Journal articles on the topic 'Pejorative function'

To the Turkish words in the official Bulgarian Language today there is a negative attitude. The presence in the Bulgarian literary language of great number of lexemes of Turkish origin, which are not recognised from the big part of society, even specialists, as Turkish and which do not have Bulgarian counterparts, is not acknowledged as a valuable contribution to the basic lexical fund. The interest is focused on the usage of some Turkish words with pejorative meaning in journalistic and everyday speech. The function and the stylistic-emotional characteristics of the Turkish loan words in the present artistic texts are not researched.In the paper the Turkish words in the artistic debut of the contemporary writer Hasan Efraimоv „Dervis’ Karakondzhul“(evil ghost) presenting the representatives of Turkish cultural and linguistic environment, having specific national colour, are analysed. To the Turkish words in the official Bulgarian Language today there is a negative attitude. The presence in the Bulgarian literary language of great number of lexemes of Turkish origin, which are not recognised from the big part of society, even specialists, as Turkish and which do not have Bulgarian counterparts, is not acknowledged as a valuable contribution to the basic lexical fund. The interest is focused on the usage of some Turkish words with pejorative meaning in journalistic and everyday speech. The function and the stylistic-emotional characteristics of the Turkish loan words in the present artistic texts are not researched. In the paper the Turkish words in the artistic debut of the contemporary writer Hasan Efraimоv „Dervis’ Karakondzhul“(evil ghost) presenting the representatives of Turkish cultural and linguistic environment, having specific national colour, are analysed.

In this paper I examine a particular type of morphological negation in French, namely non- prefixation on nominal bases (e.g. non-violence ‘nonviolence’). Drawing on a wide range of authentic examples from the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé (TLFi), the French literary database Frantext and the internet, I show that although the basic meaning of non- prefixation is negation, the nouns prefixed by non- (abbreviated as [non-N]N) may carry an additional nuance, which can be pejorative or euphemistic; hence the hypothesis defended in this paper that the prefix non- can also serve pragmatic purposes.
 After having briefly described the morphological and semantic variety of nominal lexemes which can be the input of non- prefixation, I show that [non-N]N can have three different readings, namely what I call the “complementary” interpretation (e.g. les Italiens et les non-Italiens aiment la cuisine italienne ‘Italians and non-Italians like Italian cuisine’), the “ontological” interpretation (e.g. Toute sa vie durant, Gandhi est demeuré convaincu du bien-fondé de la non-violence ‘For all his life, Gandhi was convinced of the legitimacy of nonviolence’), and the “contrary interpretation” (e.g. Les fleurs, je m’en fiche. Serais-je une non-femme? ‘Flowers, I don’t care! Could I be a nonwoman?). In the second section, I describe the pejorative and euphemistic uses of [non-N]N. The pejorative useshave been noticed by several authors (a.o. Gaatone 1971, 1987, Di Sciullo and Tremblay 1993, 1996 for French, Zimmer 1964, Algeo 1971, Bauer 1983, Horn 1989 for English); I show that these uses arise when the [non-N]N have a contrary interpretation and that they are quite frequent. I also emphasize the importance of the discourse context compared to the semantics of the base noun. Then I address the euphemistic uses of [non-N]N, which are linked to the ontological interpretation, and which are more constrained and thus less frequent; I note that these uses function almost as a politeness device. The fourth section provides an attempt to draw a parallel between certain uses of [non-N]N and the polemic and metalinguistic uses of sentential negation, as they have been described by Ducrot (1980, 1984) and Horn (1985, 1989).

Background: Radiologically isolated syndrome (RIS) is characterized by patients with asymptomatic T2 hypersignals detected by brain MRI fulfilling dissemination in space criteria and is suggestive of subclinical multiple sclerosis (MS). In previous studies, it was demonstrated that visual evoked potential and cerebrospinal fluid help to identify pejorative markers in converting to MS. Objective: To date the cognitive function has never been investigated in a cohort of RIS. The objective of this study was to investigate cognitive function in a cohort of 26 RIS patients. Methods: We prospectively assessed the BCcogSEP (a French adaptation of the Brief Repeatable Battery (BRB) including eight cognitive tests) of 26 patients with RIS, compared with 26 MS patients and 26 healthy subjects matched for age, sex and level of education. Results: When comparing the three groups, the cognitive performance was significantly lower in the RIS and MS groups compared with healthy subjects for the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) 3 seconds ( p = 0.002), phonemic fluencies ( p = 0.02), the code of the WAIS ( p = 0.05), the direct ( p = 0.002) or indirect ( p = 0.007) digit span test, the cross-taping test ( p = 0.019) and Go—No-Go ( p = 0.001). When we compared RIS and MS, the cognitive performance was significantly lower in MS patients for the direct span number ( p = 0.003) and cross-tapping test ( p = 0.05). We did not find significant differences between the three groups for the other tests. We did not find a correlation between clinical, biological and MRI results and cognitive dysfunctions. Conclusions: This study confirms the recently developed concept of RIS patients who present similar features to MS patients. Further studies are necessary to confirm these initial results and to correlate cognitive disorders with MRI surrogate markers.

The article explores the use of verbal aggression by anti-liberal “new media”. This source material was selected following the infamous Financial Times interview with Vladimir Putin, where he proclaimed that liberalism had become obsolete. The study explores the purpose, objects, and means of expressing verbal aggression. This study highlights the main ways in which a holistic trend of political philosophy comes under a sustained attack.
 The research establishes that lexemes without a default negative connotation, rather than pejorative invectives, are the primary means of expressing aggression. The study further maintains the existence of certain verbal aggression discourse algorithm whereby the use of one potentially aggressive lexeme automatically triggers the use of another lexeme. The analysis shows that anti-liberal discourse is intertwined with antisemitism, homophobia, and negative sentiment towards the internet.
 Anti-liberal environment is not limited to pro-government sentiment – occasionally the head of state alsocomes under its critique and its standard allegations. The source of verbal aggression is particularly crucial in the “new media” era: verbal aggression can originate both in governmental institutions and the demassified field. The origin of verbal aggression will further determine its consequences, ranging from impacting the fate of the object of verbal aggression to uniting the supporters sharing the sentiment behind the verbal aggression and/or pro-government opinion. Here neutral lexemes without a default negative connotation take on the function of the means of verbal aggression. This way neutral words such as liberal, Jew, gay become pejorative invectives. These words now carry a high potential for expressing aggression when used in conjunction with other words and phrases.

Diabetic autonomic neuropathy includes damage of various organ systems. The manifestations of autonomic neuropathy usually occur in setting of distal sensory motor polyneuropathy but autonomic disorders may be presented disproportionately compared to sensory and motor disorders. Diabetic autonomic neuropathy increases the risk of cardiac arrhythmias and sudden death, significantly reduces the patients’ quality of life, and exacerbates other vascular complications of diabetes mellitus. There are cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and urogenital forms of diabetic autonomic neuropathy and damaged function of autonomic nerve fibers involving respiratory system, pupils, sudoriferous glands, thermoregulatory and endocrine system. Cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy is the most studied, clinically meaningful and prognostically pejorative form of autonomic neuropathy. Autonomous diabetic neuropathy can cause frequent emergency admissions of patients with this pathology, increased mortality in patients with diabetes, which requires informing of general practitioners, endocrinologists, and intensivists about the features of the clinical manifestations and course of this disease.

This article will illustrate sadomasochistic dynamics as they arise within the consulting room and highlight the main function of perversions. Although the term “perversion” can be considered outdated, or worse, pejorative, if used in its original meaning, it remains the most appropriate term to describe the plight of certain patients who suffer from a specific sexualised form of acting out. One aim of the perversion is to attempt to reverse an earlier trauma by turning that passive experience, often not consciously remembered, into an active one. The patient suffering from a perversion replaces unwanted or unbearable historical affects with current actions that are sadomasochistic, sexually exciting, and highly gratifying, albeit temporarily, thereby keeping the patient’s mind far away from the desolation of the initial trauma. At times, the actions patients are driven to for survival are paradoxically life-threatening. I will briefly refer to the difficulties of the countertransference in working with perverse patients.

This paper examines the non-situational (i.e., non-exophoric) pragmatic functions of the three adnominal demonstratives, óyo, wâná, and yangó in the Bantu language Lingala. An examination of natural language corpora reveals that, although native-speaker intuitions sanction the use of óyo as an anaphor in demonstrative NPs, this demonstrative is hardly ever used in that role. It also reveals that wâná, which has both situational and discourse-referential capacities, is used more frequently than the exclusively anaphoric demonstrative yangó. It is explained that wâná appears in a wide range of non-coreferential expression types, in coreferential expression types involving low-salience referents, and in coreferential expression types that both involve highly salient referents and include the speaker’s desire to signal a shift in the mental representation of the referent towards a pejorative reading. The use of yangó, on the other hand, is only licensed in cases of coreferentiality involving highly salient referents and implying continuation of the same mental representation of the referent. A specific section is devoted to charting the possible grammaticalization paths followed by the demonstratives. Conclusions are drawn for pragmatic theory formation in terms of the relation between form (yangó vs. wâná) and function (coreferentiality vs. non-coreferentiality).

The clinical successes of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T-cell therapy targeting cell surface antigens in B cell leukaemias and lymphomas has demonstrated the proof of concept that appropriately engineered T-cells have the capacity to destroy advanced cancer with long term remissions ensuing. Nevertheless, it has been significantly more problematic to effect long term clinical benefit in a solid tumour context. A major contributing factor to the clinical failure of CAR-T-cells in solid tumours has been named, almost interchangeably, as T-cell “dysfunction” or “exhaustion”. While unhelpful ambiguity surrounds the term “dysfunction”, “exhaustion” is canonically regarded as a pejorative term for T-cells. Recent understanding of T-cell developmental biology now identifies exhausted cells as vital for effective immune responses in the context of ongoing antigenic challenge. The purpose of this review is to explore the critical stages in the CAR-T-cell life-cycle and their various contributions to T-cell exhaustion. Through an appreciation of the predominant mechanisms of CAR-T-cell exhaustion and resultant dysfunction, we describe a range of engineering approaches to improve CAR-T-cell function.

This article describes rhetorical innovations in late antique Christian polemic around the construction of orthodoxy/heresy and Christianity more broadly. Late antique Christian polemicists label groups as heretical by using their founders' names as eponymous proxies for an entire group and set of ideas: Marcionism/ites, Valentinianism/ites, and so forth. This type of group construction, which I term the polemic of individualized appellation due to the pejorative labeling of a group after an individual founder, is an intentional and often artificial type of elite, literary polemic put to service in the wider creative mythmaking and boundary/identity construction by heresiologists such as Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Eusebius, and Epiphanius. In identifying both precursor ingredients in various ancient Mediterranean comparanda and novel developments in the Christian heresiologists' discourse, I also engage with recent scholarship on heresy, orthodoxy, and identity constructions in Late Antiquity. I explain why the polemic of individualized appellation was especially effective in constructing difference, its role in this particular late antique context, and its function in effacing apparent similarities in widespread practices and beliefs. I conclude with a methodological discussion, arguing that scholars in religion and history should reject their sources' categories of group identity construction due to their inherent bias.

Abstract Old Arabic had many expressive derived forms: firstly, the forms with radical repetition, consonant reduplication and/or vowel lengthening; secondly, the forms with prefixes, suffixes or infixes. Most of these formatives survived in the Arabic dialects, but Arabic scholars generally focus on diminutive noun forms (nominal and adjectival forms) named taṣġīr in Arabic. This article presents the rules of formation of the diminutive in the Ḥassāniyya Arabic dialect, in which this derivation applies to the whole lexicon, including verbal forms. The derivational morphology of the diminutive constitutes a kind of double derivation, characterized mainly by the infixation of -(a)y- – the position of which varies depending on the patterns and on the nature of the base lexeme. The article then analyzes the use and meaning of diminutives in context, studied within two corpora: a corpus of traditional tales and a corpus of courteous poems. The study of these corpora shows that in Ḥassāniyya, pejorative uses of the diminutive are as prominent as meliorative ones. Finally, the article discusses the “root-and-pattern” mode of formation in Arabic and the diverse derivations attested in Arabic dialects, comparing their values with those reported for other languages in the world. Evaluative morphology is shown to be particularly prevalent in Ḥassāniyya, and it is hypothesized that this correlates with the pragmatic function endorsed by the diminutive in this language. This function allows for both positive or negative interpretations of diminutive forms, depending on the context, so that diminutives can express a broad range of emotions.

Stereotypes are people or things categorised by general characteristics of the group based on a truth that is widely recognised and function to reduce ideas to a simpler form (Dyer, 1993). Not all stereotypes are pejorative but can be a form of othering of people (Bhabha, 1996) and come about through a friction with difference (Jameson, 1995). In Johannesburg, South Africa, there is a conflation of people and space that results in a form of spatial categorisation or stereotyping. Under the apartheid government the city’s spaces were divided by race and ethnicity and are currently shifting towards divisions of class and inequality deepening the fragmented post-apartheid conditions in the city. These spatial categories have been represented in films of Johannesburg and contribute to the construction of the city’s image but also construct images for particular neighbourhoods. In this paper I examine the use of space in film as a narrative device and explore the reception and understanding of Johannesburg’s spaces by its residents to illustrate the construction and reception of spatial stereotypes. The paper discusses three dominant spatial stereotypes of Johannesburg through key films and the reception of these films through quantitative and qualitative interviews conducted with residents in four locations (Chiawelo; CBD; Fordsburg and Melville) in Johannesburg. Stereotypes have negative consequences and these spatial stereotypes reflect the ‘city of extremes’ (Murray, 2011) but their use indicates a process of navigation and negotiation across differences in space and identity in the fragmented city of Johannesburg.

Tovaronym is mainly an artificial onym related to material sphere of human activity, which characterizes proper name of a product, i.e. object designed for trade or exchange. When analyzing proper names of industrial products that function in modern Ukrainian, we registered 825 names based on appellative. They include: names of apparatuses related to sound and image transmission (594; 72%); proper names of household appliances that are used to facilitate household chores (131; 15,88%); names of means of transportation (100; 12,12%). A significant amount of proper names of industrial products is interrelated with approximation to the appellative, which can be explained by the name’s functioning peculiarity, namely such onym does not need an additional explanation; it is generally known, easy to remember, which is considered to be a positive feature in terms of advertisement. We assume that appellative-based machinonyms motivate such groups of lexeme: anthropocentric names (225; 27,27 %), zoo-lexemes (183; 22,18 %), floro-lexemes (142; 17,21 %), names of natural phenomena and processes (88, 10,66 %), art notions (45; 5,45 %), astronautic lexemes (31; 3,76 %), space notions (27; 3,27 %), everyday-character notions (24; 2,91 %), technical notions (23; 2,79 %), temporal lexemes (15; 1,82 %), mathematical notions (11; 1,33 %), sports terminology (11; 1,33 %). Appellative-based tovaronyms are mostly motivated by lexemes that have positive semantics, render pleasant associations for consumers, and have symbolic meaning for ethnos, indicate on the place of production of a certain denotative. Regarding separate pejorative names, they are mostly widespread in slang forms, their sounding or spelling being the reason of their appearance.

