Journal articles on the topic 'English Commercial correspondence'

The aim of this paper is to figure out the difficulties the students of Bachelor of Business English in Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry (HUFI) face in commercial correspondence. During the 4th semester of Bachelor of Business English, students in HUFI study the course of commercial correspondence. The major barrier for these students is their inability to use terminology and syntax correctly. For this purpose, data were collected from 100 students from two Business-English-majored classes in HUFI using timed Grammaticality Judgment Tests proposed by Ellis, R. (2005). The results showed that most students were not familiar with terminology commonly used in commerce; they failed to use formal English language syntax in their correspondence writing. In the post-test interviews, students shared that they were not equipped with enough terminology used in commerce, and it was so complicated to use grammar correctly in commercial correspondence. The findings in this paper may serve as a foundation to figure out factors that need to be considered when designing materials and teaching business English.

Department of English Language № 5 was created at the Institute of Foreign Economic Relations in 2000, and since 2011 it has been working with the students of the Department of Applied Economics and Commerce. Department of English Language № 5 prepares training materials, multimedia courses, manuals and tutorials based on the up-to-date educational technologies. A series of textbooks and teaching materials was recently published by the Department. They are widely used in teaching business communication for Economists. This series include textbook "Commercial correspondence and documentation in English" by L.K. Raitskaya and L.V. Korovin, textbook "Business English with the use of case studies (case studies)" edited by O.V. Desyatova? and textbook "Two-way translation of dialogues commercial content"by O.V. Desyatova.

Abstract This article aims to offer, within an intra- and interdisciplinary approach, a further analysis of the formal and informal contexts in which the English language was used in India during the British colonisation, highlighting the favourable conditions these contexts created for the formation of pidginised varieties of English, such as Butler Pidgin English or Boxwāllā(h) Pidgin English (Kachru 1994). Substantial elements of a wider picture of social, cultural, political and commercial contact have been taken into account along with the analysis of old written sources. Indeed, both official records of the East Indian Company (e.g. dispatches about political strategies and language policy) and merchants’ correspondence have been studied in order to understand how we can say something about oral communication through written sources (Rambø 2013).

The article aims to study English economic discourse from the theory of translation. Theoretical analysis shows that it is a process of communication between participants in various fields of professional activity. It is also characterized by the presence of certain extralinguistic features (source / author and recipient / addressee, etc.), as well as the features of its result - economic text. This kind of text is diverse in style and genre, and contains professionally relevant and terminologically expressed branch information. To expand the interpretation, English economic discourse is studied as an object of translation activity. It is a special kind of discursive practices that can be possible between an agent and a client, professional journalists and ordinary listeners / readers or non-specialist journalists (Discourse of Differences, Discourse of Concord), between professional journalists, scientists, lecturers, researchers (Discourse of Expert Community). The study reveals frequent genres of economic texts in translation activity. The survey carried out in different organizations shows that the translation activity deals with commercial documents and correspondence, scientific articles and reports.

In comparative perspective, this article examines the shipping, construction, maintenance and repair of Dutch and English ships, boats and canoes operating in West Africa during the precolonial period. In addition, I discuss the strategies adopted by Dutch, English, and other ‘nations’ of merchants present in the various coastal regions of the African continent, to cope with the challenges posed by port-to-port navigation and transportation in shallow river estuaries along the western coast of Africa. Among these strategies were the transport of pre-fabricated boats of small dimension to the coast on board of heavier ships and recruitment of personnel specialised in ship repair and shipbuilding, to the acquisition, either temporary or permanent, of African boats and recruitment of African boatmen. In this way, merchants’ success on the coast was dependent on both European and African shipbuilding craftsmanship and navigational skills. Our analysis is based on information gathered from travelogues, journals of voyages and collections of correspondence exchanged between European merchants and their commercial agents based in Africa, and between officials of the private European commercial companies on the African coast.

The present article considers some of the peculiarities of translation of complex and compound sentences used in business correspondence in English and in Russian. Translation of these utterances demands taking into account all the variety of information expressed by them as well as their pragmatic and stylistic peculiarities. Different translation transformations are used to perform adequate translation, such as: rearrangements, replacements, additions, omissions. In some cases, there may be loss and change of ethical information, but with mandatory preservation of the transmitted cognitive-evaluative and important pragmatic information, the general communicative-informational structure of the statement. Subject to the general stylistic norms of the source and translating languages that are characteristic of written business communication, differences are also observed between them, manifested in greater conciseness, categoricalness, realism, and assertiveness of the statements in Russian. The transformations made allow us to explicate “emotional psychological nuances” that give greater credibility to the assessment of the situation and emphasize the understanding by the addressee (one of the partners) of the significance of one or another fact.

The reasons why one English merchant, Robert Balle, should have wished to join The Royal Society in 1708 and become thereafter an active member of it are discussed in this paper. The author has used the Journal and Minute Books of The Royal Society, the correspondence of Sir Hans Sloane and other contemporary materials, published and unpublished. She concludes that the factors involved in Balle's decision included family connections, genuine interest in some of the subjects with which the Society was concerned and a belief in the need for the free exchange of ideas. They co–existed with Balle's wish to utilize membership of the Society to further his social and commercial ends and his use of scientific patronage for the enhancement of self–esteem and personal prestige. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the discussion on merchant membership of, and activity within, the early Royal Society.

The strategic location of the Isthmus of Panama within the commercial network of the Spanish Empire and the need to defend it has greatly influenced historical writing on sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Panama. Most studies have emphasized military and economic history and with few exceptions, have shown little interest in other aspects of Panamanian life. An excellent review of the historical literature on colonial Panama can be found in Christopher Ward, Imperial Panama: Commerce and Conflict in Isthmian America, 1550-1800 (Albuquerque, 1993). Despite a continuing emphasis on the usual themes of trade and defense, there is a growing trend to focus on other topics such as population movements and social classes. One of the areas still awaiting further investigation and study is the history of the cimarrons of Panama. The two principal primary sources for the role of the cimarrons are the collections of documents from the Archivo General de Indias in Seville published by Irene Wright and Carol F. Jopling, respectively. Wright's Documents Concerning the English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1569-1580 (London, 1932) contains the correspondence of Spanish officials on the Isthmus to the king relating to the activities of the English pirates and their alliance with the cimarrons.

During the era of the slave trade, Aného (in modern Togo), which was known to Europeans as “Little Popo” or simply “Popo,” was normally marginal to English commercial interest on the west African coast. This lack of interest is reflected in the sources that exist in British archives today. Documentary material for trade at Aného is scarce, and references to the town rarely go beyond the mentioning of a ship going there to complement its cargo of slaves. However, there is a major exception: the papers of Thomas Miles, which document the activity of the “Popo Factory” of the English firm of Messrs Miles & Weuves in the 1790s. These papers, which are kept in the Public Record Office in London (PRO), comprise a large body of material, including accounts, inventories and commercial and private correspondence. Full of detail, they offer a unique glimpse of Aného and its external trade at a time when the town was at the height of its economic power.In spite of their great value for the history of Aného and the kingdom of Ge (Genyi/Guin), however, the Thomas Miles papers are virtually unknown to historians of the area. The object of this paper is therefore to draw attention to the existence of this material and make historians aware of the unparalleled wealth of information that it contains. The first part of this paper comprises an explanation of the background and a description of the documents, which is followed by a brief discussion of their special strengths and limitations. In the second part, I focus on one aspect, which is the African side of the trade. Here I look at the question of what these documents tell us about Popo society. I have compiled a list of the African traders that frequented the factory, whom I then tried to identify.

