read Dickens’ Pickwick Club series (1837), describing

her increased motivation to start eating meals next to others, even envisioning the

possibility of feeling festive about it: “I liked the club […] I was so much better in

my mind, so much more tolerant of food and festivity” (Freeman 2018b: 228).

By transporting herself to the houses of fictional characters who eat in the company

of loved ones, Laura Freeman was able to envisage herself eating those dishes in

her own place. Halfway through her book, she describes visualizing herself “in

imagination at least, putting the fish in the pan to warm, turning the pepper mill,

lifting the capers from the jar and tipping the fillets onto rye crackers to be eaten

at my own table in my own home-sweet kitchen” (2018b: 173). In narrative

transportation theory, this is known as “simulation”, defined as a reading-induced

mechanism by which readers mentally rehearse the actions in the narrative.

Simulation has been identified as a major factor in improving health-related

behavior in different interventions (Lyons, Tate and Ward 2013). Simulating

characters eating homemade food influenced Freeman to herself try those foods:

“thanks to Mole I am now never without a tin [of sardines] in the cupboard”

(2018b: 174), although the hedging (“in imagination at least”) calls for caution in

interpreting this too optimistically.

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the author learned that food could mean

“company, home, and warmth” (2018b: 44), and further on she reflects on the

idea of eating food as a practice of care and relatedness, in particular: food, in

“children’s books”, she declares, “is given not just to build bones or put hair on

chests”, because “it is care and kindness […] a loving, motherly, fatherly, sisterly

thing to do” (174). Imagining food in connection to the idea of home probably

strengthened the author’s associations of the relatedness of homemade food

prepared by family members and close friends as a practice of care.

3.3. Gendered Spaces

Gender is inherent to an understanding of AN. While this is not the place to offer

a detailed account of AN from this perspective (for an overview, see for example

Orbach 1986), it would be unwise to approach Laura Freeman’s experience

without taking this dimension into consideration. Gender-related factors in fact

intersect with Freeman’s experience of the ED, particularly in connection with

questions of self-identity and societal expectations, as well as with the way she

portrays space and femininity.

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Medical anthropology studies have noted how the individual with AN might

experiment pleasure as a result of preparing food for others (Jacobson 2007). This

resonates with the stereotyped notion of women as providers, and specifically as

those who shoulder the burden of cooking and housework. As Jacobson points

out, women are expected to prepare meals for relatives and friends, but “when it

comes to herself, she manipulates, parses, and rejects” the food “as if it were

harmful or exotic material” (2007: 163). This could be explained by the fact that

acute hunger and eating copious amounts in public has not been classically

welcomed in women (Orbach 1986).

Laura Freeman was aware of these contradictions and addresses them explicitly when

she notes that she “had been reading almost entirely about men. Men with

uncomplicated, unashamed appetites” (2018b: 91). This realization led her to

understand that she needed to model the appetites of women. Thanks to her zealous

interest in many forms of narrative reading, she began to find solace in female

authors, and writers of cookbooks in particular, who challenged conventional

notions of femininity by displaying a hearty appetite and making a profession of it.

In particular, Freeman understood that she had to learn to appreciate food

preparation as part of the recovery process: “If I could enjoy all the parts that came

before —the shopping and scrubbing and soup bowls— I stood a better chance with

the meal itself” (2018b: 105). This can be interpreted as an embodied self-realization,

to adapt Cook-Cottone’s terminology, and as another example of food reappraisal.

Freeman acquired this awareness in the recipe books of two women, Elizabeth

David, a writer from Sussex, and the Californian Mary Frances. However,

anticipation around cooking and eating was facilitated by the ease of narrative

transportation effects —although other potential mechanisms could also be at

play. In this way, the author marks a distinction between the effects of reading the

cookbooks by David and Frances. For her, the simplicity with which she could

imagine David’s dishes seems to have caused the book to have a stronger persuasive

effect on her eating, in comparison with Mary Frances’s book: “I knew Elizabeth

David’s England in a way I couldn’t know Mary Frances’s Californian beaches,

ranches, vineyards, West Coast boarding schools and Hershey’s bars” (2018b: 112).

The distinct provenance of Frances and David’s dishes caused their recipes to be

perceived with varying accessibility. Familiarity with David’s place of origin made

Freeman more easily convinced by her descriptions. She further reflects on this

idea when she explains that “the England of Elizabeth David, though separated by

seventy years from the one I grew up in, was recognisably my England: […] Scotch

eggs for picnics; fish at school on Fridays with custard and tinned fruit cocktail”

(2018b: 115). As a consequence of the narrative proximity to the recipes of

Elizabeth David’s, Freeman was able to start eating, in particular, the omelets

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described in her books. She admits that her curiosity was piqued by the English

author’s descriptions of “a golden bolster of an omelet”, admitting to having made

“many […] since” (119). This stands as an example of a dish becoming a “safe

food”, a term commonly seen in experiences of AN that refers to a foodstuff that

is not anxiogenic, which makes one wonder whether Freeman remained too fearful

of incorporating other recipes so systematically.

One of the reasons why Freeman specifically started reading books written by

women was because she sometimes found it hard to feel inspired by men’s

descriptions of food, men with “unashamed, uncomplicated appetites” (2018b:

91). Gender was especially relevant when Freeman faced relapse as she developed

obsessions about healthy and “clean” eating, an ED known as “orthorexia”.

Orthorexia is a common form of AN relapse, though sometimes its predecessor.

This moment in Freeman’s narrative shows that AN recovery is not straightforwardly

represented, nor that it should be, since recovery is a challenging process subject

to many vicissitudes. In this regard, Merav Shohet has identified “sideshadowing”

as a common feature of AN memoirs, where steps toward recovery are integrated

into an erratic narrative of gains and losses, to present healing “as ambiguous,

conflictual, unstable, subject to constant revision” (2018: 495).

During this phase of relapse, Freeman identified with Virginia Woolf’s philosophy

of eating. As Freeman is quick to spot, Woolf was an author who may have suffered

from AN as well. Leonard Woolf, her husband, kept a journal of her eating habits,

where he elaborated on the idea that Virginia regarded eating as a taboo act. In her

diaries, she conceded that Leonard was “clearsighted” about this, as she admitted

feeling “really frightened” of “a loss of control, a chink in the armour, a breaking

of some unspoken rule” when it came to eating (in Freeman 2018b: 131).

This experience contributed to Freeman’s identification with the author. As a

result of identifying with her, Freeman notes that she found in Woolf’s diaries and

letters “a corrective to clean eating” (2018b: 136). Contrary to male authors, who

described eating as an unproblematic habit, Freeman saw Virginia Woolf as

someone who “struck a balance between not wanting to eat and knowing she must

eat” (135). Thus, Woolf, a woman who struggled with fragile mental health and

poor eating habits but who still made the effort to eat, convinced Freeman that she

had to return to a recovery mindset.

4. Conclusion

In this article, I have examined AN from a spatial perspective in order to delve into

the experience of what constitutes being anorexic from a physical, social and

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cognitive-affective point of view. Articulating AN in this way has enabled a

productive positioning of the condition along with the questions of recovery and

care. It has allowed me to discuss AN in relation with practices of care, opening up

the possibility of considering reading as a form of self-care.

Specifically, I have proposed that narrative reading could contribute to AN

recovery, since descriptions about food in books have potential to reconfigure

how somebody with AN thinks and feels about spaces associated with eating. The

concept of shelf-care has been coined to focus on the role that fictional spatiality

could play in narrative transportation and mental imagery, as well as in

reconceptualizing recovery within the paradigm of self-care and art therapies that

include self-help and bibliotherapy. A selection of passages from Laura Freeman’s

memoir The Reading Cure: How Books Restored my Appetite (2018) has been used

to exemplify the therapeutic potential that narrative reading could have in AN.

Some limitations of Freeman’s experience have also been alluded to, in order to

be faithful to the view presented of AN recovery as a non-linear phenomenon.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

Pythagoras and Empedocles are not generally believed to have left an indelible

imprint on Edgar Allan Poe’s oeuvre, despite the direct allusion to each of these

Presocratic thinkers in the poet’s writings. It is also quite remarkable that “The

Black Cat” (1843) has not typically been considered a tale of metempsychosis,

even though this motif is clearly present in the story. Moreover, the fact that Poe

allows transference to occur from one cat to another hints at his acceptance of

the contentious Pythagorean premise that the transmigration of souls is not

restricted to the human body. In addition, while a number of scholars have

acknowledged the ambivalent nature of the daemon in other works by Poe, most

studies of “The Black Cat” portray it as an unequivocally dark and malevolent

entity. In contrast, this article conceives of the daemon as an ambiguous being

that reemerges in feline form to inflict punishment on the protagonist for his vile

acts. In this disturbing narrative, Poe once again explores a question that haunted

him throughout his life —namely, whether individual identity can survive bodily

death.

Keywords: Edgar Allan Poe, Pythagoras, Empedocles, metempsychosis, daemon.

METEMPSYCHOSIS AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY

IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S “THE BLACK CAT”

METEMPSICOSIS E IDENTIDAD INDIVIDUAL

EN “EL GATO NEGRO”, DE EDGAR ALLAN POE

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249739

ANNA MICHELLE SABATINI

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

amsabatini@gmail.com

<https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3669-3902>

Anna Michelle Sabatini

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Resumen

Pitágoras y Empédocles no suelen considerarse influencias indelebles en la obra de

Edgar Allan Poe, a pesar de que el poeta alude directamente a ambos pensadores

presocráticos. También resulta sorprendente que tradicionalmente “El gato negro”

(1843) no se haya clasificado como un relato de metempsicosis, aun cuando la

temática está claramente presente en dicha narración. Es más, el hecho de que Poe

permita que la transferencia se produzca de un gato a otro, sugiere una aceptación

de la controvertida premisa de Pitágoras de que la transmigración del alma no se

circunscribe al cuerpo humano. Asimismo, aunque varios estudiosos han señalado

la naturaleza ambivalente del daemon en otras creaciones de Poe, la mayoría de los

escritos sobre “El gato negro” retratan a la criatura como inequívocamente oscura

y maligna. El presente artículo la concibe en cambio como un ser ambiguo que,

encarnado en un felino, resurge con el propósito de castigar al protagonista por sus

viles actos. En la inquietante narrativa que nos ocupa, Poe explora de nuevo una

de las cuestiones que más le obsesionó a lo largo de su vida, a saber, la posibilidad

de que la identidad individual perdure tras la muerte física.

Palabras clave: Edgar Allan Poe, Pitágoras, Empédocles, metempsicosis, daemon.

You alone were born to judge

deeds obscure and conspicuous.

Holiest and illustrious ruler of all,

frenzied god,

you delight in the respect

and in the reverence of your worshippers.

I summon you […].

The Orphic Hymns, “To Plouton”

1. Introduction. Revisiting the Daemonic in Edgar Allan

Poe’s “The Black Cat”

The depth of Edgar Allan Poe’s knowledge of early Greek philosophy cannot be

ascertained and remains a subject of controversy. Nevertheless, there is no doubt

as to the Hellenic influence on his writing. More specifically, a valuable source

that has often been overlooked is that of the Presocratics. The theme of

metempsychosis in such stories as “Metzengerstein” (1832), “Morella” (1835),

“Ligeia” (1838) and “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” (1844) has been explored

Metempsychosis and Individual Identity in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”

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by several critics (Quinn 1957; Fisher 1971; Rowe 2003). Rather surprisingly,

however, “The Black Cat” (1843) has not traditionally been included in this

group, although Thomas Ollive Mabbott does acknowledge that Poe used the

idea of the transmigration of souls in the piece (1978: 15). Various authors have

also rightly pointed to the ambiguity of the daemonic in Poe’s writing (Ljungquist

1980; Andriano 1986), but it is particularly striking that the daemon in “The

Black Cat” is often viewed as an exception and typically associated almost

exclusively with sin and wickedness.

Poe is thought to have learned about daemonology through sources as varied as

Plato (c. 427-347 BCE), British Romantic poetry, Jacob Bryant (1715-1804),

Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813), the fairytale novella Undine by Friedrich

de la Motte Fouqué (1777-1843), Gnostic philosophy and Near-Eastern lore,

among others (Ljungquist 1980). The term δαίμων traditionally carried several

meanings in ancient Greece. It often denotes a god, goddess, godlike power or fate

(Beekes 2010: 297). Daemons can also take on the role of a guardian or tutelary

deity and link humans to higher gods (Primavesi 2008: 259; Liddell and Scott

1846: 305-306). Plato’s Symposium, from which the epigraph to Poe’s “Morella”

is taken, defines a δαίμων as an entity that is “intermediate between the divine and

the mortal” (1920a: 328). In other contexts, it can also refer to the soul (Primavesi

2008: 275). Only in works by more recent authors does the daemon come to

designate a departed soul, an evil spirit or the devil (Liddell and Scott 1846: 305-

306). As Ljungquist aptly points out, the daemon takes on an ambiguous meaning

in Poe’s fiction (1980). In his writings, Poe transcends the myth of the fallen angel

and, as in the Hebrew and Greek traditions, the daemonic and the angelic become

intertwined. The Romantics echo the Greek notion that Socrates (c. 470-399

BCE) was guided by a personal daemon. They often conceive of daemons as half-

mortal, half-divine intermediary spirits who do not necessarily possess evil qualities,

and as guardians of humankind that are responsible for determining individual

fate. Such theories appear to have informed Poe’s characterization in several of his

stories, some examples of which are “Morella”, “Ligeia”, “The Power of Words”

and, of course, “The Black Cat”. In the first three tales, these entities are endowed

with extraordinary skill and vast knowledge, while the last narrative exemplifies

Poe’s fascination with the ancient tradition that associated human fate with

daemonic force. For Poe and other Romantic writers, those who are possessed by

daemons acquire inner strength and divine poetic inspiration. However, they also

perceive the daemonic as a hidden and mysterious source of power, so possession

can be both an elevating and a ghastly experience. This, in turn, is reminiscent of

Gothic sublimity, a heightened feeling of fear and awe which defies measurement

and representation (Ljungquist 1980).

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In Ljungquist’s view, the black cat in Poe’s story symbolizes a supernatural

daemonic force. Rather puzzlingly, however, he associates these feline creatures

with dark powers alone, in accordance with medieval superstition. He speaks of

“oppression or weight that could hamper human breathing”, “a feeling of being

frozen or paralyzed” and “daemonic dread” (1980: 34). Equating the cat in Poe’s

tale with a purely evil spirit is undoubtedly perfectly plausible. Still, the fact that

this animal has a noble character renders an association with the less explicitly

malignant Greek conception of the daemonic much more tenable. It is true that

the protagonist refers to his wife’s “frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion,

which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise” (Poe 1978a: 850). Nonetheless,

this remark appears to be an attempt to baffle the reader, as he immediately adds,

“[n]ot that she was ever serious upon this point —and I mention the matter at all

for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered” (850). This

is hardly surprising, as it is customary for Poe to be deliberately cryptic, to raise

epistemological doubts by blurring the line between illusion and reality, or dreams

and waking states. He frequently employs the trope of the unreliable narrator and

displays a profound distrust of the senses, creating a physical world which is

chaotic, ever-changing and insubstantial (Folks 2009: 58, 60-61). He also uses

magical lore to enhance the mystery and sublimity of his stories, to create an

alternate reality and to encourage a suspension of disbelief in the reader (Rowe

2003: 44-45). In his review of Robert Montgomery Bird’s Sheppard Lee, published

in The Southern Literary Messenger in September 1836, Poe states that the writer

of a tale of metempsychosis should deploy certain techniques, such as “avoiding

[…] directnessof expression” in order to leave “much to the imagination” and

“the result as a wonder not to be accounted for” (1997: 286, emphasis in original).

Several academics have suggested that the narrator’s cat Pluto is in fact the Greek

god of the Underworld (Moreland and Rodriguez 2015; Tsokanos and Ibáñez

2018). Although this interpretation is logical and very convincing, most critical

analyses of “The Black Cat” tend to focus on the negative aspects of the

chthonian deity, who is almost entirely associated with wickedness, violence,

rage and the diabolical (Moreland and Rodriguez 2015; Tsokanos and Ibáñez

2018). Admittedly, as the ominous god of the dead and even of death itself,

Hades was to be greatly feared but, paradoxically, it was believed that he

performed good deeds for mortals from his abode in the Underworld. Hades

was described as hateful and malignant, but also as the renowned one and a god

of good repute. Furthermore, Hades was alternately known as Pluton, which

signified wealth. As a precaution, the living were reluctant to utter the name

Hades, but this was not the case with Pluton, who responded to prayer and

offerings. Pluton was therefore a more positive designation for Hades and

became the divinity’s most common moniker during the fifth century BCE,

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both in myth and in cult (Hornblower et al. 2012: 640; Liddell and Scott 1846:

1198). Poe may well have taken this favorable association into consideration when

choosing the name Pluto for the feline protagonist of his story. Perhaps it is no

coincidence that, on the very night of the day the narrator mercilessly kills his cat

Pluto, his house is completely destroyed by fire, and the man declares, “[m]y entire

worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair”

(Poe 1978a: 852).

2. “The Modified Παλιγγενεσια of the Pythagoreans” and

the Principle of Individuation

Like the inner world of the feline protagonist in “The Black Cat”, the life of

Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570-c. 495 BCE) is shrouded in mystery. Adored and

despised in equal measure, he left nothing in writing and, if he did, none of his

original work survives. Nonetheless, it is generally accepted that he taught the

doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Pythagoras’s metempsychosis states that,

since our soul’s present and future are determined by our current choices, not all

mortals share an equal fate. This, in turn, seems to suggest that we must assume

full responsibility for our decisions. Indeed, already in Hesiod (c. 750-650 BCE)

we find that a fortunate person is a eudaemon —εὐδαίμων, meaning one who

has a good daemon. Another Greek term for this virtuous entity is agathos

daemon —ἀγαθός δαίμων (Hornblower et al. 2012: 37, 410, 640; Beekes

2010: 484). The fact that Agathos is one of the blessed immortal spirits in Poe’s

“The Power of Words” (1845) indicates that, even though this prose poem was

published two years after “The Black Cat”, Poe may have been aware of this

distinction before he wrote the latter. As Agathos himself proclaims in “The

Power of Words”, “no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result”

(Poe 1978a: 1213).

Poe’s direct allusion to Pythagoras in “Morella” (1835) corroborates that he knew

of this enigmatic polymath’s theory of the soul, and that same paragraph in Poe’s

tale evidences that he had also come into contact with at least some of the

metaphysical principles upheld by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich

Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) and John Locke (1632-1704):

The wild Pantheism of Fichte; the modified Παλιγγενεσια [Palingenesia] of the

Pythagoreans; and, above all, the doctrines of Identity as urged by Schelling, were

generally the points of discussion presenting the most of beauty to the imaginative

Morella. That identity which is termed personal, Mr. Locke, I think, truly defines to

consist in the sameness of a rational being. (Poe 1978b: 230-231, emphasis in

original)

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Although the terms palingenesia and metempsychosis do not carry the same

meaning, they are sometimes used interchangeably to denote the transfer of life or

the soul from one body to another, that is, the transmigration of souls. Pythagoras

believed that metempsychosis could occur from a human being, an animal or a

plant into a new body belonging to any of these three groups. It is important to

note that he did not explicitly define the soul as immaterial or make a clear

distinction between the corporeal and incorporeal. He thus took all that exists to

be of a material nature (Burkert 1972: 32). Poe shares with metaphysical idealists

like Schelling and Fichte the belief that physical and chemical laws do not suffice

to explain all natural phenomena. However, the influence of Greek materialism can

also be felt in his work. In fact, like Pythagoras, Poe does not conceive of the soul

as a spiritual entity. For instance, in “Mesmeric Revelation” (1844), he writes: “[t]

here is no immateriality […]. That which is not matter, is not at all” (1978a:

1033). Later on in this tale, he refers to God as matter so infinitely minute that it

becomes “[t]he ultimate, or unparticled matter”, which “not only permeates all

things but impels all things —and thus is all things within itself” (1033, emphasis

in original). Nevertheless, it must be noted that for Poe, the line that separates

matter and spirit is blurred, and his views with regard to the nature of the universe

are not unequivocal. Revealingly, to Schelling and other Romantics, matter is not

perceived as solid or impenetrable, but instead as the product of dynamic forces.

Moreover, Schelling upholds that the manifestations of nature and the structures

of the human mind are governed by a metaphysical principle he refers to as the

world soul (Sha 2018: 34; Barkhoff 2009: 210). Poe himself argues that Matter

contains so-called “spiritual Ether” that imbues it with life and consciousness.

Indeed, the fusion of the physical and psychic realms is a recurring theme in Poe’s

work. In his prose poem Eureka, which he wrote towards the end of his life, Poe

speaks of “true Epicurean atoms” (1984: 1322) but also describes God as both a

material and spiritual being that will ultimately revert to its incorporeal essence.

When the cosmos eventually sinks into One and all heterogeneity is lost, Matter

will expel the Ether that has kept atoms apart. Matter will hence become “Matter

without Matter” or “Matter no more” (1355, emphasis in original).

The fact that Poe brings together such disparate philosophers as Fichte, Schelling

and Locke in the aforementioned fragment of “Morella” is surprising and

disconcerting, given that the idealism of the former two thinkers stands in stark

contrast to the empiricism of the latter. Admittedly, Poe is not usually considered

a philosopher. As he wrote in a letter to Charles F. Hoffman in 1848, “there is no

absolute certainty either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process —[...] for this

reason, neither Philosophy is so profound as it fancies itself— and [...] neither has

a right to sneer at that seemingly imaginative process called Intuition” (Poe 2008:

688, emphasis in original). Nevertheless, it is also true that Poe was well-versed in

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the field of natural philosophy, which only began to be considered as separate from

science at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Fichte, Schelling and

Locke share a deep preoccupation with moral order. More to the point, all three

explore the principle of individuation. Poe was drawn to them as a result of his

obsession with the question of whether consciousness and individual identity

could survive physical death, as is evidenced by the excerpt in “Morella” which

immediately follows his allusion to the aforementioned philosophers:

And since by person we understand an intelligent essence having reason, and since

there is a consciousness which always accompanies thinking, it is this which makes us

all to be that which we call ourselves —thereby distinguishing us from other beings

that think, and giving us our personal identity. But the principium individuationis,

the notion of that identity which at death is or is not lost forever, was to me, at all

times, a consideration of intense interest […]. (Poe 1978b: 231, emphasis in original)

One of the most fascinating aspects of Pythagoras’s metempsychosis is precisely its

affirmation that individual identity survives bodily death when it takes on a new

form or appearance. Neither Fichte, Schelling nor Locke endorsed this view.

However, as we have seen, the fact that Poe mentions them in conjunction with

Pythagoras points to the poet’s preoccupation with personal identity and more

specifically with the possible survival of some form of consciousness after death. In

what Poe refers to as Fichte’s “wild Pantheism” (1978b: 230), even Nature is

regarded as thought, since all reality is contained in consciousness. Fichte identifies

God with the unattainable Absolute, which the Self must strive for ad infinitum,

resulting in a constant decay of individuality. As a consequence, a hypothetical

fusion of a human being with the ideal would require the complete disintegration

of individual identity (Fichte 1970: 109, 113-114). Unlike Fichte, Schelling does

not contend that self-consciousness can explain the objective realm and instead

argues that subjectivity and objectivity both emerge from the primordial identity

of the Absolute (Moreland and Shaw 2012: 60). Death for Schelling is but a

reductio ad essentiam, whereby the soul is stripped of all that is accessory and

extrinsic so that only the essence of our true Being remains. He insists that this

transition does not entail a separation from physical life but solely from this

existence (Schelling 1994: 237). Poe’s horror fiction also conveys this notion of

the dissolution of individual identity in the universal but, contrary to Schelling,

who conceptualizes it as a self-realizing event, the poet sees it as self-destructive.

For his part, Locke makes the radical and controversial assertion that personal

identity is neither founded on the body nor the soul, nor in the union of both, but

on consciousness alone. He maintains that on the Day of Judgment the dead will

be resurrected to answer for their deeds in this life. The saved will be admitted into

an eternal state of bliss, while the guilty will be condemned to a second and final

death (Locke 1847: 175, 210, 231).

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3. The Oracle of Doom

In Eureka (1848), Poe declares that ultimately “the sense of individual identity will

be gradually merged in the general consciousness” (1984: 1358). However, an

eventual collapse into the Absolute is not at odds with the idea that the soul can

survive death and exist as separate from what he terms the rudimental body (Poe

1978a: 1037). In fact, Poe continuously explores this possibility in such stories as

“The Premature Burial” (1844), “Some Words with a Mummy” (1845), “The

Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845) and “Mesmeric Revelation” (1845). In

the latter, he describes bodily demise as a mere process of transmutation:

There are two bodies —the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the

two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call “death”, is but the

painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory,

temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full

design. (Poe 1978a: 1037)

This “painful metamorphosis” is analogous to the cycle of purification related by

Empedocles of Acragas (c. 490-c. 430 BCE), a close follower of Pythagoras’s

doctrine of metempsychosis. The fact that Edgar Allan Poe was familiar with

Empedocles is evidenced by a direct reference to him in Poe’s writings: “Empedocles

professed the system of four elements, and added thereto two principles which he

called ‘principium amicitiæ’ and ‘principium contentionis’. What are these but

attraction and repulsion?” (Poe 1985: 93). For Empedocles, it is the fallen daemon

that preserves its continuity through its various incarnations, in accordance with

what he refers to as “an oracle of Doom” (in Plutarch 1959: 569). He identifies

himself and others with this “exile from heaven”, who, having “[d]efile[d] himself

with foul and sinful murder”, is compelled to wander through a succession of lives

before finally being able to return to his original divine state (B 115 607c-d, in

Plutarch 1959: 569). In his past lives, Empedocles allegedly recalls being “a boy

[…], and a maiden, [a]nd bush, and bird of prey, and fish, [a] wanderer from the

salt sea” (B 117, in Hippolytus 1921: 40). Pythagoras and Empedocles “assert

that there is a single legal condition for all living beings and […] proclaim that

inexpiable punishments await those who have done violence to an animal” (D27b,

in Laks and Most 2016: 379). Plato, who is believed to have derived his doctrine

of metempsychosis from Pythagoras, proposes a rather disturbing variation on this

maxim. In Laws, he alludes to the widespread belief that the perpetrators of crimes

of violence are punished both in Hades and once again when they return to this

world, where they will be forced to die in exactly the same manner as their victims

(Plato 1920b: 615). Compellingly, in Poe’s story “The Black Cat”, the protagonist

brutally hangs his feline companion only to see the creature reemerge, now a

harbinger of doom, the gallows on its chest unmistakably announcing that an

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equal fate awaits his slayer. The prophecy is fulfilled, and the narrator is ultimately

sentenced to death —also by hanging.

Like Empedocles’s daemons, the narrator in “The Black Cat” is in a state of bliss

at the outset, and his suffering only begins when he becomes corrupted by evil.

This in truth occurs long before he engages in the first act of violence against his

cat Pluto. Therefore, it is not his ugly deeds that are attributed to the daemonic

power, but rather the divine retribution which ensues. Even though he will

eventually be confronted with this deific force, only he can be held responsible for

his wicked and perverse behavior. The manner in which he describes the dastardly

murder of the poor animal leaves no room for doubt:

One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb

of a tree; —hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest

remorse at my heart; —hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt

it had given me no reason of offence; —hung it because I knew that in so doing I was

committing a sin —a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to

place it— if such a thing were possible —even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy

of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God. (Poe 1978a: 852, emphasis in original)

James W. Gargano considers this extreme self-condemnation “an outrageous

excess” (1960: 173). However, Pythagoras and Empedocles would have

undoubtedly taken issue with this assertion. They would also have likely

disagreed with Gargano’s assessment that the narrator’s initial affection towards

non-human creatures is “an unhealthy overdevelopment of the voluptuary side

of his nature” and “an abnormality” (173). Either way, as Gargano rightly

argues, the protagonist does appear to have an ambivalent, divided and possibly

schizophrenic personality. He continuously refuses to take responsibility for his

vile actions and instead chooses to ascribe them to his being “an erratic plaything

of an inscrutable force” (172). In effect, the main character’s cruelty to animals

is an indubitable sign of his moral deterioration, which will eventually result in

him killing his own wife.

As we have seen, Plato’s doctrine of metempsychosis seems to have been inspired

by Pythagoras. In the myth of Er, which appears at the end of the Republic, Plato

provides an alternative description of Orpheus’s descent into the Underworld. In

Plato’s account, which contradicts that of Homer (c. 750 BCE), the soul can in

fact leave Hades by reincarnating into either an animal or a human being. All

souls choose their model of life, which form they wish to take on, and the daemon

that will guide them. Er asserts that these choices must be made with the utmost

caution, as even the impious can aspire to a satisfactory existence rather than a

wretched one. In life and death, all souls must strive to become more just and

disregard all other considerations (Plato 1992: 285-290). He goes on to explain

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how the first to be asked rashly chose a life of tyranny, only to deeply regret his

decision after learning that it would result in him having to eat his own children.

Very much like the protagonist of “The Black Cat”, “he blamed chance, daimons,

or guardian spirits, and everything else for these evils but himself” (Plato 1992:

290). According to Plato’s theory of metempsychosis, the truth is that the

narrator selects his own daemon, which will in turn shape his fate. Hence, only he

can be held accountable for his despicable acts. Nevertheless, as frequently occurs

with Poe, there is a masterful twist in his tale. The psychopathic killer was once a

compassionate and affectionate human being, seemingly guarded by a good

daemon. There is a critical event in the story that marks a point of no return —the

definitive departure of this entity, the main character’s agathos daemon, his true

and better self. It is an occurrence that immediately precedes his vicious mutilation

of the innocent feline creature. Poe explicitly alludes to this instance: “[m]y

original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than

fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame” (1978a:

851). In fact, the narrator claims that he has previously been “instantly possessed”

by “[t]he fury of a demon”, but as he himself confesses, his “general temperament

and character” had already “experienced a radical alteration for the worse” (851)

long before this incident. It is true that his cat Pluto had so far been spared and

had “only” started to feel the effects of his bad temper, but his wife had by then

begun to endure his verbal and physical abuse. Additionally, he had been

neglecting and behaving violently towards his pets. He attributes his misfortune

to excessive drinking and to this so-called “instant possession”, but it is his own

moral decline that subsequently results in the absolute and irrevocable desertion

of his eudaemon. However hard the narrator of “The Black Cat” tries to attribute

his viciousness to a supernatural force, his fate is driven by the compulsion to

ravage his own soul and, as Poe puts it, “to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only”

(852). Much the same as the man who chose tyranny in Plato’s myth of Er, the

reckless slayer in Poe’s tale inadvertently summons a powerful deity, who will

ultimately return in the form of a resurrected Pluto to exact his severe and

inescapable retribution.