This article discusses the features of speech manipulation on the Russian theme in modern German political texts. The need to write such a work is due to a number of factors.First, the authors note that this topic, despite its relevance in the context of increasing information warfare, especially over the past five years, is not sufficiently described. The problem of speech violence is practically not considered in the theoretical part of the relevant dissertations, scientific articles and textbooks. In the exercises for students on abstracting, listening and socio-political translation there are no tasks related to the detection and analysis of speech manipulation means, speech demagogy or speech aggression in foreign media.Secondly, in the presence of a large amount of literature, one way or another devoted to the problem of media manipulation, it is possible to find relatively little linguistic research of foreign texts.And, thirdly, it should be noted that there are theoretical gaps in this area of research, in particular, the lack of generally accepted points of view on the classification, the terminological name of speech strategies, tactics and techniques used for the purpose of covert introduction into the consciousness of the addressee of the necessary information to the manipulator, which complicates the analysis of speech facts of manipulative influence.With regard to the German political language, the authors of this article pay attention to the manipulative linguistic techniques of the German media in publications on Russian (and in fact - anti-Russian) topics, on the extralinguistic background, especially related to the reunification of the Crimea with Russia and the conflict in the Donbass. German media, ranging from the relatively respectable newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung“ to the Boulevard “Bild” write and talk about Russia either in a bad light or nothing at all.Thus, a pejorative function directed at a negative characterization of our state without any serious argument comes to the fore. Since different types of language manipulation require contexts of a greater length for their demonstration, the authors confine their material to the adduced one.

Preeclampsia is a pregnancy-related disorder characterized by hypertension, vascular dysfunction and an increase in circulating inflammatory factors including the cytokine, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). Studies have shown that placental ischemia is associated with 1) increased circulating TNF-α, 2) attenuated pressure-induced cerebral vascular tone, and 3) suppression of β-epithelial Na+ channel (βENaC) protein in cerebral vessels. In addition to its role in epithelial Na+ and water transport, βENaC is an essential signaling element in transduction of pressure-induced (aka “myogenic”) constriction, a critical mechanism of blood flow autoregulation. While cytokines inhibit expression of certain ENaC proteins in epithelial tissue, it is unknown if the increased circulating TNF-α associated with placental ischemia mediates the loss of cerebrovascular βENaC and cerebral blood flow regulation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that increasing plasma TNF-α in normal pregnant rats reduces cerebrovascular βENaC expression and impairs cerebral blood flow (CBF) regulation. In vivo TNF-α infusion (200 ng/day, 5 days) inhibited cerebrovascular expression of βENaC and impaired CBF regulation in pregnant rats. To determine the direct effects of TNF-α and underlying pathways mediating vascular smooth muscle cell βENaC reduction, we exposed cultured VSMCs (A10 cell line) to TNF-α (1–100 ng/mL) for 16–24 h. TNF-α reduced βENaC protein expression in a concentration-dependent fashion from 0.1 to 100 ng/mL, without affecting cell death. To assess the role of canonical MAPK signaling in this response, VSMCs were treated with p38MAPK or c-Jun kinase (JNK) inhibitors in the presence of TNF-α. We found that both p38MAPK and JNK blockade prevented TNF-α-mediated βENaC protein suppression. These data provide evidence that disorders associated with increased circulating TNF-α could lead to impaired cerebrovascular regulation, possibly due to reduced βENaC-mediated vascular function. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This manuscript identifies TNF-α as a possible placental-derived cytokine that could be involved in declining cerebrovascular health observed in preeclampsia. We found that infusion of TNF-α during pregnancy impaired cerebral blood flow control in rats at high arterial pressures. We further discovered that cerebrovascular β-epithelial sodium channel (βENaC) protein, a degenerin protein involved in mechanotransduction, was reduced by TNF-α in pregnant rats, indicating a potential link between impaired blood flow and this myogenic player. We next examined this effect in vitro using a rat vascular smooth muscle cell line. TNF-α reduced βENaC through canonical MAPK-signaling pathways and was not dependent on cell death. This study demonstrates the pejorative effects of TNF-α on cerebrovascular function during pregnancy and warrants future investigations to study the role of cytokines on vascular function during pregnancy.

Ukrainians demonstrate an intense interest in the domestic and foreign policy of their country, as well as in what is going in geopolitical processes. Social and political discourse in Ukraine is highly politicised which results in a great variety of lexical elements found in everyday publications and discussions. There are many political terminoids, politological quasiterms or quasitermini, political jargonisms, and pseudoterms of political realm that are extensively used both in Ukrainian and international discourse. Examples may vary from a term Trumpism, which bears a significant emotional load with pejorative connotations, to a more neutral term Thatcherism that became a part of political and economic reference books. Russian military aggression against Ukraine brought a new meaning to the terms Putinism, that resembles the term Hitlerism, as well as Rushism – a combination of Russia and fascism, which denotes an imperialist, chauvinist, aggressive, militant foreign policy of Russia, especially to its close neighbours. Different terms like that constitute a vibrant interdisciplinary field that is not paid sufficient attention to. This article suggests approaching analysis of pragmatics functions of these lexical elements by analysing their role in more general course of terminologisation of political and social discourse. A number of different examples of such lexemes are listed and their use is commented by placing them into a broader context of lexicological studies. In the English language tradition such lexemes are studies within the discipline of language for special purposes, in this case – the language of politics. The German terminological tradition speaks of Fachjargonismen and Halbtermini, the latter may be regarded as a sort of an equivalent to the concept of quasiterms used in our terminological studies. Some examples of pejorative and metaphorical lexical elements used in political discussions are also described and commented briefly, like the terms Porokhobot as an example of a pejorative terms used to describe those who support the president of Ukraine Mr. Poroshenko and his politics, or the terms related to the revolutionary events in Ukraine in 2014 – Euromaidan – a term widely used outside of Ukraine, together with the term Leninopad to describe the removal of the monuments of Lenin as a part of the policy of de-communisation. It is claimed that this terminology allows broader public to participate in political discussions since it simplifies the discourse but also sets some terms of reference for placing opponents and proponents of certain political actors, ideologies, or parties according to lexical delimitation lines. In the European Union those who criticize the policies of the Union and see a threat in the increased German influence go as far as to suggest a term Merkelreich to combine the name of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German word Reich to imply a rather brutal reference to the Third Reich. On the other hand, such a term provides a great simplification to the discussion about the nature of political processes within the European Union. By comparing Germany’s economic potential in the common market to the imperialistic ambitions it also sets discursive boundaries for a certain type of political debate. It is also stated that such lexical elements can indicate a shift in political and social developments since such pseudoterms have potential to transform into full-fledged political science terms in the future. It might be the case the militant and aggressive foreign policy of today’s Russia would one day named Putinism and become part of university textbooks in politics. As it is almost impossible to predict the future of a particular quasiterm, it is suggested that the current process of nomination of terms within the socio-political discourse should be studied with a particular attention. Some discursive practices may reveal the mechanisms behind the logic of how certain terms are used. For example, a political expert or a political scientist would hesitate to use a terminoid with pejorative connotations in official lecture or in a peer-reviewed article, but he or she can use it in an emotionally heated discussion or, with some reservations, even on a TV-show. These terms are all around and the ways and rules of their application should be paid more attention to. The article concludes that these elements should be researched from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Ideologies are important in modern politics. This is the standard reason political scientists give for studying them. In this article I provide another rationale for the study of ideologies: to promote democracy. This normative argument has been superceded by empirical ones, in part, because of the pejorative connotations of ideology. Those connotations are, however, based upon a selective history and hence an incomplete definition of the term. By reviewing that history, I recover a positive association between ideology and democracy. In the process, I hope to encourage political theorists to teach political ideologies.The Oxford English Dictionary provides two standard definitions of ideology. The first is descriptive or neutral: ideology is the “science of ideas.” This definition, indeed the word itself, originated with Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment philosopher. The second is critical or deprecatory: ideology is “ideal or abstract speculation” and “unpractical or visionary theorizing.” Napoleon Bonaparte, Tracy's contemporary, first used ideology in this pejorative sense. Both definitions are operative in contemporary political science.Political scientists who study ideologies as “belief-systems” follow the first definition. For example, standard texts define ideology as “a set of closely related beliefs, or ideas, or even attitudes, characteristic of a group or community” or “a value or belief system accepted as fact or truth by some group.” These texts focus upon the various functions of ideologies, e.g., communication, legitimation, socialization, and especially mobilization.

Abstract Die Landschaftsdarstellungen im Werk von Herta Müller fallen durch ihre pejorative Eindimensionalität auf, weil sie beständig mit der (Lebens)Angst bzw. dem Tod konnotiert sind. Müllers Naturbild steht im Einklang mit ihrer existentiellen Haltung und prägt ihr Verhältnis zur Welt und den Mitmenschen. Es erweist sich als gleichzusetzen mit ihrem Weltbild und ist daher auf der epistemologischen sowie sozial-politischen Ebene von elementarer Bedeutung. Ferner wird die Natur als poetologische Reflexionsfigur in ihren Texten eingesetzt, um allegorisch Müllers ästhetisches Konzept, die Motivation, Funktionen und Charakteristika des Schreibens und der Sprache zu illustrieren. In der Naturbeschreibung zeichnen sich luzid Müllers Poetik, Anthropologie, Ontologie und Ethik ab.The presentations of the landscape in Herta Mueller’s works are characterized by their pejorative one-dimensionality, because they are constantly connotated with the fear of death. Mueller’s view of nature is consistent with her existential attitude and in turn shapes her relationship with the world and her fellow human beings. It proves to be equivalent to her worldview and is therefore of fundamental importance at an epistemological and socio-political level. In addition, as a figure of poetic reflection in her texts, nature is used to illustrate allegorically Mueller’s aesthetic concept concerning the motivation, functions, and characteristics of writing and language. In the description of nature, Mueller’s poetics, anthropology, ontology, and ethics are lucidly illustrated.

The present paper deals with the dialectal situation of the lexeme ogar,-a m.‘a young man’, ‘a youth’, ‘a son’, which belongs to the core vocabulary of the traditional Eastern Moravian dialect. The dialect called Wallachian is spoken around the towns of Rožnov, Valašské Meziříčí, Vsetín, Zlín, Vizovice, and Valašské Klobouky. In the southern part of the Wallachia region (around Zlín, Vizovice, and Klobouky), the expression is realized as ogara, -y / -i m. In addition, the same sense of the word ogar is common not only in the Silesian-Moravian dialectal region (namely, the Lachia area around Frenštát), which was likewise affected by Carpathian pastoral colonization in the past, but also the eastern Moravian dialectal island of Kelč with its very specific phonology. In Slovakia, the expression is found in two places. It is attested from the Spiš region (more specifically, from Veľký Šariš), where it has a pejorative meaning and is also used as a swearword (denoting a rather neglected young man). The second location is Revúca in the Slovak Central Mountains, where it denotes a tall man who is very thin - almost emaciated. In Poland, the word ogar is attested in the southern part of the Malopolska region around Ropčice (ogar - “czasem na dziecko wołają: Ty ogarze!”) and in the Zakopane region (ogarek - “2. przezwisko małych chłopców”). This information is confirmed as of the last quarter of the nineteenth century as well as the beginning of the twentieth century by Karłowicz's dictionary. Apart from that, the present-day Kraków urban dialect contains the expression agar ‘a youth’. The word ogar is not attested in the sense of ‘a boy’, ‘a youth’ in any other Slavonic or non-Slavonic language. As regards linguistic geography, the distribution of the word does not extend beyond the mountainous and sub-mountainous regions of the Western Carpathians. As it appears in several semantic varieties in multiple places around the Carpathian region but nowhere else, the word can be classified as a distinctly Carpathian expression. The alternate form ogarek, ogárek is a common diminutive derived by the suffix -ek and having a positive affective function. The form ogara found in southern Wallachia was most likely coined by analogy or by mistaking the indirect grammatical case of ogar for the nominative. Such a mistaken interpretation is quite plausible, given the fact that the area in question was less affected by the Carpathian pastoral colonization than the other regions. Hence the possible change of the nominative form of the word from ogar to ogara (and resulting in a different declensional pattern according to the keyword předseda). The lexeme ohař ‘a hunting dog’ is most likely to be an old borrowing from Eastern languages, which possibly indicates some degree of influence of those languages over the European area in question. As regards the Western Carpathian (and thus also the Moravian-Wallachian) ogar ‘a boy’ etc., it concerns a second borrowing of the same non-Slavonic word but with a different semantic content via Romanian (regardless of whether this non-Slavonic Eastern word got into Romanian directly or, rather, via a Slavonic language). In that sense, the word exists as yet another evidence of the Romanian linguistic (and perhaps also ethnic) involvement in the pastoral colonization of the Western Carpathians.

Background:All patients included in the study fulfilled the ACR/EULAR classification criteria for SSc. We prospectively included patients who underwent at least two CMR at 1.5T, including native T1 and T2 mapping (which give account for myocardial fibrosis and myocardial edema respectively), left and right ventricles morphology and functional assessment, and Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) as a part of routine follow-up between 2015 and 2019.Objectives:To evaluate the prognostic value of initial abnormal T1 mapping.Methods:All patients included in the study fulfilled the ACR/EULAR classification criteria for SSc. We prospectively included patients who underwent at least two CMR at 1.5T, including native T1 and T2 mapping (which give account for myocardial fibrosis and myocardial edema respectively), left and right ventricles morphology and functional assessment, and Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) as a part of routine follow-up between 2015 and 2019.Results:Sixty-three patients underwent at list two CMR during the study period. Forty-three patients were women. Mean age was 52.5±15.5 years old. Follow-up duration between the initial and the follow-up CMR was 14.5±11.5 months. Forty-one had diffuse SSc. The mean native T1 was 1066.8 ±44.6 ms. Twenty-one patients suffered from cardiac clinical manifestations. Nine patients died during the follow-up. Thirty patients (47.6%) had elevated T1 (ET1) with mean T1 1105.4±36.7 ms at the time of initial CMR. Initial ET1 was clearly correlated with: 1/ alteration of Left Ventricle (LV) Ejection fraction (EF) (r=0.5, p<0.0001) during the study period, 2/LV dilatation at initial screening and follow up (r=0.22, p=0.03 and r=0.3, p=0.02). Regarding Right ventricle, initial ET1 was correlated with initial Right Ventricle (RV) dilatation (r=0.3, p=0.02) but neither with RV volume nor RVEF at follow-up. Interestingly, initial ET1 correlated with pericardial effusion (r=0.3, p=0.003) which is known to be a pejorative prognostic factor. Seventeen patients (28%) had LGE but the ET1 at initial screening and follow-up was not correlated with LGE.Six patients had elevated T2 (ET2) which correlated with initial and follow up LV dilatation (r=0,32, p=0.002 and r=0.5, p<0.0001 respectively) but not with LVEF during the period study. Among other parameters, initial increased BNP was correlated with follow up ET1 LVEF and RVEF (r=0.4, p=0.01; r=0.35, p=0.007; r=0,37, p=0.005 respectively). In the same way, initial Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) was correlated with follow up ET1 (r=0.3, p=0.02). Initial ET1 did not correlate with age, sex, cardiovascular risk factors, cardiac manifestations or death.Conclusion:Assessment of diffuse myocardial fibrosis by native T1 is predictive of the occurrence of cardiac dysfunction at the follow-up as initial ET1 was associated with decreased left ventricular function and LV and RV dilatations). These data highlights the potential role of CMR with T1mapping in initial screening and at the follow-up and provides new insights in the cardiac SSc follow up strategy.References:[1]Poindron V, Chatelus E, Canuet M, Gottenberg JE, Arnaud L, Gangi A, Gavand PE, Guffroy A, Korganow AS, Germain P, Sibilia J, El Ghannudi S, Martin T.T1 mapping cardiac magnetic resonance imaging frequently detects subclinical diffuse myocardial fibrosis in systemic sclerosis patients.Semin Arthritis Rheum. 2019 Jun 19.Disclosure of Interests:None declared

The paper discusses the groundless use of mathematics. This question has been explained mainly based on example of the so called d`Alembert’s rule which unfortunately still functions in science none the less it has been based on a fiction, contrary to the truth cognition as the fundamental purpose of science. That pejorative feature of the mentioned paradigm is marked very clearly in the paper to evaluate it negatively as the only one possible note. Next the adequate characteristics of variable body motion has been presented and the description of Atwood device given in view of explaining the essence of a real equilibrium of the system of material bodies where their real inertia is of importance. In conclusion the characteristics of real inertia force being the measure of this inertia is presented. The erroneous up-to-date view concerning the measure of body inertia, assuming mass as the measure of this magnitude enabling free manipulation of the acceleration value, has been revealed. At the end it is stressed that acceleration is always positive in its nature and is existent in each condition of the material reality.