This paper considers the formation of Russian studies at the Victoria University of Manchester and the participation of A.S. Mindel, a representative of Russia abroad, in it. Teaching the Russian language at the Victoria University of Manchester started in 1907 in the wake of interest in the events in Russia (the war with Japan, the revolution). However, the exotic and difficult language lessons taught by the teacher of English W.J. Sedgefield quickly began to fall out of the public’s favor. Another “Russian boom” in Great Britain occurred during the World War I, when the two countries became allies in the fight against Germany. Due to the increasing interest in Russia in that period, A.S. Mindel, a clerk of the commercial firm, was in demand as a teacher of the Russian language. In addition to teaching, A.S. Mindel gave lectures on Russia, mainly on economic topics, because the Manchester business community, which financially supported the development of Russian studies at the university, was willing to forge contacts with Russia. The pinnacle of A.S. Mindel’s achievements as a teacher was the preparation and publication of a reference book on Russian commercial correspondence (1918). The funds collected by the university authorities in conjunction with the business community of Manchester made it possible to organize a chair of the Russian language, a post for which A.S. Mindel, with his level of education, could not apply. He was not involved in the subsequent development of Russian studies in Manchester.

El presente artículo propone una metodología de análisis de la narración ambigua en la ficción televisiva contemporánea, rasgo estilístico al alza entre propuestas comerciales. A través de la adaptación y aplicación de la comunicabilidad enunciada por David Bordwell como estrategia nar­rativa en su estudio de los modos de narración cinematográficos a una muestra de series dramáticas de origen anglosajón, se ofrece un primer tratamiento del modo narrativo de lo que desde los estudios televisivos se ha identificado como televisión compleja. Finalmente, se apunta a la cor­respondencia de este modelo con una nueva fase del modelo de narración del audiovisual postclásico.The present article proposes a methodology of analysis of the ambiguous narration in contemporary television fiction, a stylistic feature on the rise among commercial titles. Through the adaptation and applica­tion of the communicativeness formulated by David Bordwell as one of the categories of narrative strategies in his examination of the modes of narration in film to a sample of drama series produced in English-speaking regions, we offer a primary approach to the narrative mode of what has come to be known in the field of Television Studies as complex TV. Lastly, we note the correspondence between this model and a new phase of the audiovisual post-classical narration.

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to identify the main types of encouraging constructions in English letters of confidentiality.Methods. Both general scientific methods and linguistic methods are used in the work. The research is methodologically based on analysis, descriptive method, continuous selection, definitional, semantic and syntactic analysis.Results. A confidential letter as a text version of the sub-style of commercial correspondence within the official business functional style is interpreted as a regulated type of business letters, which has both specific and general features, due to the affiliation of genre groups to one functional style. It is characterized by certain language features; stability of stylistic devices of the genre, its form provides the communicative properties of the document, which are manifested in the composition and architectonics. The text of the confidential letter provides information about the reason for writing the letter, states the need to ensure the confidentiality of information related to the contract, regulates specific mechanisms of cooperation between partners in the use and disposal of classified information. Since the main purpose of such a letter is to force the recipient to perform certain actions, a confidential letter contains many constructions with a motivating value. Encouraging constructions in the texts of business letters are diverse in their semantics, among which the most frequent constructions express directives.The directive is implemented in the form of three types, which are classified by the degree of categoricalness: the actual directive (with the maximum degree of expression of categoricalness); directive-instruction (the degree of categoricalness decreases); directive-request (categoricalness is minimal, but the directive remains). Typical language formulas are presented, which help to classify these types of speech.Conclusions. Therefore, a confidential letter refers to regulated letters, the purpose of which is to establish the procedure for the use of confidential information. To do this, the addressee uses encouraging constructions, diverse in their semantics, among which constructions that express directives stand out.Key words: business letter, genre, modal verbs, confidentiality, directives. Мета. Мета цієї статті – виявити основні типи cпонукальних конструкцій в англомовних конфіденційних листах.Методи. У роботі використано як загальнонаукові методи, а саме: аналізу, описовий метод, суцільного вибирання, так і лінгвістичні методи: дефініційний, семантичний та синтаксичний аналізи.Результати. У процесі дослідження доведено, що діловий лист виокремлюється як жанр, який має критерії, що характерні будь-якому жанру, а саме: текстовий варіант ділового листа має свою назву завдяки наявності формуляру, який і відповідає назві цього документа; ділові листи оформлюються з урахуванням чітких вимог до композиції, що співвідноситься з жанро-вою формою; сюжет, що представлений у тексті листа, наповнений мовними етикетними формулами; діловий лист має обсяг, який відповідає типу листа; жанрова група ділових листів представлена різними текстами-варіантами.Конфіденційний лист належить до регламентованих листів зі своїм набором реквізитів, архітектонікою і композицією. Текстова частина дає інформацію про привід складання листа, констатує необхідність забезпечення конфіденційності відо-мостей, пов’язаних із договором, регулює конкретні механізми співпраці партнерів під час користування і розпорядження секретною інформацією. Оскільки основна мета такого листа – змусити адресата виконати певні дії, конфіденційний лист міс-тить значну кількість конструкцій зі спонукальним значенням. Спонукальні конструкції в текстах ділових листів різноманітні за своєю семантикою, які можуть виражати розпорядження, прохання, пропозиції. Розпорядження реалізуються у вигляді трьох типів, які прокласифіковано за ступенем категоричності: власне-розпорядження (з максимальним ступенем вираження категоричності); розпорядження-інструкція (ступінь категоричності знижується); розпорядження-прохання (категоричність мінімальна, але директивність зберігається).Представлено типові мовні формули, які допомагають класифікувати зазначені типи мовлення. Типова мовна формула для першого типу мовлення, а саме власне-розпорядження, акцентує увагу на тому, що суб’єкт повинен здійснити певні дії, необхідні для досягнення результату. Ефективність виконання розпорядження визначається правильно поставленою метою адресантом та адекватним вибором мовних засобів, серед яких превалюють модальні дієслова will, must, shall. Розпоряджен-ня-інструкція належить до другого типу розпоряджень, коли ступінь категоричності в повідомленні знижується. Такий тип розпорядження означає висловлювання вимоги щодо правил і необхідних умов типових дій у тій чи іншій ситуації. Розпоря-дження-прохання реалізує комунікативну мету адресанта змусити адресата підписати лист або зробити заключні дії, необхідні для підписання контракту.Висновки. Отже, конфіденційний лист належить до регламентованих листів, текст яких розвивається в певну жанрову форму і реалізує мовний задум адресанта встановити порядок використання конфіденційної інформації. Конфіденційний лист як текстовий варіант жанру ділового листа містить спонукальні конструкції, які характеризуються різноманітністю мовних засобів вираження.Ключові слова: діловий лист, жанр, модальне дієслово, конфіденційність, розпорядження.