4. Doppelgängers and Collapse into Oneness

Metempsychosis provides Poe with an ideal framework to develop another of his

recurring themes, that of the doppelgänger. In much of Poe’s fiction, including

“The Black Cat”, the double is associated with survival after death and an avenging

conscience, in this case symbolized by the punishing daemon embodied in a

reincarnated feline (Herdman 1990: 89). A shapeless white mark on the breast of

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the second cat, which will gradually become the image of the gallows, is the only

feature that distinguishes it from the first. Indeed, the eerie similarity between the

two animals —both are black and have only one eye— further contributes to the

uncanniness of this story (Kennedy 1987: 136; Nadal 2004: 459). Several critics

have noted that the narrator projects his feelings toward his wife onto the feline

creature, and thus conceives of the cat as a surrogate of the spouse (Hoffman

1972: 236; Amper 1992: 479; Dern 2017: 163). Even though the wife is not

resurrected, one could also argue that she forges an alliance with Pluto which

extends beyond their worldly existence. Revealingly, the cat and the woman’s

violent demise precede the moment they succeed in wreaking their vengeance on

the offender (Nadal 2004: 459; Dern 2017: 174). Kenneth Silverman points to

the concurrence of the afterlife and the double in Poe’s writing: “to have twins,

doubles, and twos means that […] one can be here and not here, can die and still

survive” (1991: 151).

In “The Black Cat”, the protagonist’s identity is fragile, fragmented and volatile,

blurring the boundaries between self and other. He projects everything he despises

about himself upon another being. Hence, his murderous deed could be interpreted

as a desperate attempt to annihilate the darker side of his own nature. However,

once the crime is perpetrated against his other, the main character is appalled to

discover that even bodily demise cannot rid him of the tormenting presence. The

man is repelled to find that he is breathing in the air exhaled by Pluto, petrified to

learn that he cannot flee from the ψχή (psyche) —aspiration, breath, soul, spirit—

of this implacable daemon or from its godlike power: “I started, hourly, from

dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and

its vast weight —an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off—

incumbent eternally upon my heart!” (Poe 1978a: 856, emphasis in original). The

evil he attributes to the cat is in truth a wickedness that stems from within. The real

source of his dread is the darkness of his own soul and its ineludible fate, but the

object of his fear has become indiscernible from the self. In Poe’s fiction, the inner

and the outer realms frequently become indistinguishable. In this regard, he is

consistent with many of his contemporaries. As Linda Nash explains, “[for]

nineteenth-century Americans, the body itself was not a clearly bounded entity,

separate and distinct from its surroundings; rather, it was porous and permeable”

(2006: 24). According to Matthew Taylor, Poe impels us to transcend the human

through his “paradoxical simultaneity of sameness and difference” (2013: 39) as

“self and not-self are collapsed into a common union” (33). Subject and object are

hence conceived as versions of being, intrinsically woven into an inexorable

oneness. Moreover, this dissipation of boundaries results in a disruption of the

anthropocentric view of the cosmos.

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According to various critics, it is the narrator’s wish to end his own life that

manifests as aggression towards his cat Pluto. Thus, the feline’s eye, which the

protagonist cruelly removes from its socket, is a projected symbol of his own death

anxieties (Kennedy 1987: 135, 137; Nadal 2004: 459). This organ may also

represent moral conscience and omniscience. Its destruction could therefore be

understood as a pathetic attempt to assuage his guilt or as a refusal to accept the

malicious nature of his actions. As Robert Shulman points out, “in cutting out the

eye of the black demon, the narrator is also irrationally […] seeking to destroy his

own demons, his own unacknowledged impulses and affinity with evil” (1970:

256). According to Ansu Louis, the despised enemy is truly within, but to the

narrator, the cat embodies all that his superego-dominant personality wishes to

subdue (2022: 316). Either way, the man’s fundamental blindness, his inability to

recognize the true origin of his degeneracy, will inexorably lead to madness and

self-annihilation. Any attempt to degrade, brutalize, subjugate or vanquish his

ever-present companion ultimately involves an act of self-harm and suicide. The

protagonist does initially seem to be aware of his predicament, as he admits that

the cat’s hanging was driven by his own “perverseness”, by the “unfathomable

longing of the soul to vex itself —to offer violence to its own nature” (Poe 1978a:

852, emphasis in original). This is a remarkable acknowledgement because he is

conveying that by harming Pluto he is in fact hurting himself (Taylor 2012: 365).

Still, further on in the story, he displays a deep contempt for the creature: “a brute

beast to work out for me —for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High

God— so much of insufferable wo!” (Poe 1978a: 856, emphasis in original). This

haughty sense of entitlement, his violation of the sacred Pythagorean and

Empedoclean law which connects all animate beings, will only serve to precipitate

his doom. Paradoxically, by indulging his own obsessive phobia, the narrator is

inextricably reunited with the very source of his angst (Taylor 2012: 365-366).

The opposing phenomena of attraction and repulsion which Poe refers to in

Eureka are analogous to what Empedocles termed Love and Strife. The Presocratic

poet believed that these forces alternately dominated the universe. This eternal

cycle in which the many emerges from one and one from many resembles Poe’s

concept of the Heart Divine, with every beat causing a new cosmos to expand into

existence and then return into itself (Poe 1984: 1356). Poe considered the

possibility that this process of agglomeration and dissolution could occur

perpetually, in accordance with the Divine Will. Interestingly, the pairing of

positive and negative forces, wherein the former tends toward absolute oneness

and the latter creates individuality in nature, is also found in Schelling (Follesa

2021: 271). Empedocles shares with Poe the conviction that everything is

eventually restored to perfect unity (Tennemann 1852: 77). According to

Empedocles, during the rule of Love, the four elements are fully united and form

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a single living being, which he calls the Sphairos. By killing another living thing we

are in effect replicating the destruction of the sacred One carried out by Strife.

Empedocles states that there is a universal kinship based on the common divine

origin of all forms of life, which come into existence during the cosmic cycle

(Primavesi 2008: 253, 256-258, 267). For Empedocles and Poe, life is not static

or external to matter but rather the result of a creative and dynamic process that

pervades all entities alike. Even though there is a clear distinction between humans

and animals in their philosophies, Pythagoras and Empedocles contend that to

treat any being with justice requires us to respect their nature. This premise does

not apply exclusively to the human species, but to all of existence. These assertions

remained highly controversial in Ancient Greece for many centuries, as they

disrupted the prevailing paradigm, which was strictly anthropocentric. For

instance, Empedocles is known to have been ridiculed for his belief that “all things

have insight and a share of understanding”, including animals and plants (Empiricus

2005: 146; Renehan 1981: 246). For his part, Pythagoras primarily views the soul

as the seat of emotions. As such, it differs from the intellect and is closely associated

with sentience. The kinship between animals and humans is therefore grounded in

the fact that both share this capacity to experience and respond to sensations such

as pleasure or pain. When the soul is born in a human body, it is forged by the

intellect. Nevertheless, it is not this faculty which passes from one body to another

but a personality defined by its feelings and desires (Huffman 2009: 23). Of

course, Edgar Allan Poe is far from endorsing this premise. However, he arguably

takes Pythagoras’s notion a step further in that he even challenges the supremacy

of reason over instinct. Tellingly, according to Joseph Stark, “The Black Cat” is in

fact a statement on the inadequacy of human rationality (2004: 263). In an article

published in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger in 1840, entitled “Instinct vs Reason

—A Black Cat”, Poe makes a surprising assertion:

While the self-love and arrogance of man will persist in denying the reflective power

to beasts […], he yet perpetually finds himself involved in the paradox of decrying

instinct as an inferior faculty, while he is forced to admit its infinite superiority […]

over the very reason which he claims exclusively as his own. Instinct, so far from

being an inferior reason, is perhaps the most exacted intellect of all. It will appear to

the true philosopher as the divine mind itself actingimmediatelyupon its creatures.

(Poe 1978b: 478, emphasis in original)

Later on, he speaks of “the perceptive and reflective faculties” which we mistakenly

believe pertain to reason alone (Poe 1978b: 479). Indeed, in “The Black Cat”, the

protagonist’s lack of empathy, insight and emotional intuition ineluctably lead to

his self-destruction. By comparison, his cat Pluto appears to be a much more

reasonable being. Poe thus subverts the Cartesian dualism which places human

beings on a higher rung than their animal counterparts. By killing his feline

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companion, the protagonist becomes a murderer even before he takes the life of

his spouse (Moreland and Rodriguez 2015: 205, 210). From the very moment he

disparages his initial “tenderness of heart” (Poe 1978a: 850) and betrays the trust

of his human and non-human loved ones, only the most dreadful fate can befall

him. Pythagoras and Empedocles state that to defile or obliterate is to act violently

and unjustly. If the law of measure is violated, it must be restored. Harmony is

understood in terms of cosmic equality, which in turn is a prerequisite to ensure

that cosmic justice prevails. As Gregory Vlastos explains, “the order of nature is

maintained because it is an order of equals” (1970: 57, emphasis in original) and

“[p]owers are equal if they can hold one another in check so that none can gain

‘mastery’ or ‘supremacy’ […] over the others” (58-59). In Eureka, Poe alludes to

this inexorable restoration of the natural order:

The absolute, irrelative particle primarily created by the Volition of God, must have

been in a condition of positive normality, or rightfulness —for wrongfulness implies

relation […]. That a thing may be wrong, it is necessary that there be some other

thing in relation to which it is wrong —some condition which it fails to satisfy; some

law which it violates; some being whom it aggrieves […]. Any deviation from

normality involves a tendency to return into it […]. Rëaction is the return from the

condition of as it is and ought not to be into the condition of as it was, originally, and

therefore ought to be […]. (Poe 1984: 1297-1298, emphasis in original)

Both Empedocles and Poe propound universal sentience, as to them all of matter

is imbued with mind. In fact, when alluding to the Sphairos, Empedocles writes,

“It lives,/ One holy mind, ineffable, alone,/ And with swift thoughts darts

through the universe” (B 134, in Leonard 1908: 61). Pythagoras understands the

cosmos as an animate and breathing entity, albeit constrained by a mathematical

structure (Wright 2008: 421). Pythagoras and Empedocles are believed to have

claimed that “we have a certain commonality not only towards one another and

the gods, but also towards the non-rational animals. For there is one breath reaching

through the whole world like a soul, which also unites us with them” (Empiricus

2012: 28, emphasis added). In Timaeus, Plato subsequently depicts the world as

“a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence” (1920c: 14). This

reverberates with the aforementioned metaphysical principle that Schelling himself

termed the world soul. Schelling, who worked extensively on Plato’s Timaeus,

shares this conception of the universe as a great animal wherein all the parts are

organically and reciprocally connected to the whole (Follesa 2021: 270). For Poe,

the expansion of consciousness across the cosmos casts doubt on whether human

beings are in truth the very culmination of this sentience. Indeed, he questions this

assumption and even grants consciousness to inanimate beings. In “The Island of

the Fay” (1841), he states that we are merely the inhabitants of “one vast animate

and sentient whole” (1978b: 600), and in Eureka, he writes the following:

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All […] creatures —all— those whom you term animate, as well as those to which

you deny life for no better reason than that you do not behold it in operation —all

these creatures have, in a greater or less degree, a capacity for pleasure and for pain

[…]. These creatures are all, too, more or less, and more or less obviously, conscious

Intelligences; conscious, first, of a proper identity; conscious, secondly and by faint

indeterminate glimpses, of an identity with […] God. (Poe 1984: 1358, emphasis in

original)

According to Empedocles, everything, including gods and daemons, will eventually

fuse into a fundamental unity, the Sphairos. As we have seen, Poe shares this vision

of ultimate fusion into oneness. In “The Black Cat”, universal unification translates

into the protagonist’s particular demise. Matthew Taylor envisages the returning

cat as a material herald and synecdoche of Poe’s vision in Eureka —the fatal

compaction of all entities into one another (2013: 40, 43). The conflation of the

narrator and the feline’s identities erodes the mind’s integrity and individuality,

rendering the man unable to discern between his psyche and the outside world.

Furthermore, the merging of the inner and outer realms completely undermines

his autonomy. He can therefore no longer rely on his senses, and physical reality

becomes elusive. This dissolution of ontological boundaries ultimately implies that

the supposed destructive other cannot be distinguished from the indwelling

enemy, which is the corruption of his own soul. Hence, the attack is perpetrated

from within and without by means of cosmic convergence and a disintegration of

the self.

5. Conclusion

In “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe accepts the premise that metempsychosis can

occur from one feline creature to another. He thus embraces the Pythagorean and

Empedoclean notion that it is not an exclusively human phenomenon. Both

Presocratic philosophers contend that by inflicting violence and needless suffering

on animals, one is not only defying the Hellenic sacred law, but also disturbing a

natural order, which must finally be reinstated. Moreover, according to Plato’s

perturbing dictum, killers are condemned to a death equaling that of their victims.

Since Pythagoras and Empedocles claim that any creature can potentially be

bestowed with a human soul, it follows that by cold-bloodedly hanging his feline

companion, the narrator becomes a murderer long before he commits homicide

against his wife. For this reason, it is perhaps no coincidence that the protagonist

is himself sent to the gallows. In fact, in Poe’s story, it is a human being and not

an animal that behaves irrationally and self-destructively, which in turn subverts

the traditional hierarchy of reason over instinct.

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The daemon in “The Black Cat” has often been depicted as a purely malicious

presence. The aforementioned hegemonic reversal, however, points to a more

ambiguous ancient Greek conception of the daemonic, and the true origin of evil

in Poe’s tale remains as mysterious as the universe itself. Striving for unity of effect,

Poe steered away from straightforward explanations so as to leave the reader in a

perpetual state of wonder, a result which he undoubtedly achieves in this work. In

fact, the protagonist’s sadistic behavior precedes the moment when he is

purportedly possessed by a so-called daemonic fury. While he is clearly intent on

ascribing his vile acts to anything but the deterioration of his own soul, he also

alludes to his spirit of perverseness and inclination to commit violence against his

own nature.

In addition, various analogies can be drawn between Empedocles and Poe’s

cosmologies. In “The Black Cat”, Poe creates a microcosm in which to explore his

metaphysical principles. Both writers argue that, in time, all that exists will

eventually lapse into complete unity. In this tale, the narrator’s psyche and

individual identity merge with external physical reality so that the inner-outer and

human-animal boundaries are confounded. Thus, in the same way as it is impossible

to obliterate one’s shadow, the protagonist cannot rid himself of the ubiquitous

and avenging feline creature. Indeed, any effort to do so only hastens his own

annihilation.

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Received: 08/10/2023

Accepted: 02/05/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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STATIC AND KINETIC UTOPIANISM

IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S PARABLE OF THE SOWER

UTOPIANISMO ESTÁTICO Y CINÉTICO

EN LA PARÁBOLA DEL SEMBRADOR

DE OCTAVIA BUTLER

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202410023

LUCÍA RAMÍREZ GARCÍA

Universidad de Málaga

lucia.ramirez@uma.es

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8046-4400>

Abstract

Dystopian worlds are filled with inequalities, oppression and authoritarian regimes.

They are cautionary tales that warn about potential dangers. And yet, it is also

possible to find positive attitudes and insubordinate characters who fight back

through the utopian wish, such as the case of Lauren Olamina. This utopianism

yearns for better worlds, free of injustices. This paper focuses on Octavia Butler’s

Parable of the Sower (1993) and the confrontation of two utopianisms, static and

kinetic, through religion. Kinetic utopianism, represented by Lauren and

Earthseed, advocates for change and adaptability. In contrast, static utopianism,

represented by Lauren’s father and the Baptist religion, focuses on traditional

values, and shows reticence towards change. This novel does not intend to

condemn any belief system, but to explore the impact that these two utopianisms

have on a particular society. The article concludes that the kinetic utopianism of

Lauren and Earthseed makes possible the change that she wants in the world

through adaptability and progress. On the other hand, the refusal of change and

adaptation that characterises static utopianism ultimately leads to its own

disappearance.

Keywords: utopianism, utopia, dystopia, Parable of the Sower, Earthseed.

Lucía Ramírez García

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160

Resumen

Los mundos distópicos están llenos de injusticias, opresiones y gobiernos

autoritarios. Estas historias avisan de posibles peligros futuros, pero también

contienen positivismo y personajes rebeldes que luchan a través del deseo utópico,

como en el caso de Lauren Olamina. Este utopianismo les permite soñar con

mundos mejores, libres de injusticias. El objetivo principal de este artículo es el

análisis de la confrontación de dos tipos de utopianismo, estático y cinético,

mediante la religión en La parábola del sembrador (1993), de Octavia Butler. El

utopianismo cinético, representado por Lauren y Earthseed, defiende la

adaptabilidad. En cambio, el utopianismo estático, representado por su padre y la

religión Bautista, preserva los valores tradicionales y muestra reticencia hacia los

cambios. La intención de esta obra no es la de criticar ningún sistema de creencias,

sino analizar el impacto que estos dos tipos de utopianismo tienen en la misma

sociedad. El artículo concluye que el utopianismo cinético de Lauren y Earthseed

permite el cambio que ella quiere en el mundo mediante adaptabilidad y progreso.

Por otro lado, el rechazo al cambio y a la adaptabilidad que caracterizan al

utopianismo estático, a la larga, les conduce a su propia desaparición.

Palabras clave: utopianismo, utopía, distopía, La parábola del sembrador, Earthseed.

1. Introduction

Dystopian novels are cautionary tales which represent negative outcomes of

undesirable situations, such as the rise of totalitarian governments or a subversive

use of technology. They are usually inspired by major historical events and became

especially relevant during the twentieth century because of the unprecedented

global wars and the subsequent crises that took hold. The aim of this article is to

discuss the utopian wish in the dystopian novel Parable of the Sower (1993) by

Octavia E. Butler. This study will delve into the representation of two different

types of utopianism: a kinetic model that favours evolution and a static model that

prevents it, and the effect that each of them have on the society depicted in the

novel.

Lauren Olamina is an African American adolescent who lives in a post-apocalyptic

United States that has succumbed to climate change and social mayhem. The

author highlights the existence of class division and hierarchies of power that are

clearly motivated by race; a few neighbourhoods lead comfortable lives at the

expense of the rest. The majority of the population suffer from poverty, misery

and drug addiction. Lauren and her family live in a gated neighbourhood, where

they are mostly safe from the barbaric world outside and where the majority of

Static and Kinetic Utopianism in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower

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citizens are adamant about following Protestant doctrine. However, Lauren

renounces this religion and focuses on Earthseed instead, a religion that she has

founded. Through Earthseed, she plans to introduce a set of improvements and

create a future without violence. Lauren’s objective is to start a new community

based on critical thinking, participation in society and the capacity to adapt to

new situations.

The two aforementioned models of utopianism appear within the two religions

depicted in the novel: Baptist Protestantism and Earthseed. The first is an

embodiment of static utopianism, which defends tradition and fixed ideas. The

second is a fictional religion that embodies kinetic utopianism, which promotes

change, adaptability and multiplicity. The two appear as opposites, yet they also

share common traits. They both intend to create a sense of community, provide

solace and comfort and improve overall life conditions. Octavia Butler addresses

the importance of change for survival, and she adds an Afrofuturistic perspective

to the “classical” dystopian story. In a world filled with negativity and pessimism,

the utopian wish represents a beacon of light and people’s initiative to fight for a

better life.

2. Utopia, Dystopia and Utopianism: The Creation of New

Societies

Throughout history, utopianism has received multiple names, including utopian

wish, thought, spirit, impulse or vision. Literary critics use these terms

interchangeably to represent the same idea: an undefined wish for social

improvement and an attempt not to succumb to the pessimism of societies.

Frederic Jameson defined it as “something like a utopian impulse detectable in

daily life” (2005: 1). This concept should not be confused with the utopian genre,

which is solely concerned with the literary world. Nonetheless, the utopian wish

appears within utopian novels. The utopian wish is a literary device to imagine

better societies, explore different alternatives and even criticise politics and

inequalities. According to Fatima Vieira, utopianism “has at its core the desire for

a better life” (2010: 6). Vieira further argues that the utopian literary genre is one

of the many representations of this utopianism, implying that one is contained

within the other. Utopianism is an intrinsic part of the human experience, and it is

informed by specific times and places. Each society has their own dreams and

aspirations, and thus, their utopian content will vary.

Literary utopias are based on this utopianism, a trend initiated by Sir Thomas

More in Utopia (1516). Regarded as the first proper utopia, More did not

create utopianism, but he reinvented the way it applied to fiction: “It is thus

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certain that although he invented the word utopia, More did not invent

utopianism […] but he certainly changed the way this desire was to be expressed”

(Vieira 2010: 6). Previous works were more speculative in nature and focused

on allegories or the afterlife. More drew from what already existed and moulded

it to fit his own needs.

The origin of this wish is uncertain, but it can be traced back to the times of the

Bible or Ancient Greece. The utopian wish is the basis of many religions, real and

fictional, including Butler’s Earthseed. Utopianism draws on the traditions of

mythical lands and visions of paradise: “It is widely recognized that four major

mythical models of felicity contribute to the genesis of the utopian genre: the

Golden Age, the Land of Cockaigne, the Millennium and the Ideal City” (Dutton

2010: 224). Even though the works of the Golden Age are not usually considered

utopian works per se, the influence that these had over later texts is undeniable

since they provided a foundation for the genre.

Utopianism also occupies a significant place within dystopias, or negative utopias:

“It is generally conceded that in the twentieth century, dystopia becomes the

predominant expression of the utopian ideal, mirroring the colossal failures of

totalitarian collectivism” (Claeys 2010: 108). The dystopian genre completely

dominated the twentieth century following a series of notorious events, including

the World Wars and other incidents such as the Great Depression and the rise of

totalitarianism. Thus, it is no wonder that this historical context had a huge impact

on authors, who deemed it necessary to denounce recent developments in their

fiction. In these novels, the utopian wish appears as a force of positivity intended

to eradicate oppression, manipulation and overcontrol. Dystopian fiction projects

cautionary tales of potential dangers, but it also provides a flicker of hope for

characters and readers. The utopian wish illustrates how humans find the strength

to fight for a better future, even in the darkest of times.

In Butler’s fictional work, Lauren embodies the utopian wish because she fights to

improve the world, and she includes this utopianism in Earthseed. Lauren has

something special that differentiates her from the rest: her hyperempathy, which

allows her to feel others’ pleasure and pain. The way in which she experiences the

world inspired her to create her religious manifesto, where she documents her

religious doctrines, titled Earthseed: The Books of the Living: “Lauren uses her

hyperempathy to imagine a new world and mother the birth of a new religion”

(Hinton 2018: 450). She shares various traits with the archetype of the rebellious

leader, such as her interest in denouncing injustices, advocating for change and

giving a voice to the marginalised. Many might oppose the government or other

world injustices, but only a few have the courage to act. Lauren is willing to take

risks and to put herself on the line.

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The utopianism that appeared in the late twentieth century differs from the

classical dystopias of the middle of the century, because it incorporates an element

of hope in the ending: “by resisting closure, [recent novels] allow readers and

protagonists to hope: the ambiguous, open endings maintain the utopian impulse

within the work” (Baccolini 2004: 520). Lauren’s fate differs from the characters

of the earlier dystopias, which tended to end on a negative note and with futile

attempts to overthrow dictatorships. In those novels, the utopian impulse was

external, reserved for readers to avoid the dystopian scenarios that they presented.

Lauren undergoes tremendous pain and suffering throughout the novel, but by

the end she has escaped the dystopian setting and is founding her own community.

Although predominantly dystopian, the end of the twentieth century saw a

groundswell of positivity thanks to several popular movements, including the civil

rights movement, the second wave of feminism and the environmentalists. This

novel uses race in its exploration of some of the contemporary issues intrinsically

connected to the author’s context, which makes this novel a candidate for the field

of Afrofuturism. In Mark Dery’s words, “Speculative fiction that treats African

American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of

twentieth-century technoculture […] might, for want of a better term, be called

Afro-Futurism” (2008: 8). Octavia Butler adds a much-needed perspective of race

to the traditional white-dominating dystopias, as has been claimed by Garnter:

“The Afrofuturist elements in both Parable of the Sower and Brown Girl in the

Ring demonstrate how Butler and Hopkinson create literary worlds that challenge

traditionally exclusive white feminist narratives” (2021: 1). As a part of the black

community, Octavia Butler vindicates her own right to create imagined futures; in

fact, in Womack’s words, “As feminist dystopian literature imagines possible

futures through a feminist lens, Afrofuturism imagines possible futures through a

black cultural lens” (2013: 9). The gender barrier had been somewhat broken, but

there was still a lot to be done about racial issues.

3. Static and Kinetic Utopianism

The utopian wish, or the intrinsic desire for better worlds, can be understood

under different lights depending on its creator’s ideology and beliefs. There is one

type of utopianism that advocates for multiplicity, multiculturalism and change.

This utopianism appears in several time periods, but it is especially representative of

modern societies and postcolonial and postmodern studies. On the contrary, there

is another utopianism that aims towards universalism, which is likely to ignore and

disregard smaller or marginal cultures and civilisations. This utopianism was more

common in older times, such as the Renaissance or other classical periods.

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This latter utopianism is likely to lead to imposition, totalitarianism and violence.

Plus, the idea that a state of perfection can be attained seems inconceivable:

“The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution, in which all good things

coexist, seems to me to be not merely unattainable —that is a truism— but

conceptually incoherent” (Berlin 2013: 14). The static type of utopianism can

present difficulties such as the suppression of diversity, lack of multiculturalism

and unrealistic expectations about life in community. Utopian visions are not

infallible, and they should be conceived within realistic limits. These two types of

utopianism can be regarded as kinetic and static because of their changing and

fixed nature, respectively. Kinetic utopianism supports constant change and

evolution, and it encourages multiplicity. It assumes that problems and conflict

will arise, but it also offers potential solutions. Static utopianism strives to achieve

perfection, understood as a state in which all of humanity is satisfied. According

to Berlin, “Nothing in [static utopias] alters, for they have reached perfection:

there is no need for novelty or change; no one can wish to alter a condition in

which all natural human wishes are fulfilled” (2013: 21). This utopianism

assumes that once everyone’s wishes and needs are met, change will not be

necessary.

In Parable of the Sower, each of these utopianisms is reflected in the credo of the

two religions. The Baptist religion can be equated with static utopianism, as it

relies on conventional rituals and practices. With a well-established foundation, its

followers adhere to traditional values and are reticent to change. Conversely,

Earthseed relates to kinetic utopianism in the sense that it embraces change and

adaptability over other values. Lauren’s vision is centred on creating a better

version of the world and promotes resilience and proactivity. This will be the

religion of the new generations.

In 1945, Karl Popper developed the theory of the open society, which can partly

be applied to these two notions of utopianism. Popper’s theory comments on

different types of social and political systems. Open societies advocate in favour of

pluralism and diversity. They encourage freedom of expression and participation in

the government’s decisions and envision “the society in which individuals are

confronted with personal decisions” (1947: 152). In a few words, they embody

the same values as kinetic utopianism.

Alternatively, closed societies identify with static utopianism. They defend

traditional and fixed values, are prone to resist change, and the participation of the

citizens tends to be limited. In the worst cases, they lead to totalitarianism and

violence. Popper defends that these societies deem certain laws and customs as

inevitable as natural phenomena: “It is one of the characteristics of the magical

attitude of a primitive tribal or ‘closed’ society that it lives in a charmed circle of

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unchanging taboos, of laws and customs which are felt to be as inevitable as the

rising of the sun” (1947: 49). Popper links the term ‘tribal society’ to the societies

ruled by hierarchies and which adhere to traditional values and are averse to

change. In religions, this attitude can be connected to spiritual and mystical

aspects.

Earthseed relates to kinetic utopianism and open societies because it highlights the

importance of adaptability and change in humans; as Wanzo has argued in relation

to this text, “The essentials of the text and religion are that human beings can

shape Change” (2005: 81). Lauren creates Earthseed because she disagrees with

all other religions, which is supported by Choudhury and Mukherjee when they

say that “Lauren Oya Olamina rejects dominant white Christianity and also her

black father’s black church to invent a new religion which gives hope to the

suffering masses and is inclusive of the rejects of society” (2023: 3). Lauren’s wilful

personality leads her to confront the traditionalism and static nature that

characterise conventional religions.

Conversely, Lauren’s father and Protestantism represent the static tradition and

closed societies. The Baptist religion is rooted in age-old beliefs; it supports the

traditional idea of God as a force of the universe that sees and controls everything.

Apart from the religious aspect, the closed society is also representative of the

overall fictional world of the novel. The established power hierarchy perpetuates

the state of constant violence and control because it benefits a small minority.

Lauren’s father is a Baptist minister and he is regarded as a positive figure in the

neighbourhood. He is very protective of his family, and he is one of the most

proactive members of the community. Because he is aware that he will not be able

to keep his children safe indefinitely, he tries to teach them to protect themselves,

as can be read in the following fragment: “Dad tries to shield us from what goes

on in the world, but he can’t. Knowing that, he also tries to teach us to shield

ourselves” (Butler 2019: 35). He actively defends the neighbourhood and fights

for its survival, but ultimately, he trusts that God will provide salvation. When he

disappears, the static utopianism and the chances of resistance and survival leave

with him.

Butler creates a strong comparison between these religions to illustrate the contrast

between two opposing forces: the old and the new, the immutable and the mutable,

universalism and multiculturalism. Butler denounces the limitations of static utopia

as, in Wanzo’s words, she depicts “a dystopia aimed at critiquing contemporary

social problems, particularly in examining how destruction of the environment and

religious conservatism could result in a fascist state leaving women and people of

color particularly vulnerable” (2005: 75). Nonetheless, rather than condemning

religion as a whole, Parable of the Sower criticises the aspects of religion that need

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improving, according to Butler’s opinion. She criticises the justifications of

violence and oppression made in the name of religion and the blind submission to

religious authority.

4. Utopianism and Religion in Parable of the Sower

Parable of the Sower is a compilation of diary entries by Lauren Olamina, an African

American teenager who lives in a post-apocalyptic United States ravaged by climate

change and social inequality. This diary represents the backbone of the story,

Lauren’s unfiltered perspective, which she writes from July of 2024 to October of

2027. During the course of the novel, Lauren’s character evolves as she matures

and acquires new knowledge. Still, her diary always remains a subjective work that

contains only her perception of the world.

Apart from the diary, the novel is composed of fragments from Earthseed: The

Books of the Living. This is a religious text that contains the Earthseed doctrines,

which Lauren writes down throughout the years as she comes up with them.

