No description available.

Thèse (Ph.D.)--Université Laval, 1999. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr.

No description available.

Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 1999. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr.

Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 1999. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr.

This study asks whether the use of non-English words in the novels of Canadian Mennonites perpetuates a cultural binary, and concludes that it does not. The use of the non-English word, rather than enforcing a binary between "us and them", ultimately reveals that cultural boundaries are permeable and unstable. Recent reader-response theory, which sees the reader as always influenced by a context, is central to this inquiry. Analysis of readers' responses in the form of questionnaires constitutes part of the support for my assertions, while an examination of typography, orthography, interlingua, and theme in three novels by Canadian Mennonites provides the balance. Chapter one lays the theoretical framework for the investigation. It discusses: reader-response theory and the impossibility of accessing a stable textual meaning coincidental with the author's intention, the challenge of the non-English word to the concept of universality, and the distinction between proper “English" and non-institutional "english". Chapter two examines some readers' responses to non-English words and finds that “inside" readers have interpretations in common with "outside” readers, and that variations exist between the interpretations of “inside" readers. A binary model is too simplistic to encompass the range of contexts from which readers read. Chapter three discusses typography, orthography, and interlanguage in relation to (Low) German, and suggests the importance of these features to a discussion of the texts. Chapters four through six examine Rudy Wiebe's The Blue Mountains of China (1970), Anne Konrad's The Blue Jar (1985), and Armin Wiebe's The Salvation of Yasch Siemens (1984) respectively. Each novel's thematic concern with cultural boundaries serves as a framework for interpreting its physical and linguistic features. Chapter seven concludes by examining the influence of my own fragmented identity on the development of my argument, and revisits the issue of authorial intent in our politically less-than-perfect world. A lengthy appendix serves as a pluralistic glossary to the texts, and contains the responses to my questionnaires. A brief section outlines some of the appendix's interesting patterns and trends. An index to the appendix is provided since the appendix is not arranged alphabetically.

During the seventies, a new discourse on language emerged and built up in Quebec. While the "querelle du joual" was almost finished, feminists became more and more aware of their so-called "mother tongue"'s inherent sexism. Believing in determinist linguistic theories, the vast majority of them came to the conclusion that language was a symbolic system that rejected women and women's experience. / While some American feminists were proposing an important reform of the language, in Quebec, a few women writers incorporated their preoccupations with language in their literary texts. These women dedicated themselves to intensive textual researches, with the intention of creating a new "women's language" that would override the patriarchal law ruling the symbolic order. The different works studied in this thesis have been chosen between those of the women most representative of feminist metalinguistic discourse in Quebec: L'Euguelionne (1976), by Louky Bersianik, L'Amer ou le chapitre effrite (1977), by Nicole Brossard, Une voix pour Odile (1978) by France Theoret and Lueur: roman archeologique (1979) by Madeleine Gagnon. / The analysis of these texts will particularly be focused on the tensions building between discursive and formal aspects of each work. We'll see if and how the metalinguistic discourse, which we can find in the texts themselves and in more theoretic articles, is manifesting itself by a radical manipulation of the language at a formal level. The variety of ways some women writers of Quebec tried to inscribe feminine experience in language can be shown as a proof of the extreme difficulty of these textual practices, which elaborate themselves through what they are desperately trying to overcome.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de la Sorbonne, Paris IV, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. i-xvi) and indexes.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de la Sorbonne, Paris IV, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. i-xvi) and indexes.

No description available.