The story of Bulfinch Lambe (or Lamb) and his mission to London on behalf of the king of Dahomey (or “Emperor of Pawpaw”) has been told by Marion Johnson in an earlier article in this journal. Lambe was an employee of the Royal African Company in its factory at Jakin, the port of the kingdom of Allada, who was seized and detained by the king of Allada, as security for an unpaid debt, in 1722. He was still held prisoner in Allada when it was conquered by Agaja of Dahomey in 1724, and thus became a prisoner of the latter, who carried him off to his own capital at Abomey, further inland. Agaja soon conceived, perhaps at Lambe's suggestion, the idea of negotiating some sort of commercial agreement with the Royal African Company. A letter which Lambe wrote from Abomey to Jeremiah Tinker, Governor of the Company's factory in the neighboring kingdom of Whydah, in November 1724 reported that Agaja “talks much of settling a Correspondence with the Company, and of having White Men come here.” Lambe evidently offered himself as an intermediary, as a means of securing his release from captivity, and expressed the hope that he might persuade Agaja to acquiesce in his proposals “about my going and returning again with more White Men from the Company.” When Lambe was eventually released in 1726, this was on the understanding that he would return: Agaja himself told the English trader William Snelgrave in the following year that Lambe “had taken an Oath, and promised on his Faith, to return again in a reasonable Time with a Ship.”

In 1695, James Petiver concluded the first ‘century’ of his Musei Petiveriani by observing that he had received the specimens described within it from his ‘ Kind Friends from divers parts of the World’ and ‘ Curious Persons … Abroad’. This essay examines Petiver's network of such ‘Kind Friends’ and ‘Curious Persons’ in the Atlantic World. The composition of Petiver's network reflected many of the broader patterns of English commerce in the Atlantic at the turn of the eighteenth century. Moreover, England's growing overseas empire and its expanding commercial activity required a parallel expansion in maritime labour. Mariners were correspondingly central to Petiver's work as a naturalist and collector in the region. The importance of slavery and the slave trade to Atlantic economic and social structures meant that the naturalist relied on the institutions, infrastructures and individuals of the slave trade and plantation slavery. A social history of Petiver's Atlantic network reveals how the naturalist utilized the routes of commerce and colonialism to collect specimens, as well as to collect the correspondents who might provide them from West Africa, Spanish America, the Caribbean and mainland North America. It demonstrates the entangled histories of commerce, colonialism, collecting and the production of natural knowledge.

The article states that the organization of modern production and commercial structures, changes in the political and economic life of our state contribute to the active replenishment of the Ukrainian language with the new terms of the economic sphere. It is noted that at the present stage, foreign-language borrowings take a significant place in the lexical composition of the Ukrainian literary language, because in general appearing of borrowings in terminology is a natural process common for all languages ​​of the world. There remain actual proposals that the full development of a given terminology system is possible only under the condition the balance of national and international components is preserved. New economic terms have filled our language and at present time, this tendency is preserved. It has been found out that having a significant word-formation and lexical vocabulary, the Ukrainian language can present such subtle shades of meanings ​​that can not be represented in other words. It has been proved that this contributes to the selection of a successful national term, therefore, it is not necessary to abuse our language with foreign-language words. An important role in the preparation of a language-competent specialist belongs to the language, in particular, to such an important its branch as terminology. It is known that terminological vocabulary plays an important role in the vocabulary of the Ukrainian literary language. It is the indicator of the development level of scientific vocabulary in society and, as a result, of science in general. Terminological vocabulary is a kind of barometer that determines the level of vocational education, since rich and branched terminology is undoubtedly one of the important indicators of the level of vocational education in the state. The vocabulary of the economic profile is that part of the vocabulary of the language, which includes the concepts denoting the names of objects, phenomena, processes of socio-economic life. It is connected with relevant sciences and spheres of economic life - management, marketing, finance, law, production, taxation, statistics, insurance, etc. To one of the main sources of the formation of modern Ukrainian economic vocabulary belong foreign language borrowings. At the same time, at the Ukrainian language professionally-oriented classes of Vinnytsia National Agrarian University, in the process of teaching economic terminology, much attention is paid to the Ukrainian terms, which determine the national specificity of the Ukrainian language, for example: funds, estimates, cost, purchase, sale, etc., to their formation and correct use in professional language. In the modern world, terminology plays an important role in people’s communicating as it is a powerful source of information. Besides, terminology is a part of the vocabulary that is extremely sensitive to external influences. The maximum number of foreign language borrowings is recorded in those areas where the closest interaction of languages ​​and cultures occurs. This is primarily economy. Modern economic terminology is being renewed, improved according to the development and improvement of the economic sphere. The process of correlation of national and foreign-language components in the system of Ukrainian financial and economic terminology is especially felt today, when the dynamics of borrowing English-language terminology units as special names of new phenomena and concepts has become much more active. At the same time, we observe a tendency towards excessive usage of borrowings of English-speaking origin in financial and economic terminology, unjustified usage of foreign language units under the condition of existing the autochthonous correspondences with the same meaning. Therefore, the need for a professional evaluation of English term usage in the financial and economic terminology of the Ukrainian language is in time.

This paper examines the careers of two Australian writers who left Sydney for London at the end of the nineteenth century to explore questions of cultural, as well as literary, identity and affiliation. Louise Mack, as a poet, novelist, writer of romances, journalist and war correspondent, combined a fluid sense of national identity with a flexibility in writing across genres and readerships that makes her hard to categorise. Arthur Maquarie’s career as an Australian poet aspiring to fit into an essentially ‘English’ cultural niche provides a model of Anglo-Australianness that appears to fit a conservative model, called somewhat imprecisely from an Australian perspective, expatration - but which nonetheless retains layers of identity and experience which made complete assimilation virtually impossible. At a time when there was no clear or inevitable choice between being British or Australian, it is apparent that these writers never fully renounced (indeed, could not completely lose) either their British heritage or their colonial identity, whether working in commercial or literary milieux. Living and working in London, they were not simply expatriates or exiles, but carriers of complex and often shifting roles and identities that insisted on hybridity. Despite this theoretical hybridity being inevitable to some extent, it is still possible to distinguish between them. The colonial transnational writer’s position is differently inflected from the expatriate’s, as it entails the carrying of several layers of identity without an ideologically driven impulse to assert, renounce or choose between them. By comparison with Maquarie, Louise Mack appears to be far less troubled by notions of cultural identity, whether political or more broadly literary. Her greater mobility between genres, and her lack of any fixed status or position in social or institutional settings of the kind that Maquarie adhered to, correspond to a greater flexibility in her cultural affiliations, and produced a more fluid form of ‘colonial transnational’ identity.