Lauren starts this religion as a response to the dystopian atmosphere that surrounds

her and in a utopian attempt to create a better version of the world. This argument

is supported by Stillman when he says: “Earthseed is a religion, a belief system, and

a world view. It begins as Olamina’s responses to the problems in Robledo” (2003:

25). Earthseed revolves around the tenet that ‘God is change’; it defends that

change is inevitable and that it is in the hands of humans to shape it. Lauren’s

ideals and the religion she has founded, Earthseed, are representations of kinetic

utopianism because they argue in favour of the need for adaptability and resilience

for survival. In Lauren’s words: “Out here, you adapt to your surroundings or you

get killed” (Butler 2019: 172). This is exemplified by the members of the

neighbourhood who perished because they were unable to adapt to the dystopian

circumstances.

Lauren’s dream for a better life and her yearning to start a new community propel

her and help her to survive in such a pessimistic and corrupt world, and she finds

comfort in her own writings: “We’ll adapt. We’ll have to. God is Change. Strange

how much it helps me to remember that” (Butler 2019: 138). As Choudhury and

Mukherjee have explained, “as a female protagonist who creates a new religion,

Lauren exemplifies qualities of critical dystopia and Afrofuturism. In her refusal to

accept a violent society as the norm, Lauren performs as a protagonist of critical

dystopia who does not bow down to hegemony” (2023: 8).Lauren has faith in the

future, and believes that it is in her hands, and the hands of her future community,

to shape it when she says, “There’s no power in having strength and brains, and

yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you […] God will

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shape us all every day of our lives. Best to understand that and return the effort:

Shape God” (Butler 2019: 206). In juxtaposition to this, there is a book that

embodies the opposite values and represents static utopianism: the Bible. As a

representative of static utopianism, the Bible is an embodiment of old values and

traditions. The Bible is particularly relevant while Lauren lives with her family and

attends mass, because the neighbourhood is structured according to the principles

set forth in the book. Lauren rejects her father’s religion, as can be read in the

following passage: “‘We were Baptists’, I said. ‘I couldn’t make myself believe

either, and I couldn’t tell anyone’” (Butler 2019: 246). She refuses this religion

because it does not align with her own views, and she is especially critical of the

image of God and divine lack of action. She perceives this God as an almost cruel

figure who does not care whether humans live or die: “That God sounds a lot like

Zeus —a super-powerful man, playing with his toys the way my youngest brothers

play with toy soldiers. Bang, bang! Seven toys fall dead. If they’re yours, you make

the rules. Who cares what the toys think” (Butler 2019: 15). Therefore, it can be

observed that Lauren’s views sharply contrast with the Protestants who pray to

God in exchange for salvation.

4.1. 2024: The Birth of Kinetic Utopianism

The first part of the novel is an introduction to Lauren Olamina and her gated

community. Through diary entries, the reader gets to know the laws and traditions,

Lauren’s dreams and desires, and the religion that she has founded: Earthseed.

The vast majority of community inhabitants are practicing Baptists; they go to

church and find solace in the traditional image of God and the Bible. The adult

characters exude a nostalgia for a long-lost past and a yet non-existent future:

“They never miss a chance to relive the good old days or to tell kids how great it’s

going to be when the country gets back on its feet and good times come back”

(Butler 2019: 8). They are torn between having lost faith in the future and the

hope that God will protect and save them.

The members of the community rely upon the idea that God will provide salvation

and they lack the confidence necessary to shape their own future. The Baptist

religion is shown as static because it is centred around fixed dogmas and beliefs,

and believers follow the Bible word for word: “[Mrs. Sims] believed, like Dad, that

if you kill yourself, you go to hell and burn forever. She believed in a literal

acceptance of everything in the Bible” (Butler 2019: 23). While Baptists are not

inherently opposed to change, they show scepticism and reticence. However, not

all neighbourhood residents are religious devotees, especially the younger citizens.

Most children get baptised merely to fulfil their parents’ desire and they show a

certain indifference towards religious rituals: “We would be baptized out of duty

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or as a kind of insurance, but most of us aren’t that much concerned with religion.

I am, but then I have a different religion” (Butler 2019: 8), especially the younger

members. In fact, the secularisation of religion was a growing topic of interest in

the 20th century, and Octavia Butler manages to emphasise both the importance of

religious pluralism and the loss of faith in traditional institutions. In her novel, the

static model of utopianism is starting to lose followers because of the hostile

environment and growing scepticism of the members of the closed society. On the

other hand, the popularity of kinetic utopianism increases as Lauren spreads the

word of Earthseed.

The idea of God reflected in the Baptist and Earthseed religions is very

representative of the statuses of these religions as examples of static and kinetic

utopianism, respectively. Lauren questions the idea of God in traditional religions

and wonders why he allows such barbarism, injustice and violence: “Is there a

God? If there is, does he (she? it?) care about us?” (Butler 2019: 15). She argues

against the idea of a God who determines the fate of humanity and against the idea

that it is futile to propose alternatives. Instead, Lauren’s idea of God is change,

which vastly differs from the traditional image, as she says, “My God doesn’t love

me or hate me or watch over me or know me at all, and I feel no love for or loyalty

to my God. My God just is” (Butler 2019: 25). Lauren refuses to worship a God

whom she deems unfair and unjust, and instead avers that change can come from

humans. In the dystopian world, change, resilience and adaptability are essential

for survival, and these are the pillars of Earthseed.

Earthseed: The Books of the Living opens with the claims that “without persistence,

what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains

may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is

nothing at all” (Butler 2019: 1). Throughout the novel, Lauren demonstrates how

all of these abilities allowed her to successfully start the community she had

dreamed of. She faces constant dangers and unexpected incidents, but she

perseveres. Lauren’s interest in developing Earthseed starts from an impulse that

assimilates to the utopian wish, because this impulse comes from a desire for a

better future without violence and poverty. It could even be argued that Earthseed

is born from a yearning that Protestantism is unable to fulfil. Some critics such as

Choudhury and Mukherjee have connected Lauren’s hyperempathy syndrome

and the constant suffering that it entails with the creation of Earthseed: “Lauren

emerges as a protagonist who can share others’ pain —a dystopian condition—

which leads her to contemplate the need for a new religion and a communal social

order invested in people’s happiness” (2023: 7). In fact, the analysis exposed in

this article agrees with the theory that it is Lauren’s ability to feel others’ suffering

that motivated her to create this religion. It seems that she conceives Earthseed in

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a desperate need to pursue a future without such violence and in an attempt to

establish an order of peace.

4.2. 2025: The Victims of the Closed Society

In the second part, Lauren helps her stepmother with her kindergarten classes. She

plans to use her influence for good and to prepare children for the difficulties

ahead. Even though she draws from some of Earthseed’s doctrines, she does not

teach directly from the book. Additionally, there are various altercations in the

neighbourhood, including incidents of theft, arson and assault. Lauren’s

neighbours have experienced such sorrows that they can barely dare to dream of

better worlds: “We are coming apart. The community, the families, individual

family members. … We’re a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time” (Butler 2019:

109). Thinking of alternatives seems like a faraway fantasy. Within the

neighbourhood, people are anxious about surviving the present and they are not

as concerned with a utopian future that might never come, as Stillman has

explained: “People are so involved in hierarchy and domination, so convinced of

their own rightness, so scared, or so committed to maintaining their own arbitrary

power that it can be disheartening to attempt to hope, think, and act in utopian,

promising, or novel ways” (Stillman 2003: 16). But Lauren is determined to fight.

These citizens are victims of the closed society; the members of the neighbourhood

have been indoctrinated to stay within a certain narrative. They see the mayhem

and dangers of the outside world and are content with their small, civilised

neighbourhood where they have stability, protection and resources to a certain

extent. Their reliance on static utopianism has led them to complacency; they are

resigned to their circumstances and seek comfort in what is familiar. They are

passive characters in the sense that they are waiting for a divine intervention, as

Lauren says: “Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead

of the little step-by step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the

climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back” (Butler

2019: 52). They view destiny as a force that cannot be meddled with.

During the course of the novel, Lauren progressively becomes more proactive, and

in 2025 she packs a bag to be kept for the imminent moment when she will have

to flee. In her bag, along with seeds and survival tools, she includes her diary and

the Earthseed notebook. The fact that she prioritises her book of Earthseed

highlights the importance she gives to the implementation of this new religion.

When she was younger, Lauren was a Protestant: “At least three years ago, my

father’s God stopped being my God. His church stopped being my church”

(Butler 2019: 7). Lauren’s departure from Protestantism signifies a rupture with

her father and the neighbourhood, at first spiritually but later also physically. It is

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the change from Protestantism to Earthseed which transfers her from passive to

active; she evolves from being a minor member of the Baptist church to becoming

the leader of a religious movement.

The core idea of utopianism lies in the desire for improvement, equality and a

sense of shared community. For Lauren, these qualities are intrinsically linked with

the notions of change and adaptability. Earthseed’s most important tenet, as

written in the Books of the Living, states that “the only lasting truth/ Is Change./

God/ Is Change” (Butler 2019: 75). In the world, the only constant thing is

change; change is inevitable and ever-present. Lauren’s idea that ‘God is change’

and that humans can produce change is very representative of utopian ideals.

Lauren’s ideas are consistent with the notion that a true utopia should be kinetic

and not static, as explored by H.G. Wells in A Modern Utopia: “the Modern

Utopia must be not static but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent state but as

a hopeful stage, leading to a long ascent of stages” (2009: 13). Wells stresses the

importance of adaptability and movement within the utopian society. Utopias

ought to evolve along with humanity and adjust to their wants and needs. In

Lauren’s opinion, change is part of the human experience, but maybe they do not

know how to deal with it yet.

Lauren refuses to leave her destiny in the hands of a God and would rather act of

her own volition. She yearns for a faraway community, and dreams of taking

Earthseed to space. The notion of finding a new place to start a community is a

representative characteristic of utopian fiction and the utopian vision in general:

“Is not this dreaming of life on another world, this desire for that which is not yet

here, what marks utopian thinking?” (Miller 1998: 355). This allowed people to

deal with issues such as overpopulation and space exploration. The conception of

space as a place to locate new societies became popular in the utopian tradition

after its blending with science fiction, and Octavia Butler further connects it with

Afrofuturism through her portrayal of the racial perspective. Lauren’s objective is

space: “The Destiny of Earthseed/ Is to take root among the stars” (Butler 2019:

80), which represents the potential for a blank slate without violence and injustices.

4.3. 2026: The Disappearance of Static Utopianism

In the third part, Lauren suffers two tremendous losses: her brother’s gruesome

death and her father’s mysterious disappearance. In the neighbourhood, incidents

continue to happen, and some families decide to move to richer neighbourhoods.

For her part, Lauren continues with her Earthseed plans, which are starting to take

shape. It has been explained that Lauren repeatedly advocates for change and

adaptability, but it is important to consider the extent to which she might try to

impose her own convictions on other characters. She constantly employs

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authoritative language and imperative verbs, which produce definite and categorical

statements. Lauren claims that her statements are true: “I wrote that verse a few

months ago. It’s true like all the verses. It seems more true than ever now, more

useful to me when I’m afraid” (Butler 2019: 117), but she shows no empirical

proof. Instead, it seems that she writes to reassure herself. Paradoxically, Lauren’s

kinetic doctrines resemble static utopianism in the sense that she wants to establish

a somewhat fixed vision that she tries to impose on her society.

After thoughtful consideration, Lauren takes a step further and decides that she

will leave Robledo, which at this point she has been planning for some time. She

wants to travel north, where there are better opportunities of finding a quiet place

to start her community. This travelling is reminiscent of the journey to reach

utopian islands in traditional utopias, such as More’s Utopia (1516) or Bacon’s

New Atlantis (1626). The travelling was a device used for locating utopias in time

and space. In both traditional utopias and Parable of the Sower, there is a sharp

contrast between the place of origin and the destination. In fact, the weaknesses of

the place of origin stress the superior quality of the new place. The experiences and

contents of the travels are complete opposites, but the destination in both cases is

a land to start anew. Lauren is aware of the dangers ahead, but she is prepared to

deal with the consequences.

It is also in this third part when Lauren decides the name for her book, which she

names Earthseed: The Book of the Living. The naming of the book indicates that

Earthseed has stopped being an abstract idea. Lauren continues to think about

teaching directly from the book of Earthseed when she writes “Teaching is what I

would choose to do. Even if I have to take other kinds of work to get enough to

eat, I can teach. If I do it well, it will draw people to me —to Earthseed” (Butler

2019: 117). By doing this, she will become a sort of prophet.

Within her writings, Lauren finds solace in the notions of adaptability and change;

the idea of living in a world where she is not in constant fear helps her to cope with

reality. In her darkest moments, Lauren is able to return to Earthseed and regain

her confidence in the future. Lauren intends to create a book that compiles

Earthseed’s prime principles and doctrines, which is how Earthseed resembles a

religious text. Nonetheless, Lauren never completely abandons the Bible, and

when her father disappears, she reads from it to the neighbourhood. Lauren might

disagree with the conception of God, but she shares the same sense of community

and wishes to lift people’s spirits: “We have God and we have each other. We have

our island community, fragile, and yet a fortress. Sometimes it seems too small and

too weak to survive. […] But also like the widow, it persists. We persist. This is our

place, no matter what” (Butler 2019: 127). Lauren preaches a sermon about

persistence, and it can be extrapolated to two different issues. Firstly, to continue

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the search for her missing father, who has disappeared in mysterious circumstances,

but also to resist as a community against adversity. It is not enough to have faith in

the future: it is necessary to act on it.

By the end of the third part, people’s spirits are lower than ever: “People are

setting fires because they’re frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to

improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable.

And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it” (Butler

2019: 135). The community is coming apart, and the death of Lauren’s father

represents a turning point, because he was the force that kept it together, in

Ruffin’s words: “Lauren associates the death of her father with the death of the

community, and rightly so” (2005: 90). Because Lauren’s father represented static

utopianism, when he disappears, this variant of utopianism leaves with him.

Eventually, the members of the neighbourhood determine that their attempts to

change the world are futile and they are resigned to the lives they currently have.

4.4. 2027: The Utopian Journey

In the fourth part, the gate falls and the neighbourhood succumbs to violent

outsiders. Lauren’s family and the majority of the neighbourhood perish, but she

escapes. Lauren starts her journey to find the perfect location in which to found

her open society. Before this moment, the journey had only been a theoretical

plan. During the journey, she progressively forms a group of unconventional

people who decide to join her. Earthseed starts to become a reality.

Lauren survived the fall of the neighbourhood because instead of hoping for a

miracle, she devised an escape plan. Butler creates a stark contrast between the

followers of static and kinetic utopianism. The followers of static utopianism had

faith not only in the protection of God, but also in the gate. When the gate falls,

they are unprepared and ill-equipped; they are unable to adapt to the circumstances.

Kinetic utopianism allows Lauren to adapt and to survive; she acts quickly and

efficiently, and her utopian journey begins. During the journey, Lauren teaches

Earthseed to some of her companions. She has carefully planned the order in which

the doctrines ought to appear: “Last year, I chose these lines for the first page of the

first book of Earthseed: The Books of the Living. These lines say everything.

Everything!” (2019: 184). The first lines of the book stress the importance of

change and mention the mantra of the religion; God is Change. Earthseed: The

Books of the Living is a book in progress, as opposed to the Bible, whose content has

been set for centuries. The Bible does not present a linear narrative; it is a compilation

of texts from different sources that can be read and interpreted in a variety of ways.

Once again, the essence of static utopianism resides in stability and traditionalism,

whereas the kinetic favours movement, because it is a work in progress.

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The first verses of Earthseed are essential to attract new members. They are a

presentation and summary of the whole religion. When Lauren reads aloud to one

of her companions, she carefully chooses a fragment from the first page: “Would

have given him money to read and digest some of the Earthseed portions of my

journal. But he had to be eased into them. If he read the wrong thing, it would

just increase the distance between us” (Butler 2019: 183). Lauren wants to sound

convincing, and she is afraid of scaring away potential followers. She aims to

dissipate the mistrust of the group and create a soothing atmosphere.

Unlike the book of Earthseed, the Bible does not need presentation. In the novel

it is depicted as a well-established text with a clear objective: to offer solace and

moral guidance. Lauren argues that people resort to religious texts when facing

adversities as she states: “People do that all the time. They reach back to the Bible,

the Talmud, the Koran, or some other religious book that helps them deal with the

frightening changes that happen in life” (Butler 2019: 208). One of the most

crucial differences between the two religions is the image of God, because Christian

religion presents an all-seeing and powerful God that decides the destiny of

humanity. In Earthseed, God is a spiritual force, and humans are in charge of

shaping their own destiny. Once again, the difference is based on that which is

stationary in contrast with movement.

Finally, Lauren gets some of her travelling companions to join Earthseed: “I think

Travis Charles Douglas is my first convert. Zahra Moss is my second” (Butler

2019: 209). Lauren is confident in her ideas and thinks she can get more people

to join Earthseed. Lauren’s feelings towards creating a better future are genuine

and she welcomes everyone into her group. When they first met, the members of

Lauren’s group showed reticence towards Earthseed and the open society because

of the suffering they had undergone. They were sceptical and wondered whether

Lauren’s own project would likewise end in a closed society. Nonetheless, they

eventually decide to join her and her project, abandoning their old religions along

the way. In dark times, the joint sense of community is part of what draws people

to Earthseed. Either purposefully or inadvertently, Earthseed incorporates ideas

and beliefs that exist in other religions: “It sounds like some combination of

Buddhism, existentialism, Sufism, and I don’t know what else” (Butler 2019:

246). Earthseed contains elements such as the impermanence of things from the

Buddhists, the importance of individual responsibility of existentialism, or the

pursuit of spiritual development from Sufism. Needless to say, Lauren also subverts

certain values from Christianism, such as the traditional image of God as an all-

seeing figure: “But it’s not a god. It’s not a person or an intelligence or even a

thing. It’s just… I don’t know. An idea” (Butler 2019: 204). In Earthseed, God is

not a person, but an idea that Lauren personifies for other people to remember the

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mantras more easily. Furthermore, she incorporates the sense of community and a

desire for belonging that most religions exhibit.

By the end of the novel, Butler introduces the notion of mutability within religion:

“All religions change. Think about the big ones. What do you think Christ would

be these days? A Baptist? A Methodist? A Catholic? And the Buddha —do you

think he’d be a Buddhist now? What kind of Buddhism would he practice?” (Butler

2019: 247), and the idea that all religions change within certain parameters.

Religions are never completely static, and it is natural that, as societies advance,

new interpretations and offshoots appear. Yet, the old religions are regarded as

static because of their reticence of change. At this point, Lauren has to accept that

her own religion might change beyond her own control if it continues to expand.

To Lauren, change is at the mercy of humans, and not a supernatural force. The

concept of change as Lauren understands it relates to the utopian wish inasmuch

as it recognises that change is necessary for progress. If a society refuses change,

then it cannot properly evolve, and Robledo is the perfect example. In this sense,

Butler successfully portrays “a narrative about the tragic consequences of rejecting

change by means of restoring paternalistic structures” (Nilges 2009: 1333). The

inhabitants of this neighbourhood did not survive because they relied on fixed and

antiquated traditions; they were unprepared and unable to adapt to the hostility of

the world.

Lauren wants to provide the same sense of calm and reassurance that religion

provides for others. In the end, Earthseed is not starkly different from traditional

religion; in a sense, it has a church, sacred texts and a preacher. Lauren does not

mean to impose her religion or fix all of the world’s problems, but she thinks the

world would be a better place if they followed the Earthseed doctrines. Lauren’s

devised society is the representation of an open society in that it is based on

communication, respect and, most of all, collaboration: “If we’re a good pack, and

we work together, we have a chance” (Butler 2019: 172). Individually, humans

have little chance of surviving in the dystopian world, but as a group they can

protect each other.

When the group reaches their destination, their first act as a community is to hold

a funeral for their lost members and to plant a tree for each of the departed. The

funeral provides a sense of closure, and the scene as a whole reflects the potential

for a new beginning and the birth of Lauren’s community. Finally, Earthseed

becomes the reality that Lauren has dreamed of for so long. Now that Earthseed

is not a mere theoretical proposition, it is inevitable to question whether Lauren

will manage to stop it from becoming a static utopia. The novel closes with the

Parable of the Sower from the King James Bible and the idea that seeds will die if

they fall on barren ground, but they will bear fruit if they are planted in fertile

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ground. The inclusion of this parable at the end of the text might be an indicator

that Lauren’s society will most likely flourish because she has found a location

where it is fit to start it.

5. Conclusion

Overall, this article has explored the notion that utopianism yearns for the creation

of alternative visions to current realities in order to improve them. This tenet

forms the basis of utopian fiction, since utopias are born of a yearning for

improvement and the creation of good places. But this aspect is also of paramount

importance within dystopian fiction, where this spirit is embodied in the characters

who fight to eradicate bad places. In the dystopian novel Parable of the Sower,

Octavia Butler juxtaposes two different religions, one real and one fictional, to

represent a conflict between a static and a kinetic approach to the idea of utopia.

This article has aimed to analyse how each of these two models of utopianism and

their respective religions affected the society that Butler depicted within her novel.

Parable of the Sower does not mean to condemn any religion, but it clearly favours

Earthseed over Baptist Protestantism. Lauren and Earthseed are able to evolve and

persevere because she is a fervent supporter of the adaptability that characterises

kinetic utopianism. Lauren’s determination to shape her own future forges her

resilient character, and in the end she manages to translate her utopian vision into

the real world. On the other hand, the reticence of change that characterises static

utopianism and the inability of the Protestants to adapt to the dystopian

circumstances ultimately leads to its disappearance altogether.

In conclusion, Octavia Butler contrasts these two variants of utopianism to express

the extent to which the conception of what a good place entails depends on time,

place and, especially, on the beliefs of its creator. This article concludes by agreeing

with the idea that change is necessary for the evolution and survival of any society.

This message is especially relevant within the context of the novel, but it can be

extrapolated to the real world. Parable of the Sower encourages readers to be

proactive and to seek the change that they want to see in the world.

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bERLIn, Isaiah. 2013. The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas. Princeton:

Princeton U.P.

butLER, Octavia E. (1993) 2019. Parable of the Sower. London: Headline.

CHOuDHuRy, Antara and Shreyashi MukHERJEE. 2023. “Religion and Critical Dystopia: Afrofuturism

in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower”. IIS University Journal of Arts 12 (3-4): 1-14.

CLAEys, Gregory. (ed.) 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. Cambridge:

Cambridge U.P.

CLAEys, Gregory. 2010. “The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell”. In Claeys, Gregory

(ed.): 107-134.

DERy, Mark. 2008. “Black to the Future”. In Barr, Marleen S. (ed.) Afro-Future Females: Black

Writer’s Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New-Wave Trajectory. Ohio: the Ohio State U.P.: 6-13.

DuttOn, Jacqueline. 2010. “‘Non-western’ Utopian Traditions”. In Claeys, Gregory (ed.): 223-258.

HIntOn, Anna. 2018. “Making Do with What You Don’t Have: Disabled Black Motherhood in

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents”. Journal of Literary and

Cultural Disability Studies 12 (4): 441-457. <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/709539>.

JAMEsOn, Frederic. 2005. Archaeologies of the Future. The Desire Called Utopia and Other

Science Fictions. London: Verso.

MILLER, Jim. 1998. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision”. Science

Fiction Studies 25 (2): 336-360.

nILgEs, Mathias. 2009. “‘We Need the Stars’: Change, Community, and the Absent Father in

Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ and ‘Parable of the Talents’”. Callaloo32 (4): 1332-1352.

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POPPER, Karl. (1945) 1947. The Open Society and its Enemies. Volume One: The Spell of Plato.

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RuffIn, Kimberly t. 2005. “Parable of a 21st Century Religion: Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturistic

Bridge between Science and Religion”. Obsidian III (6/7): 87-104. <http://www.jstor.org/

stable/44511664>.

stILLMAn, Peter g. 2003. “Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in

Octavia Butler’s Parables”. Utopian Studies 14 (1): 15-35. <www.jstor.org/stable/20718544>.

VIEIRA, Fatima. 2010. The Concept of Utopia. In Claeys, Gregory (ed.): 3-27.

wAnzO, Rebecca. 2005. “Apocalyptic Empathy: A ‘Parable’ of Postmodern Sentimentality”.

Obsidian III 6/7: 72-86. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/44511663>.

wELLs, H. g. (1905) 2009. A Modern Utopia. London: Penguin.

wOMACk, Ytasha. 2013. Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-fi and Fantasy. Chicago: Independent

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Received: 22/12/2023

Accepted: 04/07/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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READING MARTIN AMIS’S RECREATION

OF THE PERPETRATOR’S GAZE

IN THE ZONE OF INTEREST

LA RECREACIÓN DE LA MIRADA

DEL PERPETRADOR EN THE ZONE OF INTEREST,

DE MARTIN AMIS

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202410052

AÍDA DÍAZ BILD

universidad La Laguna

adbild@ull.edu.es

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7543-5872>

Abstract

The Zone of Interest is a historical novel set in Auschwitz in the months from August

1942 to April 1943, and which belongs to the category of perpetrator fiction. This

article centres on the character of Paul Doll, the camp commandant, who represents

the banality of evil and, through whose voice Amis gives the readers a sharp picture

of the abominations committed by the Nazis, while he recounts the causes and

devastating consequences of the perpetrators’ actions. By transforming Doll into a

buffoon, Amis offers a different perspective on the Holocaust and makes the

reader realise that those responsible for the worst crimes were neither monsters nor

exceptional human beings, but normal, vulnerable people who had the fate of

millions of Jews in their hands.

Keywords: The Zone of Interest, Martin Amis, perpetrator, Holocaust, Auschwitz,

buffoon.

Resumen

The Zone of Interest es una novela histórica que transcurre en Auschwitz desde

agosto de 1942 hasta abril de 1943 y que se incluye dentro de la categoría de

“perpetrator fiction”. Este artículo se centra en el personaje de Paul Doll, el

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comandante del campo, que encarna la banalidad del mal y a través de cuya voz

Amis le ofrece al lector una visión nítida de las atrocidades cometidas por los Nazis

y recrea las causas y el efecto devastador de las acciones de los perpetradores. Amis

transforma a Doll en un bufón y ello le permite dar una visión diferente del

Holocausto y hacer que el lector sea consciente de que los responsables de los

peores crímenes no eran seres excepcionales ni monstruos, sino gente normal y

vulnerable que tenía en sus manos el destino de millones de judíos.

Palabras clave: The Zone of Interest, Martin Amis, perpetrador, Holocausto,

Auschwitz, bufón.

1. Introduction

In “The Jewish Tragedy and the Holocaust” Isaac Deutscher states that the great

obstacle to understanding the Holocaust is its uniqueness. He does not believe

that the passage of time will provide a better comprehension of what happened: “It

is rather the fact that we are confronted here by a huge and ominous mystery of

the degeneration of the human character that will forever baffle and terrify

mankind” (1968: 164). Saul Friedländer agrees with Deutscher that, although

knowledge of the Holocaust has increased, there is “no deeper comprehension

than immediately after the war” (1976: 36). In fact, he asserts that, in the case of

the Shoah, we have to abandon our natural tendency to look for some meaning or

interpretation, because “[i]n Walter Benjamin’s terms, we may possibly be facing

an unredeemable past” (Friedländer 1989: 73). In this sense, Friedländer arguably

belongs in the group of writers and scholars who believe that, on a global level,

there is no redemptive message in the Shoah (Langer 1975; Friedländer 1988;

Ozick 1988).

British author Martin Amis echoes these scholars’ words when he admits that,

despite his extensive reading on the Holocaust, “while [he] might have gained in

knowledge, [he] had gained nothing at all in penetration” (2015: 309). Amis

recognises that he has always been amazed and fascinated by the Holocaust’s

exceptionalism (Rosenbaum 2012; Seaman 2014). He is concerned not only with

the magnitude of the event, but also with the inexplicability of the crime and of the

figure of Hitler and the actions of the German people (Seaman 2014). In fact, he

admits that the problem of understanding Hitler bedevilled him until he read

Primo Levi’s statement on the Nazi fanatical hatred of the Jews: “But there is no

rationality in the Nazi hatred: it is a hate that is not in us; it is outside man, it is a

poison fruit sprung from the deadly trunk of Fascism, but it is outside and beyond

Fascism itself. We cannot understand it, but we can and must understand from

where it springs, and we must be on our guard” (Levi 2004: 395-396). Levi’s

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statement was like an epiphany for Amis since it relieved him of the pressure to

understand the Holocaust, and he felt free to write about it again (Rosenbaum

2012).1 As Ron Rosenbaum states, Amis seems to believe that he has a responsibility

as a writer and thinker to deal with the extermination of six million Jews in his

works (2012). This explains why, after the publication of Time’s Arrow (1991), in

2014 Amis returns to the subject of the Holocaust with The Zone of Interest, a

novel set in Auschwitz in the months spanning August 1942 to April 1943.

The Zone of Interest, as Tova Reich has asserted, may be considered as a novel of

written testimonies (2014). The story is told from the point of view of the three

central characters, who Reich interprets as representations of the collaborator,

perpetrator and victim. The collaborator is Angelus Thomsen, a womaniser who

happens to be a nephew of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary; the

perpetrator is Paul Doll, the “Old Boozer”, the camp commandant and the source

of most of the comedy in the novel;2 and the victim is Szmul, the leader of the

Sonderkommando, the name given to Jewish prisoners forced to do the Nazis’

“dirty work”, that is, to help the Nazi officers deceive the prisoners on arriving at

the camp and dispose of the corpses.3 This article centres on Paul Doll, a ludicrous

figure who personifies Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil and,

through whose voice Amis gives “the reader a stomach-turning awareness of the

abominations the Nazis inflicted on their victims” (Kakutani 2014). By

transforming Doll into a buffoon, Amis achieves what he believes should be the

aim of a writer, which is to change the reader’s habits of perception, so that they

can look at the world with refreshed eyes (Stadlen 2013).

