The paper examines science fiction literature as a product and part of the social consciousness of the modern capitalist world order. This world order is seen as emphasizing science, technology, movement, growth, urbanization, industrialization, complex organization, and progress. The document is organized into two sections. The first section…

The study of the varieties of language usage in social contexts can made a significant contribution to general welfare if judgments of people's language are unshackled from right-wrong presuppositions and a dispassionate approach is taken to relating their language to the situations they must deal with in the course of their lives. An…

Rural working-class women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are rarely heard from as writers. The letters and diaries of such women that are available give virtually no information about culture, politics, or the arts, and they practically never contain an opinion. Instead, they provide minute, repetitive observations, with…

The three dominant views of metaphor emphasize comparison anomaly or dissimilarity, and a somewhat vaguer notion that combines aspects of the first two, called conceptual interaction. In all three views, a central consideration as to the aptness of the metaphor is the similarity of the objects linked by the metaphor (tenor and vehicle). The exact…

The jeremiad, a sermonic rhetorical form, played a significant role in the American Revolution. As a successful social movement, the Revolution generated a language that portrayed its interpretation of reality. This was achieved in part through the use of significant forms that served to provide a link between the past and future and to foster a…

Humor in literature and children's responses to humor deserve serious study. Humor in literature may focus on a character's method for coping with a disturbing situation, problems (such as riddles) that engender sudden insights when things fall into place, or ludicrous characters. Incongruity and surprise also play an important part in humor and…

This analysis of 22 of the 29 most popular books selected through the 1978 Books for Young Adults Poll shows the books to have considerable career content and largely to present characters with positive attitudes toward work. The 29 books are listed and the 22 career-oriented books are discussed in terms of the kinds of work represented in the…

THE STUDENT PACKET FOR GRADE 10 OF THE NEBRASKA ENGLISH CURRICULUM BEGINS WITH FOUR UNITS ON LITERATURE, EACH STRESSING AN ASPECT OF MAN'S CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD. THROUGH A STUDY OF THE LITERATURE OF SEVERAL CULTURES, WRITTEN AT VARIOUS TIMES, STUDENTS FIRST CONSIDER "MAN AND NATURE, MAN'S PICTURE OF NATURE." THE SECOND UNIT, "MAN…

Over 80 young adult novels for blacks were analyzed to determine how they revealed the shared experiences of black people in the family setting and the social world (including the world of work). The analyses showed that the authors of these books tended to focus totally on the familial aspects of the shared experiences of black people, a rather…

A review of the history of criticism applied to the arts, literature, and drama is provided in this paper and related to the need for feminist criticism. The differences of critical opinion as to whether art should reproduce life or stand on its own are discussed. The paper notes that the role and nature of art and artists have been continuously…

Based on the premise that the examination of primordial and universal genres of utterance illuminates universal principles of speaking and meaning, this paper examines the Anglo-Saxon boast, a common form of speaking among Germanic warrior societies during the early middle ages. It tells how Old English literature provides evidence from which the…

Analogies between the reading and writing processes can be drawn from a method of teaching literature that is based on Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading. The prime responsibilities of teachers of literature are to allow students the right to experience the text for themselves, arriving at their own interpretations, and to make…

The focus of the contributions to this journal issue is communication theory and research. Following an introductory article that deals with the need for quality control in the criticism of communication research, eight articles offer discussions of the following topics: the nature of criticism in rhetorical and communicative studies, some issues…

Western regional writing provides a valuable resource for scholars and teachers. In their accounts of the populating of the West and the effects of that population, Western writers suggest questions that might be asked of any region--questions of skill, culture, race, environment, scenery, and progress. If the genre deals with these matters to a…

The precision and poetic logic of the language used by Anton Chekhov in his plays, particularly "The Sea Gull," can be explored through an analysis of his use of dialogue, characterization, and imagery. Measuring the nature of a relationship, rather than providing a direct literal interchange, the dialogue is both social, when individual…