Abstract This chapter examines material published in the field of animal studies in 2018. Following on from concerns highlighted in last year’s account, we find an amplified urgency and pressure being brought to bear on the conservative ideological foundations of much of today’s pro-animal theory, along with increased emphasis being placed on guarding against an unwitting affirmation of certain normative functions as well as potential recuperation by incumbent power structures. Similarly, the pejorative charge of Kantian correlationism as reactionary and normative is coming under increasing pressure, with the indictment of conservative reaction being turned back against such scholars who employ the concept of correlationism in an attempt to bypass theory altogether. By way of contested conceptions of extinction and the diverse fables to which they give rise, I argue that animal studies has reached a point in its rapid evolution and growth whence it becomes imperative that we reconsider the directions and methodologies of the field as a whole, and as an academic discipline emerging from the era of high theory in Continental thought. In order to facilitate this, I have divided the chapter into four sections: Extinction (I), Extinction (II), Extinction 2.0, and Fragility.

To assess attitudes toward chronically and acutely mentally and physically ill individuals, 106 undergraduates read one of four vignettes describing a hospitalized individual, with each vignette divided along the factors of diagnosis (schizophrenia or cancer) and chronicity (acute or chronic). Then they completed the Community Acceptance Scale and responded to 19 rationally derived paired adjectives. A series of 2 × 2 univariate analyses indicated that individuals with diagnoses of schizophrenia were viewed significantly more pejoratively than individuals with diagnoses of cancer. Similarly, individuals with chronic courses of treatment were viewed significantly more negatively than individuals with acute courses of treatment. Surprisingly, however, no univariate interactions reached statistical significance. Findings suggest that the lack of acceptance of the chronically mentally ill individual is a function of the devaluation associated with psychiatric diagnosis.

Background. The development of visual functions takes place in the first months of postnatal life and is completed around the one year of age. In this period, the maturation of the retina and the visual pathways occur, and binocular bonds are established at the level of the visual cortex. During this phase and then for a few years, a certain plasticity of the visual functions remains, which seem therefore susceptible to change both in a pejorative sense (by pathogens) and in an improving sense (for example, by therapeutic measures). This plasticity involves also the oculomotor system. Due to this plasticity, many researchers believe that there are some functional correlations between the visual and the stomatognathic apparatus. But the scientific evidence of this statement has not been clarified yet. Aim. The purpose of this review is therefore to analyze the clinical data in this field and finally to establish their level of evidence. Studies have been collected from the main databases, based on keywords. Results. The results showed a middle level of evidence since most of the data derive from case-control studies and cross-sectional studies. Conclusions. The level of evidence allows establishing that there is a correlation between ocular disorders (myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, exophoria, and an unphysiological gait due to ocular convergence defects) and dental occlusion, but it is not possible to establish the cause-effect relationship. Future studies should be aimed at establishing higher levels of evidence (prospective, controlled, and randomized studies).

The Norwegian lexical item akkurat and the Polish akurat: a cognitive semantic analysisThe aim of the article is to demonstrate to what extent the Norwegian akkurat and the Polish akurat show similarities and differences in their conceptual content (meaning). Adopting the perspective of cognitive semantics (CS), as described in Langacker (1987) and Lakoff (1987), I shall try to show that the meanings ascribed to these etymologically and formally related words constitute complex networks of senses, rooted in a prototypical centre in each of the languages under discussion. In addition to this, the findings will be interpreted with reference to the process of pragmaticalization (a language unit’s development of increasing pragmatic functions). Within this theoretical framework I shall demonstrate that subjectification/intersubjectification and pejoration/melioration motivate the main semantic difference between akkurat and akurat. The analysis is based on Norwegian and Polish monolingual corpus data.

Abstract This article aims to encourage a discussion of how evaluative morphemes conform to the principles of iconicity and Construction Grammar through the examination of English Adj+ie/y nominalisations (e.g. brownie, softie). Our analysis of the Adj+ie/y paradigm investigates conceptual processes that employ these evaluative morphological forms. We propose a Bidirectional Conceptualisation Model (BCM) to demonstrate a templatic correlation between iconic morphological components and evaluative connotations, by means of which the suffix -ie/y is employed to instantiate a specific iconic value of the [[x-]A ie/y]N construction. The BCM incorporates the Diminution: Pejoration ↔ Endearment scale, which accounts for the semantic duality of appreciative and depreciative values realised by the morphological concept of diminution. The results of the study support the idea that superficially different functions realised by one and the same morphological form are related through interaction of Idealised Cognitive Models.

Nowadays, gender and sexuality have become the object of global interdisciplinary research, and, searching the common grounds for the description of the issue, a brand-new theoretical category of “gender” is being developed in the frames of the Anglophone feminist theoretical discussion. The category acquires its meaning in the frames of the “sex – gender” opposition and is meant as the distinction between a human’s biological self (sex) and the socially constructed conceptions about social roles and functions. Introducing the theoretical concept of “gender” into the international communication outside the Anglophone linguistic space, new theoretical, methodological, translation and adaptation problems have been revealed, especially in the languages, where the category of the grammatical gender is strongly related to the lexical and grammar field and the creation of the “sex – gender” opposition seems to be controversial. “Gender” in the nowadays English language functions as a poly-semantic category – the notions of “sex” and “gender” are used interchangeably or as partial synonyms. Various terminological solutions are being found for the recreation of the category in other languages, taking into consideration the field and contextual meaning. Translating European gender equality political documents into Latvian, the notion “dzimums” is mostly used. Various terms – “dzimums”, “dzimte”, “dzimumsocialitāte”, “dženders” – are used interpreting the works of feminism theoreticians. The mass media do not often translate the term, using the variants “dženders” or “genders”, often in the pejorative meaning, connecting it to some type of genderism ideology, foreign to the Latvian mentality and traditional culture. The aim of the article is to offer an insight into the theoretical discussions about the search for “gender” terminological equivalence outside the Anglophone linguistic space that flourished in the Western academic feminism in the 1980s and 1990s. The article is devoted to the most characteristic problematic cases related to the adaptation of the notion into the vocabulary of the Latvian humanities and social sciences and mass media.

The relevance of this research project lies in the increasing interest of the general public and professional linguists towards public discourse and the specific type of the communicative personality whose verbal behavior shakes up the normative framework and leads to violations of linguistic security. Such a speaker prefers non-normative linguistic means with the strongest communicative and stylistic charge, because they support her desire for self-expression and attract the attention of others; needless to say they often include invective. The rejection of normative expressive means is also due to the deliberate or spontaneous intention of the speaker to humiliate, ridicule, or offend the interlocutor and assert herself, which is much easier to do with invective vocabulary. Looking at the functions of the invective, its paralinguistic and linguistic features, and the intentions of the speakers, the article describes the invective genres of hating and flaming. Hating is viewed as a deliberate communicative action aimed at discrediting a person or at her social stigmatization. Flaming is characterized by spontaneity and is due to the speaker’s communicative emotionality, asociality, and propensity towards conflicts. The author determines risks of using verbal abuse, invective genres, and pejoratives in public discourse, emphasizing the importance of regulating these through relevant legislation, since, as experience shows, invective may become a form of expressing linguistic extremism and lead to physical violence. The author discusses the immediate need of introducing mandatory moderation (both automated and manual) of chats on social networks, forums, public websites, messengers, TV shows and other media in order to prevent negative consequences of invectizing public discourse and to ensure linguistic security for communication participants.

This paper intends to lay the foundations for a relevance-theoretic approach to the diminutive morpheme. In many languages, this morpheme is attached to nouns, adjectives, adverbs or verbs. It frequently nuances their referents by providing information concerning the smallness, littleness or scarcity of the size, amount or degree of their referents. However, the semantics of this morpheme cannot always be connected with such notions. In Spanish, for example, it is often used in order to intensify, express approximation or pejoration, show affection or modesty, suggest intimacy or mitigate verbal actions. This variety of functions renders its semantics fairly elusive and rules out a conceptual analysis. Relying on the relevance-theoretic distinction between conceptual and procedural meaning, this paper argues that the diminutive might possess a procedural semantics amounting to procedures or processing instructions. It also considers the output(s) of such procedures in Spanish and shows that in several cases the diminutive would clearly contribute to the lexical pragmatic processes taking place during mutual parallel adjustment . These yield highly idiosyncratic conceptual representations. In other cases, the instructions encoded by the diminutive could be thought to trigger a representation of the speakers psychological states or even contribute to what in relevance-theoretic pragmatics is known as the higher-level explicature of an utterance. Since this would involve admitting that the semantics of the diminutive could be poly-procedural , this paper concludes by wondering whether a unitary procedural approach would be preferable.

<p>The fact that various myths influence the shape of law and the mythologization of some of its aspects is indisputable. In most cases, this process of “mythologization” is perceived pejoratively, leading to the establishment of groundless, irrational ideas and at the same time the rejection of “science” in favor of “fiction”. This article aims to propose a different approach to both the concept of myth and the mythologization of law, by referring to the classical, ancient understanding of the concept of mythos as a fable, story. Ancient Greek myth performed a function similar to the law, establishing some basic rules in society. Stressing its “narrative” side indicates that what matters is not so much a description of reality, but a process that emphasizes the relational nature of the community. Thus, relating the myth, just like reading the norm of law, is an interpretation of the event in the light of applicable principles and systems of values, while being also a continuous process of shaping social awareness. Interpreting the law as a story means that those who create and use it lose the luxury of simply remaining the “mouth that pronounces the words of the law” as Montesquieu stated, since they are supposed to care not only for its implementation, but also for the quality and conviction of citizens as to its validity. The proposed form of reading the law as a myth-fable, political myth therefore is a search for a plot, understood as a possibility to act, to respond to the needs and problems of the changing world as well as the development of “the political” politics and education of citizens.</p>

Cameroon Pidgin English (abbreviated to CamP) is one of the languages of wider communication in Cameroon, a country second only to Papua New Guinea in terms of its multiplicity of languages for a relatively small population. CamP is used alongside other languages like English and French (official languages), Fulfulde, Arab Choa, Ewondo and Duala (lingua francas), and over 250 indigenous languages. What is, however, peculiar about CamP is that it is not restricted to a particular class of people or to people from a particular region. A language which arose as a result of the desperate need for a link language between people who spoke mutually unintelligible languages has now established itself as a major force to reckon with in the linguistic landscape of the country. One of the main preoccupations among researchers on CamP has been its relationship with Cameroon English (CamE), which has higher status. While CamE is an official language in the country's constitution, CamP enjoys covert prestige bestowed on it by Cameroonians as a language of wider communication, social interaction, intimacy, etc. However, Cameroonians have been given to understand that the coexistence of CamP and CamE is responsible for the falling standard of English in the country, as a result of which CamP should be eradicated at all costs. This attitude has led to the stigmatisation and intimidation of CamP speakers as educational authorities all over the country attempt to ban the language, and refer to it in such pejorative terms as bad English, poor English, bush English, join join English etc. Such hostility has tended to drive the language underground so that speakers rarely express their liking for the language overtly. They are suspicious of language authorities and thus have developed an ambivalent attitude towards anything that has to do with CamP. Thus if those speakers who use CamP daily as the main medium of communication were to be asked what they think about its status, functions and prospects, the results would be largely negative (Schröder, 2003), not because they do not like the language but simply because they have been intimidated and stigmatised. This ambivalence has caused serious methodological difficulties for researchers, which have marred most results of studies on the functions, status and prospects of CamP. The inability to adopt an appropriate methodology to research the topic has given rise to conflicting findings and statements on the relationship between CamP and CamE, some of which are sometimes truly baffling (see Ngefac & Sala, 2006; Ayafor, 2005; Kouega, 2001; Chia, 2009). Researchers insensitive to the situation carry out research on CamP and obtain results that paint a completely distorted picture of the situation on the ground. In this light, certain basic questions about this relationship remain to be settled: What is actually the relationship between CamP and CamE? Is CamP really facing death? Is CamP losing ground to CamE? Is CamP soon going to lose its identity and idiosyncrasies to CamE or is CamP going to supplant CamE? This paper will consider how various researchers have grappled with these questions. By analysing their statements, it will attempt to explain the controversies that have characterised research on the relationship between CamP and CamE thus far.

O discurso da sustentabilidade imiscuiu-se no jargão dos negócios e tornou-se uma palavra de ordem no âmbito organizacional. Percebe-se que a mídia também ampliou a atenção, cujos protestos e causas ambientais realizados por meio da mídia passam a ser notícias de destaque. Norteado por fundamentos da análise sociológica do discurso, o objetivo desse estudo foi analisar a coerência entre as estratégias discursivas sobre sustentabilidade, extraídas dos Relatórios de Sustentabilidade (RS) de empresas de capital aberto com ações listadas na Bolsa de Valores de São Paulo, e as práticas ambientais dessas empresas relatadas no discurso midiático. No interior dos RS, além da análise discursiva de elementos norteadores da estratégia organizacional (discursos sobre missão, visão, princípios, crenças e valores), o estudo analisou outros trechos que forneceram o contexto para a interpretação discursiva. Em contraposição ao discurso institucional, foram analisadas as práticas dessas empresas relatadas pelo discurso midiático - jornais e revistas de grande circulação no país. Evidenciaram-se diversas incoerências entre os princípios norteadores das empresas e o discurso midiático. Observou-se que os padrões e funções discursivos transmitidos pelos RS, buscando uma imagem de empresa sustentável, operam de forma ideológica, procurando legitimidade por meio da repetição. Os RS apresentam-se como discursos prescritivos propondo regras de conduta e emitindo conselhos. Trata-se de discursos brilhantes na forma, acompanhados de símbolos e pobres de idéias, no sentido pejorativo da retórica. O estudo instiga reflexões acerca do accountability institucional e midiático e entre as contradições presentes no discurso e na prática institucional no que tange à sustentabilidade.
 
 Palavras-chave:Estratégias discursivas; padrões e funções discursivos; accountability; relatório de sustentabilidade.
 
 ABSTRACT
 
 Sustainability discourse has blended in business jargon becoming a watchword in organizational field. The media has also increased attention, whose protests and environmental causes have become prominent. This study examines the coherence between discursive strategies on sustainability, extracted from Sustainability Reports (SRs) of companies listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange – BM&FBOVESPA, and environmental practices of these companies reported in media discourse. Discursive analysis of the guiding elements of organizational strategy (mission, vision, principles, beliefs and values discourses) within the SRs and media discourses – wide circulation newspapers and magazines in Brazil were contrasted and analyzed. The results showed several inconsistencies between institutional and media discourses. Discursive patterns and functions provided by the SRs operate ideologically and seek legitimacy through repetition. SRs presented prescriptive discourses and proposed rules of conduct and advices. The institutional discourses are brilliant in form and poor in ideas. This article contributes in order to reflect on institutional and media accountability and contradictions present both in discourse and institutional practices in regard to company sustainability.
 