2. The Zone of Interest: A Perpetrator Fiction within a

Historical Novel

Whereas Time’s Arrow is an experimental novel,4 with The Zone of Interest Amis

wanted to deal with the Holocaust in a more realistic way, and this is why he chose

social realism as the genre for the novel (Seaman 2014). Some critics have indeed

described the book as a traditional, realistic, historical novel (Ozick 2014; Preston

2014; Wood 2014), and one which merits praise due to Amis’s thorough research

into the atrocities committed by the Nazis. In fact, in the acknowledgements

section and epilogue at the end of the novel, Amis includes the historical

documentation he used to write the novel and emphasises that he “adhere[d] to

that which happened, in all its horror, its desolation, and its bloody-minded

opacity” (2015: 310). Wynn Wheldon believes that Amis has achieved a great

accomplishment is performing a fundamental task by doing justice to his subject:

“If it only helps to explain to those who at present so promiscuously throw around

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the word ‘genocide’ what that awful word in reality denotes it will have earned the

attention it will certainly receive” (2014). Wheldon’s statement is very revealing,

because Amis eschews what James E. Young considers to be one of the main

problems with what he calls “documentary fiction”. According to Young, although

the writer of Holocaust fiction asserts the factual basis of his work, there is a

danger of trivialising the historical event that is recreated (1988: 201). In addition,

Young establishes an insightful distinction between non-fiction and fiction about

the Holocaust. For him, “[w]here the nonfiction account attempts to retrieve its

authentic connection to events in order to reinforce its documentary authority,

fiction necessarily fabricates its link to events in order to reinforce its documentary

authority” (1988: 211-212). In the case of the literature of atrocity, as Langer

points out, the writer has the “advantage” of dealing with a portion of reality the

audience already knows. Due to this reason, this kind of narrative can never be just

a fiction inasmuch as an author “can never totally conceal the relationship between

the naked body and the covering costume, the actual scars of the Holocaust and

the creative salves that often only intensify pain” (1975: 91).

More specifically, when it comes to Holocaust fiction, The Zone of Interest belongs

to the category of what Robert Eaglestone calls “perpetrator fiction” (2010, 2013,

2017). This literary critic explains that in the last two decades there has been a

boom across Europe and America of works dealing with perpetrators —a trend

that, according to Eaglestone, has a three-fold justification: the growth of historical

research into perpetrators, the ongoing popularity of the historical novel and the

fascination with the question of evil (2017: 48-49). Jenni Adams has also pointed

out that this renewed attention to the figure of the perpetrator in recent Holocaust

literature “forms another key strand of the lifting of prohibitions and taboos within

both literature and criticism” (2014: 251). Erin McGlothlin considers that this

taboo, which until recently shunned or regulated representations of perpetrators,

derives from most literary critics’ belief that Holocaust fiction should focus on the

victims’ suffering and pain (2010: 212) in order to avoid betraying the memory of

the victims (213).5 However, she strongly defends that critics should earnestly and

critically analyse the consciousness of the perpetrators: “If we leave the

representation of their thoughts and motives unexamined, we construct them as

abstract, mythical figures whose actions cannot be accounted for (even and

particularly if their thoughts and actions remain, in their extremity, essentially

incomprehensible to us)” (214).6

The aforementioned statement by McGlothlin is highly significant because those

scholars, who in recent years have argued in favour of the need to explore

perpetrator trauma, have argued that such research would contribute to destroying

the perception of “perpetrators as cartoonish monsters by exposing their

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ordinariness and humanity” (Mohamed 2015: 1157). Certainly, as Stef Craps and

his co-authors point out, some believe that by focusing on the emotional and

psychological response of perpetrators to events, there is a danger of identifying

the perpetrator with the victim and excusing his or her crimes (2015: 920).

Obviously, those interested in perpetrator trauma do not only reject this possibility,

but emphasise that the unease that readers experience when contemplating the

psychological scars of the perpetrators may derive from “the uncomfortable and

challenging nature of the self-scrutiny that this entails” (Vice 2013: 16), revealing

our potential for evil (Craps, Cheyette and Gibbs 2015: 920). Certainly, whereas

Time’s Arrow also belongs in the category of perpetrator trauma narrative,7 the

main aim of The Zone of Interest is to show how ordinary people are capable of the

worst atrocities.

3. Paul Doll: The Perpetrator’s Gaze through the Figure

of the Buffoon

In The Zone of Interest, Szmul, Thomsen and Doll conclude that the concentration

camp shows your soul, revealing who you really are. In Doll’s words, “it’s true

what they say, here in the KL: No one knows themselves. Who are you? You don’t

know. Then you come to the Zone of Interest, and it tells you who you are” (Amis

2014: 68). Amis is very much concerned with the fact that, as survivors have

constantly asserted, you discover who you really are when you find yourself in

extreme circumstances: “In normal, peaceful, civilized life you are aware of ten per

cent of your resources and your deeper personality, but in an atrocity producing

context you find out amazing things about yourself, both the perpetrators and the

victims” (Seaman 2014). In fact, in an insightful article Christopher R. Browning

makes a statement that reinforces Amis’s thesis: “The men who carried out these

massacres, like those who refused or evaded, were human beings. I must recognize

that in such a situation I could have been either a killer or an evader —both were

human— if I want to understand and explain the behaviour of both as best as I

can” (1992: 36).

Actually, according to Arendt, the case of Eichmann confronted the judges with

the question of how long it takes an average person to overcome their repugnance

toward crime and how they behave on reaching this point (2006: 93). Indeed, half

a dozen psychiatrists certified that Eichmann was “normal” (25) and, for Arendt,

this normality was more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, because it

showed that Eichmann and many others were neither monsters nor perverted or

sadistic (276).8 Moreover, what the trial showed was that Eichmann and those

who were like him represented the banality of evil since they were incapable of

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thinking or at least thinking from the standpoint of somebody else (49). It was

precisely this banality —this sheer thoughtlessness— that predisposed Eichmann

to become one of the worst criminals of the period (288). The terrible lesson that

was learnt in Jerusalem, where the trial took place, was that “such remoteness from

reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts

taken together” (288). In the same line, Amis argues that we must accept the fact

that those who implemented the Final Solution were not a gang of psychopaths

“getting together saying, let’s kill a lot of people, let’s have an orgy of violence”,

but a group of people who thought they were doing something good in the name

of Good (Wachtel 1996: 45).

Nearly every page of The Zone of Interest reports some horror, which is not the

figment of Amis’s imagination, but the reflection of a cruel reality, and it is in this

portrayal of the enormity of the Holocaust that Doll’s consciousness plays a major

role. According to most critics, Doll is an admirable creation. Michael Hofmann

has argued that Doll is “really the only reason for reading the book” (2014: 3) and

Alex Preston maintains that “the sections in his voice are the novel’s bravura

performances” (2014). For his part, Wheldon believes that the “best realized is

Doll, in whose company the novel is most enjoyable” (2014), and Reich has

asserted that the commandant is “a masterful comic performance” (2014). Doll

has also been described as “a wickedly funny Monty Python figure” (Oates 2014),

a buffoon (Oates 2014; Reich 2014), an oaf, a clown. Incidentally, “clown” is the

word that Arendt uses to describe Adolf Eichmann. She argues that the German

transcription of the taped police examination constitutes a gold mine for a

psychologist, “provided he is wise enough to understand that the horrible can be

not only ludicrous but outright funny” (2006: 48). She believes that during the

trial the judges became aware of his “worst clowneries” but decided to ignore

them, because it would have been hard to sustain that someone like him had

caused so much harm (2006: 54). This is the terrible reality that Amis portrays

through the ridiculous character of Doll.

It is no surprise that the conception of this Nazi perpetrator as a comic figure in

Amis’s work may be met with objection. Ozick, who has been very critical of the

character of Doll, has asserted that “[h]istory as comedy has a parallel effect: it

trivializes the unconscionable. The blood the clown spills is always ketchup”

(2014). She also claims that no genre is more liberated from the obligation to be

truthful to history than comedy. This viewpoint, however, is questionable because,

as some critics have proved in the last few years, comedy can deal with the

Holocaust respectfully while offering a different perspective that does not belittle

its enormity. Des Pres believes that comedy has become essential when coping

with such a horrifying event as the Holocaust, because “humour counts most in

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precisely those situations where most decisive remedies fail” (1991: 218). Mark

Cory endorses De Pres’s argument when he emphasises that, as a literary device,

humour has “functioned aesthetically to make the unfathomable accessible to the

minds and emotions of the reading public” (1995: 39). Casey Haskins reaches the

same conclusion in his analysis of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful when he

argues that humour is often the only possible response to a reality before which

ordinary representational strategies fail (2001: 380). Life is Beautiful has certainly

attracted the attention of those scholars concerned with the Holocaust and its

representation through comedy. Most of them agree with Haskins that the film, far

from trivialising the Shoah, proves that comedy can provide a different perspective

without cheapening its subject. Thus, Daniel Kotzin claims that in the film “[l]

aughter is nearly irresistible but it is earned without minimizing the horror of the

camp” (1998: 4), while Maurizio Viano argues that comedy can be an effective

tool for the dissemination of the memory of the Holocaust (1999: 33).

In keeping with this, Amis himself has argued that humour should have no

limits, although he recognises that a subject such as the Holocaust carries with it

certain responsibilities, a kind of decorum that the writer must bear in mind (in

Mars 2015). As Preston has argued, humour in The Zone of Interest is more

restrained than in other works by Amis and is always directed towards the ethical

ends of the novel (2014). Paul Doll is the main source of comedy in the novel

and, by approaching the terrible events of the Holocaust from the point of view

of a buffoon, Amis succeeds in creating a terrifying picture of the cruelty and

violence of the “ordinary men” who committed mass murder. The first step in

the whole process of extermination was the confinement of Jews in ghettos,

where many of them died, either of starvation or disease (Gill 2018: 38).

However, in Amis’s novel Doll gives us his own view of life in the ghettos while

blaming the Jews themselves for living in such dramatic conditions, as a way to

dehumanise them:

(As a loving father, I found it particularly hard to stomach their vicious neglect of the

semi-naked children who howl, beg, sing, moan, and tremble, yellow-faced, like tiny

lepers.) In Warsaw there are a dozen new cases of typhus every week, and of the ½ a

million Jews 5-6,000 die every month, such is the apathy, the degeneracy, and, to be

quite frank about it, the want of even the rudiments of self-respect. (Amis 2015:

110)

This biased description of the ghettos offers readers a devastating picture of this

Nazi perpetrator, particularly his lack of empathy, his sense of racial superiority, his

fanaticism, as well as his blindness to the fact that it is the Nazi apparatus that has

led the Jews to this terrible predicament. Nonetheless, the implication that the

Jews are responsible for their subhuman living conditions, for their “degeneracy”,

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which can be extracted from Doll’s words, rather reveals the prejudices that Nazi

officials like Doll had about them.

The second step for many Jews after the harsh experience of the ghetto involved

being transported to a concentration camp by train. Here Amis makes the reader

acquainted with what he calls “the mercenary aspect” (in Rosenbaum 2012) when

he refers to these trips toward death: “how incredibly avaricious the whole

operation was. The way they made the Jews pay for their tickets in the railway cars

to the death camps. Yeah, and the rates for a third-class ticket, one way. And half

price for children” (in Rosenbaum 2012). Precisely, in the novel one of the Nazi

characters, Boris, expresses how bizarre the whole situation surrounding the train

tickets is: “‘You know they pay for their own tickets? They pay their own way here,

Golo. I don’t know how it went with those Parisians, but the norm is […]’. ‘…But

this —this is fucking ridiculous” (Amis 2015: 41-42). As a Nazi, Boris understands

the rationale behind many of the norms implemented by the Third Reich, but, like

Amis, he finds it absolutely ridiculous that the victims have to pay for their tickets

to Auschwitz. In fact, in the above conversation Boris refers to a train that has just

arrived from Paris with new prisoners. Doll and Professor Zulz, the head doctor,

do not hesitate to mock the French is spite of the ordeal they are about to go

through:

“Three classes? Well, you know the French. They do everything in style.”

“Too true, Professor,” I rejoined. “Even the way they hoist the white flag has a

certain —a certain je ne sais quoi. Not so?”

The good doctor chuckled heartily and said, ‘Damn you, Paul. Touché, my

Kommandant.’

Oh yes, we bantered and smiled in the collegial fashion […]. (Amis 2015: 22)

The fact that Doll and his colleagues can make these jokes when dealing with the

painful fate of the prisoners is quite revealing, because, as Andrea Reiter explains,

many reports by survivors testify to the sadistic “humour” of the SS despite the

eventual doom awaiting the butt of the joke (2005: 127). Actually, throughout

the novel Doll prides himself on his sense of humour, like when he jokes about the

tattoo on a prisoner’s arm: “And is that your phone number? Just joking” (Amis

2015: 127). He even considers himself blessed with “a sense of humour” (111)

when he makes fun of a Jewish family at a funeral service in the Jewish cemetery of

Warsaw. Doll shows again his cruel humour when he is confronted by a French

woman who has just arrived at Auschwitz:

“No service at all. Even in 1st class!”

“Even in 1st class? An outrage.”

“All we had were the cold cuts we’d brought with us. And we almost ran out of

mineral water!”

“Monstrous.”

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“…Why are you laughing? You laugh. Why are you laughing?”

“Step back, Madam, if you would,” I spluttered. “Senior Supervisor Grese!” (24)

The reference to Ilse Grese is highly relevant because she was Senior SS Superior

at Auschwitz and killed an average of thirty people a day —hence her nickname,

“the Hyena of Auschwitz”. She was in charge of selecting women for the gas

chamber, which explains why Doll calls her to deal with the French woman “in the

appropriate manner” (25), a euphemism for her use of the most sadistic methods,

such as sicking dogs on inmates. Of course, Doll “respects” her: “Grese is admirably

firm with recalcitrant females” (21). As Rees explains in his memoir, Rudolf Höss,

the SS officer and commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, records that

for mass murder to be successful it was vital to conduct the whole process in an

atmosphere of great calm, which is why it was important to keep an eye on those

individuals who could cause trouble for the Nazis on their way to the gas chamber

by warning the other prisoners of what was going to happen to them. Such people

were immediately removed from the scene and shot (Rees 2005: 146). Obviously,

in The Zone of Interest the French woman does not know what is awaiting her, but

the fact that she complains and therefore can disturb the whole process turns her

into a threat for Doll and the deathly project he is involved in.

Once the Jews arrived at the concentration camp, what Rees has described as “one

of the most infamous procedures associated with Auschwitz” started: the initial

selection which “would come to symbolize the cold-hearted terror of the place”

(2005: 141-142). Boris again describes it very well: “The most eerie bit’s the

selection” (Amis 2015: 4). The weak ones —women with children, elderly

people— were sent directly to the gas chamber, whereas those fit for work, the

healthy ones, were kept alive. In the novel, this process of selection is described by

Doll:

As for the Selektion: all but a few were under 10 or over 60; and even the young

adults among them were, so to speak, selected already.

Look. That 30-year-old male has a broad chest, true, but he also has a club foot.

That brawny maiden is in the pink of health, assuredly, and yet she is with child.

Elsewhere —spinal braces, white sticks. (23)

The fact that Doll becomes disappointed because the young woman is pregnant is

highly significant because both pregnant women and mothers with children were

sent directly to the gas chambers. As Rees has explained, although the selection

process separated men from women and husbands from wives, Nazi officials very

soon realised that it would be against their own interest to force mothers away

from their children. The reason would be that “the upset involved in such

separation would be so great as to rival the emotional disturbance caused to the

killing squads by shooting women and children at close range —the very trauma

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that the gas chambers had been designed to diminish” (Rees 2005: 168). Doll

himself refers to this reality in the novel:

And now, I see (the teletype lay before me), that that moron Gerhard Student at

EAHO is floating the bright idea that all able-bodied mothers should be worked till

they drop in the boot factory at Chelmek! Fine, I’ll tell him. And you can come to the

ramp and try separating them from their children. These people —they just don’t

think. (Amis 2015: 73, emphasis in original).

As his words evince, Doll is furious with the bureaucrats, but not because he

worries about the mothers dying in the factory from hard work and starvation,

since he is indifferent to their suffering. Yet, ironically, he presents himself as the

actual victim of those who try to make his life more difficult, which is highly

revealing, because in his final statement Eichmann argued that the court had not

understood him, since he was merely “the victim of a fallacy” and only the ruling

elite deserved to be punished (Arendt 2006: 247-248). Actually, Arendt argues

that Eichmann’s statements in the police examination are so funny because he told

everything in the tone of someone who thought that people would feel sympathy

for what he considered to be the hard-luck story of a man whose personal affairs

and work plans always went wrong (2006: 50). Like Eichmann, Doll presents

himself as a victim, not only because his colleagues and superior officers do not

appreciate his work, but because, as will be discussed later, he marries a woman

who overpowers him.

Once the selection was complete, it was necessary to make the Jews believe that

what was going to happen was just a formal procedure, which was done for

everyone’s benefit, as Doll’s welcoming of the prisoners reveals:

We apologise for the lack of sanitary facilities in the boxcars. All the more reason, though,

for a hot shower and a light disinfection —because there are no diseases here and we

don’t want any. Frightfully good, that, I had to admit. The stethoscope, the white

coat (the black boots)— awfully good. Oh, and would diabetics and those with special

dietary needs report to Dr Bodman after supper at the Visitors’ Lodge. Thank you.

Fearfully good, that, really 1st rate… (Amis 2015: 176, emphasis in original)

The aim of the Nazis’ reassuring words was not to make the Jews’ last minutes less

painful, but to solve some of the problems that the procedure might generate. As

Rees affirms, “[n]ot only did it prove easier to get people into the gas chamber by

deception rather than outright force, it was also less stressful for the killers themselves”

(2005: 121). This explains why, for Doll, the fact that the French have arrived quite

“comfortable” by train is a dream come true because everything has been done

peacefully without the need to use “the dogs, the truncheons, and the whips?”

(Amis 2015: 25). Yet, although Doll is very proud of the way in which he welcomes

the new inmates, his colleagues question his ability to deceive the prisoners:

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“What’s wrong with the business of the barrel?” The barrel: this was a wheeze I

dreamt up in October. Concluding my speech of welcome, I’d say, Leave your

valuables with your clothing and pick them up after the shower. But if there’s anything

you especially treasure and can’t afford to be without, then pop it in the barrel at the end

of the ramp. I asked, “What’s wrong with it?”

“It stirs unease,” said Entress. “Are their valuables safe or aren’t they?”

“Only the juvenile and the senescent fall for that 1, Kommandant,” said Zulz. “All

we ever find in the barrel’s a jar of blood-thinners or a teddy bear.” (173-174,

emphasis in original)

The irony and comedy that pervades the whole extract emphasises Doll’s

incompetence and his role as a buffoon, who becomes the source of laughter for

those who work for him. In this sense, it could be argued that one of the most

subversive aspects of the novel is that Amis has created a perpetrator who is

everything but strong and powerful. In fact, he is described by his wife, Hannah,

as “so coarse, and so…prissy, and so ugly, and so cowardly, and so stupid” (Amis

2015: 298). Interestingly enough, Hannah is the strong one in their relationship,

which is a clear reversal of the roles allocated to women married to camp

commandants. Doll admits that he is afraid of her (222) and that he cannot

discipline her (31). She even gives him black eyes, which, as Doll himself admits,

“seriously detract from [his] aura of infallible authority” (58) and makes him feel

“like a pirate or a clown in a pantomime” (59). What Doll is not aware of is that

he is really a clown whom nobody respects. Doll would like Hannah to be more

“tractable” (62) and more solicitous when he comes home burdened with

problems (29). Nonetheless, Hannah’s aim is “to hasten the psychological collapse

of the Commandant” (143), because she despises what her husband is doing in

Auschwitz. She knows that he sometimes uses music to muffle the horrible screams

of the inmates when they are confronted with a reality they cannot process because

of its terrifying nature. On such occasions, she is so numb with terror that she

cannot utter a word, and only smoking helps her cope with the situation (14-15).

Accordingly, the Nazis actually used music at the concentration camps, especially

to calm newly arrived prisoners (Fackler). In this case, Doll has given orders to his

musicians to start playing because the French inmates have just seen a heap of

corpses in a lorry and are terrified:

Now you don’t go far in the Protective Custody business if you can’t think on your

feet and show a bit of presence of mind. Many another Kommandant, I dare say,

would have let the situation at once degenerate into something decidedly unpleasant.

Paul Doll, however, happens to be of a rather different stamp. With 1 wordless

motion I gave the order. Not to my men-at-arms, no: to my musicians! (26)

As this excerpt from the novel shows, once again Doll is presented as a clown, an

oaf, who is convinced that he is a kind of genius for the way in which he has

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handled the whole situation. But for Hannah, who knows what he has done, this

is just another instance of his cruelty and inhumanity, which leaves her devastated.

In fact, at the end of the book she admits that she has been destroyed by what she

witnessed and experienced in Auschwitz (Amis 2015: 299).

Nevertheless, Amis does not only recreate the devastating effect of the perpetrators’

actions on their victims and even themselves; he also explains the rationale behind

some of them. Thus, gassing was not the Nazis’ first option. They started by

shooting the Jews, but then they decided to use Zyklon B to eliminate them, not

only because it was cheaper, but because it helped the executioners cope with their

task (Rees 2005: 89-90). One of the characters in the novel, Professor Konrad

Peters, describes the reasons for this change: “But the gas chambers and the

crematories are just epiphenomena. The idea was to speed things up, and economise

of course, and to spare the nerves of the killers. The killers…those slender reeds”

(Amis 2015: 246). According to Rees, when Heinrich Himmler visited Minsk in

August 1941 to see the work of the killing squads first-hand, he realised that many

of the officers were traumatised after the executions, since the shootings included

women and children (2005: 86). Eichmann himself was horrified when he went to

Minsk and Lwów and saw the shootings: “Our people will go mad or become

insane, our own people” (Arendt 2006: 89). In the novel, one of the characters

refers to the way in which some of the Nazis were mentally destroyed by the

denigrating tasks they were asked to fulfil: “I heard they were killing psychiatric

patients in Konigsberg. Why? To clear bedspace. Who for? For all the men who’d

cracked up killing women and children in Poland and Russia” (Amis 2015: 95).

Doll himself admits that not everybody is prepared to follow the execution orders:

“And mind you, disposing of the young and elderly requires other strengths and

virtues —fanaticism, radicalism, severity, implacability, hardness, iciness,

mercilessness, und so weiter” (123). Here the use of irony and more particularly

antiphrasis —what Doll considers virtues are obviously unacceptable vices—

enables Amis to emphasise once again the brutality and dehumanisation of the

Nazis.

One of the cruellest jokes that readers can find in the novel in relation to the

extermination of the Jews appears when a woman who has just arrived at the

camp smears lice on Doll’s face and he has to follow the same protocol as the

inmates to get disinfected: he is told to take off his clothes and fold them tidily

(Amis 2015: 181). The whole situation is ironic because Zyklon B was used

initially at Auschwitz as an insecticide and that the “epiphany” about the mass

killing potential of this gas occurred when Karl Fritzsch, Höss’s deputy, came to

the conclusion that “[if] Zyklon B could be used to kill lice, why could it not be

used to kill human pests?” (Rees 2005: 89). Once the prisoners had been gassed

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in the chambers, the Nazi officers had to get rid of the bodies. At first, they

decided to bury them in what Amis ironically calls in the novel the “Spring

Meadow” (Amis 2015: 37). The problem is that the bodies soon start to putrefy,

and the smell becomes unbearable, as readers can grasp from Doll’s words: “You

could smell it, of course; and you could hear it. Popping, splatting, hissing” (65).

A delegation of local worthies talks to Doll about the problem the population is

facing:

“…They said it’s undrinkable no matter how many times you boil it. The pieces have

started to ferment, Hauptsturmfuhrer. The water table’s breached. There’s no

alternative. The smell is going to be unbelievable.”

“The smell is going to be unbelievable, my Kommandant? You don’t think it’s

unbelievable already?” (61, emphasis in original)

In this extract Doll is addressing Wolfgang Prufer, his Lagerführer, who is

shocked by Doll’s inability to acknowledge a terrible reality. In fact, Doll does

not realise that Prufer is just being ironic and reprimands him for always

complaining. Because of the smell, they have to dig up the bodies and find a way

to get rid of them. The first idea they have in the novel is to blow them up,

which, of course, creates a surrealistic situation, because rather than disappear

completely, the corpses go everywhere and there are “bits hanging from the

trees” (65-66). When reading this scene in The Zone of Interest, one is tempted

to believe that this is just another instance of Amis’s sarcastic humour. Even

Doll, who is an incompetent officer, is perplexed when they tell him about the

experiment, because he realises how ludicrous the whole thing is. Unfortunately,

the whole episode is based on facts. Amis is merely reproducing the testimony of

Wilhelm Jaschke, a captain in Einsatzkommando 8 (Rees 2005: 87), who

explains that Albert Widmann, an SS Untersturmführer from the Technical

Institute of Criminal Police, in charge of devising a new method of killing the

prisoners, first thought that to blow them up would be a viable option. He put

several mentally ill patients in a bunker with a packet of explosives, and the result

was truly heinous.

Given the aforementioned unsuccessful experiment, Doll decides that the best

option is to burn the corpses, but he does not know how to make naked bodies

catch fire (Amis 2015: 74). Ironically enough, it is precisely Szmul, the leader

of the Sonderkommando —the Jewish prisoners in charge of throwing the bodies

into the fire— who gives him a series of suggestions “which, as it happened,

proved key” (74).9 Pressburger, who was a member of the Sonderkommando at

Auschwitz, testifies to this reality and emphasises that the stench was terrible

(Rees 2005: 144). Pressburger’s reference to the stench provoked by the

burning of bodies is of utmost importance, because, as Kakutani has pointed

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out, one of the most powerful aspects of the novel is Amis’s “insistent dwelling

on the stench that emanated from the camp (which would have been impossible

for nearby residents to ignore, however invested they might have been in

denial)” (2014). The stench became part of life in Auschwitz, and obviously

nobody could ignore it. In fact, one of the civilian contractors at the Buna-

Werke plant complains to Doll that in the town, which is 50 km away, it is

impossible to swallow a mouthful from six to 10 p.m. because the wind brings

the terrible smell. Even Doll is shocked when he goes outside and is confronted

with the disgusting smell:

During the drive back […] I kept pulling over and sticking my head out of the

window and taking a sniff. It was as bad as I’ve ever known it, and it just got worse

and worse and worse…

I felt as if I were in one of those cloacal dreams that all of us have from time to

time —you know, where you seem to turn into a frothing geyser of hot filth, like

a stupendous oil strike, and it just keeps on coming and coming and piling up

everywhere no matter what you try and do. (Amis 2015: 112, emphasis in

original)

The smell was really so unbearable that a British prisoner who survived after

working at the Buna-Werke, stated that he could never forget the “sweetish

gagging corruption that caught at the throat and nose and clung to clothes and

hair” (Jeffreys 2008: 234). Doll’s approach to this terrible reality shows to what

extent he is delusional, since he believes that everyone has from time to time what

he calls the “cloacal dream”, which he describes using words like “geyser” or

“stupendous”, as if he were describing something beautiful.

Moreover, Doll, who represents the quintessence of Nazism and is becoming

more paranoid and grotesque as the novel advances, imagines himself surrounded

by dead bodies recently exhumed for immolation on the pyre while he is attending

a concert. However, in juxtaposition to the corpses of Jews, he believes that dead

German bodies do not stink: “And how sweet the Aryans smelled! If I rendered

them into smoke and flame, the burning bones (I felt confident) would not

forsake that fresh aroma!” (Amis 2015: 191). Doll admits that this is not the first

time his mind plays tricks on him. During his previous experience as a concert

spectator, he “spent the whole 21/2 hours intently estimating how long it would

take (given the high ceiling as against the humid conditions) to gas the audience”

(70). Doll’s ludicrous daydreams show the extent to which he is obsessed with his

work and believes in the righteousness of the Nazi project. In another passage

from the novel, he goes so far as to state that the fact that prisoners are often

incapable of assimilating what they see at the camp is “a reminder of —and a

tribute to— the blinding radicalism of the KL” (27-28, emphasis in original). By

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characterising Doll as a buffoon who is constantly despised and ridiculed by his

wife and colleagues, who is not aware of his own shortcomings and who

wholeheartedly supports the Nazi vision, Amis is capable of dealing with some of

the most terrible atrocities committed by the perpetrators from a different

perspective.

4. Conclusion

There is a moment in the novel when Doll says to Szmul that he has never hated

the Jews, but something “had to be done about them” (Amis 2015: 139). Doll

goes so far as to ask himself why they do what they do (222). Doll’s moment of

doubt does not last long, but it is highly revealing because, as Eaglestone has

argued, both perpetrator testimony and perpetrator fiction seem to promise to

answer the question “why”, explaining why the protagonists committed such

atrocities, but in the end they fail to answer the question they posed for themselves.

They swerve, leaving “our speech broken, with nothing to say” (2017: 29). It is

obvious that, for Amis, there is no reason, and his aim with The Zone of Interest is

not to provide a definitive answer or interpretation. As Julia Klein has asserted, “It

may require a novelist’s skill to penetrate the psyche of a Holocaust perpetrator.

But even when the novelist is as accomplished as Martin Amis, the mystery of

radical evil is probably destined to remain elusive —possible to describe, but not

to understand” (2014).

In this novel, Amis makes no claim of offering the reader new insights into the

Holocaust, but to remind them of its enormity. He truly believes that it is important

to remember an episode of modern history whose brutality and horror still leave

us bewildered (Rosenbaum 2012), and in order to achieve his goal he uses comedy,

which, according to him, is the only form left that can take on the real ills (Wachtel

1996: 53). In a world where evil is not always punished and good is not necessarily

rewarded, “we can deal with iniquity only by sneering and laughing if off the

stage” (Wachtel 1996: 53). Since the machinery of punishment and conversion has

become obsolete, the writer can only use ridicule to achieve his aims. This is

precisely what Amis does in The Zone of Interest by creating Doll, a buffoon who

shows that intellectually and morally shallow people can become the incarnation of

evil. By approaching the atrocities committed at Auschwitz from the point of view

of a character who is defined by his stupidity, incompetence and fanaticism, Amis

offers the reader a different perspective and makes them realise that those

responsible for the worst crimes during the Holocaust were not monsters or

exceptional human beings, but normal, vulnerable people who had the fate of

millions of Jews in their hands.

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Works cited

ADAMs, Jenni. 2014. “New Directions in Holocaust Studies”. In Adams, Jenni (ed.) The Bloomsbury

Companion to Holocaust Literature. London: Bloomsbury Academic: 237-263.

AMIs, Martin. 1991. Time’s Arrow. London: Jonathan Cape.

AMIs, Martin. 2015. The Zone of Interest. London: Vintage.

APPELfELD, Aharon. 1988. “After the Holocaust”. In Lang, Berel (ed.): 83-92.

AREnDt, Hannah. 2006. Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. London:

Penguin.

Notes

1. Ozick has criticised Amis for

what she considers to be a manipulation of

Levi’s words (2014).

2. Although Amis asserts that he

based the character of Doll on Rudolf Höss,

Alex Preston has argued that Doll exists

somewhere between Rudolf Höss and Kurt

Franz, an SS officer and commandant at the

Treblinka death camp, whose nickname was

Doll (2014).

