Germaine Bree

Bio: Germaine Bree is an academic researcher from Wake Forest University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Banquet & French literature. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 22 publications receiving 157 citations.

Narrative discourse : an essay in method

Abstract: Foreword by Jonathan Cutler Translator's Preface PrefaceIntroduction 1. Order 2. Duration 3. Frequency 4. Mood 5. VoiceAfterword Bibliography Index

Facilitating Effects of Marginal Glosses on Foreign Language Reading

Abstract: larly amenable channel for second language acquisition is well established (Krashen).1 Recently, arguments have been advanced supporting the reading of L2 literary texts as powerful sources of linguistic and cultural input (Kramsch; Goldenstein). In fact, the use of any authentic selection is apparently very appealing to foreign language students in the US (Swaffar). The understanding of such passages can be improved by the L2 reader's use of knowledge of text topic and structure (Hudson; Carrell). Many literary passages, however, contain so many low-frequency vocabulary items that the reader's background knowledge may be unavailable because of the undue attention required to decode individual word meanings. In this case, reading no longer provides a minimally stressful access to real language but becomes instead a "threeto four-hour ordeal, mainly because of the [non-native reader's] constant recourse to a dictionary" (Crow: p. 242). The importance of vocabulary is underscored by a study which found that, in certain contexts, just one unfamiliar word can render a sentence or even a whole passage incomprehensible (Wittrock, Marks & Doctorow). One traditional means of bridging the gap between the L2 text and the L2 reader's limited cultural

The Socially Responsible Existentialist: A Normative Emphasis for Journalists in a New Media Environment

Abstract: In an open and virtually boundless media environment, old responses to the question of who is a journalist, based primarily on roles associated with the process of gathering and disseminating information, no longer apply. This article suggests a reconceptualization of the journalist based instead on normative constructs. Specifically, it advocates a blend of two competing philosophical approaches, existentialism and social responsibility theory, as well as two roughly corresponding professional norms, independence and accountability. The combination produces a “socially responsible existentialist”, a journalist who chooses to act as a trustworthy source of information that serves the public interest. That framework is applied at both a concrete level, through consideration of weblogs and the proliferation of partisan information sources, and a conceptual level, through consideration of gatekeeping and agenda-setting functions.

Modernism and Mass Press from Mallarmé to Proust

Abstract: Modernism and Mass Press from Mallarmé to Proust Max McGuinness The rapid expansion of the mass press in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century France, along with the concurrent rise of an information-driven style of journalism known as reportage, coincided with a shift in literary portrayals of the press. Early to mid-nineteenth-century novels of journalism such as Balzac’s Illusions perdues consistently depict the world of journalism in intensely hostile tones, as do many later novels and works of poetry, at times with even greater vitriol. By contrast, from Baudelaire onwards, some French authors including Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and Proust took a more ambivalent approach to the press, pivoting between antipathy and enthusiasm for what became a truly massified and ubiquitous cultural phenomenon during their lifetimes. Their equivocal portrayals of the press in poetry and prose fiction epitomize their broader ambivalence towards modernity itself – a trait that distinguishes these modernist authors from their avant-garde contemporaries, who advocated a radical break with tradition and tended to be more consistently hostile or enthusiastic towards journalism. The thematic prominence of journalism in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French literature reflects its ongoing role as what Marie-Ève Thérenty calls “the laboratory of literature,” whereby authors published poetry and prose fiction in the mass press, for which they also wrote opinion columns, criticism, and other forms of journalism that they then frequently recycled in their literary works. Belying the account of literature’s autonomization found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that literature and the mass press had grown apart by the end of the nineteenth century, modernist poetry and prose fiction continued to appear in largecirculation, commercially oriented newspapers and magazines into the twentieth century. From the 1880s onwards, the growth of the mass press was paralleled by the emergence of a wave of little magazines known as petites revues that became the primary literary laboratory of literary modernism. These petites revues had many material links to the mass press. Authors often wrote simultaneously for both newspapers and petites revues. Many of the latter courted publicity in the former, even as they denounced those very same publications as the antithesis of true literature. And petites revues published many pieces of reportage – a style of journalism associated with the mass press. These connections to the mass press left their mark on the literary works published in petites revues, which often draw on newspaper articles and confront topical journalistic subjects. Moreover, several petites revues evolved into major publishing houses, including Éditions Gallimard, whose extensive commercial interactions with the mass press further shaped the works they published as modernist authors themselves became intimately involved in publicizing their books. Early to mid-nineteenth-century authors consistently avoid confronting their debts to journalism in their literary works. They thunder against the press but cannot live without it. Antijournalistic thunder underlain by various kinds of dependence on the press remains a dominant feature of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French literature and cultural criticism. By contrast, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and Proust as well as Gide and Péguy all allude to the ambiguous position of journalism within their prose poetry, poetry, novels, and essays. These authors at once draw on journalism in their literary works and reflect on the significance of their journalistic borrowings within those works themselves. The self-conscious modernist spirit of their writing thus allows them, unlike their precursors and most of their contemporaries, to finally come to terms with the challenge posed by the mass press to literary creation.

Can emotional valence in stories be determined from words

Abstract: In spite of the growing interest witnessed in the study of the relationship between emotion and language, the determination of the emotional valence of sentences, paragraphs or texts has so far attracted little attention. To bridge this gap, a technique based on the emotional aspect of words is presented. In this preliminary study, we have compared the affective tones of the sentences of four texts as perceived by readers, to the values generated by the words that compose the texts. The results support the psychological reality of the affective tones of linguistic units larger than a word, and the possibility of their evaluation through the lexical information. Such information should be useful for studying the role of emotional interest on text processing and for the analysis of the natural stories produced by people in reaction to stressful events.