Showing papers in "Letras & Letras in 2011"

The rigmarole of intelligibility in World English(es) - or, on making sense of it all or, if you like, making the very idea of intelligibility intelligible

Abstract: In this paper, I discuss the hot-button issue of mutualintelligibility among the different varieties of English, as they are currently spreading across the world at large, that has preoccupied a growing number of scholars in the field. I argue that such worries are largely misguided and are the result of mistaken assumptions concerning the expansion of English worldwide, as well as the fact that the phenomenon that I have for some time been calling "World English" is unique and suigeneris. In the final analysis, our difficulty in viewing World English as a phenomenon unprecedented in history probably has to do with the fact that many of us are still trapped in a way of thinking about language typical of the 19 th century.

Hybridity and travel writing in English: the grand tour and the imperial frontier

Abstract: This paper brings a discussion of the genre “travel narratives” as being a record of the clash of historically, geographically and culturally apart people in what Pratt (1992) calls the “contact zone”. It argues that this transnational encounter gives rise to “hybridity” (BHABHA, 1994) which, in turn, becomes its main narrative trope. However, as the traveler and writer tries to produce this far away culture for his people back home, he/she will domesticate their text to make it conform to their countries’ political agenda, which acts as a “transcendental signified” (DERRIDA, 1981). It is, precisely, the counterpoint between both forces as articulated in travel writing that is addressed in this paper.