3. On the figure of Szmul, see Aída

Díaz Bild (2018). In an interview Amis explains

that in Time’s Arrow he dealt with the victims

from a distance, but by the time he started

working on The Zone of Interest, he felt closer

to them, because now he was married to a

Jewish woman whose family were Holocaust

victims (in Mars). Already in 1993 Amis

defined himself as a philo-Semite and

emphasised how much he admired the Jews

for their heightened intelligence and their

tendency towards transcendentalism (Self

1993: 162).

4. Most of the articles on Time’s

Arrow focus on how the experimental

narrative strategies —double narrator, reverse

chronological order, defamiliarisation—

contribute to the novel’s ethical import. See

McCarthy (1999), Vice (2000), Martínez-Alfaro

(2008) and Chatman (2009).

5. In his analysis of Jonathan

Littell’s “Les Bienveillantes”, Debarati Sanyal

expresses the same idea: “How can its

narrative deployment be dedicated to those

who perished at their hands” (2010: 50).

6. McGlothlin’s statement echoes

Aharon Appelfeld’s thoughts on the Holocaust.

He rejects the tendency to mystify the

Holocaust, to link the extermination of Jews

to the incomprehensible, the mysterious, the

insane and the meaningless (1988: 92).

7. See Martínez-Alfaro (2011) and

Roldán-Sevillano (2021).

8. It is highly revealing that

throughout the novel Doll emphasises again

and again that he is “a normal man with

normal needs. I am completely normal. This is

what nobody seems to understand” (Amis

2015: 32, emphasis in original).

9. Amis pays so much attention to

the episode of digging up the bodies and

burning them because he thinks that

historians have not paid enough attention to

it. He believes that the Germans were trying to

cover their tracks, although it was only 1942,

because they knew they were going to lose

the war and would have to pay for their

terrible crimes if they came to light (Seaman

2014).

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bROwnIng, Christopher R. 1992. “German Memory, Judicial Interrogation, Historical

Reconstruction: Writing Perpetrator History from Postwar Testimony”. In Friedländer, Saul (ed.)

Probing the Limits of Representation. Nazism and the “Final Solution”. Cambridge,

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Received: 06/01/2024

Accepted: 09/07/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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AN EDUCATION FOR (FUTURE) HEALTH

PROFESSIONALS AND LITERARY SCHOLARS:

AUDRE LORDE’S THE CANCER JOURNALS

AND MARISA MARCHETTO’S CANCER VIXEN

UNA EDUCACIÓN PARA (FUTURAS/OS)

PROFESIONALES DE LA SALUD Y EXPERTAS/OS

EN LITERATURA: THE CANCER JOURNALS

DE AUDRE LORDE Y CANCER VIXEN

DE MARISA MARCHETTO

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202410198

FRANCISCO JOSÉ CORTÉS VIECO

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

francort@pdi.ucm.es

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7280-6092>

Abstract

Life-writing on breast cancer vindicates women’s health rights, but, as this article

demonstrates, the autopathographies Cancer Journals (1980) by Audre Lorde

and Cancer Vixen (2006) by Marisa Marchetto also have the potential to teach

lessons to (future) health professionals and scholars in literary studies, so that

they can, respectively, improve their interactions with patients and understand

the therapeutic power of illness narratives to emotionally heal their authors and

intended female readers. Lorde uses the weapon of anger both to criticize how

cancer patients are dehumanized by the often-insensitive medical profession and

to proudly assert her post-mastectomy identity as a one-breasted warrior.

Meanwhile, Marchetto opts for humor to describe her eleven-month war against

breast cancer and its associated complications: her lack of health insurance to

treat her illness and her fear of losing her fiancé. Yet, as this article examines,

Cancer Vixen shows the illuminating power of graphic medicine as a breakthrough

narrative form, to mitigate the antagonism between doctors and cancer patients,

while enhancing literary scholars’ and health professionals’ empathic

understanding of patients’ personal stories of illness beyond clinical and hospital

encounters.

Keywords: breast cancer, diaries, graphic medicine, patient, health professionals.

Francisco José Cortés Vieco

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Resumen

Los testimonios de mujeres sobre el cáncer de mama reclaman su derecho a la

salud, pero como este ensayo demuestra, Cancer Journals (1980) de Audre Lorde

y Cancer Vixen (2006) de Marisa Marchetto igualmente enseñan lecciones a

(futuras/os) profesionales de la salud y a expertas/os en literatura para,

respectivamente, mejorar sus relaciones con las pacientes de cáncer y apreciar el

poder terapéutico de las autopatografías: la recuperación emocional de sus autoras

y lectoras. Lorde emplea el arma de la rabia para criticar que la profesión médica es

insensible y deshumaniza a la enferma de cáncer, además de afirmar, con orgullo,

su nueva identidad tras la mastectomía: guerrera con un solo pecho. En cambio,

Marchetto elige el humor para describir su batalla de once meses contra el cáncer

de mama y sus complicaciones: no tener seguro médico para tratar su enfermedad

y su miedo a perder a su prometido. No obstante, como este artículo examina,

Cancer Vixen refleja que la medicina gráfica, como nuevo género narrativo, mitiga

el antagonismo entre médicos y pacientes, a la vez que ayuda a que profesionales

sanitarios y expertas/os en literatura empaticen con las historias personales de las

enfermas de cáncer de mama más allá de encuentros clínicos y hospitalarios.

Palabras clave: cáncer de mama, diarios, medicina gráfica, paciente, profesional

sanitario.

1. Autopathographies on Breast Cancer

Breast cancer forms in the cells of the breasts and, according to the Mayo Clinic,

it is the second most common cancer diagnosed in women in the United States.

Breast cancer patients face traumatic, invasive surgical procedures, such as

lumpectomy, mastectomy and breast reconstruction, often in combination with

equally painful hormone therapies, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Historically,

cancer has been enveloped in a fog of secrecy, fear and stigma that renders

individuals with the disease socially invisible and their post-surgery, post-treatment

anatomies weak and ravaged. As Susan Sontag notes, because cancer has been felt

to be a “morally, if not literally, contagious” disease, many cancer patients have

been shunned by relatives and friends as if they had an infection (1978: 3). In

recent times, social awareness and research funding have helped to advance the

diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer to the point that, today, deaths associated

with this illness have declined thanks to enhanced understanding of the disease and

an individualized treatment regimen for each patient’s recovery. Caring for the

individual experiences of women with cancer and showing empathy for their

physical pain and psychological damage during their illness are vital battles to

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eliminate the fog around cancer. During second-wave feminism, women’s political

activism along with literature have contributed to defeating breast cancer both

medically and socially. Adrienne Rich posits that, in the second half of the twentieth

century, a vigorous feminist movement advocating for medicine to support female

needs, has defied the medical industry and healthcare systems, which have been

arrogant and indifferent to women (1986: x). Female patients have been essential

to this health feminism in their refusal to submit to medical authority —often

male— and have reclaimed their rights to be listened to by health professionals and

to tell their own stories about their ill —or pathologized— bodies and minds. As

Anne Boyer states, “disease is never neutral. Treatment never not ideological.

Mortality never without its politics” (2019: 123), so women’s life-writings have

joined the public debate around female health rights and survival. Notably, two

paradigmatic texts advocating for greater empathy and better care by the medical

profession in the management of women’s illnesses are The Bell Jar (1963) by

Sylvia Plath, related to mental health and psychiatry, and The Cancer Journals

(1980) by Audre Lorde, for breast cancer and oncology.

Edmund Pellegrino, a pioneer of modern medical ethics, contends that “medicine

is the most humane of sciences, the most scientific of the humanities” (2011:

313). The interdisciplinary field of medical humanities explores human health and

disease through the methods and materials of the creative arts and humanities,

including literature. This discipline envisages improving healthcare practice by

influencing its practitioners to both refine and complexify their judgments in

clinical situations based on a deep, complex understanding of illness, suffering and

personhood (Shapiro et al. 2009: 192-193). Medical humanities offers health

professionals knowledge and sensitivity about the patient’s experience of illness,

her circumstances and surroundings and her emotional spectrum —from strength,

courage and optimism to vulnerability, panic and defeatism— which have been

traditionally ignored by the education and routine work of health practitioners;

yet, they enrich the quality of medical care and foster mutual understanding in

doctor-patient relationships.

Medical humanities also enlightens literary scholars to better examine the genre of

autopathography, which Anne Hawkins defines as “a form of autobiography […]

that describes personal experiences of illness, treatment, and sometimes death”

(1998: 1). To explain the artistic boom in autopathography since the second half

of the twentieth century, Hawkins argues that an autopathography is a “modern

adventure story” when “life becomes filled with risk and danger as the ill person is

transported out of the familiar everyday world into the realm of the body that no

longer functions” (1). This type of illness narratives1 also becomes “the logical

counterpart to the medical history written by the physician” because it describes

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how the experience of being sick and the treatment of illness are understood by its

patient, who is its author (12). Beyond the impersonal, objective knowledge of a

biomedical condition on the part of health professionals, the subjective first-person

account of being ill is a literary form that gives voice to typically silenced individuals

—the patients— and describes how their lives are conditioned by disease. For

Thomas Couser, an autopathography becomes a cathartic act of scriptotherapy “by

heightening one’s awareness of one’s mortality, threatening one’s sense of identity,

and disrupting the apparent plot of one’s life” (1997: 5); so to say, the act of

writing about being ill facilitates the patient’s emotional recovery. Additionally, an

autopathography denounces social constructions of the sick body as evil,

dangerous, shameful or ugly, while becoming a personal counternarrative of the

patient’s fight against their marginalization and dehumanization in clinical

interactions and elsewhere. Illness involves the transient or enduring alteration not

only of the physical self, but also of the inner self. Virginia Woolf emphasizes the

tremendous spiritual change that illness brings to its sufferer, who feels “the waters

of annihilation” (1926: 32). An autopathography thus expresses emotional pain,

fear and anxiety or how harrowing it is to be seriously ill and, even, to face death.

Yet, as Theresa MacPhail states, this form of illness narrative is “a method for

coming to terms with the myriad effects, both positive and negative, on our worlds

of any crisis, chronic illness, or contagious disease” (2014: 5). Indeed, an

autopathography also illustrates an individual’s ability to transform the ordeal of

being sick, making it into an empowering act leading to personal growth,

knowledge about the world, finding meaning in life and even laughing at adversity.

In the case of cancer, Federica Frediani contends that this disease suddenly and

brutally drives patients to a marginal space, where their bodies are exposed to

violent therapies —ultimately to loss and even to death— so they feel separated

from their former selves, and writing their stories becomes a tool with which to

reclaim agency, deal with grief, reconnect with their former identities and, in the

process, acquire a new one (2017: 254). Accordingly, as an autopathography, The

Cancer Journals shares Lorde’s fear of dying and mourning of her amputated right

breast. Yet, she accepts her new post-mastectomy physical self and defends any

woman’s right and duty to speak of her illness and to make her own decisions

about her body. Sontag argues that metaphors to describe cancer and its treatments

usually come from the language of warfare and military terminology (1978: 4).

Symbolically, cancer cells are enemies that invade and massacre the cancer patient’s

body and are counterattacked by oncologists. In The Cancer Journals, Lorde

becomes a warrior who narrates her early battles during her fourteen-year personal

war against breast cancer. She also aims the artillery of her feminist criticism to

target the often-insensitive medical profession, the cold hospital institution and

the profit-driven beauty business of replacement breasts. Lorde sees enemies both

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inside her own body —the cancer cells— and outside her body —healthcare

providers. Hence, how can the rage in The Cancer Journals help (future) health

professionals to advance their expertise and treatment of patients afflicted with this

illness? If we trust Virginia Woolf’s harsh analysis of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre,

the use of anger discredits a writer and ruins her literature. The purpose of this

essay is twofold. On the one hand, it discusses key angry elements from The Cancer

Journals, which can be, indeed, instructive for health practitioners, and reflects the

beneficial use of humor in comics belonging to the new literary genre known as

graphic medicine, like Cancer Vixen (2006) by Marisa Acocella Marchetto (1962),

to enhance doctor-patient communication. On the other hand, focusing on the

field of literary studies, this article highlights the power of autopathography as a

consolidated narrative form, to become an effective therapy for authors and

intended readers to navigate sickness and its mental wounds, while gaining an in-

depth understanding of the subjective experience of illness that counterbalances

the authority of physicians and healthcare systems in the management of breast

cancer.

2. The Patient’s Anger: Audre Lorde

Cancer patients may construct their own narratives as subjective experiences of

illness beyond the patient-doctor encounter, their medical history and the scientific

management of their symptoms (Karpf 2013: 179). In agreement with this writing

choice, Lorde’s The Cancer Journals does not revolve around breast cancer itself,

but around what it feels like being a woman with this illness: her mental and

physical pain, despair and fear of dying. Lorde’s autopathography, stressing her

own emotions and sensations, complements objective knowledge about breast

cancer that health professionals must acquire and employ at work on a daily basis.

Iris Young argues that, in our culture, the woman feels and is, indeed, judged and

evaluated according to the size and contours of her breasts, both as visible signifiers

of her womanliness, and as fetishes, thus blurring the lines between sexuality and

motherhood and becoming objects of sexual desire (2005: 76-77). Accordingly,

non-medical readers of Lorde’s autopathography also observe that having breasts

is not only a biological fact about the female anatomy, but also a worry, or even an

obsession, in women’s lives. Breasts become some kind of discourse for patients to

be accepted and approved in social and sexual contexts. Mastectomy is surgery to

remove all breast tissue from a breast to treat or prevent breast cancer, including

breast skin and nipple. It is a routine operation for doctors; yet, for women, this

procedure involves both a physical loss and the mental mourning of that loss. The

surgery to restore the shape of an amputated breast is called breast reconstruction

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and may be undertaken at the same time as a mastectomy or in a second operation

later. In The Cancer Journals, Lorde confesses that she is against prostheses as “a

norm for post-mastectomy women” (2020: 56) and against breast reconstruction,

although she admits that other women are entitled not to share her views and

choices about her ill body. Lorde decides never to hide the fact that she has a

missing breast as she reflects in her autopathography. Ten days after her mastectomy,

she remembers visiting her doctor for the first time without a prosthesis —a “wad

of lambswool pressed into a pale pink breast-shaped pad” (34)— and being

confronted by a nurse, who tells Lorde “you will feel so much better with it on”

(52) and who reprimands her for not wearing one, because it was “bad for the

morale of the office” (52). The text reveals that, for this medical staff, Lorde’s

choice represents a defeat for other cancer sufferers. The nurse does not care for

the patient’s own morale and denies her space to mourn the painful change in her

body (Karpf 2013: 187). Lorde confesses being speechless during that encounter,

and that is why she makes her own diagnosis in The Cancer Journals: the patient’s

silence about her health rights and feelings is as harmful as cancer itself, so ill

people must find their own voices to defend themselves against verbal assaults,

while healthcare workers must avoid inconsiderate remarks.

Divided into three parts, The Cancer Journals were written between 1977 and

1979 when, like Marchetto, Lorde was in her forties. In its second part —“Breast

Cancer: A Black Lesbian Feminist Experience”— she explains her experience with

mastectomy and feeling discriminated against as a person with breast cancer. This

section alternates among Lorde’s recollections, recording transcriptions and the

reprint of short journal entries written by her in the hospital. The use of tape

recordings during her stay in the medical institution, which she replays at home at

the time of writing The Cancer Journals, was the way in which Lorde captured

what she could not bring herself to write in her journal because she was weak, tired

and in pain. The author claims that healthcare systems and professionals do not

seem to care about the emotional problems of cancer patients who endure invasive

surgery. Alfred Hornung states that, in The Cancer Journals, the hospital

institution, including its layout and organization, extinguishes all feelings and

“reduces human beings to the status of what the word patient literally means: a

non-active persona acted upon” (2022: 133), just as Lorde recalls: “the very bland

whiteness of the hospital, which I railed against and hate […] a blank environment

within whose undifferentiated and undemanding and infantilizing walls I could

continue to be emotionally vacant —psychic mush— without being required by

myself or anyone to be anything else” (2020: 38-39). Besides, Lorde is invaded by

fear: “There is the horror of those flashing lights passing over my face, and the

clanging of disemboweled noises that have no context nor relationship to me

except to assault me” (28). The repetitive start of each sentence with “I remember”

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shows the depersonalization or dehumanization felt by Lorde as a post-mastectomy

patient in hospital: “I remember screaming and cursing with pain in the recovery

room, and I remember a disgusted nurse giving me a shot. I remember a voice

telling me to be quiet because there were sick people here, and my saying, ‘well, I

have a right, because I’m sick too’” (28-29). Although doctors partly rely on

information provided by their patients, they assume all responsibility for diagnosis,

prognosis and therapy, while patients submit to their doctors’ authority for the

decision-making in the management of their illnesses (Lupton 2012: 112). To

function effectively, hospital life also involves routines and regulations which

nurses and other healthcare workers impose on patients. Lorde depicts a side of

medicine and healthcare that training in these fields discount: the incongruity

between what the patient considers to be her life’s great crisis, characterized by

powerlessness and her subjugation to forces outside her control, and the fact that

such crises, for healthcare providers, seem a part of the everyday routine of their

professions (Schleifer and Vannatta 2019: 96). Lorde also feels that she is being

ignored and damaged by health professionals, who disregard her emotional needs,

while they control and monitor her ill body.

Beyond being an autobiographical testimony of illness, The Cancer Journals also

becomes literary when Lorde asserts her desire to survive, not to die; to be a

warrior, not a victim. In her journal entry from September 21, 1978, she wonders

how in previous centuries, the women warriors of Dahomey —the only known

all-female army in history— coped with losing one of their breasts when they

were only girls. These female soldiers from the African kingdom of Dahomey —

today’s Benin— were known for the fierceness and courage in combat to protect

their king, so the Europeans who first encountered them, called them Amazons.

In The Cancer Journals, Lorde employs the term Amazon to describe the

Dahomey women warriors because, according to Greek mythology, Amazons

were excellent horse riders who cut or burned off their right breasts to have

better bow control and become more effective archers. Amazons are also a

feminist myth of powerful, independent warriors who fought in wars against

male-dominated societies and lived freely in all-female communities, and they are

frequently found as characters in breast cancer memoirs. Although Greek

Amazons and the Dahomey warriors were not part of the same civilization, Lorde

fuses them and wonders how they must have felt when having their breast cut off.

She does not describe her own mastectomy to her readers but compares her own

sacrifice —the amputation of her right breast to escape death— with the sacrifice

of Amazons and the Dahomey warriors —the amputation of their right breasts to

become better fighters. But more importantly, Lorde identifies herself with these

mythical and historical women to embrace her new identity as a one-breasted

survivor. In her analysis of the language of warfare, Robina Khalid argues that

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during the process of her recovery, Lorde imagines herself to be a warrior as a

defense mechanism against those who would make her feel inadequate after the

surgery (2008: 701), including health professionals. Instead of having swords or

bows with arrows, Lorde has words as weapons to help herself and other breast

cancer sufferers to heal and, like Amazons and the Dahomey warriors, she

cherishes living in a community of women, who offer her love and support in her

war against cancer.

In The Beauty Myth, concerned with society’s unrealistic standards of flawless

female physical beauty, Naomi Wolf argues that women delay mammograms for

fear of losing a breast and becoming “only half a woman” and, although implants

make cancer detection more difficult, women increasingly choose to undergo

breast surgery for purposes of enhanced sexual desirability (1991: 229, 243). A

leg prosthesis is useful because it helps a person to walk, but Lorde believes that

breast prostheses, or “false breasts” (2020: 56), are cosmetic devices placed not

for well-being or health reasons, but instead are designed “for appearance only”

(56). This intensifies the belief that, in our culture, being a woman means having

breasts, while having perfect, prominent and symmetrical breasts means being a

more worthy female. Contrary to these rules, Lorde embraces her own deviance

from biology and the beauty canon after mastectomy: “Prosthesis offers the

empty comfort of ‘Nobody will know the difference’. But it is that very difference

which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share

that strength with other women” (54). Lorde reconceives her own anatomy by

explaining what her breast means to her: it gives her pleasure, but not apart from

the rest of her body (Alexander 1994: 701). Although she mourns her beautiful

right breast which was removed, she believes that she must reconcile herself with

her forced loss, instead of concealing this physical loss by means of a prosthesis:

“Either I would love my body one-breasted now, or remain forever alien to

myself” (Lorde 2020: 37). She also rejects existing gender stereotypes in society

that support that post-mastectomy female patients like herself are asexual and

unattractive, when she insists that “a woman can be beautiful and one-breasted”

(57). Indeed, Lorde places herself “in the vanguard of a new fashion” (58), as

the first one who designed clothes and jewelry to favor “asymmetrical patterns”

(58), and intended to be worn by one-breasted women like herself. Readers of

The Cancer Journals, both healthcare workers and those outside of the medical

field, can admire Lorde’s fierce determination as a post-mastectomy warrior,

while realizing that breast cancer patients not only endure a life-threatening

illness, but also life-lasting social and sexual pressures and expectations to

maintain female beauty standards about their breasts, compulsorily viewed in

plural.

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Lorde also condemns the process by which a prosthesis trivializes and ignores

women’s own perceptions of themselves, particularly in the case of African

American female patients like herself. This is illustrated by the episode of a

volunteer from the US association Reach for Recovery who visits her after her

mastectomy. While this white person praises the advantages of prostheses, Lorde

“look[s] away, thinking, ‘I wonder if there are any black lesbian feminists in Reach

for Recovery?’ […] I needed to talk with women who shared at least some of my

major concerns and beliefs and visions, who shared at least some of my language.

And this lady, admirable though she might be, did not” (2020: 35). Lorde explains

that the pink prosthesis “was the wrong color, and looked grotesquely pale through

the cloth of my bra” (36). By denouncing how her own racial difference is

discounted by this pale-colored prosthesis manufactured for white women, she

emphasizes how illness —like being Black, a lesbian and a mother— is not

experienced in a uniform way by all women: she is not like others; she does not

want to comply with the social norm of having, or pretending to have, two breasts.

Lorde appears to represent the racist cliché of the Angry Black Woman (ABW)

which permeates US culture. As Melissa Harris-Perry states, Black women’s

passion and righteous indignation are often misread as irrational anger, so this

image is used to silence and shame them if they chal lenge social inequalities,

complain about their circumstances or demand fair treatment (in West 2018: 149).

Yet, Lorde transcends the social punishment inherent to the ABW stereotype and

exhibits the literary use of loud anger in her autopathography to denounce white

privilege and the invisibility of Black patients in the (medical) treatment of breast

cancer patients.

The Cancer Journals also discusses the profit-oriented medical industry of breast

reconstruction. Lorde rejects the aesthetic operation of silicone gel implants

inserted by plastic surgeons, as well as the preventive removal of her heathy left

breast. She views the demand for a normal body, on which the choices of prosthesis

and breast reconstruction are based, as “an index of this society’s attitudes toward

women in general as decoration and externally defined sex object” (2020: 53).

Contrary to this, Lorde asks that health workers, from doctors to volunteers in

cancer associations, respect her decision, which strengthens the educational

dimension of her autopathography for all types of readers. Mastectomy was

mandatory to save her life. Conversely, wearing a prosthesis and breast

reconstruction do not obey medical, but social impositions of feminine beauty and

homogeneity.

The Cancer Journals gives visibility and strength to its author and to her female

readers as breast cancer patients to define and empower their post-mastectomy

selves. Any lethal illness is a life crisis, but also has the potential to change one’s

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life. Unlike other women choosing to ignore the pain and fear of cancer, Lorde

seeks strength at the heart of her own cancer experience: she uses her pain and fear

to better understand that the high risk of dying is a source of power. Death must

be integrated into life and cancer enables Lorde to embrace her new one-breasted

body, to learn to love life, and enjoy being alive. Beyond the fact that her

autopathography is the best therapy of self-healing, it is equally important for

Lorde to admit, thanks to her cancer ordeal, that health is a political issue: “If we

are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action

against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must

become visible to each other” (Lorde 2020: 54). Being a voiceless patient means

powerlessness, particularly in the case of female Black patients. Meanwhile, writing

about illness means becoming powerful because, as Hornung notes, by extending

her text into the reality of her readers, Lorde builds a “community of like-minded

people” sharing a common experience (2022: 133). Arthur Frank claims that one

type of illness narrative is the “quest story”, in which the ill person accepts their

illness and believes that “something is to be gained” through the experience of

being sick (1995: 115-116). The Cancer Journal is, indeed, the story of a quest in

which Lorde embraces her own cancer to make a meaningful contribution to the

world: patient advocacy. In other words, her autopathography seeks to gain rights

for its intended addressees —other breast cancer warriors— and to win the war

against the social stigmatization and the medical dehumanization that women may

endure on their journey toward survival or death. Identifying these two pathological

conditions associated with breast cancer becomes Lorde’s proposal to educate any

reader of her quest story.

3. The Patient’s Humor: Marisa Marchetto

More than twenty years after Lorde published her autopathography, the Italian

American cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto writes Cancer Vixen, whose

artistic gun is not loaded with Lorde’s anger, but with humor to narrate her

eleven-month story with breast cancer, from diagnosis until cure. Nancy Walker

identifies essential characteristics of women writers’ humor in the United States:

they write about what they know best and concerns them most; their humor is less

aggressive and hostile than that of men; and their jokes can capture the incongruity

between promise and reality to send feminist messages toward gender equality

(1998: 32). However, race is not accounted for in Walker’s description of humor,

so whiteness is presented as a universal feature, like Lorde’s pale-colored prosthesis

manufactured for white women. Marchetto’s graphic novel is consistent with these

traits of US female humor: she writes about herself; she does not attack but,

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instead, nurtures friendly ties with health professionals; and she guides unrealistic

women, who may resist learning more about breast cancer, doing self-exams and

having mammograms after reaching the age of forty. However, Cancer Vixen also

epitomizes the illuminating power of graphic medicine to serve both healthcare

and the literary study of illness narratives. Since its coinage in 2007 by the comic-

doctor Ian Williams, graphic medicine has entered medical humanities as an

umbrella term for comics and graphic novels on being sick. In 2015, comic-nurse

M.K. Czerwiec and her collaborators published The Graphic Medicine Manifesto,

which defines graphic medicine as “the intersection of the medium of comics and

the discourse of health care” to train health professionals, and as “an emerging

area of interdisciplinary academic study” (2015: 1). This type of comic, exemplified

by Cancer Vixen, becomes a valuable text for both readers employed in healthcare

and scholars on illness narratives to better understand their authors as patients and

the power of literature toward (self-)healing, while enhancing quality care and

communication in doctor-patient encounters. Physicians may successfully excise a

cancerous tumor and, later, find its best clinical treatment, but they also need

instruments to stop the cancer sufferers’ emotional bleeding in the process of

eliminating illness.

Traditionally, humor has been viewed as a form of entertainment, not as serious

writing to be immortalized by the literary canon, and the same can be said for

comics, which usually employ humor. Traditionally, writing has never been a

decent career for women, as in the advice given to US wisecracker Dorothy Parker

by her grandfather, which she comically expresses in a poem: “My dear,/

Remember what I tell you when you’re choosing a career: […] Rob your neighbors’

houses in the dark midnight;/ but think of your families, and please don’t write”

(2010: 309). Traditionally, humor is unsuitable, vulgar and offensive when

narrating a serious, painful and dangerous illness like cancer. Contrary to all these

traditions, Marchetto —a female illustrator working for the magazines Glamour

and The New Yorker— uses satire and comedy to laugh at her illness and at herself

as a patient toward purposes of survival and self-healing, because, as The Graphic

Medicine Manifesto states, “comics have often been associated with cultural

changes and are ideal for exploring taboo or forbidden areas of illness and

healthcare” (Czerwiec et al. 2015: 3). Cancer Vixen does.

Marchetto’s graphic novel recounts her cancer experience in chronological order,

including the continuation of her professional career as a cartoonist and her

romance and ultimate marriage to the famous restaurateur Sylvano. Breast cancer

is, therefore, not the only narrative event in Marchetto’s life during the eleven

months of her illness. In Cancer Vixen she uses parody and clowning in her self-

portrait as a patient, as if she personified a happy-go-lucky fictional female character

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snatched from the US television show Sex and the City: “a shoe-crazy, lipstick-

obsessed, wine-swilling, pasta-slurping, fashion-fanatic, single-forever, about-to-

get-married big city-girl cartoonist […] with a fabulous life” (2006: 1), when she

“finds… a lump in her breast?!?” (1). Text and images reflect that urbanite Marisa

loves being a socialite in New York’s vanity fair: haute-couture clothes, high heels,

fancy cars and restaurants, expensive getaways to Europe, glamorous galas before,

during and after her illness, because her daily existence can be fabulous —if she

wants it to— even while having a tumor in her breast. Cancer might kill her, but it

cannot define her or rule all her days and nights. Marisa is not what a scholar in

literary studies expects to find in a patient with a life-threatening illness: neither

the helpless victim to be pitied nor the furious warrior, like Lorde, to be admired,

because there is no prototype for breast cancer sufferers. For Arthur Frank, another

type of illness story is the “restitution narrative”, whose plot is, “Yesterday I was

healthy, today I’m sick but tomorrow I’ll be healthy again” which reflects a natural

desire to get well (1995: 77-78). Cancer Vixen is a restitution narrative in which

Marisa remains as frivolous, vain and funny as she used to be, while being serious

about fighting the war against illness, recovering her physical and mental health

from cancer, and surviving.

Her graphic novel begins when Marisa discovers a lump in her left breast, goes to

Dr. Mills’s clinic, and a biopsy confirms the diagnosis of cancer, so she must

undergo a lumpectomy. This breast-conserving surgery removes cancer or other

abnormal tissue from the breast, including a small amount of healthy tissue that

surrounds it to ensure that all the abnormal tissue is removed; thus, not all the

breast tissue. Dorothy Judd lists some states of mind which a life-threatening

illness may provoke in people with disease can experience, like uncertainty,

nameless dread, loneliness, falling forever, catastrophic change, guilt, mourning,

or the need to make reparations (2013: 27-28). When Marisa finds out that she

has breast cancer and must endure a surgical procedure, some panels in the same

page of Cancer Vixen reflect these feelings: “The Electrolux of the universe sucked

me into a black hole. I was alone, afraid. Frozen in time for an eternity in a vast

expanse of nothingness, surrounded by dark matter… wishing I could just go back

to worrying about my stupid, self-absorbed, self-esteem, weight, bad-skin, bad

hair issues that had obsessed me my whole life…” (Marchetto 2006: 9). Here,

words capture her distress; the drawing parodies her fall into darkness, while color

plays a vital narrative role in this example of graphic medicine, because it adds

meaning to text and sketches, notably, her emotions. Thanks to the visual presence

of red in her shoes and black in her surroundings, the reader observes the intensity

of the cancer patient’s anxiety at having no future and the fear of dying soon. Yet,

in her graphic novel, she keeps her sense of self during her descent into the hell of

coping with illness: she still wears her trademark high heels.