She's the dollars, she's my protection; she's a promise, in the year of election. Sister, I can't let you go; I'm like a preacher, stealing hearts at a traveling show. For love or money, money, money... Desire -- U2, "Desire" (1988) For the love of money. In the worship of things. Desire has traditionally been employed by advertising as a means of selling product. Regardless of culture, more powerful than context, desire is invoked as one of capitalism's iron-clad codes of quality. The Uses of Desire in Advertising Specifically, two variants have been most common. That in which desire is: (1) stimulated or (2) sated by a product. Crucial to advertisers, in both cases the product is more powerful than the thing the audience finds most powerful: the physical surge, the emotional rush, the chemical compulsion we label "desire". In the case of the former, a typical approach has been to create an equation in which product intervenes in the relationship between man and woman (and it is always man and woman), stimulating the psycho-physiological desire of one for the other. A classic pre-post design. Absent the product, desire would not arise, ad text often alleges. This tack is well captured in this ad for a perfume. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that the ad reader will desire desire. If so, he or she -- equally desirous of this turn of events -- will insert him or herself into the scenario, engaging in a symbolic, if not actual purchase of the product1. As we saw above, desire is often depicted via substitute symbols -- flashing red neon, burning matches, flame-blowers, stifling heat and raging brush fires2. The product is then used to extinguish such signs -- metaphorically quenching desire. This is the satiation variant identified at the outset. Standardised Desire? This last is an Australian ad, but in a wide variety of contexts, the same formula of product/desire appears. A recent Malaysian ad, for instance, plays out like this: a motorbike roars up to a doorstep; its leather-clad rider dismounts. Removing the helmet we find beneath a ... beautiful long-haired woman. Cut to a medium shot of the front door opening. A similarly-clad male leans against the molding. Rugged, firm, slightly aloof. Cut to product name: Dashing for Men. Followed by a picture of the cologne. "The Dashing Sensation" is then posted -- ripe with the implication that the cologne has worked its magical, magnetic attraction uniting female and male. It should be pointed out that Malaysia is a market with a significant western presence. Its top advertising firms are American, British and Italian. Thus, if one were curious as to whether desire was inherently a "cultural universal" or rather due to accession (i.e. the movement of intellectual and corporate capital), Euro-American presence would certainly be a factor to consider 3. Innovating Desire Bringing us to Japan. Desire is also a major theme there, as well. However, there, Japanese firms dominate ad production. And, interestingly, though the above-mentioned formulations do appear, desire in Japan also has its own specialised discourse. Rather than a relationship between the consumable and the consumer's emotional/physical state, discourse about desire can transpire independent of the product. Desire is often simply about desire. This is in keeping with a trend (or, more formally, a stage) of development Japanese advertising has achieved -- what I call "product-least advertising"; a condition in which discourse is about many things other than consumption. One of these things being desire. In closing I will wonder what this might say about Japanese society. Japanese Approaches to Desire As noted above, it is not the case that messages of product-induced desire do not appear in Japan. They are certainly more pervasive than in their Islamic neighbor, Malaysia. And, like America, desire is treated in an array of ways. Object-Mediated Desire One approach, admittedly less conventional, posits the product as medium. Only through the product will desire be manifested. In this ad, though verbal substitutes are invoked -- "lust", "love", "lick", "pinch", bite", "touch" -- desire is the guiding force as the figures trapped inside the product's bar code move mechanically toward physical consummation. Of particular note is the product's multi-faceted relationship to desire: it subsumes desire, stimulates it, provides a forum and means for its expression, and is the device securing its culmination ... the ad text is ambiguous as to which is controlling. This is a definitive "postmodern ad", pregnant with shifting perspective, situational action, oppositional signs and interpretive possibilities. The kind of text so-called "cultural studies" intends by the term "polysemy" (the notion that multiple meanings are contained in any sign -- see Fiske). In the case of desire, postmodern ads tell us not that desire is multiple. Rather, it is a singular (i.e. universally experienced) condition which may be differentially manifested and variously interpretable vis-à-vis singular object/products. Object-Induced Desire For instance, in this ad, again for instant noodles, two salarymen contemplate the statement "this summer's new product is stimulating". Each conjures a different image of just what "stimulating" means. For the younger man, a veritable deluge of sexual adoration; for his elder, an assault by a gang of femmes toughs. And while the latter man's fantasy would not qualify as the conventional definition of "desire", the former would. Thus, despite its polysemic trappings, the ad varies little from the standard approach outlined at the outset (plates 1 and 2). It posits that the product possesses sufficient power to stimulate desire for its consumer in external, unrelated others. Object-Directed Desire One of sociology's earliest complaints about capitalism was its reduction of people to the status of things. Social relations became instrumental acts aimed at achieving rational ends; the personalities, thoughts and qualities of those human agents engaged in the exchange become secondary to the sought good. Advertising, according to early semiotic critiques (see for instance Williamson), has only intensified this predilection, though in a different way. Ads instrumentalise by creating equality between the product presented and the person doing the presenting. When the presenter and product are conflated -- as in the case where a major star clasps the product to her bosom and addresses the camera with: "it's my Nice Once" (the product name) -- the objectification of the human subject may be unavoidable. The material and corporeal meld. She cherishes the drink. If we desire her (her status, her style, her actual physical being) but are realistic (and thus willing to settle for a substitute) ... we can settle for the simulation (her drink). This kind of vicarious taking, this symbolic sharing is common in advertising. Played out over and over the audience quickly learns to draw an equal sign between the two depicted objects (product and star). Purchasing one enables us to realise our desire (however incompletely) for the other. Sometimes the product and person are separated, but in a way that the discourse is about longing. The product is consumed because the human can't be -- perhaps a less satisfactory substitute, but a replacement, nonetheless. Or, as in the ad below, the two might be interchangeable. Interior. Bright yellow room without any discernible features. No walls, windows or furniture. Tight shot of black fishnet stockings, barely covered by a yellow dress. The legs swivel in a chair, allowing a fleeting shot of the model's crotch. Cut to a darkened interior. The product sits next to a set of wrenches. Cut back to first interior. Medium tight of the model's bare shoulders. She spins in her chair. Cut to the mechanic working on the engine of a car. Female voiceover: "Hey! Work AGAIN? ... Let's play!" Cut to tight shot of her pursed lips. "Hey! ... let's go for a drive", accompanying consecutive shots of the mechanic wiping sweat from his brow and the vamp's derriere. Next, a sequence of fast, tight images: mechanic revving the engine, the model's face, then her upper body viewed through heavily-ventilated apparel. "Oh", she says, "cars are cuter, huh?" The mechanic pauses to consider. Walks over to the product, pops the top. "When it comes to that sort of man..." her VO says as he gulps the drink, "women are suckers". Tight on woman's face: "(he's a) rake", she pouts. To better appreciate this endemic correspondence between objectification and desire, consider this ad for a car named "Rosso" ("red" in Italian, "aka" in Japanese). The model, "Anna", is tinted head to toe in red (red, of course, being the universal signifier for passion and desire)4. She and/or the car rouse enough passion in a male by-stander to literally make his blood boil. This, in turn, produces steam which, in turn, sends air current of sufficient force to propel Anna's skirt skyward. This, in turn, converts the man's face into an embarrassed and/or impassioned red. "Rosso!" he gushes enthusiastically -- reference to car, his condition, Anna and, presumably, her panties5. Thus, the desire for things -- people included -- is by no means disappearing in Japanese advertising. The name of the game is still to sell that which has been produced. Although Japanese ads have moved toward a decentring of product -- an introduction of consumption-least discourse, with a concomitant increase in popular cultural and societal content -- the great majority still speak in the language of "here it is, buy it!" The prevailing tenor is still object-oriented. And the spill-over, as we just saw, is a tendency to depict humans and their interactions in objectified terms. A recent ad, for the discount store LLAOX, is rather stark in this regard. A young man displays photos of the many items (guitars, television, appliances) he found at LLAOX. In the final shot, of an attractive woman standing in front of the items, he proudly boasts: "I found her at LLAOX, too!" Subject-Oriented Desire Like ads in other countries, then, Japanese ads tend to place the object ahead of the subject. Desire for the person depicted in the ad is either ancillary to the desire expressed for the product, or else exists as a function of the subject's objectified status. However, an accreting number of Japanese ads have begun orienting desire toward one or both of the subjects in the ad, over or independent of the object for sale. A man and woman in their early thirties sit at a table sipping whiskey. The woman leans toward the man and in a perky voice utters: "Hey, let's turn in soon." The man protests, pointing to the drink: "we haven't finished this, yet." The woman tilts her head. She insists "let's head home." Then in a conspiratorial undertone "it's that day" and winks. The man's elbow falls off the tabletop. The woman blows him a kiss. Cut to a cat hiding beneath one of his paws in embarrassment. (Source: Nikka All Malt Whiskey -- Japan, 1993) Admittedly, not all ad discourse involves desire. But of late considerable ad space has been devoted to human relations and longing6. Consider this promo for a health drink. A man stands on his verandah in his t-shirt and pyjama bottoms. He looks groggy. Cut to a young woman watering her plants on the adjacent porch. "Hey!" she coos to her