 Keywords: discursive strategies; institutional and media discourses; accountability; Sustainability Report (SR).

In this paper I examine compound names of plants, animals, human beings and other things in which at least one nominal component designates a part of the body or clothes, or some basic elements of houshold in Serbian and English. The object of my analysis are complex derivatives of the type (adjective noun) + suffix in Serbian and componds of the type noun's + noun, noun + noun and adjective + noun in English. I try to show that there is a difference in metaphorical designation of human beings and other living creatures and things by such compound nouns. My thesis is that the metathorical designation of human beings by such compounds is based on the symbolic meaning of some words and expressions while the designation of other things and beings relies on noticed similarity. In Serbian language such designation is provided by comples derivatives praznoglavac 'empty-headed person', tupoglavac 'dullard' debolokoiac 'callos person', golobradac 'young, inexperienced person' zutokljunac 'tledling' (fig), in English chicken liver, beetle brain birdbrain, bonehead, butterfingers, bigwig, blackleg, blue blood bluestocking, eat's paw, deadhead,fat-guts,fathead, goldbrick (kol) hardhat, hardhead, greenhorn, redcoat (ist), redneck (sl), thickhead, etc. Polisemous compounds like eat's paw lend support for this thesis because their designation of human beings is based on symbolic meaning of some words or expressions. I hypothesize that the direction and extend of the possible metaphorization of names may be accounted for by the following hierarchy (11) people - animals - plants - meterial things. Such hierarchy is well supported by the observations of Lakoff (1987) and Taylor (1995) about the role of human body in early experience and perception ofthe reality. Different restrictions which may be imposed in the hierarchy (11) should be the matter of further study, some of which have been noted on this paper. The compounds of this type denoting people have metaphorically meaning conected with some pejorative uses. These compounds refer to some psychological or characteral features, and show that for the classification of people such features are much more important than physical properties. While the animals and plants are classified according to some charecteristics of their body parts, people are usually classified according to psychollogical characteristics or their social functions. I have also noted a difference in structure between compounds designation animals and those designating plants and other things. The designation of animals relies more on metonymy, and that of plants and other things on metaphor based on comparision of noticed similarities. In the compounds designating animals, the nominal component relatively seldom refers to the parts of plants or other things. I guess that the cause may be the fact that the anatomy of plants is very different from the anatomy of animals. As a consequence the structure adjective + noun is much more characteristic of the compounds designating animals in English than the structure noun's + noun, and the same holds, although in a lesser degree for the compounds designating humans. It is also noticeable that in English compounds whose second component a part of body or clothes the first component rarely designates animals. On the other hand the compounds (9), in which the nominal head refers to some superordinate species, the first component often designates animal species, but usually of a very different kind. These data seem to lend support for Goldvarg & Gluksberg's thesis (1998) that metaforical interpretation is favoured if the nominal constituents denote quite different entities.

Abstract Background. Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia (WM) is a B-cell malignancy characterized by bone marrow (BM) infiltration of clonal lymphoplasmacytic cells, which produce a monoclonal immunoglobulin M. MYD88L265P mutation may be considered as a founder event because of it high frequency in WM. WM cells may acquire additional genetic hits that may potentially promote disease progression: CXCR4 or CD79B mutations, copy number variation,…TP53 is a tumor suppressor gene that functions as regulator influencing cellular responses to DNA damage. Little is known regarding TP53 alteration in WM. Our aim was to screen TP53 mutation in a large cohort of WM at diagnosis to analyze the genomic landscape of WM using targeted next generation sequencing (NGS) and genome wide single nucleotide polymorphism array (SNPa) and to identify clinical and biological characteristics. Method. BM samples of 125 WM (mean age: 67 years) were analyzed at diagnosis. Tumoral DNA was extracted following CD19 B cell selection. TP53 mutations were analyzed by targeted NGS to scan the coding exons of TP53. MYD88L265P, CD79A, CD79B, and CXCR4mutations were analyzed by sanger sequencing and/or NGS. Genome-Wide Human SNP Array 6.0 (Affymetrix chips) was performed in 62 cases. CN-LOH (copy neutral- loss of heterozygosity) and CNA (copy number aberration) were mapped using console 3.02 software (Affymetrix). Flow cytometry was performed to assess P53 and p21 expression after nutlin3a exposition to characterize functional mutant of TP53. Viability and cell growth of treated cells were determined using the MTS assay. Results. We have identified TP53 mutations using NGS in 7.3 % of WM (6 non-sense, 3 frameshift mutations located in the DNA binding domain) (TP53mut WM). The mutation load of TP53 varied from 13% to 98.9% (mean: 62.0%) using the variant allele frequency in NGS. We next examined the effects of nutlin-3a which is an mdm2 inhibitor on WM patients CD19+ cells genotyped for TP53 mutation. Nutlin-3a increased the expression of p53 and p21 in TP53Wild WM patients using flow cytometry (n=6). In contrast, in TP53MutWM cells, no significant variation of p53, p 21 and viability using MTS assay was observed suggesting the presence of functional mutation of TP53. The minimal deleted region of 17p in 17p deleted (TP53Del) samples was mapped using SNP array and contained 79 genes, among which was systematically comprised the loss of TP53. A high correlation between TP53 mutation and deletion 17p (p<106) was observed. One case of CN-LOH was observed at TP53 locus (1,6% of cases). Overall, we have identified alteration of TP53 locus including mutation, deletion and copy neutral loss of heterozigosity in 11, 2% of WM. Using SNP array, we found a relationship between deletion 17p, alteration of TP53 locus including mutation, UPD or del17p (TP53Alt) and TP53Mutand a greater frequency of genomic aberrations in WM compared toTP53wild (p=0.01, p=0.024 and p=0.06 respectively). A higher frequency of WM patients with more than 3 CNA identified by SNPa was observed in TP35Mut group (p=0.03) and del17p group (p<0.00001). No association was observed between TP53Mut and CXCR4 and MYD88mutations. We thoughtto identify clinical and biological characteristics of WM according to TP53Mutand/or Del17pfeatures. With a median follow-up of 5 years, 33 (26%) patients had died. 69% of cases were treated. Front line therapy included rituximab-based regimens in 76%, alkylating agent in 78%, fludarabine in 6%. The WM with TP53alteration, irrespective of TP53Mut or del17p, displayed features of adverse prognosis in regards to higher serum levels of b2m (89% versus 40%, p=0.012), and also greater IPSSWM score 2 and 3 (50% versus 30%, and 43% versus 30%, p=0.041, respectively). Importantly, the presence of TP53alteration, irrespective of TP5Mut or del17p, was associated to poor outcome in overall survival in our series, TP53alteration (p=0.003), del17p (p=0.002), and TP53Mut(p=0.015). TP53 alteration prognostic value was independent of CXCR4 or MYD88L265Pmutations. Conclusion: A low frequency of TP53 mutation was observed in WM at diagnosis. We identified a genomic signature associated to their presence. In addition, a pejorative prognostic value of TP53 mutation was observed in WM highlighted the need of new therapeutic in this sub group of WM. Disclosures Leleu: TEVA: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Novartis: Honoraria; LeoPharma: Honoraria; Pierre Fabre: Honoraria; Amgen: Honoraria; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Honoraria; Takeda: Honoraria; Celgene: Honoraria; Janssen: Honoraria.

Abstract According to Cushman, rationalization occurs when a person has performed an action and then concocts beliefs and desires that would have made it rational. We argue that this isn't the paradigmatic form of rationalization. Consequently, Cushman's explanation of the function and usefulness of rationalization is less broad-reaching than he intends. Cushman's account also obscures some of rationalization's pernicious consequences.

This article deals with metaphor and metonymy as language tools that function in a media text. Metaphors and metonymy violate the Grice’s maxims and serve a disinformation strategy. The metonymy in a media text is expressed mainly with the help of names (-onyms) and performs two functions. The pragmatic function is to shape the reader's perception. The instrumental function is to form the subjective image. The metonymic models (part – the whole, concrete – abstract, dominant – secondary) indirectly refer to an object, which allows the author to create a negative image without the risk of incriminating lies or disinformation. A metaphor in a disinforming media text helps to form a pejorative assessment of an object. The main functions of a metaphor in a media text are manipulative (metaphors form and fossilize stereotypes) and emotional-evaluative (metaphors appeal to emotions). The nature and game metaphors are frequently used in a media text. The nature metaphor is effectivebecause of its simplicity. The game metaphor forms the image of an adversary/enemy. Metaphors and metonymy in a media text make it either informationally redundant or eager, ambiguous and emotional. Metaphors and metonymy violate the Cooperative Principle and contribute to the manipulation of the readers’ perception and consciousness stimulating verbal aggression in readers’ comments on media texts

The article outlines the derivational, structural-semantic and functional properties of usual and individual-authorial adjectival composites with a materially non-marked suffix with the first adjectival and the second substantive component, denoting a characteristic of a person and having basically non-somatic notion of anthroponymic and non-anthroponymic character. Adjectival composites with the first adjectival and the second substantive component occupy a noticeable place among adjectival derivatives formed with the participation of a zero-suffix formant. So far, composites of the investigated word-formative type in general and complex-zero-suffixal adjectives with a materially non-marked formant in particular have never been the subject of a special study, which determines the relevancy of the chosen topic. The purpose of the article is to define the word-usage frequency of the corresponding complex-zero-suffixal adjectival derivatives, to find out their place, role, specificity of functioning in the modern Ukrainian language, to elucidate their derivational, structural-semantic and functional properties. The achievement of the stated goal involves solving of the following tasks: to determine the peculiar properties of the motivation of the derivatives under study, to analyze the external valency, as well as to find out their pragmatic potential. The conducted analysis of the complex-zero-suffixal adjectival derivatives has revealed the following tendencies: among the composites of the lexical-semantic group being studied, only opaque (non-motivated) composites function actively, while we have not noticed motivated and semi-motivated lexical items among them. Complex-zero-suffixal adjectives have broad co-occurrence and extensively implement their figurative (allegoric) meanings. On the whole, the corresponding composites, entering into distribution with the nouns denoting a person, gain pejorative meaning, becoming the markers of negative evaluation and disparagement. Sometimes it happens that the units under study come into distribution with the nouns denoting the phenomena of nature, realizing a new figurative idiomatic meaning – “the revival” of the nonliving, thus replenishing the corpus of epithets and contributing to the enrichment of the poetic language imagery.

Derived nouns on -ei (-erei) and those with prefix Ge- and suffix -e have a number of functions in German. The most prominent is arguably the expression of negative speaker attitudes, like dissatisfaction, contempt, etc. Both forms are normally interpreted as being synonymous (e. g. Tanzerei and Getanze). This article has the intention of sketching a more differentiated approach where it will be argued that even though there is considerable overlapping with regard to the meaning of the nouns in question, they cannot be classified as synonymous and that native speakers, even though unaware of the process, seem to have clearly marked preferences which are based on contextual and situational variables.

Abstract This study focusses on the use and functions of so-called taboo vocatives (e.g. dickhead, you bastard, bitch) in the language of London teenagers, based on the analysis of over 500 examples extracted from COLT (The Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language) and LEC (London English Corpus). Findings illustrate a wide variety of items in this category, and show that these cannot be regarded as mere insults, since they often serve to reinforce the bonds between young speakers as well, and indeed can even carry affectionate connotations. The majority of these items are nouns and denote some kind of sexual reference, an abnormal or strange human condition, or a pejorative, animal-related allusion. There does not seem to have been any major changes in the use of these forms from the 1990s to the first decades of the current century, although many of them have broadened their meaning and can now be used with either male or female speakers.

The article reveals the communicative and pragmatic parameters of the blog as a genre of personal Internet communication. On the material of the blog by Lyudmila Linnyk on the website �Galitsky Correspondent� it is proved that language means of different levels can participate in the process of text and character formation. They can acquire additional meanings in the process of unfolding the text, form an evaluative frame of the message, and facilitate the decoding of blog posts in the manner defined by the author mainstream. The purpose of the study is to reveal the communicative and pragmatic features of a blog as a specific genre of Internet communication. The following methods have been used in the work: descriptive (with its help we have collected and analyzed language means that are significant in the communication process), contextual (has allowed us to explore the environment of linguistic units and its impact on the result of communication) and the associative field method (has helped to identify associative links between in words, the implementation of a multilevel analysis of tokens). It is noted that various researchers base their understanding of a blog as a separate genre of communication in the network on its specific characteristics, but everyone agrees with the statement that a blog is a website with chronological, back-structured multimedia information presented in it, the content of which can be commented on. It has been found that the communicative and pragmatic potential of a blog as a genre of personal Internet communication is realized due to the actualization of linguistic means of different levels: pronouns and deictic structures, connotative and associative linguistic units, slang and pejorative elements, phraseological units, grafon, parcels, affix morphemes. It has been established that pronouns are used in blogs to intensify the text, dynamizing the storyline, and forming antinomies. Connotationally and associatively coloured linguistic units act as keywords that are nodes of a concatenation of the semantic structure of the text, the starting point for the development of the topic; they are emotionally evaluative components capable of semantically expanding the text, giving it new semantic dimensions, reflecting the blogger�s position and his individualized vision of certain social problems. Parcelled constructions perform attractively and meaningful reinforcing functions, actualize the blogger�s speech intentions. The use of grafon as a way of avoiding the graphic standard contributes to the actualization of the meanings of individual lexemes, providing them with new meanings. Slang and pejorative elements, like affixal morphemes, form evaluativeness (usually negative), expressiveness and euphemism. It is noted that different types of linguistic units can form the evaluative frame of the message, intensify the plotline, express the presentation of the material, establish connections between implications in the text and facilitate the identification of the associative meanings of the word.


 
 
 This consideration of British poet, novelist, and critic Iain Sinclair’s ‘bad’ writing begins at the summit of Beckton Alp, a pile of waste in London’s east that has been reconstituted as recreational space. For Sinclair, Beckton Alp functions as a totem signifying the pervasive regulatory influence of Panopticism in contemporary urban culture. It shares the Panopticon’s ‘see/being seen dyad’, which is delineated thus by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: 
 
 In the peripheric ring [which in this case acts as an analogue for London] one is seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower [for our purposes, Beckton Alp], one sees everything without being seen. (201)
 
 
 In his most recent novel, Dining on Stones (or, The Middle Ground), the prospect from Beckton Alp offers Sinclair the following image of London:
 
 Leaning on a creosoted railing London makes sense. There is a pattern, a working design. And there’s a word for it too: Obscenery. Blight. Stuttering movement. The distant river. The time membrane dissolves, in such a way that the viewer becomes the thing he is looking at. (190)
 
 
 The city, following Michel de Certeau, can be read as a text from Beckton Alp, one that appears intelligible, one that ‘makes sense’ (92). But what “sense” is the reader to make of Sinclair’s vision of London, a London characterised by this intriguing (and typically Sinclairean) neologism, obscenery? Obscenery’s etymological origins in the word ‘obscene’ suggest that it is indecent, unruly, offensive. It would seem to encompass everything that hegemonic culture would prefer to keep off-stage and unseen, everything that it considers ‘bad.’ Yet as Sinclair makes clear, it is hardly hidden—it can be seen from the Alp. By all accounts, obscenery proves to be the completely visible manifestation of what is normally segregated, managed and disposed of by disciplinary apparatuses, such as the Panoptic schema, which organise and supervise urban space. In summary, obscenery contends the regulatory power of Panopticism by being visible, obscenely so. 
 