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Before enduring a lumpectomy, Marisa’s text and images show that, suddenly,

three interrelated problems coexist in her daily routine: breast cancer, no insurance

to pay for this procedure to eliminate cancer, and no assurance that her fiancé

Sylvano will ever marry her as a cancer patient. She should focus all her energy on

winning the war against her illness, but she cannot. Indeed, she is forced to devote

two thirds of her emotional resources to two other inescapable endeavors: she

must tell Sylvano the bad news and later, prove to him that she is not so sick that

she cannot still enjoy the dolce vita that his money and high social status afford her,

as well as manage to pay the bills of about USD 200,000 for the lumpectomy and

subsequent medical treatment. In the early twenty first century, US healthcare was

ruled by the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) —a group of insurance

providers, which offered insurance coverage for a monthly or annual fee that not

all Americans could afford or would remember to pay. David Morris explains that

this system negotiated contracts with hospitals and health professionals, while

limiting doctors’ autonomy about treatment, because decision-making often

rested with cost-conscious bureaucrats, and an HMO may withhold access to care

from some patients, which undermined their health and eroded their trust in the

medical profession. Morris further states that “an illness does not count as illness

unless HMO certifies it” (2007: 13).

Cancer Vixen is a collage combining various visual and textual elements, including

Marisa’s own medical reports and statistics from the National Breast Cancer

Foundation to add individual veracity to what, for her, is a problematic situation

in US society and legislation: “Fact: women without insurance have a 49% greater

risk of dying from breast cancer. And when it’s needed the most, that’s when it’s

the hardest to get” (Marchetto 2006: 94). Health workers and scholars in literary

studies may overlook the added anxiety when, unlike in Europe, cancer sufferers

were not protected by a tax-funded, government-subsidized healthcare system in

the United States but sometimes were, instead, at the mercy of the profit-driven

business of care and cure. Beyond visualizing Marisa’s agony because she has no

health insurance, Cancer Vixen suggests that US oncologists violate the Hippocratic

Oath when they fail to uphold the ethical standard of non-maleficence: their forced

inaction to treat the uninsured cancer patient means harming that patient. Not

only being poor but also oversight may be the reason why some US women have

no health insurance with which to cover the expenses of surgery and later therapies,

because as Cancer Vixen reflects, it is human to think that others —never us— will

endure a life-threatening illness. Marchetto’s graphic work illustrates how she

recalls that her coverage had just lapsed right when she most needed it: when she

was diagnosed with a tumor in her breast. Then, profit-driven insurance companies

reject her. Her economic problem renders her invisible vis-à-vis health professionals

and adds distress to her life, which complicates her efforts to heal, and can even

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jeopardize her chances to receive the best cancer treatment. Indeed, Cancer Vixen

exposes the inequalities of healthcare systems because it is sometimes money —not

a dangerous illness— that decides whether one lives or dies. Marisa’s humor

pictures her unfounded fear: being rejected by her wealthy fiancé because she

receives her cancer diagnosis only three weeks before her wedding and dreads that

Sylvano will not marry an ill bride. However, he still loves her with cancer and adds

her name —as his wife— to his medical insurance so, unlike less fortunate women,

Marisa’s success story means that she has the romantic economic means to survive

and live happily ever after, like in fairy tales.

Whereas money and love are narratives that eventually find a happy ending, Cancer

Vixen must also necessarily address illness itself and captures how medical speech

frequently chooses euphemisms that are not useful for patients. Before surgery,

Marisa’s mother asks Dr. Mills if her daughter should stay at home with her after

lumpectomy, and he says: “Even though she probably won’t stay overnight… This

is a major procedure” (Marchetto 2006: 115), which Marisa translates as “There

will be pain” (115). She does not care about spending the night in hospital, alone

in her flat or being looked after by her mother, because all that matters to her, what

frightens any cancer sufferer, is excruciating pain. Yet, this is not always information

that a doctor eagerly discloses. A later sequence of panels in The Cancer Vixen

shows lumpectomy from the patient’s eyes on the operating table. First, the

practitioner’s words before administering anaesthesia to Marisa: “OK, we’re going

to excise the tumor and…” (119); then, black color to show that she “was out”

(119); and finally, waking up after this procedure and hearing him again say “The

operation was a success, and it looks like the margins were clear” (119). Sketching

reflects the practitioner’s blurred image, which is what Marisa —still dizzy— sees

when she recovers her consciousness. In the last sketch, she educates non-physician

readers about lumpectomy: a peach symbolizes the breast tissue extracted during

the surgery and inside, its pit was the cancer that was excised. Some time after, Dr.

Mills informs Marisa at his office:

You had early breast cancer. The tumor is completely removed. It was 1.3 centimetres.

Chemotherapy and hormone therapy are systemic treatments. They treat the whole

body. They lessen the risk of the disease spreading somewhere else. Surgery and

radiation are local treatments. Radiation treatment to the breast significantly reduces

the risk of recurrence. Radiation is given because there could be cells in transit that

have been undetected. (123)

Panels from Cancer Vixen evince that physicians sometimes communicate poorly

with their patients. Dr. Mills assumes that Marisa is familiar with technical details

of cancer treatment and does not realize that, overwhelmed by the fact that her

ordeal has not yet ended, she is unable to absorb all the information that he

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transmits to her. Furthermore, post-surgery patients have more pressing

preoccupations, which are not necessarily addressed by doctors, like in Marisa’s

case: “How long are treatments? How often are treatments? How many treatments

will I need? Will I be tired? What kind of exercise should I do? Can I keep

working? Does each treatment get progressively worse? Will I throw up? Can I

travel? How nauseous will I be? When will this ever end?” (2006: 144). Yet, this

is not textually reflected as a conventional list of concerns. Graphic medicine

offers readers from the healthcare field and beyond additional non-verbal

information. Thanks to the use of a larger typeface for some of Marisa’s questions,

it is evident that she has three priorities: to know how exhausted she will be, if

each treatment will gradually intensify her pain, and if there is light at the end of

the tunnel of cancer.

Chemotherapy is a drug treatment that uses powerful chemicals to kill cancer cells

that can easily and quickly multiply in the patient’s body, although it carries risks

of side effects and is painful. Susannah Mintz contends that, although it has

become “a truism that pain cannot be described, that it defies representation in

language”, pain can be uttered in literature (2013: 4). Cancer Vixen reflects that,

after surgery, invasive chemo must treat Marisa’s cancer, and visualizes the most

frightening artifact during its sessions: the needles, which were initially shown

when a biopsy removed breast tissue to diagnose cancer. But, more importantly,

Marchetto’s synergy between comical sketches and serious language in her work

explains pain to health professionals and scholars in literary studies and what she

feels after chemotherapy: “Imagine being injected by a truckload of wet cement.

Imagine that truckload… hardening… in your entire body, immobilizing you with

extreme muscle and bone aches” (Marchetto 2006: 164). Pictures and text

eloquently describe the chemo aftermath: its intrusion into her ordinary life and its

heavy burden of suffering and paralysis because, for days between sessions, Marisa

is prostrate in bed.

In the United States, some medical institutions today work with graphic artists to

spread information about healthcare issues and treatments among the public,

while graphic novels appear on syllabi in medical humanities courses and medical

schools encourage students to read comics about illness to gain empathy and

insights into what their patients may be experiencing (La Cour and Poletti 2021:

2). Cancer Vixen prioritizes the interactions between the patient and healthcare

workers. As graphic medicine, it has the potential to educate students, because

they can see themselves as future doctors in the mirror of comic panels and observe

details about the practicalities of cancer treatment that typically go unnoticed but

can be valuable information when following-up their patients; like the discomfort

that cancer sufferers feel but do not dare to confess to doctors. As a taboo breaker,

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Cancer Vixen is useful for both the medical profession and scholars in literary

studies. Marisa is embarrassed in front of Dr. Paula due to her flatulence’s bad

smell: “Chemo farts. Nobody, I mean nobody, told me about them” (Marchetto

2006: 161). Meanwhile, she is a slave to society’s beauty standards of thinness and

abundant hair. Due to chemotherapy, she suffers because she is putting on weight.

Text and images show that, for Christmas, she offers a gift to one of her doctors:

“Mary Ann, we brought you some cookies” (181), which this practitioner accepts:

‘Oh, I’m on a diet. But I’ll take them anyway” (181). Marisa not only thanks her

doctor and takes the liberty of calling her by her first name as they have become

friends, but she also uses humor to symbolically take revenge against Mary Ann,

who is ordering chemo sessions for the author and is as obsessed with gaining

weight, as is Marisa herself. The greatest fear in cancer is death, while the greatest

fear in chemotherapy is hair loss, which scares most women. Marisa makes a parody

of her frivolous pre-cancer self as her tactic to confront the terror of not looking

attractive for herself and for others: “All those complaints about bad hair days… I

just should have been thankful I had it” (124). Between being comical and serious,

she shares her worries with Dr. Klein: “Let me be really straight. My husband owns

a restaurant where the most beautiful women go and I can’t look like crap!... and

I will kill myself if I lose my hair” (132). Indeed, Marisa has already been a victim

of the cancer stigma when a girl openly flirted with Sylvano in front of her, gave

him her card, and told him: “I’m not sick… call me if you want a healthy

relationship” (99). Because of her illness’ early stage, Marisa can “enjoy […]

chemo light. Light chemo…” (132), which comically for her “sounds like a soft

drink…” (132). Dr. Klein not only listens to her patient and writes down Marisa’s

farcical threat of suicide in her medical history, but also angrily warns her: “There’s

nothing soft about it… chemo light is still chemo” […] I would never let you risk

your life to save your hair” (132). Therefore, both medical competence and

sympathy are found in Dr. Klein’s praxis, while readers of Cancer Vixen who are

not part of the healthcare industry see that Marisa succeeds in navigating through

the threatening waters of light chemo because she obeys the social expectation of

feminine beauty: her hair.

Part of a physician’s expertise in managing disease and its sequalae is to know and

understand a patient’s story, particularly when she is not in the doctor’s office

(Myers and Goldenberg 2018: 158). Sometimes cancer diagnosis is accompanied

by a bad prognosis beyond illness itself. During chemo sessions, Marisa learns that

it is impossible for her to become a biological mother. In a panel, after informing

her about the onset of her early menopause due to her treatment, her doctor asks

her: “Are you OK? You look upset” (Marchetto 2006: 150). Marisa replies: “Well,

I was just given some pretty terrible news considering I’m 43 and it’s already late

for me to have children” (150). This is a typical doctor-patient conversation, but

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to foster empathy, healthcare and lay readers of Cancer Vixen also penetrate

Marisa’s realm of emotions after she discovers that she will remain childless: cancer

invalidates the narrative of motherhood in the future. Outside the clinic, she

imagines a baby boy in the sky, who says, “Hey Mom! Up here! Your son wanted

to say goodbye. My time’s up. I’m not happening in this lifetime” (150), to reveal

how she tries to assimilate the news she received from her doctor, and to mourn

her maternal loss.

The graphic novel reproduces other routine episodes of check-ups during cancer

treatment. Dr. Klein —now called Paula— asks Marisa whether or not she is

experiencing chemo side effects, like nausea, hot flashes, night sweats, fatigue and

diarrhea. When she confirms all of them, this doctor adds empathy to her clinical

practice by asking her patient, “How’s everything else?” (Marchetto 2006: 189),

which implies interest in non-health issues affecting the life of Marisa, who replies:

“I got no complaints” (189). As a patient, she is not a troublemaker and instead,

maintains a positive attitude, which is both vital to recover her health and not to

alienate her doctors. She does not blame physicians for her physical pain,

discomfort, early menopause and infertility. Nevertheless, Cancer Vixen does not

incorporate any racist experiences because, as a white patient, racism is absent from

Marchetto’s personal account of illness, as opposed to the medical hostility and

social invisibility suffered by a Black woman, which Lorde narrates in her

autopathograhy. When Marisa successfully finishes her treatment and is cancer-

free, friendly goodbyes at the clinic prove that she established good relationships

with health workers. Yet, Cancer Vixen also reflects that every time she sees the

white coat of a doctor who calls her name during a post-cancer check-up, “there

will always be a second where I lose my breath” (208), implying that Marisa is

always afraid of visiting a clinic and receiving bad news about cancer recurrence,

even if her doctor is only going to say, “you can change out of your gown” (208).

Thus, readers of Marchetto’s work from the healthcare field can learn to be careful

with patients after recovery from their disease, whereas her readers in literary

studies observe emotional residue of post-cancer fear, also omnipresent in Lorde’s

journals.

4. Life Lessons in Cancer Narratives

Marisa becomes a cancer vixen, or a victor, because she fails to allow illness to deflate

her spirit, and the last page of her graphic novel, showing her driving with her

husband in his Maserati on their one-year wedding anniversary, sends the final

message of her success (Chute 2017: 416). Some women survive cancer, like

Marchetto, while others, like Lorde, die. However, her autopathography from

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1980, including her furious critique of the medical profession, has paved the way

for later generations of breast cancer sufferers as authors like Marchetto. First,

Lorde empowered these women to raise social awareness about their illness;

second, she prompted them to elicit both self-healing through the act of

writing autopathographies and healing through the act of reading them by

other female patients; and third, Lorde urged them to fight to improve patient-

doctor relationships. Narratives like The Cancer Journals and Cancer Vixen

have the power to enhance both healthcare providers’ clinical practice and

students’ education. Lay readers of Lorde’s autopathography enjoy her literary

audacity when comparing herself to the mythical Amazons and the historical

Dahomey female soldiers, all of them proud, strong and brave one-breasted

warriors. Meanwhile, (future) physicians are encouraged to select passages of

Lorde’s emotional hemorrhage, which contain vital lessons on medical ethics.

Both types of reader should also situate the necessary —and not offensive—

anger of The Cancer Journals in the historical past: Lorde’s activism fighting

for the rights of women, Black people and patients during the 1970s.

Searching for knowledge and interpretation of illnesses, (future) physicians gain

more confidence from seeing images than readings texts, much less literary ones.

In their daily practice, they look at the results of blood and other laboratory tests

while contemplating results from imaging technology for the diagnosis and

prognosis of patients’ symptoms and illnesses. In their research done to treat

diseases, they trust information from visually instructive diagrams, curves, tables,

graphs and other forms from data and statistics in peer-reviewed publications.

Unlike conventional narratives relying on words only, the blending between

speech and images in graphic medicine speaks a new message in the same language

of health professionals, and scholars in literary studies should acquaint themselves

with this language. Cancer Vixen is, thus, not only a survival guide to help other

women, but also an effective visual text to be included in vade mecums to train

physicians in observational skills and cancer treatment, while developing their

intuition, empathy and understanding of patients’ personal stories beyond clinical

examinations or hospital encounters. Readers from the health professions can

picture themselves as humans in Marchetto’s graphic medicine and extract valuable

lessons for their own sake to embrace a more humanized clinical practice and to

have healthier interactions with the protagonists of illness: their patients.

Concurrently, scholars in literary studies discover the potential of humor in Cancer

Vixen to narrate the individual experience of being sick, to denounce economic

injustices endured by those with cancer, and to emotionally recover from illness.

Although there have been losses in Marchetto’s life, she survives and writes; thus,

she laughs last.

An Education for (Future) Health Professionals and Literary Scholars

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Notes

1. Arthur Kleinman defines illness

narrative as “a story the patient tells, and

significant others retell, to give coherence to

the distinctive events and long-term course of

suffering” (1988: 49).

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T. sMItH. 2015. Graphic Medicine Manifesto. University Park: Pennsylvania State U.P.

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cancer/symptoms-causes/syc-20352470/>. Accessed December 23, 2023.

MIntz, Susannah. 2013. Hurt and Pain: Literature and the Suffering Body. London: Bloomsbury.

MORRIs, David. 2007. Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age. Berkeley: University of California

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MyERs, Kimberly and Michael gOLDEnbERg. 2018. “Medical Education: Graphic Pathographies and

the Ethical Practice of Person-Centered Medicine”. AMA Journal of Ethics 20 (2): 158-166.

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Accepted: 02/07/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

The term ‘femicide’ entered public discourse only in the late 1970s, when

feminist critic Diana Russell used the term to bring attention to male violence

and discrimination against women. This article intends to re-examine the

representation of femicide through Louisa May Alcott’s short story “A Whisper

in the Dark” (1865) in light of studies on femicide and female violence. Drawing

from Russell’s definition of femicide, its theoretical approach and multiple

redefinitions, the article proceeds by exploring Alcott’s depiction of femicide in

the text. After a preliminary discussion, I critically examine Alcott’s short story

in light of studies on femicide by placing the text within American female Gothic

fiction. Afterwords, I will demonstrate how femicide in the tale is based upon an

interplay of three main tropes: wrongful confinement, the threshold and

madness, all of which are themes that Alcott develops with astonishing topicality

and which underscores the importance of the tale as an example of female abuse

and domestic violence, a phenomenon that has improved considerably all over

the world in recent years. I conclude by showing how Alcott illustrates the

politics of female control and offers an example of femicide long before the term

was ever used.

Keywords: femicide, Alcott, female abuse, madness, female control.

SHADOWING FEMI(NI)CIDE,

MADNESS AND THE POLITICS OF FEMALE CONTROL

IN LOUISA MAY ALCOTT’S

“A WHISPER IN THE DARK”

LA SOMBRA DEL FEMINICIDIO,

LOCURA Y LA POLÍTICA DE CONTROL FEMENINO

EN “UN SUSURRO EN LA OSCURIDAD”

DE LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202410298

BEATRICE MELODIA FESTA

University of Verona, Italy

beatrice.melodiafesta@univr.it

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7811-5973>

Beatrice Melodia Festa

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Resumen

El término ‘feminicidio’ no entró en el discurso público hasta finales de la década

de 1970, cuando la feminista Diana Russell lo utilizó para llamar la atención sobre

la violencia masculina y la discriminación contra las mujeres. Este artículo pretende

reexaminar la ilustración del feminicidio a través del relato corto de Louisa May

Alcott “Un susurro en la oscuridad” (1865), que se examinará a la luz de los

estudios sobre el feminicidio y la violencia femenina. Partiendo de la definición de

feminicidio de Russell, su enfoque teórico y sus múltiples redefiniciones, el artículo

procede a explorar la ilustración que Alcott hace del feminicidio en el texto. Tras

esta discusión preliminar, examino críticamente el cuento de Alcott a la luz de los

estudios sobre el feminicidio, situando el texto dentro de la ficción gótica femenina

estadounidense. A continuación, demostraré cómo el feminicidio en el cuento se

basa en un intercambio de tres tropos principales: el confinamiento injusto, el

umbral y la locura, temas que Alcott desarrolla con asombrosa actualidad y que

subrayan la importancia del cuento como ejemplo del maltrato femenino y la

violencia doméstica que en todo el mundo ha mejorado considerablemente en los

últimos años. Concluyo mostrando cómo Alcott ilustra la política del control

femenino y ofrece un ejemplo de feminicidio mucho antes de que se utilizara el

término.

Palabras clave: femicidio, Alcott, abuso femenino, locura, control femenino.

1. Introduction

In the 1990s, the neologism ‘femicide’1 entered public discourse forcefully in the

Western world as media, scholars, feminists and activists devoted attention to the

epidemic of men exercising violence on women, in most cases going so far as to kill

them. Since then, its dramatic rise in international attention has been unprecedented.

In 2021,2 staggering statistics from the United States proved how domestic

violence, and more generally, gender asymmetries, still pervade in many areas of

social, political and professional life, occurring at a shameful rate. This persistence

seems to constitute a backlash to the fight for gender equality. According to recent

data, violence in America affects almost three women every day —a fact that led

the month of March to become recognized as female violence awareness month in

the US. In 2023, the White House launched a first-of-its-kind national action plan

to end gender-based violence, such as domestic abuse, sexual assault, stalking and

dating violence.3 Beyond doubt, the phenomenon of gender-based violence has

gained greater visibility all over the world, especially in recent years, when the

actual numbers of victims have begun to increase.

Shadowing Femi(Ni)Cide, Madness and the Politics of Female Control

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Taking a step back from recent media attention, violence against women and

femicide were first represented in 19th century North American literature,

coinciding with the earliest documented examples of femicide, even though at the

time these representations appeared as tacit demonstrations of denunciation that,

if read today, make us ponder more deeply the actual roots of this phenomenon.

Louisa May Alcott’s short story “A Whisper in the Dark” (1863) deserves

prominent attention in the debate on this surprisingly topical phenomenon,

addressing the question of psychological and physical violence exerted upon

women. From the very first pages, the main plot line is a case of domestic and

gender-based abuse or, to use a contemporary term, an example of femicide. At

the time Alcott wrote the story, the term femicide did not yet exist; however,

throughout the gloomy framework of the narrative, abuse and violence run like an

inner thread that stretches to the present debate on this issue. By contrast, it is

revealing to note how, for decades, scholars did not acknowledge the innovative

aspect of this text. The reason for this oversight can be traced back to critical

appraisal of Alcott’s work, which recurrently classified her works under domestic,

sentimental or sensational fiction. More gripping, however, are those approaches

arguing that Alcott’s narratives do not deal with the image of fragile and passive

women, as they conversely present active and self-sufficient female archetypes

(Cogan 1989). Those who are familiar with the work of Louisa May Alcott, who

achieved fame with her undisputed classic Little Women (1868),4 can easily note

that “A Whisper in the Dark” is narratively and stylistically distinct from her

masterpiece, which consecrated her popularity and helped to sketch the decisive

portrait of Alcott as a sentimental writer. The tale is part of a series of thrillers

Alcott published —anonymously and pseudonymously— in Frank Leslie’s

illustrated newspaper and that were eventually republished in 1889 in the volume

A Modern Mephistopheles and a Whisper in the Dark.

First published in 1863, “A Whisper in the Dark” offers a fierce portrayal of issues

that are still crucial today —freedom of individual choice, the accusation of insanity

and power relations within the traditional family— narrated with an apparent

simplicity through a brilliant style and with the help of a gripping story line. The

plot is based on a young woman who is deceived, threatened, accused of insanity

and eventually confined. The narrative tells the story of Sybil, a seventeen-year-old

orphan heir. The young woman has been placed in the care of her uncle; the man

is in charge of managing the girl’s assets until she comes of age and marries her

cousin, as written in her father’s will. Sybil is then forced by her uncle into an

arranged marriage with her cousin, Guy. Initially, the young woman is curious and

well-disposed to the arrangement, but her arrival at the uncle’s residence changes

the course of events. Sybil is young and naïve in appearance and, seduced by her

uncle’s ambiguous charm, she initially seems to accept Guy’s courtship, but,

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discovering she is trapped in an arranged marriage, she rejects her preordained

future and declines the proposal. As Sybil will eventually discover, the will contained

a clause stating that if Sybil showed signs of madness like her mother, all assets

would pass into the hands of her uncle and cousin. Because of her refusal to marry

her cousin, the uncle, with the aid of an unscrupulous doctor, Dr. Karnac, causes

Sybil to be diagnosed as mentally unstable and, supported by the doctor’s false

diagnosis, he confines Sybil to a mental institution. In the asylum, Sybil meets her

mother, whom she believed to be dead, discovering instead that she was condemned

to the same fate and imprisoned on charges of insanity. Yet, the story ends with a

positive outcome: Sybil manages to escape from the asylum and marries her cousin,

who discovers the truth and his father’s dreadful plan.

As Alcott’s narrative can be read through the lens of femicide and gender-based

violence, in what follows I delve into the meanings and implications of femicide,

its theoretical approaches and multiple redefinitions, mostly drawing on Diana

Russell’s theory. This discussion will be necessary to examine “A Whisper in the

Dark” as a fictional representation of femicide long before its current definition

and within the context of American female Gothic fiction. Afterwards, I will

demonstrate how femicide in the tale is based upon an interplay of three main

tropes: wrongful confinement, the threshold and madness —all of which are

themes that Alcott develops with astonishing topicality and which underscore the

importance of the tale as an example of female abuse and domestic violence.

2. Femicide: Meanings and Implications

Before delving further into the text and its author, it is crucial to clarify the moral

and epistemic significance of femicide, which before being associated with Alcott

requires definitional and conceptual clarity. Undoubtedly, the concept has had

many definitions and has evolved over time. Feminist critic Diana Russell coined

the term in 1979, even though it officially acquired a definition in 1990 with the

seminal study by Russell and Radford, Femicide: The Practice of Women Killing,

regarded as the most compelling study on the phenomenon. There, Diana Russell

and Jill Radford explain how the term designates extreme violence by men against

women, who become victims primarily because of their sex. As Russell and Radford

observe, femicide is the peripheral of a broader phenomenon: violence against

women, including domestic violence, sexual violence and psychological abuse

(Russell and Radford 1990). Besides this, in 2001, Russell slightly changed the

original epistemic meaning, considering femicide as an umbrella term that

encompasses any form of male sexism over women, turning them into victims

especially because they are female. As she additionally notes, “There are many

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kinds of femicides that can be identified, for example serial femicide, rape femicide,

wife femicide, racist femicide […]” (Russell and Hermes 2001: 18), to name but

a few examples from a long list. Although femicide generally refers to the

misogynous killing of women, its significance has changed to encompass any form

of violence systematically exercised on women in the name of a patriarchal

ideological superstructure in order to perpetuate subordination and annihilate

female identity through physical or psychological subjugation, to the point of

incarceration or death (Russell and Radford 1992: 6-7).

At its root, “femicide has many different forms and the concept extends even

beyond legal definitions of murder to include situations in which women are even

permitted to die as a result of misogynous attitudes” (Russell and Radford 1992:

7).5 Yet, as Russell and Radford further imply, at the origin of femicide there is

always a masculine need to deprive women of control over their lives and bodies.

In making my argument, I draw on radical feminist theories that have regarded the

woman’s body as a starting point, considering it as the primary object of masculine

violence. Indeed, the term femicide originated from the efforts of radical feminists

that, as far back as the 1980s, aimed to denounce the issue of violence against

women by asserting that women were systematically oppressed as a ‘sex class’

within a persistent patriarchal framework (MacKinnon 1989). Lea Melandri traces

the cause of violence against women to an inherent failure to question gender

relations. Taking up this thread, Melandri highlights how “since the dawn of time

and even in modern times, man has continued to consider the woman ‘an inferior

subject’ and at the same time the repository of a divine spark, threatening her

continuity” (2011: 35, my translation).6 In her study, Melandri maintains that love

and violence tend to polarize to the point where the feeling of love and the violent

act interpenetrate. According to Melandri, the ‘masculinization’ of public space

functions as a new form of male domination. As she proceeds to argue, women

have always suffered continuous expropriation of their existence, leading to a

constant gender inequality that has always highlighted male dominance and placed

women in a subordinate status (2011: 36-37).

In a recent study on the global resonance of femicide, Myrna Dawson and Michelle

Carrigan underscore how one of the reasons behind the upsurge in attention given

to the issue of femicide today has to do with the way in which “femicide should be

defined and how it is distinct from homicide” (2020: 2). Femicide, in its many

different forms, represents a mechanism of control and subjugation by man over

woman and, even today, it often takes the form of a non-acceptance of women’s

freedom and independence. The man feels legitimized to take away the woman’s

autonomy the moment she ‘rebels’ and manifests a need to emancipate herself

from male authority. It is precisely this aspect of femicide, well illustrated by

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Dawson and Carrigan in their study, on which I will focus in order to begin the

analysis of Alcott’s story and the innovative facets of the narrative.

Another essential consideration concerns the issue of gender-based violence.

Defining what is meant by violence is often very problematic, and there is a

tendency to link the term to different phenomena. Historically, violence appeared

to be the product of a certain type of culture that often stemmed from power

relations, and which functioned as a natural discriminator of gender (Héritier

2005: 23). According to anthropologist Francoise Héritier, violence originates

within the binary representation of masculine and feminine: in ancient times and

in Western culture, it was exercised on the woman as a way to ‘protect’ masculine

honor. Not surprisingly, in a male-dominated society, such as the one in which

Louisa May Alcott sets her story, there was a use of violence against women that

has been identified as a characteristic of patriarchal society, also due to the social

construction of femininity as receptive and passive. As Russell and Radford

maintain, “Patriarchal oppression, like other forms of oppression, may manifest

itself in legal and economic discrimination, but like all oppressive structures is

rooted in violence” (1992: 6), a definition that flawlessly reflects the situation

envisioned by Alcott. It is precisely this form of masculine imposition and female

deprivation that will allow me to read Alcott’s narrative in these terms, considering

its relevance within the current debate on female violence and femicide.

3. Louisa May Alcott as a Feminist Icon

As mentioned above, in her second anonymously published thriller, “A Whisper in

the Dark”, Louisa May Alcott illustrates the dynamics of domestic and psychological

abuse against women in the 1800s. Although the writer presents a story that was

often labeled under the genre of sentimental narrative, the tone and atmosphere

recall those of Gothic fiction, and it surprisingly anticipates the feminist debate on

physical and psychological violence within the domestic sphere. Alessandra

Calanchi recently observed how it is not daring to claim that the story focuses

precisely on gender issues, including femicide —real or attempted— well before

the term was ever used (2020: 13, emphasis added).

In her compelling study, Elisabeth Lennox Keyser proves how, beneath the

progressive feminism of Alcott’s work, lurks a more radical image of women,

which is evident in her Gothic thrillers “Behind the Mask” (1866), “A Marble

Woman” (1865) and, eventually, “A Whisper in the Dark”. In line with this

perspective, Calanchi considers this text as the first piece of a symbolic trilogy

illustrating femicide within the context of American literature and connecting this

work to other canonical texts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall

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Paper” (1892) and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899). In both stories, as in

Alcott’s narrative, a woman is the victim of psychological violence by a man who

accuses her of insanity (a theme to which I will later return).

