Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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2025-03-20T00:00:00Z, 2025-03-20T00:00:00Z
This thesis explores the conceptual mechanisms that underlie utopian world-making and rest on grammatical structures, identified as ‘grammars of utopia’. Examining case studies from modern and...Show moreThis thesis explores the conceptual mechanisms that underlie utopian world-making and rest on grammatical structures, identified as ‘grammars of utopia’. Examining case studies from modern and contemporary English and Greek literature, the thesis shows utopia to be both beyond and within grammatical limits: the conception of an ideal society, which a utopia is, is a gesture away from a given reality – its limitations, more precisely – as well as towards an alternative one, and this latter is the one drawing limits to the utopian thought anew. Herbert George Wells’ A Modern Utopia (1905), James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962), and Sotiris Dimitriou’s The Silence of the Dry Weed (2011) map five categories without which we cannot make sense of or construe utopian narratives: modality, polarity, conditionality, subjectivity, and mood. Therefore, close reading these works provides a first grammatical ‘study of Utopian fantasy mechanics’, as proposed by Fredric Jameson (2005, xiii). Αt the same time, all texts try (and more or less succeed) to remap these five configurations and invite possibilities of alternative grammars of utopia that are yet to come.Show less
Over the years, English interrogative tags (isn’t it? wouldn’t they? right?) have received quite some scholarly attention. However, the same cannot be said of their French counterparts: oui? non? n...Show moreOver the years, English interrogative tags (isn’t it? wouldn’t they? right?) have received quite some scholarly attention. However, the same cannot be said of their French counterparts: oui? non? n’est-ce pas? and hein?. In order to find the interpretative differences between those four tags, we decided to examine the matrix sentences they could combine with. We argued that the incompatibilities of these tags with certain matrix sentences were caused by their intrinsic differences. With that in mind, we used various tests to determine those differences. We found that the polarity distribution within the tag question played an important part in their interpretation. That is, tag questions with reversed polarity (positive matrix, negative tag or vice-versa) clearly conveyed a meaning of doubt on the speaker’s part, whereas those with constant polarity hardly showed any uncertainty at all. We claimed that oui?, a tag that only occurs in constant polarity questions, expresses the dominance of the speaker over the hearer, by means of orders, rhetorical questions and questions that are strongly biased towards a positive answer. Furthermore, we hypothesized that hein? expresses neither doubt nor dominance, which distinguishes it from the other tags we discussed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Au fil des années, les tags interrogatifs en anglais (isn’t it ? wouldn’t they ? right ?) ont reçu beaucoup d’attention dans la littérature scientifique. Cependant, cela n’est pas vrai pour les tags interrogatifs en français : oui ?, non ?, n’est-ce pas ?, et hein ?. Afin de mieux cerner les différences interprétatives entre ces tags, nous avons examiné les matrices avec lesquelles ils se combinaient. Nous avons avancé que les différences intrinsèques entre les tags provoquent leurs différences de compatibilité. Aussi avons-nous employé différents tests dans l’objectif de mieux comprendre ces différences. Nous avons trouvé que la distribution de polarité dans la question-reprise joue un rôle important dans son interprétation. C’est-à-dire, les questions-reprise de polarité inversée (une matrice positive, un tag négatif ou vice-versa) indiquent un certain degré de doute de la part du locuteur, tandis que celles de polarité constante n’expriment aucun sentiment de doute. Nous avons proposé que oui ?, qui ne figure que dans les contextes de polarité constante, exprime la domination du locuteur par rapport à son interlocuteur. Cette domination se manifeste par des injonctions, des questions rhétoriques et des questions présuppositionnelles. Finalement, nous avons formulé l’hypothèse que hein ? n’exprime ni le doute ni la domination, ce qui le distingue des autres tags que nous avons discutés.Show less