 Sinclair is careful to avoid a dialectic positing obscenery as the disordered antinomy to the pattern of hegemonic order. Instead, obscenery problematises the differentiations demarcating ‘good’ and ‘bad’ culture. Sinclair’s poiesis also blurs the boundaries between divergent spheres of culture as it oscillates between small press publishing and the mass market. His mimeographed chapbooks and limited edition hardcovers have for the major part of his career been conceived, produced, and disseminated outside the parameters of mainstream culture. An affiliation with the avant-garde British Poetry Revival indicates Sinclair’s dedication to alternative publishing, as does the existence of his own imprints: the punningly named horz commerz, and the Albion Village Press.
 
 But his mainstream publications (including Dining on Stones, which was released by multinational publishing house Penguin) complicate this position because although he is published and circulated within the sights of hegemonic literary culture, and therefore subject to the gaze of the Panopticon, Sinclair rejects hegemonic expectations about what comprises literature. He exploits written language, a tool licensed by the Panopticon, for unlicensed praxis. Identifying Sinclair’s cultural production as a type of textual obscenery, or ‘bad’ writing proposes an alternative model of cultural production, one that enables the creative practitioner to loosen the panoptic bonds with which Foucault pinions the individual and productively negotiate the archetypal struggle faced in a capitalist political economy: the conflict between artistic integrity and commercial imperative. 
 
 In a sense, Sinclair and his circle of collaborators constitute a modern day la bohème—a league of artistic and literary putschists conspiring against the established order of cultural production, distribution, and consumption. As Sinclair commented in an interview: 
 
 There’s no anxiety. Most of the stuff I have done didn’t have to win anybody’s approval. For me, there wasn’t that question of ‘How do I get published?’ that seems to preoccupy writers now. I used to publish myself. (Jeffries)
 
 
 For Sinclair, hegemonic culture is marching acquiescently, mindlessly to the ‘military/industrial two-step. That old standard… YES was the word.’ (Sinclair, London Orbital 4) If ‘yes’ is the mantra of this type of (false) consciousness, then Sinclair’s contrary creations are asserting a politics of ‘no.’ Sinclair’s refusal to accede to hegemonic attitudes regarding what is ‘good’ writing points to a deliberate decision to preserve what Herbert Marcuse terms ‘artistic alienation’ (Sinclair 63). According to Marcuse, artistic alienation, as distinct from traditional Marxist notions of alienation, should be encouraged in order to preserve the integrity of the work of art as something that has the power to rupture reality. In late era capitalism, reality is the totality of commodity culture, thus art must remain antagonistic to the ubiquity of the commodity form. Or, in Marcuse’s words, ‘art has …magic power only as the power of negation. It can speak its own language only as long as the images are alive which refuse and refute the established order’ (65). Within the panoptic schema, the disciplinary apparatus of capitalism, refusal, or refuse, is equivalent to obscenery. Like raw sewage washing up on the beach, or a split garbage bag lying uncollected in the street, Sinclair’s writing is matter out-of-place.
 
 If Panopticism, as Foucault theorises, is to efficiently and effectively implement discipline via real and imagined networks of surveillance that shift constantly between operations extrinsic and intrinsic to the subject, it does not necessarily prevent heterogeneous, transgressive, or subversive practice from emerging. However, it will, by means of this surveillance, draw attention to these practices, classify and segregate them, apply pejorative labels such as ‘bad’, ‘useless’, ‘harmful’, and relegate them to a social or spatial sphere outside the realm of the normative tastes and standards. In this process lies the Panopticon’s vast potential to devise, standardise, and regulate patterns of production and consumption. Practices and production that do not conform to hegemonic conventions are deemed aberrant, and rendered invisible. In a capitalist political economy, where governing institutions and operations function as extensions of systems predicated upon the fetishism of commodities, regulating patterns of consumption—by deciding what can and can’t be seen—imposes control. According to the logic of scopophilic culture, to be ‘unseen,’ by choice or otherwise, necessarily restricts consumption. In this manner, the Panopticon reinforces its role as arbiter of public taste. Obscenery’s visibility, however, rejects panoptic classification. It resists the panoptic systems that police cultural production, not by remaining hidden, or Other, but by declaring its presence. Unlike the commodity, which in its conformity is seamlessly assimilated into consumer culture, obscenery draws attention. Beckton Alp, a sanitised pile of waste rendered useful, palatable, is, in contrast, an example of obscenery averted (see endnote). 
 
 As Marx explains, for a product to exist fully it must be consumed (91). A book becomes a product only when it is read. Writing that is designed to refuse the act of reading is perverse according to any schema of cultural logic, but particularly according to the logic of an economy driven by consumption. This refusal resonates with particular force within a capitalist schema of cultural production because it is fundamentally contrary to the process of commodification. Sinclair’s texts deny easy, uncritical consumption and subsequently cause a blockage in the process of commodification. In this manner, Sinclair contends the logos of capitalist alchemy. A book that resists being easily read, but is still visible to mainstream culture, constitutes a type of obscenery. Situating Sinclair’s poiesis within the domain of obscenery enables an understanding of why his texts have been judged by some critics and readers as ‘bad,’ difficult, inaccessible, impenetrable, even ‘unreadable’. Practitioners of counter-cultural and sub-cultural art and literature traditionally protect their minoritarian status and restrict access to their work by consciously constructing texts which might be considered ‘shit’; in other words, creating something that is deemed excremental, or ‘bad’ according to hegemonic tastes and standards. They create something that inhibits smooth digestion, something that causes a malfunction in the order of consumption. 
 
 Stylistically, Sinclair employs a number of linguistic and formal devices to repulse the reader. Unrelenting verbiage and extreme parataxis are two such contrivances, as this exemplary excerpt from Dining on Stones illustrates:
 
 HEALTHY BOWELS? No problem in that department. Quite the reverse. Eyes: like looking out of week-old milk bottles. Ears clogged and sticky nose broken. But bowels ticked like a German motor: Stephen X, age unknown: writer. Marine exile.
 
 
 His walk, the colonnade. Wet suits for scuba divers. Yellowed wedding dresses. Black god franchises. Fast food. NO CASH KEPT ON PREMISES. The shops, beneath the hulk of the Ocean Queen flats, dealt in negatives, prohibitions – fear. They kept no stock beyond instantly forgotten memorabilia, concrete floors. Stephen releases a clutch of bad wind. (Sinclair 308)
 
 
 Sinclair’s writing constructs linguistic heterotopias that ‘desiccate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar’ (Foucault, Archaeology xix). His language is clipped, elliptical, arrhythmic. In fact, Sinclair’s prose often doesn’t resemble prose; formally and syntactically, it is more aligned with poetry. It is peppered with paradoxical conceits—‘forgotten memorabilia’—which negate meaning and amplify the inscrutability of his words. His imagery is unexpected, discordant, frequently unsettling, as is his unpredictable register which veers from colloquialisms (‘No problem in that department’; Sinclair 308) to more formal, literary modes of expression (‘Stephen X, age unknown: writer’; Sinclair 308).
 
 Sinclair also alienates the reader through the use of digressive narrative, which in its Blakean insistence on cyclical shapes resists the linear structure associated with the shape of rational imagination. In terms of the economy of a teleological narrative, Sinclair’s storytelling in novels like Dining on Stones is wasteful in its diversions. His fictions and non-fictions contain characters and events that are incidental to what only occasionally resembles a plot. The apotheosis of the urge to contend linear forms of narrative is chronicled in Sinclair’s 2002 book London Orbital, a navigation of the M25 that as a circuitous journey has neither defined point of origin nor a locatable terminus. 
 
 Sinclair’s novels, criticism, poetry, films constitute a hermeneutic circle, insisting that you have a working knowledge of the other texts in order to decipher the single text, and the body of work gives meaning to each discrete text. Acquiring Sinclair’s recondite code—which those who are cognisant with his style are well aware—is not a task for the uncommitted. The reader must assume the role of detective tracking down his poetry in second-hand bookshops. Obscure references that saturate the page must be researched. To read and understand Sinclair requires what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has called ‘cultural competence’ (2). Bourdieu’s ideas on taste and consumption provide a framework for understanding Sinclair’s textual allegiances, his affinity for other types of textual obscenery—unsanctioned graffiti, small magazine poetry—which are also derided as ‘shit’, as ‘bad’ writing by those who have not acquired the cultural competence necessary to understand their coded information. 
 
 There is a self-reflexive joke contained in the title Dining on Stones. After all, it is a novel that constantly urges the reader to swallow indigestible text and unsavoury subject matter. Sinclair’s writing continually forces our attentions back to the purlieus of urban culture, to everything that the centrifugal forces of Panopticism have driven to the periphery: social inequality, marginal spatial practice, refuse, shit. Sinclair’s textual obscenery is perceived as ‘bad’, as excremental because it denies mainstream literary audiences the satisfaction of uncomplicated, uncritical consumption. According to the restrictive logic of late era capitalism, Sinclair’s slippery, complex, inaccessible narratives are perverse. But they are also the source of perverse pleasure for those who refuse the inhibitions of conformity.
 
 Endnote
 
 Visual technology in the service of surveillance has been steadily integrated into the everyday, and, by virtue of its ubiquity, has become ‘unseen.’ Similar to the panoptic technologies described by Foucault, Beckton Alp, ‘a considerable event that nobody notices,’ (Sinclair, Dining on Stones, 179) is also assimilated into the urban landscape. 
 
 References
 
 Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 2003. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1977. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Jeffries, Stuart. “On the Road.” The Guardian Online 24 Apr. 2004. 28 Apr. 2004 http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1201856,00.html>. Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. London & New York: Routledge, 2002. Marx, Karl. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft). Trans. Martin Nicolaus. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973. Sinclair, Iain. Dining on Stones (or, the Middle Ground). London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004. Sinclair, Iain. London Orbital. London: Granta, 2002.
 
 
 