bushes, "are you lively?" She tends the pots along the centre divider. Is she addressing her foliage or the young man on the other side? He cranes his neck to steal a peek. She seems unaware. He lays his head on his forearms, admiring her. Cut to a shot of her regarding the product; drinking it; savouring the taste. The text reads: "With Lactia you will bloom beautifully." The woman enthuses audibly: "happiness!" Her voyeur, still in thrall, emits a sigh, suddenly straightens and declares aloud (in English): "Nice!" The previous two examples feature desire by adults. Considerable contemporary desire-centred discourse, however, focuses on teens. In these cases the product is sometimes introduced as a symbol for desire -- as in this case of a potato chip which snaps crisply each time a boy's romantic advance is repelled. A boy and girl walk along a boardwalk. The boy tentatively reaches for his partner's hand. Just then an approaching bicyclist toots his horn and cleaves a path between the two. A superimposed chip snaps. Next, seated on the shoreline, the boy reaches out again. Suddenly, a wind-blown ball rolls past, prompting his intended to abruptly vacate her position. He is left, literally clutching air. Another chip snaps again. The boy reaches out to touch the girl's handprint in the sand. He utters "I like you". The girl turns and asks "what did you say?" He impotently shrugs "nothing at all." Cut to a box of the chips. This youthful obsession with desire plays prominently in ads. First, because it fits well with the "mini-drama" format currently favoured in Japanese advertising. Second, because it is an effective technique for capturing viewer interest. The emotional tugs keep the audience attending to the ad beyond the first viewing. In the following ad, while desire for the product is the punch line, the entire ad is structured around unrequited desire. The confusion of the former for the latter not only redounds to product value, but predisposes the audience toward empathy and engagement. A teenage girl in her plaid uniform steers her bike into its berth outside school. Her voiceover identifies the bike name, shows how one touch locks the wheel in place and the seat in the vertical position. "Oh!" a quavering male voice utters off camera. "Can I ask name?" Japanese being a language that often operates without articles and pronouns, we aren't sure which name he means. Quick zoom in on the girl's expectant expression. "Eh?" she asks breathlessly. Her narration stops, her heart soars, glowing a vibrant red over her white sweater. "The bike's name", her interlocutor clarifies. All at once, the throbbing red heart is extinguished, fading to a black circular smudge. Her expectant smile dissolves into disappointment. Not all scenarios are downers, however. In the following case the product is a prop -- at best an accoutrement -- in the teenage game of expressing desire. A spry girl pours hot water into two cups. Off camera an older female voice asks whether she isn't supposed to be resting. "Don't worry about it", the girl replies. Cut to exterior shot. She's wearing a short coat, backing through the front door with the two cups in her hands. Cut to an angled reaction shot: a handsome boy leans across his bike, placing a letter in the post. He holds the letter up. "This", he says. Cut to the girl, now leaning against the entryway of the building, sipping her drink. Haltingly, in a breathy voice, she utters: "To... tomorrow... would have been... okay. But..." Japanese being the language of implication we read this as "it's fine the way it is working out." With the girl in the foreground, we see the boy leaning against the entryway on the opposite side contemplating his drink. Cut to a long angled shot from high above. The two teens sup in the cool evening air, alone, intimate, yet separated by the building's bright entrance. The narrator closes with a message about the nutritional value of the drink -- wholly unrelated to the unequivocal web of intimacy spun by these two youths. This ad offers us a perfect take on how desire is constructed and reproduced in contemporary ads in Japan. A perfect place for us to close. Evolving Desire? Desire is not new to advertising, but the form in which it is currently being expressed is. In Japan, at least, where commercials strive for polysemy in the volatile, evanescent and ultimately quixotic struggle for audience attention, communication is increasingly about things unrelated to the product. High on the list are affection, intimacy and sexuality -- aspects of human existence which bear considerable connection to desire. Reproduced in a variety of forms, played out in an array of contexts, by a variety of demographic "types", such commercial communications have the effect of centralising desire as a major theme in contemporary Japanese society7. The increase in so-called "secondary discourse"8 about human longing is palpable. But what to make of it? Clear explanations lie in "social evolution" -- factors such as: Japan's remarkable achievement of its postwar economic goals; its subsequent economic meltdown and accreting political malaise; the dramatic decline in corporate loyalty; disintegration of the family; increased urbanisation, atomisation and anomie; the stratification of generations and economic classes; increased materialism and attention to status; the concomitant loss of a personal raison d'être and collective moral beacon. In fact, all the reasons that Emile Durkheim diagnosed in fin de siècle France in inventing the discipline of sociology and Murakami Ryu has recently discerned a century later in fin de siècle Japan. Desire is a manifestation of social breakdown, as well as a plea for its resolution. As we enter a new century -- indeed a new millenium -- it is an empirical question worth monitoring whether the Japanese obsession with desire will continue to swell. Footnotes 1. Although the claims in this paper are qualitative, rather than quantitative, without question it is true that both men and women in Japanese television advertising are depicted as desiring. In this way, one could claim that desire exists independent of gender in ads. At the same time, it is almost certain that desire is often depicted as being manifested differentially by men and women. However, as one can infer from the data below, this is not always so (viz. "True Love"). Moreover, while women (or men) might more often fit one or another of the constructs below (i.e. object-mediated, object-induced, object-directed, subject-oriented) than their opposite number, cases can generally be found in which both (male and female) are depicted desiring in each of the stated relationships. 1. Thinking of this (fire-desire) symbol-set generally (and this ad specifically), one is reminded of the Springsteen lyric: At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head; Only you can cool my desire. I'm on fire. -- Bruce Springsteen: "I'm on Fire" (1984) Reminding one of the lyric by Shocking Blue from their decade-spanning Number 1 single (1970 by the Dutch band as well as the 1986 cover version by Bananarama): I'm your Venus, I'm your fire at your desire. If not the Earth, Wind and Fire phrasing from "That's the Way of the World" (1975): Hearts of fire, creates love desire... Of course, the fire/desire combo might also have become a universal association due to the easy opportunity (at least in English) to commit a rhyme (no matter how cloddish). 2. It has yet to be determined that desire is a cultural universal. However, the universal presence and relatively uniform logic of the "machinery of capitalism" (a major aspect of which is advertising) certainly serves as a powerful prod. That machinery overlaps culture and tends to act on it in relatively similar ways (one of which may just be the discourse about desire). This, of course, makes no claims about universal outcomes. I have addressed the interaction of capitalism and context and the themes of global/local, homogeneity/heterogeneity, universal/particular in a series of articles concerning information transfer, body, color, and advertising form in comparative context. Please see my home page for references to and greater detail on this work. 3. Regarding red as signifier, see Branston & Stafford (7). Also see my work on color universals ("The Color of Meaning") and culture-specific colour conventions ("The Color of Difference"). 4. Support for this interpretation can be found in other ads, as ideas and practices in Japanese advertising tend to travel in twos or threes. During this same period, Suzuki Move placed Leonardo DiCaprio behind the wheel. As he tooled around the city, his accelleration was such as to raise the skirts of two by-standers. DiCaprio promptly braked, placed the car in reverse, rolled astride the two women, and impishly pointing at each, identified the shade of underpants ("white and strawberry") they were sporting. 5. And let me reiterate: All such depictions are exclusively about sexual/emotional longing between men and women. 6. As I am mainly working with Japanese data in this article, I feel comfortable only seeking to draw conclusions about Japanese society. Certainly, one could fathom conducting the same sort of analysis and arriving at the same general conclusions about other postmodern, capitalist, commercial-centred, consumer-oriented societies. 7. The word is O'Barr's. It bears considerable similarity to Barthes's "second order signification". Plates 1 Caliente perfume (USA, 1994) 9 Georgia canned coffee (Japan, 1999) 2 Old Spice cologne (USA, 1994) 10 Rosso (Japan, 1998) 3 Coke (Australia, 1994) 11 LLAOX (Japan, 1999) 4 Dashing cologne (Malaysia, 1997) 12 Lactia (Japan, 1997) 5 Cup Noodles (Japan, 1998) 13 5/8 and 3/5 Chips (Japan, 1993) 6 Cup Noodles (Japan, 1998) 14 Gachyarinko (Japan, 1999) 7 Nescafe Excella (ice coffee; Japan, 1999) 15 Hotpo (health drink; Japan 1999) 8 Various ads References Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Jonathan Cape, 1972 (1957). Branston, G., and R. Stafford. The Media Student's Book. London: Routledge, 1996. Fiske, John. Television Culture. London: Methuen, 1987. Holden, Todd. "The Color of Meaning: The Significance of Black and White in Television Commercials." Interdisciplinary Information Sciences 3.2 (1997): 125-146. ---. "The Color of Difference: Critiquing Cultural Convergence via Television Advertising" Interdisciplinary Information Sciences 5.1 (1999): 15-36. O'Barr. Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1994. Williamson, Judith. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyers, 1979. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Todd Joseph Miles Holden. "The Evolution of Desire in Advertising: From Object-Obsession to Subject-Affection." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.5 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/adverts.php>. Chicago style: Todd Joseph Miles Holden, "The Evolution of Desire in Advertising: From Object-Obsession to Subject-Affection," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 5 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/adverts.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Todd Joseph Miles Holden. (1999) The evolution of desire in advertising: from object-obsession to subject-affection. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/adverts.php> ([your date of access]).

