Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching

Animality as an excuse for murder: David Grann and Killers of the Flower Moon

2023-07-06T06:12:29+00:00

This paper examines the investigative nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, which explores a series of murders of vulnerable members of the Osage tribe that took place in northeastern Oklahoma between 1918 and 1931. Grann’s account reveals how white citizens, ranchers, and townsfolk conspired against their Native American neighbors in a scheme involving poisoning, arson, deception, and falsified death certificates. The direct motivation for these crimes was greed triggered by income from oil deposits discovered in the land where the Osage were relocated after a century of broken treaties and other misfortunes. Furthermore, the paper explores how the supposed animality of the victims was employed to conceal and excuse genocidal tendencies against Native tribes, and how contemporary Native American accounts attest to their sense of unreality, resulting in the unclear status and uncanny subsistence of a living person reduced to the status of a ghost. In a broader perspective this paper discusses the colonization of America and its impact on the indigenous tribes who already inhabited the land. The demeaning metaphor of Indians as beasts yielded to a more palatable representation of the Noble Savage, but the accusations of bestiality returned when the tribes attempted to protect their way of living. The colonizers believed that by not cultivating the land and not building large, permanent communities, the indigenous tribes had forfeited their title to the land; those who resisted were conveniently labeled as pests to justify their inevitable erasure. The paper recalls rarely cited evidence, dating back to the history of the suppression of the 1652 Irish rebellion, to examine the multitudinous ways in which language played an important part in justifying the supposed animality of the indigenous people and eradicating them to make room for governmentauthorized settlers.

Cross-linguistic phonological interaction: Word-stress usage in the English of Polish advanced EFL speakers

2023-07-05T12:25:13+00:00

The paper discusses the emergence of L1-induced word-stress patterns in the spoken production of Polish advanced speakers of English. In Polish, unlike in English, a great deal of word-stress predictability is attested, and the paper investigates whether this affects the actual production. The investigations are couched within the broad area of contact linguistics and are analysed in the usage-based cognitive phonological approach. A possible lack of exemplar connections to standard English forms is postulated here, so that EFL speakers develop patterns where the connections are being made to their native exemplars. The Frequency in a Favourable Context criterion is used here to estimate effects of use pattern that are distinct in the investigated languages. The data were obtained in a series of production tasks in a test-like format, by students in the English Department at PUK in Kraków. The results were analysed to the effect that they demonstrated a high level of L1 influence bordering possibly on innovation and propagation of new pattern of use, with cognate forms demonstrating the more rigid adherence to L1 stress locus.

Fostering an autonomous approach as a key to successful remote learning during the covid pandemic

2023-07-06T05:40:16+00:00

The purpose of this article is to call for greater attention to the expanding problem of fostering autonomous approach, which may prove to be the key to changing the common perception of remote learning and be the source of its success. Drawing on the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework, this conceptual paper integrates research on learning and teaching approaches in the light of emerging realities to present the potential and benefits of a remote learning model based on autonomous practice and increased awareness. A case is made that fundamental work is necessary to contribute to a positive change in public attitudes towards remote learning and to increase its effectiveness. Current debates on the potential for developing the latest teaching recommendations are also extended, considering the benefits of promoting autonomous approaches with a particular reference to distance learning settings.

The 55th Linguistics Colloquium “Inter- und intrasprachliche Kontraste / Inter- and Intralinguistic Contrasts”, online, Rzeszów 2021

2023-07-06T06:42:02+00:00

Progress in Colour Studies, Tallinn 2022

2023-07-06T06:51:37+00:00

Circumlocutions with the noun guy in Hawai’i Creole English

2023-07-05T12:11:39+00:00

The purpose of this article is to identify and analyse the uses of the word guy in circumlocutions in The Revelation of St. John Divine in Hawai’i Creole English. The identified instances of circumlocutions with guy are contrasted with their parallel expressions found in King James’ Bible. The analysis was conducted with the corpus tools offered by AntConc. In the text, the word guy occurs 385 times and it is found 177 times in various circumlocutions.