 
 Citation reference for this article
 
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The word 'nigger' is arguably the most charged epithet in American English; thus it is surprising that this word has been appropriated by some African Americans to refer to themselves. To be precise, the African-American version of this term is not 'nigger' but 'nigga', a word that has, as Geneva Smitherman notes, "a variety of meanings ranging from positive to negative to neutral" (Black Talk 167). Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in his study of African-American literature, provides a theoretical foundation for understanding why some African Americans use this word and how it operates rhetorically. Building on Gates's work, I will argue that the co-optation of the slur often involves a complex of three rhetorical devices that fall under the rubric of an African-American rhetorical strategy called Signifyin(g)—a term that will be discussed at length later. The first of these devices is agnominatio, defined as "the repetition of a word with an alteration of both one letter and a sound" (Gates 46). The second, semantic inversion, is the reversal of the meaning of a term (Holt qtd. in Smitherman, "Chain"). Chiastic slaying, the third rhetorical strategy, is a critique that transforms the status of a group or individual.1 Through these three modes of rhetorical transfiguration, the slur 'nigger' becomes 'nigga' a positive term that carries with it a critique of racism. I will further argue that all of these rhetorical devices operate through a principle I term "semantic looping" in which a new term derives meaning by continual reference to an older, existing term. This principle is a key to understanding how Signifyin(g) works in the appropriation of 'nigger' and helps to reveal how, in the words of Michel Foucault, the appropriation is a culturally rooted form of "reverse discourse" (101). Ultimately, this rhetorical analysis reveals that the African-American usage of 'nigga' is a strategy for asserting the humanity of black people in the face of continuing racism, a strategy that celebrates an anti-assimilationist vision of African-American identity. Foucault has argued that while the naming of oppressed groups by those in power serves as an instrument for oppression, such naming can also engender group identification and resistance to oppression (101). The coining of the word 'homosexual', for example, allowed for the repression of gay people but also allowed homosexuals to organise a gay rights movement using the very terminology utilized to oppress them (Foucault 101). One strategy for resisting hostile slurs like 'queer' or 'nigger' is for the oppressed group to appropriate the name and transform it into a rallying cry or "reverse discourse". An understanding of how 'nigga' operates as a reverse discourse requires a culturally rooted rhetorical analysis of the term. Gates, in The Signifyin(g) Monkey, provides background for such an analysis. Because his project is ultimately to derive an African-American theory of literary criticism, he touches on the appropriation of 'nigger' only briefly, asserting that a "political offensive" was mounted against the term by African-Americans through a black rhetorical strategy called Signifyin(g) (47). Gates, however, does not explain precisely how Signifyin(g) works in this case, except to suggest that it involves agnominatio (46). Thus 'nigger' becomes 'nigga', a word that differs from the racial slur but originates from and recalls it.2 Although Gates's commentary on the appropriation of 'nigger' amounts to little more than a sentence, much of his explication of the term Signifyin(g) implicitly applies to the co-optation of 'nigger'. The rhetorical analysis presented in this paper is a logical extension of Gates's initial linkage of the appropriation of 'nigger' with the rhetorical practice of Signifyin(g). The social baggage attached to 'nigga' assures that every use of the term is double-voiced in the Bakhtinian sense. More precisely, 'nigga' is a Bakhtinian parody of 'nigger'; the new connotation parodies or comments on the original because the new term carries with it the history of its pejorative use as well as the refashioned connotation of defiant group pride.3 This kind of rhetorical turn or critique is an example of the African-American rhetorical practice Gates identifies as Signifyin(g). Pinning down exactly what constitutes Signifyin(g) is difficult. Numerous black language scholars have commented on the expansiveness of the term.4 Gates argues that in its broadest sense, to Signify means to be "figurative," further noting that "to define it in practice is to define it through any number of its embedded tropes" (81).5 For our purposes it can be described as a rhetorical action that indirectly critiques another term or sign by revising it. Gates explains that, fundamentally, this revision and critique involve "repetition, with a signal difference" (51). Gates distinguishes the African-American term, 'Signifyin(g)', from the word 'signifying' by capitalizing the 'S' and bracketing the 'g' (46). It is helpful to think of the former term as 'Signifyin(g) on' (or critiquing) something whereas the latter word 'signifies' (or means) something but does not inherently involve a critique. Thus, to parody the motions of a police officer behind his or her back 'Signifies on' the officer and 'signifies' one's disrespect.6 Signifyin(g) is inherently a counter-puncher's strategy, an act of resistance against an oppressive force. Gates even goes so far as to call it the "slave's trope" (52). In Signifyin(g), the revised term, through its parodic double-voicedness, enters into a semantic loop with the original term; recollection of past oppressive usage must occur to fuel the term's new meaning. Figure 1 - Semantic Loop of Semantic Inversion and Agnominatio This semantic loop recalls what W.E. B. Dubois termed African-American double consciousness, a consciousness that yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. (16-17) While 'nigga' recalls how blacks have been measured by the tape of the world, it also defies this estimation through ironic revision of the name. Although Dubois would criticize this pathway through the white term as a road to false consciousness, others might insist that since revision of the white term occurs through distinctly African-American rhetorical strategies, the revision is emblematic of an authentically African-American consciousness—which is a double consciousness. In this view the revision does not attempt to reconcile what DuBois calls the "two unreconciled strivings" of the black person as "an American and a Negro" but instead involves them in an endless interplay (17). The interplay of the two signs sustains an antagonistic stand toward the dominant white community through the polemical comment: "this is how whites see us but we are something more". 'Nigga', then, is "authentically black" speech because it recognizes and maintains the divide between black and white worlds. As Smitherman notes: [e]ncoded within the rhetoric of racial resistance, nigga is used to demarcate (Black) culturally rooted from (white) culturally assimilated African Americans. Niggaz are those Bloods (Blacks) who are down for Blackness and identify with the trials as well as triumphs of the Black experience… ("Chain") The defiance implied by the revision of the white slur is also an assertion of human subjectivity. Gates identifies a parallel strategy in African-American slave narratives. Referring to Frederick Douglass's famous chiasmus—"You have seen how a man became a slave, you will see how a slave became a man."—Gates asserts that "Douglass's major contribution to the slave narrative was to make chiasmus the central trope of slave narration, in which a slave-object writes himself or herself into a human subject through the act of writing" (172). By comparison, through the semantic inversion of 'nigger'/'nigga', dehumanized blacks speak themselves into human subjects through the act of speaking. This transfiguration conforms to what Gates terms "chiastic slaying" (66). His somewhat off-hand phrase is inspired by the African-American use of chiasmus, which is defined as, "a grammatical figure by which the order of words in one of two parallel clauses is inverted in the other" (Oxford English Dictionary qtd. in Grothe). Chiasmus is often represented as an ABBA pattern (so Douglass's chiasmus would be reduced to: (A) man - (B) slave - (B) slave - (A) man). In Gates's usage, chiastic slaying involves repetition and reversal but not necessarily a literal ABBA pattern of chiasmus. In the same vein, 'nigga' is a repetition of 'nigger' that reverses the position of African Americans (from objects to subjects). Analogously, 'nigger to nigga' can be conceived of as the inverted second clause of a chiastic statement like Douglass's 'man - slave - slave - man' in which personhood and agency are re-affirmed. This re-affirmation of humanity implicit in 'nigga' is not likely to be understood by many whites given, as Smitherman notes, that they often fail to recognize the semantic difference between 'nigger' and 'nigga'.7 Since whites are frequently unaware of the Signification of 'nigga', it is impossible for African Americans to kill (i.e. end) the white use of the racist term. In the context of Signification, chiastic slaying does not put an end to the idea Signified upon. In fact, Signification must be activated by what Gates calls the "absent presence" of the original term (48). The critique of racism and assertion of subjectivity implicit in the employment of 'nigga' is not aimed at white people or the elimination of their sign; it is aimed at a black audience that must survive in a continually racist environment. What, then, is the "slaying" of chiastic slaying? It must be seen as a refutation of the original term or sign. In the case of 'nigga', it is a rejection of the dehumanization implied by 'nigger' with the recognition that African Americans will still be continually subjected to this libel despite its refutation. Thus, the chiastic slaying of 'nigger' by 'nigga' requires a continual interplay or semantic loop between the two terms. The context of continuing racism, then, requires 'nigga' to recurrently signify on (i.e. assert the falsity of) the slur. The recurrent Signification can be thought of as a loop inscribed upon the linear chiastic pattern: Figure 2 - Semantic Loop Inscribed on the Chiastic PatternThe context of continuing racism is one factor that accounts for the value of semantic looping in African-American rhetoric. Since the semantic loops of African-American culture draw their strength from the oppression to which they react, they are continually useful. This kind of resistance does not attempt to overcome racism but instead draws African-American attention to it so blacks can survive it. The first step in this survival is to be aware, as DuBois might say, that blacks in America are perceived of as a "problem" (15). The Signification of 'nigga' also "keeps it real", by reminding African Americans of the harsh truth of racism and by continually enacting a refutation of racism through a complex of culturally familiar rhetorical strategies. In this respect, the appropriation of the white slur is, to borrow the words of Foucault, a culturally inspired "reverse discourse" aimed at responding to white oppression. The identification of semantic looping in this case opens up an array of other questions. How does semantic looping function in the appropriation of other epithets by other groups? (A few cases that may be worth investigating in addition to the previously mentioned 'queer', are 'dyke', 'girl'/'grrl' by young feminists and 'anorexia'/'ana' as well as 'bulimia'/'mia' by pro-eating-disorder advocates.) Do the cultural differences of various groups affect how semantic looping operates? What does semantic looping reveal about the struggle over authenticity or identity, especially with respect to gender, class and subculture? And lastly, how do groups respond to re-appropriations by dominant groups? (In particular I am thinking of the increasing use of 'nigga' by white American teenagers.) I hope others will find these questions worth pursuing. Notes 1. While Gates suggests that agnominatio is involved in the co-optation of 'nigger', he does not mention the term 'semantic inversion' at all (although he is obviously aware that Signifyin(g) often involves this rhetorical action). Gates's phrase, chiastic slaying, occurs only in the context of a general discussion of Signifyin(g). See 66 in Gates for his use of chiastic slaying. 2. Other English speakers including Australians and the English may find it difficult to distinguish between these spoken words and 'hear' them both as 'nigguh'. But to those from the United States the distinction is noticeable. 3. Gates identifies Bakhtin's notion of the double voiced word and his concept of narrative parody as relevant to African-American rhetoric. See 50, 110-13 and 131 in Gates. Bakhtin's most comprehensive discussion of double-voiced discourse can be found in 185-186, and 190-99. Bakhtin's distinction between parody and other types of discourse can be found in 193-99. 4. Gates lists the following as providing substantive definitions of Signifyin(g): H. Rap Brown, Roger D. Abrahams, Thomas Kochman, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Geneva Smitherman and Ralph Ellison (71). Gates considers Mitchell Kernan's data to be more representative than the others' and even she states that she could not get consensus from her informants regarding Signifyin(g) (Gates 80-81). 5. Gates has identified numerous rhetorical strategies that can be involved in Signifyin(g). See 52 in Gates for a complete list of these tropes. 6. I build on an example from Abrahams who states that "... it is signifying to make fun of a policeman by parodying his motions behind his back..." (52). 7. Smitherman notes that the semantic inversion of 'nigger' (or 'flippin the script' as it is known in the hip-hop world) "... is often misunderstood by European Americans and castigated by some African Americans" (Chain). Smitherman's comment suggests that the ability to discriminate between the two terms (as well as one's comfort level with the usage of 'nigga') is not racially monolithic. Whites who participate in hip-hop culture, for example, are likely to see the distinction between 'nigger' and 'nigga'. Some factors that seem likely to complicate any generalization about understanding and comfort level with 'nigga' are race, affinity for hip-hop, class, age and geographic location. References Abrahams, Roger D. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Aldine, 1970. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Ed. and Trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. DuBois, W.E. Burghardt. The Souls of Black Folk. Greenwich: Fawcett, 1961. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1980. Grothe, Mardy. Chiasmus.com. Online. Internet. 9 Oct. 2001. Available <http://www.chiasmus.com/whatischiasmus.shtml>. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford U P, 1988. Smitherman, Geneva. "'The Chain Remain the Same'." Journal of Black Studies 28 (1997): n.pag. Online. Academic Search Elite. 10 May 2002. - - -. Black Talk. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Links http://www.chiasmus.com/whatischiasmus.shtml Citation reference for this article MLA Style Jacobs, Andrew T.. "Appropriating a Slur" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/semantic.php>. Chicago Style Jacobs, Andrew T., "Appropriating a Slur" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/semantic.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Jacobs, Andrew T.. (2002) Appropriating a Slur. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/semantic.php> ([your date of access]).

The Gothic is not always suited to women’s emancipation, but it is very well suited to women’s anger, and all other instances of what Barbara Creed (3) would refer to as ‘abject’ femininity: excessive, uncanny and uncontained instances that disturb patriarchal norms of womanhood. This article asserts that the conventions of the Gothic genre are well suited to expressions of women’s rage; invoking Sarah Ahmed’s work on the discomforting presence of the kill-joy in order to explore how the often-alienating processes of uncensored female anger coincide with contemporary notions of the Monstrous Feminine. This should not suggest that the Gothic is a wholly feminist genre - one need only look to Jane Eyre to observe the binarised construction of Gothic women as either ‘pure’ or ‘deviant’: virginal heroine or mad woman in the attic. However, what is significant about the Gothic genre is that it often permits far more in-depth, even sympathetic explorations of ‘deviant femininity’ that are out of place elsewhere.Indeed, the normative, rationalist demand for good health and accommodating cheerfulness is symptomatic of what Queer Crip scholar Katarina Kolářová (264) describes as ‘compulsory, curative positivity’ – wherein the Monstrousness of deviant femininity, Queerness and disability must be ‘fixed’ in order to produce blithe, comforting feminine docility. It seems almost too obvious to point to The Yellow Wallpaper as a perfect exemplar of this: the physician husband of Gillman’s protagonist literally prescribes indolence and passivity as ‘cures’ for what may well be post-partum depression – another instance of distinctly feminine irrationality that must be promptly contained. The short story is peppered through with references to the protagonist’s ‘illness’ as a source of consternation or discomfort for her husband, who declares, “I feel easier with you now” (134) as she becomes more and more passive.The notion of men’s comfort is important within discussions of women’s anger – not only within the Gothic, but within a broader context of gendered power and privileged experience. Sara Ahmed’s Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness asserts that we “describe as happy a situation that you wish to defend. Happiness translates its wish into a politics, a wishful politics, a politics that demands that others live according to a wish” (573) For Ahmed, happiness is not solely an individual experience, but rather is relational, and as much influenced by normative systems of power as any other interpersonal process.It has historically fallen upon women to sacrifice their own happiness to ensure that men are comfortable; being quiet and unargumentative, remaining both chase and sexually alluring, being maternal and nurturing, while scrupulously censoring any evidence of pregnancy, breastfeeding or menstrual cycles (Boyer 79). If a woman has ceased to be happy within these terms, then she has failed to be a good woman, and experiences what Ahmed refers to as a ‘negative affect’ – a feeling of being out of place. To be out of place is to be an ‘affect alien’: one must either continue feeling alienated or correct one’s feelings (Ahmed 582). Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild uses the analogy of a bride feeling miserable at her wedding, obliging herself to bring her feelings in-line with what is expected of her, “Sensing a gap between the ideal feeling and the actual feeling she tolerated, the bride prompts herself to be happy” (Hochschild 61).Ahmed uses to the term ‘Kill Joy’ to refer to feminists – particularly black feminists – whose actions or presence refuse this obligation, and in turn project their discomfort outwards, instead of inwards. The stereotype of the angry black woman, or the humourless feminist persist because these women are not complicit in social orders that hold the comfort of white men as paramount (583); their presence is discomforting.Contrary to its title, Killing Joy does not advocate for an end to happiness. Rather, one might understand the act of killing joy as a tactic of subjective honesty – an acknowledgement of dis-ease, of one’s alienation and displacement within the social contract of reciprocal happiness. Here I use the word dis-ease as a deliberate double entendre – implying both the experience of a negative affect, as well as the apparent social ‘illness’ of refusing acquiescent female joy. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the protagonist’s passive femininity is ironically both the antithesis and the cause of her Monstrous transformation, demonstrating an instance of feminine liminality that is the hallmark of the Gothic heroine.Here I introduce the example of Lily Frankenstein, a modern interpretation of the Bride of the Creature, portrayed by Billie Piper in the Showtime series Penny Dreadful. In Shelley’s novel the Bride is commissioned for the Creature’s contentment, a contract that Frankenstein acknowledges she could not possibly have consented to (Shelley 206). She is never given sentience or agency; her theoretical existence and pre-natal destruction being premised entirely on the comfort of men. Upon her destruction, the Creature cries, “Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness?” (Shelley 209). Her first film portrayal by Elsa Lanchester in James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein (1936) is iconic, but brief. She is granted no dialogue, other than a terrified scream, followed by a goose-like hiss of disgust at Boris Karloff’s lonely Creature. Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) merges the characters of Elizabeth and the Bride into the same doomed woman. After being murdered by the Creature, she is resurrected by Frankenstein – and consequently fought over by both. Her inevitable suicide is her one moment of tragic autonomy.Penny Dreadful is the first time that the Bride has been given an opportunity to speak for herself. Lily’s character arc is neither that of the idealised, innocent victim, nor is she entirely abject and wanton: she is – quite literally – two women in one. Before she is re-animated and conditioned by Victor Frankenstein to be the perfect bride, she was Brona, a predictably tragic, Irish street-walker with a taste for whisky and a consumptive cough. Diane Long Hoeveler describes the ambiguous duality of the Gothic feminine arising from the fantasies of middle-class woman writing gothic fiction during the 19th century (106). Drawing upon Harriet Guest’s examination of the development of femininity in early Gothic literature, Hoeveler asserts that women may explore the ‘deviant’ pleasures of wanton sexuality and individualistic, sadistic power while still retaining the chaste femininity demanded of them by their bourgeois upbringings. As both innocent victim of patriarchy and Monstrous Feminine, the construction of the gothic heroine simultaneously criminalises and deifies women.I assert that Penny Dreadful demonstrates the blurring of these boundaries in such a way that the fantasy of the sympathetic, yet Monstrous Gothic Feminine is launched out of the parlours of bored Victorian housewives into a contemporary feminist moment that is characterised by a split between respectable diplomacy and the visibility of female rage. Her transition from coerced docility and abject, sexualised anger manifests in the second season of the show. The Creature – having grown impatient and jealous – comes to collect his Bride and is met with a furious refusal.Lily’s rage is explosive. Her raw emotion is evidently startling to the Creature, who stands in astonishment and fear at something even more monstrous and alien than himself – a woman’s unrestrained anger. For all his wretched ‘Otherness’ and misery, he is yet a man - a bastard son of the Enlightenment, desperate to be allowed entrance into the hallowed halls of reason. In both Shelley’s original novel and the series, he tries (and fails) to establish himself as a worthy and rational citizen; settling upon the Bride as his coveted consolation prize for his Monstrous failure. If he cannot be a man as his creator was, then he shall have a companion that is ‘like’ him to soothe his pain.Consequently, Lily’s refusal of the Creature is more than a rejection – it is the manifestation of an alien affect that has been given form within the undead, angry woman: a trifecta of ‘Otherness’. “Shall we wonder the pastures and recite your fucking poetry to the fucking cows?” She mocks the Creature’s bucolic, romantic ideals, killing his joyful phantasy that she, as his companion, will love and comfort him despite his Monstrousness (“Memento Mori”).Lily’s confrontation of the Creature is an unrestrained litany of women’s pain – the humiliation of corsetry and high heels, the slavery of marriage, the brutality of sexual coercion: all which Ahmed would refer to as the “signs of labour under the sign of happiness” (573). These are the pains that women must hide in order to maintain men’s comfort, the sacrificial emotional labours which are obfuscated by the mandates of male-defined femininity. The Gothic’s nurturance of anger transforms Lily’s outburst from an act of cruelty and selfishness to a site of significant feminine abjection. Through this scene Hochschild’s comment takes on new meaning: Lily – being quite literally the Bride (or the intended Bride) of the Creature – has turned the tables and has altered the process of disaffection – and made herself happy at the expense of men.Lily forms a militia of ‘fallen’ women from whom she demands tribute: the bleeding, amputated hands of abusive men. The scene is a thrilling one, recalling the misogyny of witch trials, sexual violence and exploitation as an army of angry kill joys bang on the banquet table, baying for men’s blood (“Ebb Tide”). However, as seems almost inevitable, Lily’s campaign is short-lived. Her efforts are thwarted and her foot soldiers either murdered or fled. We last see her walking dejectedly through the London fog, her fate and future unknown.Lily’s story recalls an instance of the ‘bad feminism’ that nice, respectable, mainstream feminists seek to distance themselves from. In her discussion of the acquittal of infamous castatrix Lorena Bobbitt, poet Katha Pollitt (65-66) observes the scramble by “nice, liberal middle-class professional” feminists to distance themselves from the narratives of irrational rage that supposedly characterise ‘victim feminism’ – opting instead for the comforting ivory towers of self-control and diplomacy.Lily’s speech to her troops is seen partly through the perspective of an increasingly alarmed Dorian Gray, who has hitherto been enjoying the debauched potential of these liberated, ‘deviant’ women, recalling bell hooks’ observation that “ultimately many males revolted when we stated that our bodies were territories that they could not occupy at will. Men who were ready for female sexual liberation if it meant free pussy, no strings attached, were rarely ready for feminist female sexual agency” (41). This is no longer a coterie of wanton women that he may enjoy, but a sisterhood of angry, vengeful kill-joys that will not be respectable, or considerate of his feelings in their endeavours.Here, parallels arise between the absolutes drawn between women as agents or victims, and the positioning of women as positive, progressive ‘rational’ beings or melancholic kill-joys that Ahmed describes. We need only turn to the contemporary debate surrounding the MeToo movement (and its asinine, defensive response of ‘Not All Men’) to observe that the process of identifying oneself as a victim has – for many – become synonymous with weakness, even amongst other feminists. Notably, Germaine Greer referred to the movement as ‘whinging’, calling upon women to be more assertive, instead of wallowing in self-victimisation and misandry, as Lily supposedly does (Miller).While Greer may be a particularly easy strawman, her comments nonetheless recall Judith Halberstam’s observations of prescriptive paternalism (maternalism?) within Western feminist discourse. His chapter Shadow Feminisms uses the work of Gayatri Spivak to describe how triumphalist narratives of women’s liberation often function to restrict the terms of women’s agency and expression – particularly those of women of colour.Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? asserts that the colonial narratives inherent within white feminists’ attempts to ‘save’ non-Western women are premised upon the imagined heroicism of the individual, which in turn demands the rejection of ‘subaltern’ strategies like passiveness, anger and refusal. She asks, “does the category of resistance impose a teleology of progressive politics on the analytics of power?” (9). Put more simply, both Halberstam and Spivak beg the question of why it is necessary for women and other historically marginalised groups to adopt optimistic and respectable standards of agency? Especially when those terms are pre-emptively defined by feminists like Greer.Halberstam conceptualises Shadow Feminisms in the melancholic terms of refusal, undoing, failure and anger. Even in name, Shadow Feminism is well suited to the Gothic – it has no agenda of triumphant, linear progress, nor the saccharine coercion of individualistic optimism. Rather, it emphasises the repressed, quiet forms of subversion that skulk in the introspective, resentful gloom. This is a feminism that cannot and will not let go of its traumas or its pain, because it should not have to (Halberstam, Queer Art 128-129).Thus, the Monstrousness of female rage is given space to acknowledge, rather than downplay or dismiss the affective-alienation of patriarchy. To paraphrase scholars Andrew Smith and Diana Wallace, the Gothic allows women to explore the hidden or censured expressions of dissatisfaction and resentment within patriarchal societies, being a “coded expression of women’s fears of entrapment within the domestic and within the female body” (Smith & Wallace 2).It may be easy to dismiss the Gothic as eldritch assemblages of Opheliac madness and abject hyperbole, I argue that it is valuable precisely because it invites the opening of festering wounds and the exploration of mouldering sepulchres that are shunned by the squeamish mainstream; coaxing the skeletons from the closet so that they may finally air their musty grievances. As Halberstam states in Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, the Gothic represents the return of the repressed and thus encourages rather than censors the exploration of grief, madness and irrationality (Skin Shows 19). Accordingly, we may understand Lily’s rage as what Halberstam would refer to as a Monstrous Technology (21-22) – more specifically, a technology of the Monstrous Feminine: a significant site of disruption within Gothic narratives that not only ‘shows’ the source of its abjection, but angrily airs its dirty laundry for everyone to see.Here emerges the distinction between the ‘non-whinging’, respectable feminism advocated by the likes of Greer and Lily’s Monstrous, Gothic Feminism. Observing a demonstration by a group of suffragettes, Lily describes their efforts as unambitious – “their enemies are same, but they seek equality” (“Good and Evil Braided Be”). Lily has set her sights upon mastery. By allowing her rage to manifest freely, her movement has manifested as the violent misandry that anti-suffragists and contemporary anti-feminists alike believe is characteristic of women’s liberation, provoking an uncomfortable moment for ‘good’ feminists who desperately wish to avoid such pejorative stereotypes.What Lily offers is not ethical. It does not conform to any justifiable feminist ideology. She represents that which is repressed, a distinctly female rage that has no place within any rational system of belief. Nonetheless, Lily remains a sympathetic character, her “doomed, keening women” (“Ebb Tide”) evoking a quiet, subversive thrill of solidarity that must be immediately hushed. This, I assert, is indicative of the liminal ambiguity that makes the Monstrous Feminine so unsettling, and so significant.And Monsters are always significant. Their ‘Otherness’ functions like lighthouses of meaning. Further, as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (6) reminds us, Monsters signify not only the fragile boundaries of human subjectivity and discourse, but also the origins of the alterity that defines them. Like the tragic creature of Shelley’s masterpiece, Monsters eventually follow their creators home to demand an explanation – their revenant terror demands accountability (Cohen 20). What Lily exemplifies does not have to make others comfortable, and it is under no obligation to remain within any standards of ethics. To return one last time to Halberstam, I argue that the Monstrosity manifested within female rage is valuable precisely because it because it obliges us “to be unsettled by the politically problematic connections history throws our way” (Halberstam, Queer Art 162). Therefore, to be angry, to dwell on traumatic pasts, and to revel in the ‘failure’ of negativity is to ensure that these genealogies are not ignored.When finally captured, Victor Frankenstein attempts to lobotomise her, promising to permanently take away the pain that is the cause of her Monstrous rage. To this, Lily responds: “there are some wounds that can never heal. There are scars that make us who we are, but without them, we don’t exist” (“Perpetual Night and the Blessed Dark”). Lily refuses to let go of her grief and her anger, and in so doing she fails to coalesce within the placid, docile femininity demanded by Victor Frankenstein. But her refusal is not premised in an obdurate reactionism. Rather, it is a tactic of survival. By her own words, without her trauma – and that of countless women before her – she does not exist. The violence of rape, abuse and the theft of her agency have defined her as both a woman and as a Monster. “I’m the sum part of one woman’s days. No more, no less”, she tells Frankenstein. To eschew her rage is to deny its origin.So, to finish I ask readers to take a moment, and dwell on that rage. On women’s rage. On yours. On the rage that may have been directed at you. Does that make you uncomfortable?Good.ReferencesAhmed, Sara. “Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35.3 (2010): 571-593.Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1996. 3-25.Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1993.“Ebb Tide.”. Penny Dreadful. Showtime, 2016.“Good and Evil Braided Be.” Penny Dreadful. Showtime, 2016.Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. USA: Duke UP, 1995.———. The Queer Art of Failure. USA: Duke UP, 2011.Hoeveler, Diane. “The Female Gothic, Beating Fantasies and the Civilizing Process.” Comparative Romanticisms: Power, Gender, Subjectivity. Eds. Larry H. Peer and Diane Long Hoeveler. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998. 101-132.hooks, bell. Communion: The Female Search for Love. USA: Harper Collins, 2003.Kolářová, Kristina. “The Inarticulate Post-Socialist Crip: On the Cruel Optimism of Neo-Liberal Transformation in the Czech Republic.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 8.3 (2014): 257-274.“Memento Mori.” Penny Dreadful. Showtime, 2015.Miller, Nick. “Germaine Greer Challenges #MeToo Campaign.” Sydney Morning Herald, 21 Jan. 2018.“Perpetual Night/The Blessed Dark.” Penny Dreadful. Showtime, 2016.Pollitt, Katha. “Lorena’s Army.” “Bad Girls”/“Good Girls”: Women, Sex & Power in the Nineties. Eds. Nan Bauer Maglin and Donna Perry. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996. 65-67.Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus. Australia: Penguin Books, 2009 [1818].Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1988.Smith, Andrew, and Diana Wallace. “The Female Gothic: Now and Then”. Gothic Studies 6.1 (2004): 1-7.