Alcott’s production shifted from Gothic thrillers, published under the pseudonym of

A.M. Barnard (for the most part Gothic stories in which she explored themes such

as madness, violence and revenge), to sentimental novels. However, Alcott’s Gothic

and ‘domestic thrillers’ —a term used pejoratively to diminish psychological thrillers

written by women in comparison to traditional thrillers— focused on themes such as

manipulation, murder and forbidden love, and were often published in anonymous

form or under a masculine pseudonym. These works, including those of authors

such as Edith Wharton and the aforementioned Charlotte Perkins Gilman, can be

aligned with the genre of ‘American female Gothic’.7 In The Cambridge Companion

to the American Gothic (2017), Diane Hoeveler maintains that “The subgenre of the

female Gothic generally refers to the works written by women that use specific

themes, tropes and conventions of the Gothic, to reflect and address female concerns

such as marriage, inheritance, and patriarchal empowerment” (2017: 99). In her

pioneering study The Female Gothic (1983), Juliann Fleenor argues that the female

Gothic becomes a metaphor of female experience, and it is used to describe the

condition of women within patriarchal society.8 As literary critics have aptly shown,

the American female Gothic has its roots in the work of female authors associated

with the supernatural and set in New England. Narratives within the American

female Gothic tradition generally articulate firm critiques of the patriarchal

establishment, condemning masculine imposition in the domestic sphere. Overall, in

the American female Gothic “the woman and her body becomes the ultimate

embodiment of Gothic horror” (Hoeveler 2017: 111).

Teresa A. Goddu firmly includes Alcott as a relevant name within the Gothic genre

(1997: 3-8), in which a recurring theme is the portrayal of the female experience and

the challenges it entails. Over the course of her life, the author demonstrated a clear

aversion toward the societal expectations imposed on women, particularly the

requirement to adopt a submissive stance in the face of dominant male chauvinism.

Alcott’s Gothic thrillers, which skillfully integrate Gothic tropes with the female

experience, unfold within only one setting: the domestic sphere, often depicting

female tragedies, narratives of revenge, confinement, subjugation and rebellion, as

exemplified in “A Whisper in the Dark”. As the narrative unfolds, the young

protagonist repeatedly pauses to describe the Gothic and grotesque setting of the

domestic environment as “the blackened ruins of a house of horrors” (363). With

remarkable consistency, Alcott’s Gothic fiction encodes these scenarios by combining

violence, perversion and madness —tropes I will grapple with in the pages ahead. As

exemplified in the critical analysis of Alcott’s Gothic fiction conducted by Madeleine

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Stern, “A Whisper in the Dark” becomes not only an engrossing gruesome Gothic

narrative but an interesting foray into the disorders of the mind” (1978: 429).

That said, it must be noted that the different narrative approach of Alcott’s work

reflects, in part, the writer’s autobiographical experience. Louisa May Alcott was a

precocious child: when she was only ten, she wrote plays for her circle of friends;

at fifteen, she composed melodramas with her sister; and when she was only

nineteen, after a brief period at the service of a wealthy family to earn money to

emancipate herself financially, she published her first poems under the pseudonym

of Flora Fairfield. Indeed, Alcott led an active and dynamic life. In the second half

of the 1800s, the writer became a staunch abolitionist, helping fugitive slaves

through the secret system of aids known as the Underground Railroad. At the

outbreak of the Civil War, Alcott sewed uniforms for the soldiers of Concord and

worked as a nurse at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown.9 In the late 1870s,

she became a steadfast women’s rights advocate and encouraged women to fight

for the right to vote in the state of Massachusetts.10 Subsequently, Alcott wrote a

series of letters —later published in the Massachusetts suffrage periodical, Women’s

Journal— in which she expressed her disappointment with the government of

Concord and the State of Massachusetts for their lack of action in favor of women’s

rights. These aspects of Alcott’s life prove the writer’s interest in sustaining female

emancipation, an ideology at odds with that of the official discourse of the time.

Given her long support toward women’s rights —a support Alcott inherited from

her parents, who endorsed most reforms, including women’s suffrage— Madelaine

Stern posits that “She was a feminist because she was a humanist; she embraced the

cause of women because she embraced the causes of humanity” (1978: 429). Not

surprisingly, as critics have recently suggested, Alcott’s intriguing mix of fiction

and auto-fiction engages and intersects —as does Alcott’s life— with domesticity,

femininity and female emancipation (Sesnić 2022: 1).

4. Instances of Femicide in Louisa May Alcott’s “A Whisper

in the Dark”: Thresholds, Boundaries and the Spaces of

Female Control

Fitting into the historical frame mentioned above, “A Whisper in the Dark” reflects

on male authority by showing how the protagonist resists patriarchal imposition

despite the strong and obvious masculine intention to exert control and use violence

and psychological abuse on the female protagonist. In her critical reflection on the

condition of womanhood in the 19th century, Susan Cruea claimed that “Women

were the continual victims of social and economic discrimination. Upper and

middle-class women’s choices were limited to marriage and motherhood, or

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spinsterhood” (2005: 187). Moreover, in the introduction to an Italian edition of

Henry James’s Daisy Miller, Donatella Izzo proceeds to argue that in the second

half of the 19th century, the widespread dissemination of domestic ideology, as the

social norm of reference, constituted a moral primacy that contemplated women

exclusively within the framework of marriage. As such, the lives of women were

entirely under the control and in the service of men (Izzo 2017: 20). In this sense,

Elisabeth Keyser remarks on Alcott’s frequent use of the verb ‘to master’ to

accentuate the physical and psychological male subjugation of the female characters.

Early in the narrative, Sybil admits “I was mastered. Yet only physically, my spirit

was rebellious still” (Alcott 1996: 331, emphasis added).

Consistent with this I argue that the question of female victimization in the narrative

revolves around three major themes: wrongful confinement as a representation of

female reclusion; the threshold as a powerful metaphor for boundaries that may or

may not be transgressed; and ultimately, madness as a pretext for violence and

control. As we shall now see, it is on the basis of these tropes that we can read the

novel in a contemporary frame and consider it a valid example of modern femicide.

Along with the recurring use of the verb ‘to master’, closed spaces are equally

relevant in contextualizing the female figure as an object of violence. As such, the

asylum to which the protagonist is confined is not merely the concrete place in

which Sybil is imprisoned, but also the psychological and familial one, in which she

is subjugated and psychologically harassed by the masculine characters, that is, her

uncle and the doctor. As Calanchi noted when analyzing this text, the home turns

out to be a false domestic comfort, a symbol of female imprisonment inside which

coexist explosions of violence, and fantasies of escape (2020: 15-16). The relocation

of the protagonist within closed spaces, the carriage in which Sybil is introduced to

the reader in the very first scene, the house, the bedroom in which she is often

detained, and finally, the asylum, are the concrete representations of a persistent

intention to subjugate and imprison the young woman. “I succumbed to despair

[…] even in my prison-house” (Alcott 1996: 354, emphasis added), claims Sybil.

Again, when she is diagnosed by Dr. Karnac, the uncle “closed the door and locked

it, having dexterously removed the key from within” (Alcott 1996: 350). Sybil then

manages to escape by jumping out of the window and safely climbing down the

trellis before she is brought back to her room. Although Sybil attempts to free

herself, she remains relentlessly and physically confined to enclosed spaces and, as

Keyser points out, “Sibyl escapes the prison of her room only to be imprisoned in

Karnac’s asylum” (1993: 7). Sybil’s forced confinement should be read as essential

to an analysis of the text as a case of femicide. In effect, the protagonist is forced

into a double segregation: first, physically and psychologically; and then, at home

and in the asylum. When Sybil wakes up in her room at the madhouse, the sense of

imprisonment is evident: “The place was small, plainly furnished, and close, as if

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long unused […] A moment I started about me bewildered, then hurried to the

window —it was gated!” (Alcott 1996: 351, emphasis added). At this moment, the

protagonist discovers she has gone from the reclusion in her room to the internment

in the asylum. Yet Keyser, in her reading of the text, further remarks how “Motivated

by youthful rebelliousness and a fondness for manipulating others, Sybil fails to

question patriarchal assumptions until, at her uncle’s request, she pursues her

father’s will in which the terms of the compact are set forth” (Keyser 1993: 352).

The frequent recurrence of the threshold as a transitional space in the narrative

represents a liminal boundary that limits what the female protagonist can do and

what she is bound not to do. According to Calanchi, in the text the threshold

illustrates the woman’s ‘condition of in-betweenness’, as she is torn between the

desire for emancipation, which will culminate in her refusal of marriage, and the

psychological and material violence to which she is condemned: being accused of

insanity and locked up in an asylum for the choice to rebel against patriarchal

order. The masculine power over the woman lies, in fact, in the threshold, or

rather, in the spaces where the threshold is never fully open: a window ajar, a half-

open door, an antechamber —all narrative threads that lead to the protagonist’s

realization of a need to break free from her oppressor (Calanchi 2020: 18). It is

therefore essential to consider this motif to understand the importance Alcott

gives to this theme, which becomes a leitmotif in the narrative.

Early in the text, Sybil repeatedly describes the uncle leaning on the doorjamb, as

if his position indicates an impenetrable boundary and, most importantly, male

power over the limit the woman shall not pass: “Soon he came, and paused on the

threshold” (Alcott 1996: 334), recalls Sybil in one of the numerous references.

Later, when she is asked for the last time if she is still convinced to refuse the

marriage proposal, while waiting to be diagnosed with feigned insanity, it is the

doctor who stands on the threshold, once again to suggest the seemingly

insurmountable limit to which Sybil is condemned: “I pointed to the door as I

spoke; the women hurried out with scared faces, the doctor bowed and followed

but paused on the threshold while my uncle approached me, asking in a tone

inaudible to those still hovering round the door —“Do you still persist in your

refusal, Sybil?” (Alcott 1996: 349, emphasis added). It is precisely through a partly

open door that two of the most important narrative twists in the story occur: Sybil

discovers the uncle’s awful intentions, and, through the threshold, she overhears

her mother’s voice for the first time. As one of the text’s central concepts, the

threshold looks like an attempt to illustrate the female transit toward emancipation

and her ability, in the end, to cross the limit and override the woman’s exercise of

male power. Such space in the narrative serves as a way to make visible and legible

Sybil’s way to liberation in her capacity to surpass that boundary.

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5. Madness, Imprisonment and Hysteria

The construction of violence in the text revolves around the figure of the masculine

oppressor, the uncle, who, after seducing his underage niece with a marriage

proposal, accuses her of insanity to sequester her in a madhouse. The question of

surveillance, in Foucauldian terms, and the manipulation the man exercises on the

woman, become repetitive threads that will be passed on between the protagonist

and her mother, imprisoned in the asylum and condemned to the same fate. Stern

observes that in this text “the reader is regaled with the lowest form of psychological

manipulation —an attempt for mercenary purposes, to drive the heiress heroine

insane so that her inheritance will be denied her” (1978: 429). In conjunction with

masculine domination, “imprisonment takes its toll on Sybil’s physical and

psychological health” (Carpenter 1986: 32). In this sense, the implications of

femicide in the narrative become entangled with madness to provide an extensive

critique of patriarchal culture, as the author denounces a misogynistic and patriarchal

society that labels women who want to be free with madness and hysteria. As the

story progresses, Sybil soon admits that “Madness seemed my inevitable faith”

(Alcott 1996: 356).. The narrative’s gradual decline into madness suggests how, at

the time, any deviation from the norm was considered a sign of mental instability.

From this perspective, the tale is set against the backdrop of the 1850s, and explores

the pre-conceptual view of madness as a gender stereotype or a gendered disorder.

In fact, it is known that in the late 1850s, asylum statistics confirmed the perception

that female inmates were likely to outnumber their male counterparts, so that

madness soon became a pointedly gendered illness. This phenomenon cast women

in a (gendered) imbalance that fed the imposition of a patriarchal structure.

Moreover, madness and the asylum are two pitfalls of the Gothic novel, whose

purpose was to illustrate the immorality of women in patriarchal society, as well as

female resistance to oppression (Keyser 1993: 4). In medicine, hysteria was

originally attributed to women —a theory corroborated by a historical fraud by

which the origin of the term was related to the uterus. Freud then traced hysteria

back to the repression of sexual desire, referring to it as a distinctively female

disease, since the repression of desire was associated with the societal role of

women.11 Scholarly work has often considered madness as a rather desperate form

of rebellion and, more generally, an extreme condition that deprives the subject of

the capacity to protest and of self-affirmation and thus can lead to a pressing need

to break free from a condition of deviance.12 In their seminal study on madness,

women and Victorian literature, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), Sandra

Gilbert and Susan Gubar used psychoanalytic theory to explore female anxieties

surrounding authorship and space. In their study, they explained how female

writers and women in general “fated to inhabit male-defined masks” (2000: 19).

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As a consequence, the woman becomes polarized in the binomial ‘angel’ and/or

‘monster’ —expressions of a dual personality. If monstrosity in Alcott’s text

develops in masculinity, the visible inner monstrosity of female violence —

embedded in hysteria as a female problem— becomes visible in the ghostly whisper

of Sybil’s mother, her double. In the end, Sybil rebels against her condition, and

her rebellion comes precisely from the encounter with her mother whom, in an

almost Lacanian sense, she sees reflected behind a broken glass, as if to mirror her

image, her alter ego. In “A Whisper in the Dark”, madness becomes the excuse to

trigger a mechanism of control and masculine imposition. Insanity, when officially

diagnosed, is the element capable of preventing Sybil from accessing her inheritance

and being free to choose her future. For Alcott, mental illness becomes the

scapegoat for femicide, a decisive masculine pretext to manipulate and subjugate

the female protagonist. If, as Keyser has argued, “In ‘A Whisper in the Dark’,

Alcott directly associates female madness with patriarchy” (Keyser 1993: 107), the

bogus diagnosis of insanity is more than ‘just’ a representation of illness, as it

undermines the perpetuation of femicide as an intentional abuse with a gender-

related motive. In keeping with this, the scene of the accusation of insanity turns

out to be a moment of absolute violence:

I was unused to wine. The draught I had taken was powerful with age, and though

warm and racy to the palate, proved too potent for me. Still sitting before my fire, I

slowly fell into restless drowse […] whose motion gradually lulled me into perfect

unconsciousness. Waking at length, I was surprised I found myself in bed with the

shimmer of daylight peeping through the curtains. Recollecting that I was to leave

early. I sprang up, took one step and remained transfixed with dismay, for the room

was not only my own. (Alcott 1996: 351)13

As the scene makes clear, Sybil is subjected to real instances of physical violence: she

is drugged, rendered unconscious and forcefully taken to the asylum, where she will

wake up unaware of her fate and what has transpired. As Alcott illustrates, the

young protagonist is placed in a position of vulnerability by male authority, leading

to her confinement. This passage serves as a comprehensive representation of the

Gothic horror depicted on the female body, as delineated by Hoeveler (2017).

In her analysis of Alcott’s work through the lens of disability studies, Karyn Valerius

observes that “Representations of mental health and illness might complicate and

enhance established feminist readings of Alcott’s fiction” (2018: 87).14 By

addressing this issue, Carpenter has claimed that “To suggest the fullest extent of

masculine domination and to justify woman’s anger as a response to that domination,

would surely be inharmonious with the respectable traditions of Concord. For a

cultured woman and an Alcott to do it might well be considered madness” (1986:

37). As such, the question of madness in the narrative is complicated by another

intern living next door. Sybil is intrigued by this other individual, whom she will

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soon discover to be her mother (the origin of the title’s whisper). The meeting

between the daughter and her mother, who urges Sybil to save herself from their

common fate, is an example of how Alcott transforms madness into a double

suffering handed down from mother to daughter, a repetitive cycle of triumphant

abusive male power and female victimization. From Carpenter’s perspective, “Alcott

takes great pains to develop an identification between mother and daughter, and

even to intimate that their fates are parallel” (1986: 33). By incorporating women,

madness and violence into the narrative, “A Whisper in the Dark” illustrates the

interconnected construction of gender and mental illness within the 19th-century

concept of female hysteria. By giving centrality to insanity as a significant trope that

devaluates the woman as the irrational sex, Alcott triggers a path of rage and

rebellion, as mental illness, from an element of submission and control, becomes a

way of reacting to femicide and gendered violence.

Particularly of note at this point is Paige Clements’s recent perspective on mental

disorders. Focusing on the iconic figure of Brönte’s madwoman in the attic —with

which Alcott’s tale shares numerous similarities, such as internment on account of

purported madness as a symbol of patriarchal oppression— Clements relates

madness to female emancipation and wonders: “If a patriarchal system causes

mental illness, then why can madness not be a form of escapism and/or rebellion

within that system? While mental illness should not be erased or overshadowed

insofar as it is a true medical condition, does that mean we must disregard the

pathologization of women’s behavior in response to oppression?” (2021: 24).

This observation reflects, in part, the narrative twist of Alcott’s story. Upon closer

inspection, alongside the violence, which the author highlights in concrete images

(e.g. the poisoned drink, cutting of female hair, forced imprisonment), Sybil’s

gestures of rebellion are numerous. Following a passage in which the protagonist

is deliberately drugged by her uncle, so that she can lay on his knee for his pleasure,

Sybil bites the man’s hand, although she immediately realizes that it would have

been better to surrender, since she fears her uncle’s reaction: “I had better have

submitted, for slight as the foolish action was, it had an influence on my afterlife as

many others such as had” (Alcott 1996: 330). According to Carpenter, “The

comment implies that her own physical violence marked the first in a series of

rebellions, for which she would later be punished” (1986: 35). A further subversive

attitude is evident in Sybil’s clear decision to refuse marriage, a choice that leads

the uncle to make an incestuous insinuation, aiming to become the “faithful

guardian of her life” (Alcott 1996: 347) by proposing to be her husband. The

female rejection takes the form of another obvious gesture of rebellion, as Sybil

goes so far as to throw her engagement ring against a mirror, cracking it in the

middle: “I flung the ring, case and all, across the room, it struck the great mirror,

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shivered it just in the middle, and sent several loosened fragments crashing to the

floor” (347). Later in the narrative, the protagonist does not fail to stress how

“[she] had never been subjected to restraint of any kind, it made [her] reckless at

once, for this last indignity was not to be endured” (350). However, Sybil’s

personality is anything but fragmented —a term that usually evokes a neuro-

psychological disorder. The young woman is very firm in her decisions: she rejects

marriage and is determined to free herself from her condition.

5.1. Whispers as Threats of Masculine Utterance

A useful point that relates whispering with madness, thus considering it as an

additional parameter leading to the perpetration of femicide, can be found in

Jimmy Packham’s recent analysis of the fundamental role haunting voices play in

Gothic fiction. According to Packham, “A Whisper in the Dark” offers an example

of rebellion against the initial imposition of masculine voices. In effect, the

masculine voice plays an essential role in the narrative, as Alcott entrusts it with

peremptory and intimidating utterances to suggest the authoritarian and

subjugating tone of man over woman. The importance of whispering in the

scenario of violence we have delineated so far —as Packham reminds us— sets up

the transgressive and troubling role voices play in Alcott’s narrative. Packham

argues the following: “Alcott’s tale explores the extent to which a woman’s voice

is heard under patriarchy as ‘raving’, and the extent to which this voice is

coextensive with an (in)visible body; it explores the silencing and erasure of a

woman’s voice in law and legal matters, and the frustrating of communication

between women” (2021: 80-81).

The role that voices and sounds play in the construction of femicide and the

consequent process of rebellion become evident when Sybil is confined to the

asylum. The footsteps the protagonist overhears above her room, the low murmurs

and the screams interspersed with cries of weeping —which will turn out to belong

to her mother— are the first audible presence of a female rebellion. Then, this

female voice resists madness and confinement as it transmits itself through those

boundaries —previously discussed— that could not be transgressed, as sounds

come from a keyhole, a locked door, distinctly labeled as places of prohibition. The

trajectory taken in this section of the tale highlights “the bodily limitations imposed

by the domineering masculine authorities upon the woman as agent and establishes

a non-physical spectralized space as the space of agency” (Packham 2021: 82). The

sonority of these rumors and the silence that precedes them is indicative of the

position to which women were condemned: being silenced by patriarchal authority.

At its conclusion, the narrative engages the reader through the clear and assertive

voices of women (Sybil and her mother, the whisper that leads to the escape).

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While initially playing a marginal role compared to the dominant masculine voices

in the story, women become central figures in the latter part, both in their presence

and as voices. In this way, Alcott uses the sanatorium as a space to re-orient the

authority of speech on the woman.

If one reads the narrative within this frame, it can be seen how, as Packham

additionally implies, “The acousmatic whisper poses a continual threat to the

forms of masculine utterance” (2021: 87). In the first section of the narrative,

Alcott exploits the tension between a voiceless female character —which from that

whispering will make her voice heard, moving from absence to presence—

decisively silencing and denying the power of masculine authority. Indeed, as the

narrative unfolds, Sybil rebels and renounces silent isolation. Nevertheless, as

Carpenter illustrates, the protagonist will prove to have inherited from her mother

not madness but the spirit of rebellion that will enable her to save her life (1986:

31). In spite of Sybil sharing the same fate as her mother, the young protagonist,

to whom Alcott grants a happy ending, is the only one capable of saving herself. As

the story draws to a close, the mother dies in the asylum on the night of Sybil’s

18th birthday and leaves her daughter two letters urging her to flee, tying them on

a dog’s collar with a lock of her blonde hair. The symbiotic mother-daughter

relationship reaches a climax as Sybil observes the deceased body of the mother

and she contemplates their similarities: “The face I saw was a pale image of my

own. Sharpened by suffering, pallid with death, the features were familiar as those

I used to see; the hair beautiful and blonde as mine had been, streamed long over

the pulseless breast, and on the hand still clenched in that last struggle, shone the

likeness of a ring I wore, a ring bequeathed me by my father” (Alcott 1996: 359).

Susan Williams further contends that Alcott’s mother-daughter relationship is an

example of a sentimental bond that extends beyond emotions (2020: 53). As

Carpenter explains, “Sybil’s mother might be described as ‘destroyed’ by madness

leaving her daughter ‘motherless’ if not in actuality” (1986: 33). Hence, if the

accusation of insanity becomes the starting point for committing a case of femicide,

madness for Alcott later becomes an essential narrative climax to trigger a process of

female emancipation. The behavioral escalation of the female character materializes

in the unexpected happy conclusion: Sybil escapes from the asylum, finally gaining

her freedom at the expense of an abrupt willingness to forgive her perpetrators.

6. Conclusion

Returning to Russell’s definition, as gender-based violence and femicide have

different expressions, Alcott’s “A Whisper in the Dark” foregrounds the violence

exerted on a woman who becomes a victim of psychological abuse that causes

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mental unrest and distress. Coercion, drug administration and forced confinement

are the most obvious expressions of the atrocity of violence to which women were

subjected. All these characteristics are also fueled by narrative patterns, that is,

confinement, madness and the threshold as powerful metaphors, whose recurrence

has allowed me to read Alcott’s short story as an acutely topical text capable of

explicitly denouncing the condition and the social system to which women were

unconsciously condemned by patriarchal society in 19th century America. Yet, in

this scenario of extreme violence, Alcott envisages a female protagonist who refuses

marriage in the name of inspirational freedom. Indeed, the narrative strength of

“A Whisper in the Dark” does not lie in Alcott’s immutable victimization of the

woman, as it offers her a chance to regain her liberty.

If the story departs from femicide to stage and denounce female abuse through a

pessimistic tone, at least in the first section of the narrative, the ending suggests

Alcott’s intention to end on a positive note. As Calanchi recalls, the choice of such

a positive resolution “is not a narrative device for an easy conclusion but a message

of hope for abused women and an implicit invitation to react to physical and

psychological violence without considering victimhood as a permanent state”

(2020: 22, my translation).15 At a time when gender-based violence and femicide

as an act of violence that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm to a woman

have taken center stage in the discussion on gender-based abuse, the importance

of Alcott’s tale lies in its moral: a current light of hope for all abused women.

Most 19th-century American female Gothic fiction, especially during Alcott’s

time, was motivated by the social emergency of violence against women that today

is epitomized by femicide. To this end, “A Whisper in the Dark” anticipates the

fast-growing attention on femicide and female abuse, a global issue prompted

today by the increasing number of cases and the renewed international awareness

on female violence. The exceptional modernity of Alcott’s work is confirmed by its

proximity to current events in the narrativization of violence, events that are as

intimate as they are collective, thus taking a perspective that projects this tale into

the future, leading up to our current awareness on female violence. From this view,

Alcott’s tale becomes a model for gender denunciation, revolt and the desire for

emancipation of those women deprived of voice and authority. Along with Alcott,

the heroine represents the female rebellion against violence, reclaiming her voice

in the context from which women have been excluded.

As one of the most severe forms of violence against women, femicide has recently

become an urgent and painful topic and a global phenomenon. As the problem

stems from a culture based on patriarchal imposition and unequal power relations,

there is a great need to shine a spotlight on femicide and increase awareness of its

deeply entrenched nature, which extends beyond the current discourse advocating

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for change. To this end, “A Whisper in the Dark” proves how literature by the end

of the 19th century already provided a platform for women to reject patriarchal

abuse via imposition of their voice, a ‘whisper’ in that loud and sonorous masculine

oppression we still deal with in our current society.

Notes

1. The term ‘femicide’ is often

used interchangeably with ‘feminicide’. The

difference in terminology lies in the fact that

femicide (the one I am about to examine) is

the original sociological term associated with

the phenomenon coined by feminist Diana

Russell, whereas feminicide is the political

term referring to the role of the state within

the phenomenon and to the judicial structures

that normalize misogyny.

2. See Hackman (2021).

3. For more on this, see Howard

(2023).

4. The author’s fame is mainly due

to the publication of Little Women, which soon

became a bestseller and was adapted into

numerous films, as confirmed by Greta

Gerwig’s latest adaptation, Little Women

(2019), and cinema’s recurring interest in the

novel. The novel was commissioned by Roberts

Brothers publishing, despite Alcott’s initial

doubts as she felt that this kind of narrative

genre was insufficient for her potential.

5. Femicide has 14 different

subtypes, distinguished by relationship or

motivation. For more information, see Dawson

and Carrigan (2020).

6. “fin dall’alba dei tempi e pure in

epoca odierna, l’uomo, ha continuato a

considerare la donna “una vita inferiore” e

allo stesso tempo la depositaria di una

scintilla divina, promessa e minacciosa allo

stesso tempo della sua continuità”.

7. The term ‘female Gothic’ was

originally coined by Ellen Moers in 1976 to

encompass Gothic stories authored by women.

8. For a fuller discussion on the

American Gothic, see Weinstock (2017) and

Hoeveler (2017). For more on female Gothic,

see Fleenor (1983) and the more recent study

by Wallace and Smith (2009). An excellent

overview of the topic in Alcott’s fiction can also

be found in Madeleine Stone’s introduction to

the book Plots and Counterplots: More

Unknown Thrillers by Louisa May Alcott (1976).

9. The experience as a Civil War

nurse was an important part of Alcott’s life,

which led not only to the publication of

Hospital Sketches (1863), but also affected her

health when she contracted pneumonia and

typhoid fever and was treated with inorganic

mercury medication that produced an acute

mercury poisoning, causing her chronic

health problems (including vertigo).

10. Alcott was the first woman to

Concord.

11. For more on this, see Freud

(2013).

12. See Rüggemeier (2019) and

Felman (1975).

13. Sybil’s case is reminiscent of a

very current phenomenon: so-called rape

drugs. These are mostly narcotics dissolved in

small amounts in drinks to sedate the subject

(in most cases women), making the victim

unconscious and vulnerable to sexual assault.

14. Psychiatric disability is a recur-

ring feature in Alcott’s fiction and especially in

those works published anonymously, among

which we find “A Whisper in the Dark”.

15. “Il lieto fine non è un

espediente per una facile conclusione, ma un

messaggio di speranza per le donne vittime di

abusi e maltrattamenti e un invito implicito a

reagire alla violenza - fisica e psicologica -

senza introiettare la condizione di vittima

come stato mentale permanente e inevitabile”.

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HOEVELER, Diane Long. 2017. “The American Female Gothic”. In Weinstock, Jeffrey (ed.) The

Cambridge Companion to the American Gothic. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.: 99-114.

HOwARD, Jacqueline. 2023. “White House Launches National Plan to End Gender-based Violence”.

CNN (May 25). <https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/25/health/gender-based-violence-white-house-

plan/index.html>. Accessed September 21, 2024.

Izzo, Donatella. 2017. “Introduction”. Daisy Miller: Uno studio. Ed. D. Izzo. Trans. S Francescato.

Venezia: Marsilio: 9-46.

kEysER, Elisabeth Lennox. 1993. Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott. Knoxville:

University of Tennessee Press.

MACkInnOn, Catharine. 1989. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge (MA): Harvard U.P.

MELAnDRI, Lea. 2011. Amore e violenza. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri.

PACkHAM, Jimmy. 2021. Gothic Utterance: Voice, Speech, and Death in the American Gothic.

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Shadowing Femi(Ni)Cide, Madness and the Politics of Female Control

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RüggEMEIER, Anne. 2019. “Female Mental Illness, Monstrosity and Male Medical Discourses:

Revisiting Jane Eyre”. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 30: 73-88.

RussELL, Diana E.H. and Jill RADfORD. 1992. Femicide: the Politics of Women Killing. New York:

Twayne Publishers.

RussELL, Diana E.H. and Roberta A. HERMEs. 2001. Femicide in Global Perspective. New York:

Teachers College Press.

sEsnIć, Jelena. 2022. “Louisa May Alcott’s Changing Views on Women, Work and Marriage in

Work”. European Journal of American Studies 17 (3): 1-9. <https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.18592>.

stERn, Madeleine B. 1978. “Louisa Alcott’s Feminist Letters”. Studies in the American Renaissance:

429-452.

VALERIus, Karyn. 2018. “Is the Young Lady Mad? Psychiatric Disability in Louisa May Alcott’s ‘A

Whisper in the Dark’”. In Donaldson, Elisabeth J. (ed.) Literatures of Madness, Disability Studies

and Mental Health. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan: 91-108.

wALLACE, Diana and Andrew sMItH. 2009. The Female Gothic: New Directions. London: Palgrave

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Received: 26/02/2024

Accepted: 22/07/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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IMAGINING THE CELTIC PAST IN MODERN FANTASY

Edited by Dimitra Fimi and Alistair J.P. Sims

London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249729

ANDREA VALEIRAS FERNÁNDEZ

Universidade da Coruña

andrea.valeiras@gmail.es

<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9694-5428>

Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Alistair J.P.

Sims and published by Bloomsbury in 2023 is part of the Perspectives on Fantasy series.

This title reflects the conciliatory approach that this collection has regarding Fantasy

Studies. As Attenbery, Fimi and Sangster state in the Series Editors’ Preface, there is

not a unique definition or set of rules, but infinite ways to understand it, since this

genre evokes “different meanings at different times for different people” (2023: x).

As Fimi explains in the Introduction, defining what or who is “Celtic” is complex,

since researchers choose distinctions depending on their fields and context, and in

popular culture the delimitation becomes a hodgepodge (2023: 1-2). Concerning this

book, the diversity is well reflected, since different fantasy writers had re-imagined their

own “Celts” (Iron age, medieval, cultural crossovers with similar languages, etc.). Ten

researchers analyze representations of a variety of fantasy narratives that take elements

from the Celtic tradition and culture, and their works explain the reasons beyond those

choices and the deep lore that is created along the worldbuilding and the plot.