The academic journal is obsolete. In a world where there are more titles than ever, this is a comment on their form – especially the print journal – rather than their quantity. Now that you can get everything online, it doesn’t really matter what journal a paper appears in; certainly it doesn’t matter what’s in the same issue. The experience of a journal is rapidly obsolescing, for both editors and readers. I’m obviously not the first person to notice this (see, for instance, "Scholarly Communication"; "Transforming Scholarly Communication"; Houghton; Policy Perspectives; Teute), but I do have a personal stake in the process. For if the journal is obsolete then it follows that the editor is obsolete, and I am the editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies. I founded the IJCS and have been sole editor ever since. Next year will see the fiftieth issue. So far, I have been responsible for over 280 published articles – over 2.25 million words of other people’s scholarship … and counting. We won’t say anything about the words that did not get published, except that the IJCS rejection rate is currently 87 per cent. Perhaps the first point that needs to be made, then, is that obsolescence does not imply lack of success. By any standard the IJCS is a successful journal, and getting more so. It has recently been assessed as a top-rating A* journal in the Australian Research Council’s journal rankings for ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia), the newly activated research assessment exercise. (In case you’re wondering, M/C Journal is rated B.) The ARC says of the ranking exercise: ‘The lists are a result of consultations with the sector and rigorous review by leading researchers and the ARC.’ The ARC definition of an A* journal is given as: Typically an A* journal would be one of the best in its field or subfield in which to publish and would typically cover the entire field/ subfield. Virtually all papers they publish will be of very high quality. These are journals where most of the work is important (it will really shape the field) and where researchers boast about getting accepted.Acceptance rates would typically be low and the editorial board would be dominated by field leaders, including many from top institutions. (Appendix I, p. 21; and see p. 4.)Talking of boasting, I love to prate about the excellent people we’ve published in the IJCS. We have introduced new talent to the field, and we have published new work by some of its pioneers – including Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall. We’ve also published – among many others – Sara Ahmed, Mohammad Amouzadeh, Tony Bennett, Goran Bolin, Charlotte Brunsdon, William Boddy, Nico Carpentier, Stephen Coleman, Nick Couldry, Sean Cubitt, Michael Curtin, Daniel Dayan, Ben Dibley, Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, John Frow, Elfriede Fursich, Christine Geraghty, Mark Gibson, Paul Gilroy, Faye Ginsberg, Jonathan Gray, Lawrence Grossberg, Judith Halberstam, Hanno Hardt, Gay Hawkins, Joke Hermes, Su Holmes, Desmond Hui, Fred Inglis, Henry Jenkins, Deborah Jermyn, Ariel Heryanto, Elihu Katz, Senator Rod Kemp (Australian government minister), Youna Kim, Agnes Ku, Richard E. Lee, Jeff Lewis, David Lodge (the novelist), Knut Lundby, Eric Ma, Anna McCarthy, Divya McMillin, Antonio Menendez-Alarcon, Toby Miller, Joe Moran, Chris Norris, John Quiggin, Chris Rojek, Jane Roscoe, Jeffrey Sconce, Lynn Spigel, John Storey, Su Tong, the late Sako Takeshi, Sue Turnbull, Graeme Turner, William Uricchio, José van Dijck, Georgette Wang, Jing Wang, Elizabeth Wilson, Janice Winship, Handel Wright, Wu Jing, Wu Qidi (Chinese Vice-Minister of Education), Emilie Yueh-Yu Yeh, Robert Young and Zhao Bin. As this partial list makes clear, as well as publishing the top ‘hegemons’ we also publish work pointing in new directions, including papers from neighbouring disciplines such as anthropology, area studies, economics, education, feminism, history, literary studies, philosophy, political science, and sociology. We have sought to represent neglected regions, especially Chinese cultural studies, which has grown strongly during the past decade. And for quite a few up-and-coming scholars we’ve been the proud host of their first international publication. The IJCS was first published in 1998, already well into the internet era, but it was print-only at that time. Since then, all content, from volume 1:1 onwards, has been digitised and is available online (although vol 1:2 is unaccountably missing). The publishers, Sage Publications Ltd, London, have steadily added online functionality, so that now libraries can get the journal in various packages, including offering this title among many others in online-only bundles, and individuals can purchase single articles online. Thus, in addition to institutional and individual subscriptions, which remain the core business of the journal, income is derived by the publisher from multi-site licensing, incremental consortial sales income, single- and back-issue sales (print), pay-per-view, and deep back file sales (electronic). So what’s obsolete about it? In that boasting paragraph of mine (above), about what wonderful authors we’ve published, lies one of the seeds of obsolescence. For now that it is available online, ‘users’ (no longer ‘readers’!) can search for what they want and ignore the journal as such altogether. This is presumably how most active researchers experience any journal – they are looking for articles (or less: quotations; data; references) relevant to a given topic, literature review, thesis etc. They encounter a journal online through its ‘content’ rather than its ‘form.’ The latter is irrelevant to them, and may as well not exist. The Cover Some losses are associated with this change. First is the loss of the front cover. Now you, dear reader, scrolling through this article online, might well complain, why all the fuss about covers? Internet-generation journals don’t have covers, so all of the work that goes into them to establish the brand, the identity and even the ‘affect’ of a journal is now, well, obsolete. So let me just remind you of what’s at stake. Editors, designers and publishers all take a good deal of trouble over covers, since they are the point of intersection of editorial, design and marketing priorities. Thus, the IJCS cover contains the only ‘content’ of the journal for which we pay a fee to designers and photographers (usually the publisher pays, but in one case I did). Like any other cover, ours has three main elements: title, colour and image. Thought goes into every detail. Title I won’t say anything about the journal’s title as such, except that it was the result of protracted discussions (I suggested Terra Nullius at one point, but Sage weren’t having any of that). The present concern is with how a title looks on a cover. Our title-typeface is Frutiger. Originally designed by Adrian Frutiger for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, it is suitably international, being used for the corporate identity of the UK National Health Service, Telefónica O2, the Royal Navy, the London School of Economics , the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Conservative Party of Canada, Banco Bradesco of Brazil, the Finnish Defence Forces and on road signs in Switzerland (Wikipedia, "Frutiger"). Frutiger is legible, informal, and reads well in small copy. Sage’s designer and I corresponded on which of the words in our cumbersome name were most important, agreeing that ‘international’ combined with ‘cultural’ is the USP (Unique Selling Point) of the journal, so they should be picked out (in bold small-caps) from the rest of the title, which the designer presented in a variety of Frutiger fonts (regular, italic, and reversed – white on black), presumably to signify the dynamism and diversity of our content. The word ‘studies’ appears on a lozenge-shaped cartouche that is also used as a design element throughout the journal, for bullet points, titles and keywords. Colour We used to change this every two years, but since volume 7 it has stabilised with the distinctive Pantone 247, ‘new fuchsia.’ This colour arose from my own environment at QUT, where it was chosen (by me) for the new Creative Industries Faculty’s academic gowns and hoods, and thence as a detailing colour for the otherwise monochrome Creative Industries Precinct buildings. There’s a lot of it around my office, including on the wall and the furniture. New Fuchsia is – we are frequently told – a somewhat ‘girly’ colour, especially when contrasted with the Business Faculty’s blue or Law’s silver; its similarity to the Girlfriend/Dolly palette does introduce a mild ‘politics of prestige’ element, since it is determinedly pop culture, feminised, and non-canonical. Image Right at the start, the IJCS set out to signal its difference from other journals. At that time, all Sage journals had calligraphic colours – but I was insistent that we needed a photograph (I have ‘form’ in this respect: in 1985 I changed the cover of the Australian Journal of Cultural Studies from a line drawing (albeit by Sydney Nolan) to a photograph; and I co-designed the photo-cover of Cultural Studies in 1987). For IJCS I knew which photo I wanted, and Sage went along with the choice. I explained it in the launch issue’s editorial (Hartley, "Editorial"). That original picture, a goanna on a cattle grid in the outback, by Australian photographer Grant Hobson, lasted ten years. Since volume 11 – in time for our second decade – the goanna has been replaced with a picture by Italian-based photographer Patrick Nicholas, called ‘Reality’ (Hartley, "Cover Narrative"). We have also used two other photos as cover images, once each. They are: Daniel Meadows’s 1974 ‘Karen & Barbara’ (Hartley, "Who"); and a 1962 portrait of Richard Hoggart from the National Portrait Gallery in London (Owen & Hartley 2007). The choice of picture has involved intense – sometimes very tense – negotiations with Sage. Most recently, they were adamant the Daniel Meadows picture, which I wanted to use as the long-term replacement of the goanna, was too ‘English’ and they would not accept it. We exchanged rather sharp words before compromising. There’s no need to rehearse the dispute here; the point is that both sides, publisher and editor, felt that vital interests were at stake in the choice of a cover-image. Was it too obscure; too Australian; too English; too provocative (the current cover features, albeit in the deep background, a TV screen-shot of a topless Italian game-show contestant)? Running Order Beyond the cover, the next obsolete feature of a journal is the running order of articles. Obviously what goes in the journal is contingent upon what has been submitted and what is ready at a given time, so this is a creative role within a very limited context, which is what makes it pleasurable. Out of a limited number of available papers, a choice must be made about which one goes first, what order the other papers should follow, and which ones must be held over to the next issue. The first priority is to choose the lead article: like the ‘first face’ in a fashion show (if you don’t know what I mean by that, see FTV.com. It sets the look, the tone, and the standard for the issue. I always choose articles I like for this slot. It sends a message to the field – look at this! Next comes the running order. We have about six articles per issue. It is important to maintain the IJCS’s international mix, so I check for the country of origin, or failing that (since so many articles come from Anglosphere countries like the USA, UK and Australia), the location of the analysis. Attention also has to be paid to the gender balance among authors, and to the mix of senior and emergent scholars. Sometimes a weak article needs to be ‘hammocked’ between two good ones (these are relative terms – everything published in the IJCS is of a high scholarly standard). And we need to think about disciplinary mix, so as not to let the journal stray too far towards one particular methodological domain. Running order is thus a statement about the field – the disciplinary domain – rather than about an individual paper. It is a proposition about how different voices connect together in some sort of disciplinary syntax. One might even claim that the combination of cover and running order is a last vestige of collegiate collectivism in an era of competitive academic individualism. Now all that matters is the individual paper and author; the ‘currency’ is tenure, promotion and research metrics, not relations among peers. The running order is obsolete. Special Issues An extreme version of running order is the special issue. The IJCS has regularly published these; they are devoted to field-shaping initiatives, as follows: Title Editor(s) Issue Date Radiocracy: Radio, Development and Democracy Amanda Hopkinson, Jo Tacchi 3.2 2000 Television and Cultural Studies Graeme Turner 4.4 2001 Cultural Studies and Education Karl Maton, Handel Wright 5.4 2002 Re-Imagining Communities Sara Ahmed, Anne-Marie Fortier 6.3 2003 The New Economy, Creativity and Consumption John Hartley 7.1 2004 Creative Industries and Innovation in China Michael Keane, John Hartley 9.3 2006 The Uses of Richard Hoggart Sue Owen, John Hartley 10.1 2007 A Cultural History of Celebrity Liz Barry 11.3 2008 Caribbean Media Worlds Anna Pertierra, Heather Horst 12.2 2009 Co-Creative Labour Mark Deuze, John Banks 12.5 2009 It’s obvious that special issues have a place in disciplinary innovation – they can draw attention in a timely manner to new problems, neglected regions, or innovative approaches, and thus they advance the field. They are indispensible. But because of online publication, readers are not held to the ‘project’ of a special issue and can pick and choose whatever they want. And because of the peculiarities of research assessment exercises, editing special issues doesn’t count as research output. The incentive to do them is to that extent reduced, and some universities are quite heavy-handed about letting academics ‘waste’ time on activities that don’t produce ‘metrics.’ The special issue is therefore threatened with obsolescence too. Refereeing In many top-rating journals, the human side of refereeing is becoming obsolete. Increasingly this labour-intensive chore is automated and the labour is technologically outsourced from editors and publishers to authors and referees. You have to log on to some website and follow prompts in order to contribute both papers and the assessment of papers; interactions with editors are minimal. At the IJCS the process is still handled by humans – namely, journal administrator Tina Horton and me. We spend a lot of time checking how papers are faring, from trying to find the right referees through to getting the comments and then the author’s revisions completed in time for a paper to be scheduled into an issue. The volume of email correspondence is considerable. We get to know authors and referees. So we maintain a sense of an interactive and conversational community, albeit by correspondence rather than face to face. Doubtless, sooner or later, there will be a depersonalised Text Management System. But in the meantime we cling to the romantic notion that we are involved in refereeing for the sake of the field, for raising the standard of scholarship, for building a globally dispersed virtual college of cultural studies, and for giving everyone – from unfavoured countries and neglected regions to famous professors in old-money universities – the