 
 
 When Ray Winstone’s character in the film ‘Nil by Mouth’, uses an album cover as a portable work surface to prepare drugs, what is invariably being enunciated is a narrative of generational identity. The object status of the vinyl record with its sleeves, notes, and protective sheath, appends a broader trajectory of the ‘record collection’, ‘stereo’, ‘speakers and dials’. The series of operations performed upon these raw materials whether, collecting, listening to, trading or buying second hand, creates a unique cultural form, a series of unordered items/events, which Lev Manovich terms a ‘narrative’. A narrative can best be described as a series of developments within otherwise unrelated elements, which forms and/or sustains an identity for the group of people interacting with them. The culture of listening to commodified music, with its necessary hardware (vinyl/CD/cassette), collectively works to map methods of listening and modes of behaviour, which enable an album’s ritualistic consumption. However, the various digital translations of the traditional album cover, including the ‘album icon’, the ‘desktop’, the ‘playlist’, invert the narrative created by the traditional vinyl assemblage by their nature as discrete data. The paragraphs which follow examine the effects of New Media’s ‘transmissive’ rather than reflective aesthetics, producing alternate maps of the physical, aural, and cultural experience of data and narrative. The digital album ‘icon’, the transmissible ‘sign’ or ‘trace’ of a material object, functions as a complication to Manovich’s New Media narrative/database binary. 
 
 The construction of database and narrative as natural enemies within New Media discourse highlighted by Manovich, is problematic when dealing with systems of operation characterised by their mutability. The traditional relationship between the album cover and its musical content, its remediation in digital format, serve to reveal that the two are not so mutually exclusive. Within popular discourse, it is acknowledged that the database – repositories of discrete information – is foregrounded by the digital apparatus, whereas the analogue apparatus is seen to foreground narrative – the processes performed upon information, from generation, to packaging, to transmission. 
 
 The packaging, the physical dimensions and collectable attributes of the record, constructed a ritualistic narrative specific to the vinyl. The public face of the vinyl album in record stores and personal collections was a transitory stage, prolonging the inevitable ‘unwrapping’ in private. The promise of something untouched and unexplored beyond the removal of the ‘nylon stockings’ of the vinyl sleeve; the enticement to come into physical contact with the textured ridges of the LP in order to move the play head to a desired point from which the experience will begin, articulates the seductive, and culturally entrenched power of the narrative database, and its private use. While the vinyl object constructed a narrative able to oscillate between public and private modes, the encoding of sound into mp3 or wma, by its presence as naked data is both direct and indirect, and foreshadows the general role of technology universally – to standardise action into repetitive occurrences – producing residues of a direct action. The digital music file has already been “unwrapped”; it is a conversion, a singularity, the “animal” which enters into things, signalling a change of state (Deleuze and Guattari 27).
 
 What is being altered and reassembled in the translation from analogue to digital is not only the format of the data, but the surrounding assemblage/phylum. While the LP’s assemblage was a promise of unexplored territory, the less determinate assemblage encasing the digital file, if anything, presents a colonised terrain. It makes explicit the external party (the programmer/conversion software) having proceeded before you. Whether through a ‘peer-to-peer’ or ‘pay-per-download’ service, the digital file becomes the single object accessible to countless, subjects. It is not one, but a multitude of unaccountable ‘unwrappers’.
 
 The map, or indexed data, is the catalyst to narrative activity. Its elements are arranged attuned to a cultural sensitivity, in order for its contents to be understood and to be acted upon. Understanding the material album cover as a specific type of cartography – physically shepherding the consumer towards real material locations when examining its digital counterpart in the “icon”, reveals the fragmentary effects of the digital apparatus. The album icon does not merely signal the malleability of subject and object and the rupture of former equations of reality with embodied experience. More importantly, the presence of the icon whether on a webpage, iPod, or playlist, heralds an alteration in the relationship of sound to visuals, and the nature of navigation itself.
 
 Albums contained in main street stores and shopping complexes, like the music they reflect, carry – not entirely pejorative – connotations of being “tame”, “tidy” and “bland” (Shaughnessy 5). The search for more experimental music entails a step outside the consumerist domain of the mainstream record industry to “comb the hidden networks of labels releasing new and experimental music”. Labels such as Warp and Beggars Banquet signify their position on the fringe of the economy through album covers “fizzing with … incoherence, weirdness, techno-fetishism, anti-commercialism, anti-design, and visual promiscuity”. The material album cover provides a perceptive map with which to explore a territory.
 
 Conversely, the presence of the ‘album icon’ on a website, or alongside a playlist causes the navigator to enter a territory to explore its map. For if a ‘narrative’ is to be understood in Munster’s terms as a set of processes performed upon information, then New Media have the ability to foreground the ‘database’ over ‘narrative’ accounts for its transmissive, rather than reflective aesthetics. Unlike an album cover in its material form – be it vinyl or CD, the icon doesn’t bind a material space – it doesn’t ‘cover’ anything. It is not an object to be transmitted. It is a transmission. It occupies the intermediate ground between narrative and data. The icon, like hypertext, becomes interface, a series of movements through and across unfolding surfaces. It is a performative zone, acting to shepherd site visitors to a review of the album in question, or towards options for attaining its material presence via customised payment. The album icon fragments the conceived assemblage, not only in its foregoing of materiality (which the material presence of the computer would contradict), but through altered methods of navigation; ‘transmitted’ rather than ‘reflective’ topographies of image to genre are aesthetically understood. When every site online becomes equivalent to the next by means of its ‘addressability’ – where everything can be located by an address, and a discrete value, what was formerly the visual equivalent to the music, is now a smooth plateau of perception (Vanhanen).
 
 As stated by Novak, technology, or rather human interaction with technology has evolved to the point where the materials transmitted are signs of subjects (1997). The material presence of an LP/CD acted as a set of coordinates with which to circumnavigate and ‘become’ a popular identity. With the digital music file, the ‘seducer’ becomes the ‘seduced’; the package that once contained the LP or CD becomes externalised upon the physical space, its subsequent “wrapping”/“unwrapping” or consumption, contingent upon the ambience created by a particular soundtrack. When consumers enter a territory to explore a map, the binary between narrative and database is blurred. 
 
 References
 
 Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. Kafka. Trans. Cochran, T. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Novak, M. “Transmitting Architecture.” In Kroker, Digital Delirium. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997. Munster, A. “Compression and Intensification of Visual Information in Flash Aesthetics.” Fine Art Forum 24 May 2004 http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n10/reviews/munster.html>. Shaughnessy, A. “Anti-Design, Playfulness and Techno-Futurism.” Introduction to Intro, Radical Album Cover Art Sampler 3. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2003. 5. Vanhanen, J. “Loving the Ghost in the Machine.” C-Theory 24 May 2002. http://www.ctheory.net/text_asp?pick=312>.
 