The book is divided in four parts, designed to encapsulate the different subgenres

of the essays. The first part, “Celticity as Fantastic Intrusion”, includes three

chapters. The first of them is “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: The Celtic Fairy

Realm in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell”, written by Dr. K. A.

Laity, and it analyzes the complex relationship between Englishness and Celticity,

regarding the sense of “otherness”, in terms of geography, language and tradition,

as the key to Clarke’s story. It must be considered that this novel is historical

fantasy, taking place around the Napoleonic wars and focusing on the fall of the

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use of magic. With this essay, Dr. Laity explains how defining “Celticity” and

choosing the aspects to include in the text is an ideological act itself, with Clarke

offering some restoration of magic and, at the same time, warnings about it. All of

this can be related to the Celtic past and the complex cultural and political visions

around it, a theme that will be shared by most of the texts cited in this book. The

second chapter verses on “The Evolution of Alan Garner’s Celticity in Boneland”.

In this work, Gwendolen Grant explains that Garner’s narratives and vision of the

myths has not only inspired his world-building, but has also contributed to the

fields of History, Archaeology and Anthropology, due to the author’s interest in

the subjects. The interrelation between tradition and fantasy was clear for Garner,

who declared that, even if he lacked the chance to learn the language, hearing

Welsh felt like remembering, like “hearing the knights, who lay in the cave with

their king under the hill behind our house” (Garner 1997: 196). Grant also revises

how, as the author was writing the Widerstone trilogy, the Jungian ideas he was

implementing in the narrative evolved, making it necessary for the reader to

undertake personal research in order to understand the references. The first section

of the book closes with Kris Swank’s work “Woman as Goddess in the Irish

Fantasies of Jodi McIsaac”. This scholar analyzes how McIsaac subverts the

medieval vision of the Tuatha Dé Danann and the interconnection between Celtic

deities and saints. For example, the figure of Brigit / Brigid is a subject of allegories

and symbolism related to fire, crosses and death (which, for Swank, is what a trip

to Fairyland could mean). This essay explores how Irish legend can set the basis for

feminine-empowerment and revolution but also humane qualities and values such

as love and self-sacrifice, through the McIsaac powerful yet compassionate heroines

whose morality can be adapted to reflect the Christian virtues and standards.

The second part, “Celtic Fantasy Worlds and Heroes” is divided into three chapters.

In “The Heroic Biographies of Cú Chulainn and Connavar in the Rigante Series”,

Alistair J. P. Sims develops a study of the depiction of the heroes of the saga, inspired

by the Cú Chulainn and different Roman and Gallus warriors and rulers, such as

Vercingetorix. Following methods such as the Heroic Biography Pattern, Sims

analyzes their deeds and ethos in David Andrew Gemell’s stories. The same narrative

universe is revised in “Classical Ethnography and the World(s) of the Rigante”, by

Anthony Smart, who portrays another point of view: the classical Greek and Roman

basis for Gemell’s imagery when it comes to barbarians and how Rigante’s world

could be considered a Romanized perspective of Celtic history. In contrast to the

kind of warriors and the heroes studied in the previous essay, Smart explains how

the depictions of the Germanic barbarians from the Roman perspective present

them as a menace to their identity and culture, representing their otherness as

dangerous and corrupt. The sixth chapter of the book is a literal change of universe:

“Celts in Spaaaaace!”, by Cheryl Morgan. This researcher explores how sci-fi and

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mythological fantasy intertwine in Patricia Kennealy’s Keltiad book series, where

the mythical Celtic past and Arthurian legend narratives are combined, creating a

utopian magical and technologically advanced society. Morgan explains the

complexity of this depiction, since the Keltic race is not only inspired by the Tuatha

Dé Dannan, but also contains references to the Atlanteans, relating them to the

Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Peruvian Machu Picchu and Nazca Lines. This

essay explores how the myth of Atlantis is extrapolated to the Irish past, building a

combination of speculative fiction and mythology.

The book’s third part, “Celtic Fantasy Beyond the Anglophone” contains two

essays. The first of them is titled “From Vertigen to Frontier: The Fate of the

Sidhes in Léa Silhol’s Fiction”. There, Viviane Bergue offers a perspective of how

magical beings like fairies have been traditionally linked to Celtic culture,

underlying the sense of otherness that relies on those visions. As Bergue explains,

the author not only got inspiration from Celtic and Greek mythology, but her lore

crossed paths with Christianity, including angelic legends, since Silhol’s portrays

the faeries as former fallen angels who did not join Lucifer’s army. As many other

essays contained in this book, the connection between religion and previous Irish

myths is common and serves to reinforce the imagery of fantasy literature.

Narratives like this one fall into the category of “mythopoesis”, as the transformation

of pre-existent myths inspire the reader to examine their own spirituality and

morals (Mythopoetic Society). The other chapter from this section is “‘Chaidh e

nas doimhne agus nas doimhne ann an seann theacsaichean’: Gaelic history and

legend in An Sgoil Dhubh by Iain F. MacLeòid”, written by Duncan Sneddon. The

researcher analyzes the way in which fantasy often revolves around certain clichés

such as mythical swords. This work explains how the different folklores and myths

influence and complete MacLeòid’s narration, finding models and references to

Irish Medieval stories and Norse literature. As Sneddon explains, basing these

narratives about Gaelic culture on legends and traces of Norse settlements on the

islands and implementing them in a fictional present builds an alternative Gaelic

history with a very deep and interesting lore. It must also be said that, as the

scholar remarks, MacLeòid’s worldbuilding is also connected to well-established

tropes from fantasy literature, such as J.R.R.Tolkien and Terry Pratchett’s stories,

which include elves, dwarves, among other popular creatures, confirming their

strong presence as part of the popular culture’s version of Celtic myths.

Finally, the fourth part, “Fantastic Perceptions of Celticity” includes the last two

chapters of the book. In “The Celtic Tarot in Speculative Fiction”, Juliette Wood

explains how tarot magic has been associated with the Celtics (despite the fact that

their texts did not explicitly mention anything about that matter) in order to build a

narrative that links folklore and magic through esoteric practices. In this work, Wood

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makes a recapitulation of several fantasy novels and poems where tarot imagery is

essential and explains how the authors relate the cards and motives not only to Irish

legends, but also to Arthurian stories and even the Templars, since the grail quest

could be related to the modern Tarot seeker (2008: 110). Lastly, in “Celtic

Appropriation in Twenty-First-Century Fantasy Fan Perceptions”, Angela R. Cox

examines how readers and audiences in general perceive the inclusion of Celtic

mythology in fictional narratives. This essay analyzes how certain patterns and tropes

(druids, fairies, etc.) are so intricately linked to fantasy genres that the association

between Celticity and fantasy is inevitable. Through ethnographic research based on

collective online discussion from two online fantasy-fan communities, Cox explains

that, even if the genre contributes to the popularization of mythology, the apparently

homogeneous mixture between Irish and Welsh traditions and Arthurian legendary

could end up diminishing the meaning of the folklore itself in popular culture.

In conclusion, this book offers different perspectives about Celticity in fantasy

texts, presenting a wide variety of study cases. Although the authors review very

different texts and narratives, there are certain common subjects, such as the early

Christian imagery infused by Celticity, the Arthurian legend as complement to

many of the myth-based stories, and the importance of Norse settlements regarding

culture and tradition within the previous idiosyncrasy of the Islands. Through the

different studies with a very practical approach and a fair quantity of examples

analyzed, the reader (whether scholar or not) can understand how Irish mythology

and folklore have been linked to new fantasy stories, the role they play in

worldbuilding, and the evolution of these Celtic-inspired narratives through time.

Works cited

gARnER, Alan. 1997. The Voice That Thunders. London: Harvill Press.

Mythopoetic Society. About the Society. <https://www.mythsoc.org/about.htm>. Accessed 26

September, 2024.

wOOD, Juliette. 2008. Eternal Chalice: The Enduring Legend of the Holy Grail. London and New

York: I.B.Tauris.

Received: 05/10/2023

Accepted: 04/10/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITY:

CADS APPROACHES TO THE BRITISH MEDIA

Edited by Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez and Michael Toolan

London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249783

JAVIER FERNÁNDEZ-CRUZ

Universidad de Málaga

fernandezcruz@uma.es

<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9007-9976>

The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality is a monograph that emerged

from a symposium at the University of Birmingham in mid-2018, featuring

chapters presented at the event as well as additional commissioned chapters from

other scholars. Edited by Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez and Michael Toolan, this book

explores how language in the British media portrays and influences economic

inequality. Using a variety of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study (CADS) approaches,

it provides an historicized perspective on the normalization of wealth inequality in

the United Kingdom from the 19th century to the present day. By analyzing print,

radio, and online media, the nine chapters, written by scholars with backgrounds

in Critical Discourse Studies, reveal how the media influences public perception

and contributes to entrenched inequality in modern Britain. The book highlights

the multifaceted nature of economic inequality and its interconnections with

health, gender, and class. In the times where poverty is justified as an individual

choice, and meritocracy and financial self-aid are discursively hegemonic, this book

is an asset for social scientists of diverse fields (e.g., Economy, Sociology,

Journalism, Pol-Sci) to gain a linguistic perspective of this phenomenon.

This volume contributes to social sciences by offering an Applied Linguistics

perspective on the representation of those suffering from inequality. It shows how

an imbalanced structure of power has used negationism and repression as tools to

control and perpetuate itself, all in the name of democracy and liberty. The book’s

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core idea underscores the inescapable nature of inequality, a concept that constantly

evolves with changing historical circumstances and class power balances. These

social interactions lead to new forms of discourse and require innovative strategies

for addressing it. The Introduction, written by Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez and

Michael Toolan, establishes the overarching theme of the discursive construction

of economic inequality in the UK. It provides a comprehensive foundation for

understanding the book’s focus and methodology. Following the Introduction,

nine chapters analyse specific aspects of economic inequality, examining how it is

represented and perpetuated through language and British media.

The first chapter, written by Nuria Lorenzo-Dus and Sadiq Almaged, applies

CADS techniques on Labour and Conservative annual conferences on poverty and

social exclusion from 1900 to 2014, dividing the data into three periods. Keyword

analyses are conducted to identify relevant terms, followed by manual categorization

of contextualized use of these terms into Poverty and Social Exclusion discourses

within the corpora. Finally, an ideo-textual analysis is performed on concordance

lines containing the most frequent keywords. The findings reveal two dominant

discourses: a financial-centric approach favored by the Conservative Party, and a

more hardship-oriented narrative favored by Labour. Both parties tend to use

abstract words to depict poverty and social exclusion, often using third-person

language to distance decisionmakers from responsibility. Not strikingly, party

leaders tend to use passive forms when depicting ‘the poor’, which reinforces the

aforementioned inescapable nature of economic exclusion.

Chapter 2, by Joe Spencer-Bennet, conducts a critical discourse analysis of

inequality during World War II, drawing from sources in the Ministry of

Information and the Mass-Observation project. Employing a qualitative approach,

the chapter thoroughly examines official texts, particularly focusing on the

synthetic vernacularization of political communication directed at the masses. This

shift in political discourse from abstract and educated to a more vernacular “new

language of leadership” for the masses is explored. The analysis reveals that the

language intended for the ‘masses’ was rife with stereotypes, primarily serving aims

of population control rather than fostering democratization or egalitarianism.

Chapter 3, written by Isabelle van de Bom and Laura L. Paterson, offers a

compelling analysis of the evolution of the ‘welfare state’ concept in the press. To

accomplish this, they meticulously extracted concordances containing this term

from a subcorpus of articles sourced from The Times. They systematically classified

all instances of the key term from 1940 to 2009. Their findings reveal that the

term is not anchored to a consistent core value and that its associated meanings

have fluctuated over time. Notably, the discourse surrounding welfare shifted

ideologically, aligning with neoliberalism and associating welfare with the creation

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of a socially marginalized underclass. This shift intensified following Rupert

Murdoch’s acquisition of The Times. During the 1960s, the welfare state was

largely taken for granted and scarcely mentioned. However, it came under intense

scrutiny during the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with the acquisition of the

newspaper by the tycoon. More importantly, this chapter unveils that The Times

has restricted the concept of welfare to the provision of benefits for the less

privileged, omitting core elements such as education or the National Health

System from the discourse on welfare.

In Chapter 4, Michael Toolan undertakes a critical discourse analysis by comparing

the keywords extracted from a corpus of opinion articles sourced from The Times,

spanning two distinct decades: the 1970s and the 2000s. This study’s central focus

is child poverty, and it introduces two contrasting script types: a laissez-faire

approach and an interventionist approach. While the research is undeniably

intriguing, it would greatly benefit from a more explicit exposition of the

methodology employed. During the 1970s, the interventionist approach was

considered desirable, while in the 2000s, the narrative took a contrasting turn.

Discourse surrounding welfare and state-supported assistance became marginalized,

and poverty in the 2000s was predominantly portrayed as a personal issue, with

the state seemingly incapable of providing viable solutions.

Chapter 5, authored by Ilse A. Ras, analyzes how the press portrays elite crimes,

such as ‘corporate fraud’ and ‘modern slavery’. The research examines rhetorical

techniques and neutralization in media coverage, using different time periods

(2004-2007, 2008-2010, and 2011-2014) to construct the Modern Slavery

Corpus from database searches in 22 British newspapers. The study finds that

reporting on these crimes often avoids assigning responsibility to corporate

criminals, instead blaming governments for a perceived failure to regulate

effectively, allowing corporations to evade accountability.

Chapter 6, authored by Jane Mulderring, explores the intricate relationship

between health and inequality, with a specific focus on the analysis of the UK

government’s Change 4 Life program aimed at reducing obesity from its inception

in 2009 to 2019. This chapter seeks to examine the linguistic representation of

target groups within obesity policy, aiming to uncover the linguistic processes that

shape the normative linguistic identity assigned to certain populations.

Furthermore, it endeavors to identify the strategies employed by the government

to engage specific target audiences. To accomplish this, Mulderring’s research

draws upon two primary sources: a corpus of policy documents and a corpus of

advertisements disseminated on television and social media platforms. However,

the chapter does not provide detailed information regarding the size or scope of

these corpora.

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Chapter 7, co-authored by Leslie Jeffries and Brian Walker, undertakes a

comprehensive examination of the evolution of ‘austerity’ in discourse, one of the

Great Recession mantras, instrumentalized in advancing a neoliberal agenda. The

authors meticulously scrutinized the utilization of the key term ‘austerity’ in the

UK Parliamentary context by juxtaposing two time-tagged newspaper corpora

during different stages of the crisis (beginning and end). Over time, the discourse

surrounding austerity has transitioned from a concept associated with war-rationing

across all social classes to the imperative of ‘balancing the books’ discourse —to

justify the reduction of public spending disproportionately impacting the less

affluent and exacerbated inequality. Thus, ‘austerity’ evolved into a hegemonic

term that resists critical scrutiny, often positioned as a necessary evil.

In Chapter 8, Richard Thomas undertakes a commendable task, meticulously

transcribing and analyzing news broadcasts from BBC (publicly owned) and ITV

(a private broadcaster). His analysis spans the years 2007 and 2014. Through a

combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, a consistent use of neoliberal

anti-regulation rhetoric to shield the interests of the affluent is unveiled, which is

particularly outrageous for the publicly-funded BBC, all while demonstrating

reluctance to address the pressing issue of inequality. In his analysis, the author

highlights how these news outlets often employ neoliberal anti-regulation rhetoric

to defend the interests of the super-rich, while consistently using language to mask

their reluctance to address the pressing issue of inequality. Thomas’s paper artfully

strikes a balance between statistical precision and engaging, thought-provoking

arguments, leaving the reader with a plethora of questions that beckon further

exploration.

In Chapter 9, Wolfgang Teubert boldly concludes the book with what may be

considered its most combative episode, asserting that his hermeneutic work is

unequivocally “not a scientific paper”, and indeed, it need not be. The author

challenges the foundational principles of parliamentary systems under the control

of the oligos, the few, who safeguard their interests in the market from the masses

while veiling inequalities under the rhetoric of “individual liberty” as working-class

movements grew stronger in the 19th century. In his analysis, Teubert posits that

true freedom is primarily enjoyed by the wealthy, thereby asserting that they are

the only ones truly capable of exercising their freedoms. To manage the

revolutionary aspirations of the working class and suppress major upheavals, the

narrative framework was strategically shifted overnight from “democracy is evil” to

“we already live in a democracy”. Teubert conducts a hermeneutic analysis of

select texts from political works and the records of British Parliament discussions

on democracy, spanning from 1832 to the present day. While his pessimistic

perspective on a seemingly divided and powerless working class may be contentious,

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it offers a rare opportunity to engage with critical issues in linguistic discourse.

Teubert’s work offers valuable insights into the discourse surrounding the working

class and contemporary discourses of meritocracy and the follies of a social ladder.

Ultimately, he concludes that hegemonic discourse inhibits workers from actively

advocating for equality within the democratic sphere, which would lead to equality

and real democracy for the working-class social majority.

The book closes with an Afterword by Danny Dorling where he reflects on

inequality and an omniscient market economy “where everything is for sale,

everytime, everywhere” (185). You cannot be unlucky but rather you have not

tried hard enough.

While the book undoubtedly offers valuable insights, it is worth noting that there

was room for more visualizations and statistical analyses within its pages. Such

enhancements could further enrich the presentation and interpretation of data,

providing a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. Apart from

this, the book provides a highly valuable multidisciplinary bibliography,

encompassing fields like linguistics, discourse studies, political science, sociology,

and cultural studies. Within its pages, readers will discover a treasure trove of

methodologies that are very valuable in their own right for the analysis of other

discourses, but here succeed on the quest of underscoring the profound changes

in discourse over time. Each chapter critically scrutinizes the discursive norms used

by the elites that often obfuscate and marginalize the source of social inequalities.

Encouragingly, this body of work is an antidote for fatalism: it demonstrates that

nothing is irreversible. If discourse could evolve in the past for the worse, it could

also be reshaped (for the better, for the many) in the future.

Received: 18/10/2023

Accepted: 21/09/2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Notes for contributors

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NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies is a double-blind peer-

reviewed journal published twice a year by the Department of English and German

Philology, University of Zaragoza, Spain. In addition to the printed version of the

journal, current and back issues of the journal are available online at the following

website:

https://papiro.unizar.es/ojs/index.php/misc

Miscelánea publishes articles on English language and linguistics, on literatures

written in English, and on thought, cinema and cultural studies from the English-

speaking world.

General format and style guide

All manuscripts should follow the style guidelines of the 7th edition of the

American Psychological Association (APA) Style unless otherwise specified.

How to contribute

Contributions, in English or Spanish, should neither be published nor considered

for publication elsewhere.

The recommended length for articles is 6,000 to 8,000 words.

Authors are expected to upload their anonymous contributions on the journal

webpage.

Notes for contributors

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An abstract of no more than 200 words should also be provided, together with five

key words and a translation into Spanish when possible.

Authors should consult and follow our journal’s Code of Ethics before submitting

their manuscript.

Non-discriminatory language should be endorsed throughout manuscripts,

making use of inclusive expressions and avoiding gender and racist-biased

references.

Authors are encouraged to indicate whether the research data used in their studies

take sex and/or gender into account in order to identify possible differences that

may result from it.

Reviews are also accepted of books that are of general interest in the field of

English studies and that have been published within the last four years

(recommended length: 1,500 words). They should not only be a mere description

of the contents of the book, but should also provide an explanation of its

contribution to the field within which it belongs. Reviews will also be refereed.

Notes (brief reports on language, literature, history and lexicography) are also

accepted.

Invited (non-refereed) contributions from leading scholars will be acknowledged

as such.

There will be no restrictions placed on authors’ use of their material for reprints or

other publications as long as their first publication is acknowledged.

Reviewing process

Papers may be published if they receive favourable reports from reviewers who are

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Selection of contributions

The criteria for selecting contributions will be: their global interest and originality,

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thesis, the quality of their style and the general observance of the norms required

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errors and introduce stylistic corrections without further notice.

For additional information, contact the Editors, Silvia Pellicer Ortín, Pilar Mur

Dueñas and Oana Maria Carciu at the following address or via e-mail:

Silvia Pellicer Ortín (literature, film and cultural studies)

Pilar Mur Dueñas (language and linguistics)

Oana Maria Carciu (reviews)

Revista Miscelánea

Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

C/ San Juan Bosco, 7

Universidad de Zaragoza

50009 Zaragoza

SPAIN

miscelanea@unizar.es

PUBLICATION GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Citations

Double quotation marks should be used for citations. Single quotes may be used

to draw attention to a particular item in the text. Italics are used for foreign words,

or for emphasis. References in the text to publications should include the author’s

Notes for contributors

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surname, the year of publication, and, if necessary, page numbers, as in the

following examples:

As Bachelard claims, while past memories are important, “all really inhabited space

bears the essence of the notion of home” (2004: 5, emphasis added), which raises

a question about the quality of living.

According to Shaw, the works belonging to this genre are concerned with either

reflecting imaginatively, responding directly or dealing with the socio-cultural,

economic and racial consequences that followed the UK’s exit from the European

Union (2021: 4).

…language always fulfils three communicative functions (Jewitt et al. 2016).

…this idea has been rejected by several authors (Reger 2017; Evans 2015;

Cochrane 2013).

As Suárez Orozco suggests …. (in Inda 2014: 34).

Should part of the original text be omitted, this will be made clear by inserting

[…], NOT (…).

Should the emphasis be in the original text, this will be explicitly indicated as

“emphasis in original”. Should the emphasis be added by the author, “my

emphasis” should be added: (Bordwell 2006: 73, emphasis in original).

Bibliographical references

Bibliographical references should be included in alphabetical order at the end of

the manuscript and under the heading WORKS CITED. In the Works Cited all

references used should be included and not more.

Authors’ full first names should be used unless the authors themselves customarily

use only initials. Set the author’s surname(s) in small caps (e.g. Joyce, neither

Joyce nor JOYCE).

References to two or more works by the same author in a single year should be

accompanied by a lower-case a, b, etc. after the year of publication, both in the

reference list and in citations in the text. If two works by the same author are cited,

but in one of them there is a second author, the latter will go after.

Hyland, Ken. 2017a.“Metadiscourse: Whatis it and Whereis it Going?”Journal

of Pragmatics 113: 16-29. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.007>.

Hyland, Ken. 2017b.“English in the Discipline: Argumentsfor Specificity”.ESP

Today 5 (1): 5-23.

Hyland, Ken and Feng Kevin Jiang. 2021.“‘Our Striking Results Demonstrate…’:

Persuasion andthe Growth of Academic Hype”. Journal of Pragmatics 182:189-

202. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.06.018>.

Notes for contributors

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References to books should include the publisher’s name, and references to articles

in journals should include volume, issue number (if necessary) and page numbers.

Titles of books and journals will be written in italics. Titles of articles and of book

chapters will be placed in double inverted commas.

The DOI should be included for all references that have it (see https://doi.

crossref.org/simpleTextQuery).

Monographs:

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). Year. Title in italics. Place:

Publisher.

nagel, James. 2015. The American Short Story Handbook. Hoboken: Wiley-

Blackwell.

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). (Year of 1st edition) Year of

edition actually used. Title in italics. Place: Publisher.

Bauman, Zygmunt. (2005) 2017. Liquid Life. Cambridge, Malden: Polity.

editor’s surnAme(s), Editor’s first name(s). (ed.) Year. Title in italics. Place:

Publisher.

mcnamara, Kevin R. (ed.) 2014. The Cambridge Companion to the City in

Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.

First Author’s surnAme(s), First author’s first name(s), Second author’s

first name(s) second Author’s surnAme(s) and Third author’s first name(s)

third Author’s surnAme(s). Year. Title in italics. Place: Publisher.

Pahta, Päivi, Janne Skaffari and Laura Wright. (eds.) 2017. Multilingual

Practices in Language History: English and Beyond. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). Year. Title in italics. Trans.

Translator’s initials. Translator’s surname(s). Place: Publisher.

atWood, Margaret. 2017. El cuento de la criada. Trans. E. Mateo. Barcelona:

Salamandra.

Chapter or article in a monograph:

If only one chapter or article has been used:

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). Year. “Title in double inverted

commas”. In Editor’s surname(s), Editor’s first name(s) (ed.) Title of

monograph in italics. Place: Publisher: 00-00.

leonard, Suzanne. 2014. “Escaping the Recession? The New Vitality of the

Woman Worker”. In Negra, Diane and Yvonne Tasker (eds.) Gendering the

Notes for contributors

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Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity. Durham and London: Duke

U.P.: 31-58. <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1131fr9.5>.

If two or more chapters/articles have been used:

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). Year. “Title in double inverted

commas”. In Editor’s surname(s), Editor’s first name(s) (ed.): 00-00. (The

reference of the edited book should be written, in full, as a separate entry).

molina-guzmán, Isabel. 2014. “‘Latina Wisdom’ in ‘Postrace’ Recession Media”.

In Negra, Diane and Yvonne Tasker (eds.) Gendering the Recession: Media and

Culture in an Age of Austerity. Durham and London: Duke U.P.: 59-80. <https://

doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1131fr9.6>.

negra, Diane and Yvonne taSker. 2014. Gendering the Recession: Media and

Culture in an Age of Austerity. Durham and London: Duke U.P. <https://doi.

org/10.1515/9780822376538>.

If the book is a compilation of another author’s works:

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). (Year of 1st edition) Year of

edition actually used. In Editor’s surname(s), Editor’s first name(s) (ed.)

Title in italics. Place: Publisher.

Wilde, Oscar. 2017. In Donohue, Joseph (ed.). The Complete Works of Oscar

Wilde, Vol. 10: Plays 3: The Importance of Being Earnest; ‘A Wife’s Tragedy’

(fragment). Oxford: Oxford U.P.

If the author of the collection and of the short piece being cited are the same

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). Year. “Title in double inverted

commas”. In Title of monograph in italics. Place: Publisher: 00-00.

oateS, Joyce Carol. 2004.“Curly Red”. In I Am No One You Know: Stories. New

York: Harper Collins: 3-20.

Article in a journal:

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). Year. “Title in double inverted

commas”. Name of journal in italics number (volume): 00-00. DOI (if given).

lu, Xiaofei. 2011. “A Corpus-Based Evaluation of Syntactic Complexity Measures

as Indices of College-Level ESL Writers’ Language Development”. TESOL

Quarterly 45 (1): 36-62. <https://doi.org/10.5054/tq.2011.240859>.

Article in a journal special issue:

Author’s surnAme(s), Author’s first name(s). Year. “Title in double inverted

commas”. Name of special issue in italics. Special issue of Name of journal in

italics number (volume): 00-00. DOI (if given).

Notes for contributors

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adami, Elisabetta. 2018. “Styling the Self Online: Semiotic Technologization in

Weblog Publishing”. Social Media as Semiotic Technology. Special issue of Social

Semiotics 28 (5): 601-622. <https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2018.1504713>.

Citations on electronic sources:

author’S Surname(S), Author’s first name(s). Year (if given). “Title in double

inverted commas”. Information about print publication (if given). <Information

about electronic publication>. Access information.

morriS, Regan. 2018. “Is #meToo Changing Hollywood?”. BBC News (March).

<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43219531>. Accessed March

18, 2022.

If no author is given, begin the entry with the title of the document, inserted in

alphabetical order with the rest of the references.

“The return of Sir Thomas Phillipps’ Italian manuscripts to Italy”. 2021. Institute

of English Studies (blog). (July 2). <https://englishstudies.blogs.sas.ac.

uk/2021/07/02/the-return-of-sir-thomas-phillipps-italian-manuscripts-to-

italy/>. Accessed March 18, 2022.

Films:

director’s surnAme(s), Director’s first name(s). Year. Title in italics.

Production Company.

roSS, Matt. 2016. Captain Fantastic. Electric City Entertainment.

Television shows, series and limited series:

creAtor’s surnAme(s), Creator’s first name(s). Year(s). Title in italics.

Broadcast studio.

Waller-Bridge, Phoebe. 2016-2019. Fleabag. BBC Three and Amazon Prime

Video.

The following norms should also be taken into account:

• Keywords should be written in lower case, unless they are proper nouns and

they need to be separated by a comma (not a semicolon). A full stop needs to

be included at the end.

• Endnotes, which should appear before the Works Cited list, should be as few

and short as possible, and their corresponding numbers in the main text

should be typed as superscripts.

Notes for contributors

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258

• Additional comments should appear in between long dashes: (—) rather than

(-); —this is an example—, leaving no spaces in between the dashes and the

text within them.

• There should be no full stops after interrogation and exclamation marks.

• Inverted commas should never appear after punctuation marks (e.g. “this is

correct”, but “this isn’t.”).

• Current (CG Times or Times New Roman) typefaces should be used, and

special symbols should be avoided as much as possible.

• “&” should be avoided whenever possible.

• Generally speaking, punctuation and orthography should be coherent (British

or American style) all through the article. For example: “emphasise/

recognise” rather than “emphasize/recognise”; “colour/colour” rather than

“colour/color”.

• Authors are encouraged to divide their articles into entitled subsections.

Capitalizations in such subsection headings should follow APA guidelines.

• In the case of co-authored articles, the specific contribution of each author

will be indicated in the manuscript. This section will be added before the

Works Cited list.

• Funding agency/agencies and project code(s) should be indicated in the

Acknowledgements section (not as an endnote) and should be placed before

Endnotes.

EXCHANGE POLICY

Miscelánea welcomes exchanges with other scholarly publications. Please write to:

Miscelánea (intercambios)

Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Universidad de Zaragoza

50009 Zaragoza (Spain)

The basic exchange rate for periodical publications is established on the basis of

annual volumes. Quarterly, bi-monthly or monthly journals, or book series editors,

may agree to establish other rates or complementary exchanges.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Miscelánea was awarded the Quality Seal for Excellence of scientific journals

granted by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), a

Notes for contributors

miscelánea 70 (2024): pp. 251-260 ISSN: 1137-6368 e-ISSN: 2386-4834

259

scientific body pertaining to the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and

Competitiveness, in 2016 (renewed until July 2025).

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Página web: <https://papiro.unizar.es/ojs/index.php/misc>

Cuenta de Twitter: @MiscelaneaUZ

261

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank all the colleagues who, without belonging to our Board of

Referees, were willing to revise and assess some of the contributions.

Prensas de la Universidad

miscelánea

vol. 69

2024

I S C E E AL Á N

literature, lm and

cultural studies

language

and linguistics

vol. 69

2024

a journal of english

and american studies

miscelánea