same chance to get their research published. In fact, these are largely delusional ideals, for as everyone knows, refereeing is part of the political economy of publicly-funded research. It’s about academic credentials, tenure and promotion for the individual, and about measurable research metrics for the academic organisation or funding agency (Hartley, "Death"). The IJCS has no choice but to participate: we do what is required to qualify as a ‘double-blind refereed journal’ because that is the only way to maintain repute, and thence the flow of submissions, not to mention subscriptions, without which there would be no journal. As with journals themselves, which proliferate even as the print form becomes obsolete, so refereeing is burgeoning as a practice. It’s almost an industry, even though the currency is not money but time: part gift-economy; part attention-economy; partly the payment of dues to the suzerain funding agencies. But refereeing is becoming obsolete in the sense of gathering an ‘imagined community’ of people one might expect to know personally around a particular enterprise. The process of dispersal and anonymisation of the field is exacerbated by blind refereeing, which we do because we must. This is suited to a scientific domain of objective knowledge, but everyone knows it’s not quite like that in the ‘new humanities’. The agency and identity of the researcher is often a salient fact in the research. The embedded positionality of the author, their reflexiveness about their own context and room-for-manoeuvre, and the radical contextuality of knowledge itself – these are all more or less axiomatic in cultural studies, but they’re not easily served by ‘double-blind’ refereeing. When refereeing is depersonalised to the extent that is now rife (especially in journals owned by international commercial publishers), it is hard to maintain a sense of contextualised productivity in the knowledge domain, much less a ‘common cause’ to which both author and referee wish to contribute. Even though refereeing can still be seen as altruistic, it is in the service of something much more general (‘scholarship’) and much more particular (‘my career’) than the kind of reviewing that wants to share and improve a particular intellectual enterprise. It is this mid-range altruism – something that might once have been identified as a politics of knowledge – that’s becoming obsolete, along with the printed journals that were the banner and rallying point for the cause. If I were to start a new journal (such as cultural-science.org), I would prefer ‘open refereeing’: uploading papers on an open site, subjecting them to peer-review and criticism, and archiving revised versions once they have received enough votes and comments. In other words I’d like to see refereeing shifted from the ‘supply’ or production side of a journal to the ‘demand’ or readership side. But of course, ‘demand’ for ‘blind’ refereeing doesn’t come from readers; it comes from the funding agencies. The Reading Experience Finally, the experience of reading a journal is obsolete. Two aspects of this seem worthy of note. First, reading is ‘out of time’ – it no longer needs to conform to the rhythms of scholarly publication, which are in any case speeding up. Scholarship is no longer seasonal, as it has been since the Middle Ages (with university terms organised around agricultural and ecclesiastical rhythms). Once you have a paper’s DOI number, you can read it any time, 24/7. It is no longer necessary even to wait for publication. With some journals in our field (e.g. Journalism Studies), assuming your Library subscribes, you can access papers as soon as they’re uploaded on the journal’s website, before the published edition is printed. Soon this will be the norm, just as it is for the top science journals, where timely publication, and thereby the ability to claim first discovery, is the basis of intellectual property rights. The IJCS doesn’t (yet) offer this service, but its frequency is speeding up. It was launched in 1998 with three issues a year. It went quarterly in 2001 and remained a quarterly for eight years. It has recently increased to six issues a year. That too causes changes in the reading experience. The excited ripping open of the package is less of a thrill the more often it arrives. Indeed, how many subscribers will admit that sometimes they don’t even open the envelope? Second, reading is ‘out of place’ – you never have to see the journal in which a paper appears, so you can avoid contact with anything that you haven’t already decided to read. This is more significant than might first appear, because it is affecting journalism in general, not just academic journals. As we move from the broadcast to the broadband era, communicative usage is shifting too, from ‘mass’ communication to customisation. This is a mixed blessing. One of the pleasures of old-style newspapers and the TV news was that you’d come across stories you did not expect to find. Indeed, an important attribute of the industrial form of journalism is its success in getting whole populations to read or watch stories about things they aren’t interested in, or things like wars and crises that they’d rather not know about at all. That historic textual achievement is in jeopardy in the broadband era, because ‘the public’ no longer needs to gather around any particular masthead or bulletin to get their news. With Web 2.0 affordances, you can exercise much more choice over what you attend to. This is great from the point of view of maximising individual choice, but sub-optimal in relation to what I’ve called ‘population-gathering’, especially the gathering of communities of interest around ‘tales of the unexpected’ – novelty or anomalies. Obsolete: Collegiality, Trust and Innovation? The individuation of reading choices may stimulate prejudice, because prejudice (literally, ‘pre-judging’) is built in when you decide only to access news feeds about familiar topics, stories or people in which you’re already interested. That sort of thing may encourage narrow-mindedness. It is certainly an impediment to chance discovery, unplanned juxtaposition, unstructured curiosity and thence, perhaps, to innovation itself. This is a worry for citizenship in general, but it is also an issue for academic ‘knowledge professionals,’ in our ever-narrower disciplinary silos. An in-close specialist focus on one’s own area of expertise need no longer be troubled by the concerns of the person in the next office, never mind the next department. Now, we don’t even have to meet on the page. One of the advantages of whole journals, then, is that each issue encourages ‘macro’ as well as ‘micro’ perspectives, and opens reading up to surprises. This willingness to ‘take things on trust’ describes a ‘we’ community – a community of trust. Trust too is obsolete in these days of performance evaluation. We’re assessed by an anonymous system that’s managed by people we’ll never meet. If the ‘population-gathering’ aspects of print journals are indeed obsolete, this may reduce collegiate trust and fellow-feeling, increase individualist competitiveness, and inhibit innovation. In the face of that prospect, I’m going to keep on thinking about covers, running orders, referees and reading until the role of editor is obsolete too. ReferencesHartley, John. "'Cover Narrative': From Nightmare to Reality." International Journal of Cultural Studies 11.2 (2005): 131-137. ———. "Death of the Book?" Symposium of the National Scholarly Communication Forum & Australian Academy of the Humanities, Sydney Maritime Museum, 2005. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.humanities.org.au/Resources/Downloads/NSCF/RoundTables1-17/PDF/Hartley.pdf›. ———. 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