 
 
 
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“I’m fat–and it’s okay! It doesn’t mean I’m stupid, or ugly, or lazy, or selfish. I’m fat!” so proclaims Joy Nash in her YouTube video, A Fat Rant. “Fat! It’s three little letters–what are you afraid of?!” This is the question I pose to my class on day one of Fat Studies. Sadly, many college students do fear fat, and negative attitudes toward fat people are quite prevalent in this population (Ambwani et al. 366). As I teach it, Fat Studies is cross-listed between Psychology and Gender Studies. However, most students who enrol have majors in Psychology or other behavioural health science fields in which weight bias is particularly pronounced (Watkins and Concepcion 159). Upon finding stronger bias among third- versus first-year Physical Education students, O’Brien, Hunter, and Banks (308) speculated that the weight-centric curriculum that typifies this field actively engenders anti-fat attitudes. Based on their exploration of textbook content, McHugh and Kasardo (621) contend that Psychology too is complicit in propagating weight bias by espousing weight-centric messages throughout the curriculum. Such messages include the concepts that higher body weight invariably leads to poor health, weight control is simply a matter of individual choice, and dieting is an effective means of losing weight and improving health (Tylka et al.). These weight-centric tenets are, however, highly contested. For instance, there exists a body of research so vast that it has its own name, the “obesity paradox” literature. This literature (McAuley and Blair 773) entails studies that show that “obese” persons with chronic disease have relatively better survival rates and that a substantial portion of “overweight” and “obese” individuals have levels of metabolic health similar to or better than “normal” weight individuals (e.g., Flegal et al. 71). Finally, the “obesity paradox” literature includes studies showing that cardiovascular fitness is a far better predictor of mortality than weight. In other words, individuals may be both fit and fat, or conversely, unfit and thin (Barry et al. 382). In addition, Tylka et al. review literature attesting to the complex causes of weight status that extend beyond individual behaviour, ranging from genetic predispositions to sociocultural factors beyond personal control. Lastly, reviews of research on dieting interventions show that these are overwhelmingly ineffective in producing lasting weight loss or actual improvements in health and may in fact lead to disordered eating and other unanticipated adverse consequences (e.g., Bacon and Aphramor; Mann et al. 220; Salas e79; Tylka et al.).The newfound, interdisciplinary field of scholarship known as Fat Studies aims to debunk weight-centric misconceptions by elucidating findings that counter these mainstream suppositions. Health At Every Size® (HAES), a weight-neutral approach to holistic well-being, is an important facet of Fat Studies. The HAES paradigm advocates intuitive eating and pleasurable physical activity for health rather than restrictive dieting and regimented exercise for weight loss. HAES further encourages body acceptance of self and others regardless of size. Empirical evidence shows that HAES-based interventions improve physical and psychological health without harmful side-effects or high dropout rates associated with weight loss interventions (Bacon and Aphramor; Clifford et al. “Impact of Non-Diet Approaches” 143). HAES, like the broader field of Fat Studies, seeks to eradicate weight-based discrimination, positioning weight bias as a social justice issue that intersects with oppression based on other areas of difference such as gender, race, and social class. Much like Queer Studies, Fat Studies seeks to reclaim the word, fat, thus stripping it of its pejorative connotations. As Nash asserts in her video, “Fat is a descriptive physical characteristic. It’s not an insult, or an obscenity, or a death sentence!” As an academic discipline, Fat Studies is expanding its visibility and reach. The Fat Studies Reader, the primary source of reading for my course, provides a comprehensive overview of the field (Rothblum and Solovay 1). This interdisciplinary anthology addresses fat history and activism, fat as social inequality, fat in healthcare, and fat in popular culture. Ward (937) reviews this and other recently-released fat-friendly texts. The field features its own journal, Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, which publishes original research, overview articles, and reviews of assorted media. Both the Popular Culture Association and National Women’s Studies Association have special interest groups devoted to Fat Studies, and the American Psychological Association’s Division on the Psychology of Women has recently formed a task force on sizism (Bergen and Carrizales 22). Furthermore, Fat Studies conferences have been held in Australia and New Zealand, and the third annual Weight Stigma Conference will occur in Iceland, September 2015. Although the latter conference is not necessarily limited to those who align themselves with Fat Studies, keynote speakers include Ragen Chastain, a well-known member of the fat acceptance movement largely via her blog, Dances with Fat. The theme of this year’s conference, “Institutionalised Weightism: How to Challenge Oppressive Systems,” is consistent with Fat Studies precepts:This year’s theme focuses on the larger social hierarchies that favour thinness and reject fatness within western culture and how these systems have dictated the framing of fatness within the media, medicine, academia and our own identities. What can be done to oppose systemised oppression? What can be learned from the fight for social justice and equality within other arenas? Can research and activism be united to challenge prevailing ideas about fat bodies?Concomitantly, Fat Studies courses have begun to appear on college campuses. Watkins, Farrell, and Doyle-Hugmeyer (180) identified and described four Fat Studies and two HAES courses that were being taught in the U.S. and abroad as of 2012. Since then, a Fat Studies course has been taught online at West Virginia University and another will soon be offered at Washington State University. Additionally, a new HAES class has been taught at Saint Mary’s College of California during the last two academic years. Cameron (“Toward a Fat Pedagogy” 28) describes ways in which nearly 30 instructors from five different countries have incorporated fat studies pedagogy into university courses across an array of academic areas. This growing trend is manifested in The Fat Pedagogy Reader (Russell and Cameron) due out later this year. In this article, I describe content and pedagogical strategies that I use in my Fat Studies course. I then share students’ qualitative reactions, drawing upon excerpts from written assignments. During the term reported here, the class was comprised of 17 undergraduate and 5 graduate students. Undergraduate majors included 47% in Psychology, 24% in Women Studies, 24% in various other College of Liberal Arts fields, and 6% in the College of Public Health. Graduate majors included 40% in the College of Public Health and 60% in the College of Education. Following submission of final grades, students provided consent via email allowing written responses on assignments to be anonymously incorporated into research reports. Assignments drawn upon for this report include weekly reading reactions to specific journal articles in which students were to summarise the main points, identify and discuss a specific quote or passage that stood out to them, and consider and discuss applicability of the information in the article. This report also utilises responses to a final assignment in which students were to articulate take-home lessons from the course.Despite the catalogue description, many students enter Fat Studies with a misunderstanding of what the course entails. Some admitted that they thought the course was about reducing obesity and the presumed health risks associated with this alleged pathological condition (Watkins). Others understood, but were somewhat dubious, at least at the outset, “Before I began this class, I admit that I was skeptical of what Fat Studies meant.” Another student experienced “a severe cognitive dissonance” between the Fat Studies curriculum and that of a previous behavioural health class:My professor spent the entire quarter spouting off statistics, such as the next generation of children will be the first generation to have a lower life expectancy than their parents and the ever increasing obesity rates that are putting such a tax on our health care system, and I took her words to heart. I was scared for myself and for the populations I would soon be working with. I was worried that I was destined to a chronic disease and bothered that my BMI was two points above ‘normal.’ I believed everything my professor alluded to on the danger of obesity because it was things I had heard in the media and was led to believe all my life.Yet another related, “At first, I will be honest, it was hard for me to accept a lot of this information, but throughout the term every class changed my mind about my view of fat people.” A few students have voiced even greater initial resistance. During a past term, one student lamented that the material represented an attack on her intended behavioural health profession. Cameron (“Learning to Teach Everybody”) describes comparable reactions among students in her Critical Obesity course taught within a behavioural health science unit. Ward (937) attests that, even in Gender Studies, fat is the topic that creates the most controversy. Similarly, she describes students’ immense discomfort when asked to entertain perspectives that challenge deeply engrained ideas inculcated by our culture’s “obesity epidemic.” Discomfort, however, is not necessarily antithetical to learning. In prompting students to unlearn “the biomedically-informed truth of obesity, namely that fat people are unfit, unhealthy, and in need of ‘saving’ through expert interventions,” Moola at al. recommend equipping them with an “ethics of discomfort” (217). No easy task, “It requires courage to ask our students to forgo the security of prescriptive health messaging in favour of confusion and uncertainty” (221). I encourage students to entertain conflicting perspectives by assigning empirically-based articles emanating from peer-reviewed journals in their own disciplines that challenge mainstream discourses on obesity (e.g., Aphramor; Bombak e60; Tomiyama, Ahlstrom, and Mann 861). Students whose training is steeped in the scientific method seem to appreciate having quantitative data at their disposal to convince themselves–and their peers and professors–that widely held weight-centric beliefs and practices may not be valid. One student remarked, “Since I have taken this course, I feel like I am prepared to discuss the fallacy of the weight-health relationship,” citing specific articles that would aid in the effort. Likewise, Cameron’s (“Learning to Teach Everybody”) students reported a need to read research reports in order to begin questioning long-held beliefs.In addition, I assign readings that provide students with the opportunity to hear the voices of fat people themselves, a cornerstone of Fat Studies. Besides chapters in The Fat Studies Reader authored by scholars and activists who identify as fat, I assign qualitative articles (e.g., Lewis et al.) and narrative reports (e.g., Pause 42) in which fat people describe their experiences with weight and weight bias. Additionally, I provide positive images of fat people via films and websites (Clifford et al. HAES®; Watkins; Watkins and Doyle-Hugmeyer 177) in order to counteract the preponderance of negative, dehumanising portrayals in popular media (e.g., Ata and Thompson 41). In response, a student stated:One of the biggest things I took away from this term was the confidence I found in fat women through films and stories. They had more confidence than I have seen in any tiny girl and owned the body they were given.I introduce “normal” weight allies as well, most especially Linda Bacon whose treatise on thin privilege tends to set the stage for viewing weight bias as a form of oppression (Bacon). One student observed, “It was a relief to be able to read and talk about weight oppression in a classroom setting for once.” Another appreciated that “The class did a great job at analysing fat as oppression and not like a secondhand oppression as I have seen in my past classes.” Typically, fat students were already aware of weight-based privilege and oppression, often painfully so. Thinner students, however, were often astonished by this concept, several describing Bacon’s article as “eye-opening.” In reaction, many vowed to act as allies:This class has really opened my eyes and prepared me to be an ally to fat people. It will be difficult for some time while I try to get others to understand my point of view on fat people but I believe once there are enough allies, people’s minds will really start changing and it will benefit everyone for the better.Pedagogically, I choose to share my own experiences as they relate to course content and encourage students, at least in their written assignments, to do the same. Other instructors refrain from this practice for fear of reinforcing traditional discourses or eliciting detrimental reactions from students (Watkins, Farrell, and Doyle-Hugmeyer 191). Nevertheless, this tack seems to work well in my course, with many students opting to disclose their relevant circumstances during classroom discussions: Throughout the term I very much valued and appreciated when classmates would share their experiences. I love listening and hearing to others experiences and I think that is a great way to understand the material and learn from one another.It really helped to read different articles and hear classmates discuss and share stories that I was able to relate to. The idea of hearing people talk about issues that I thought I was the only one who dealt with was so refreshing and enlightening.The structure of this class allowed me to learn how this information is applicable to my life and made it deeper than just memorising information.Thus far, across three terms, no student has described iatrogenic effects from this process. In fact, most attribute positive transformations to the class. These include enhanced body acceptance of self and others: This class decreased my fat phobia towards others and gave me a better understanding about the intersectionality of one’s weight. For example, I now feel that I no longer view my family in a fat phobic way and I also feel responsible for educating my brother and helping him develop a strong self-esteem regardless of his size.I never thought this class would change my life, almost save my life. Through studies shown in class and real life people following their dreams, it made my mind completely change about how I view my body and myself.I can only hope that in the future, I will be more forgiving, tolerant, and above all accepting of myself, much less others. Regardless of a person’s shape and size, we are all beautiful, and while I’m just beginning to understand this, it can only get better from here.Students also reported becoming more savvy consumers of weight-centric media messages as well as realigning their eating and exercise behaviour in accordance with HAES: I find myself disgusted at the television now, especially with the amount of diet ads, fitness club ads, and exercise equipment ads all aimed at making a ‘better you.’ I now know that I would never be better off with a SlimFast shake, P90X, or a Total Gym. I would be better off eating when I’m hungry, working out because it is fun, and still eating Thin Mints when I want to. Prior to this class, I would work out rigorously, running seven miles a day. Now I realise why at times I dreaded to work out, it was simply a mathematical system to burn the energy that I had acquired earlier in the day. Instead what I realise I should do is something I enjoy, that way I will never get tired of whatever I am doing. While I do enjoy running, other activities would bring more joy while engaging in a healthy lifestyle like hiking or mountain biking.I will never go on another diet. I will stop choosing exercises I don’t love to do. I will not weigh myself every single day hoping for the number on the scale to change.A reduction in self-weighing was perhaps the most frequent behaviour change that students expressed. This is particularly valuable in that frequent self-weighing is associated with disordered eating and unhealthy weight control behaviours (Neumark-Sztainer et al. 811):I have realised that the number on the scale is simply a number on the scale. That number does not define who you are. I have stopped weighing myself every morning. I put the scale in the storage closet so I don’t have to look at it. I even encouraged my roommate to stop weighing herself too. What has been most beneficial for me to take away from this class is the notion that the number on the scale has so much less to do with fitness levels than most people understand. Coming from a numbers obsessed person like myself, this class has actually gotten me to leave the scales behind. I used to weigh myself every single day and my self-confidence reflected whether I was up or down in weight from the day before. It seems so silly to me now. From this class, I take away a new outlook on body diversity. I will evaluate who I am for what I do and not represent myself with a number. I’m going to have my cake this time, and actually eat it too!Finally, students described ways in which they might carry the concepts from Fat Studies into their future professions: I want to go to law school. This model is something I will work toward in the fight for social justice.As a teacher and teacher of teachers, I plan to incorporate discussions on size diversity and how this should be addressed within the field of adapted physical education.I do not know how I would have gone forward if I had never taken this class. I probably would have continued to use weight loss as an effective measure of success for both nutrition and physical activity interventions. I will never be able to think about the obesity prevention movement in the same way.Since I am working toward being a clinical psychologist, I don’t want to have a client who is pursuing weight loss and then blindly believe that they need to lose weight. I’d rather be of the mindset that every person is unique, and that there are other markers of health at every size.Jones and Hughes-Decatur (59) call for increased scholarship illustrating and evaluating critical body pedagogies so that teachers might provide students with tools to critique dominant discourses, helping them forge healthy relationships with their own bodies in the process. As such, this paper describes elements of a Fat Studies class that other instructors may choose to adopt. It additionally presents qualitative data suggesting that students came to think about fat and fat people in new and divergent ways. Qualitative responses also suggest that students developed better body image and more adaptive eating and exercise behaviours throughout the term. Although no students have yet described lasting adverse effects from the class, one stated that she would have preferred less of a focus on health and more of a focus on issues such as fat fashion. Indeed, some Fat Studies scholars (e.g., Lee) advocate separating discussions of weight bias from discussions of health status to avoid stigmatising fat people who do experience health problems. While concerns about fostering healthism within the fat acceptance movement are valid, as a behavioural health professional with an audience of students training in these fields, I have chosen to devote three weeks of our ten week term to this subject matter. Depending on their academic background, others who teach Fat Studies may choose to emphasise different aspects such as media representations or historical connotations of fat.Nevertheless, the preponderance of positive comments evidenced throughout students’ assignments may certainly be a function of social desirability. Although I explicitly invite critique, and in fact assign readings (e.g., Welsh 33) and present media that question HAES and Fat Studies concepts, students may still feel obliged to articulate acceptance of and transformations consistent with the principles of these movements. As a more objective assessment of student outcomes, I am currently conducting a quantitative evaluation, in which I remain blind to students’ identities, of this year’s Fat Studies course compared to other upper division/graduate Psychology courses, examining potential changes in weight bias, body image and dieting behaviour, adherence to appearance-related media messages, and obligatory exercise behaviour. I postulate results akin to those of Humphrey, Clifford, and Neyman Morris (143) who found reductions in weight bias, improved body image, and improved eating behaviour among college students as a function of their HAES course. 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