This thesis explores structures of melancholy in five of Kurt Vonnegut's early novels, Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. The thesis attempts to give new readings to each of the novels by drawing on critical approaches to melancholy and by viewing each text as being subject to contemporary cultural influences. In particular, the thesis maps how each of the novels comments on human progress through a combination of historical, scientific, cultural, social and political paradigms. In the chapters on The Sirens of Titan and Mother Night the protagonist is seen as suffering from a number of melancholic complaints that are closely related to schizophrenia, while the narratives as a whole exploit this splintering of the self to suggest a variety of allegorical readings. The chapters on Player Piano, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions discuss how the Puritan foundations of American culture play a major part in the construction of the self through the establishment of the Protestant work ethic. These chapters also attempt to expose how many of the ideological concepts that adhere to work, progress and capitalism have melancholic consequences for all involved. Throughout the thesis the relationship between reality and representation, language and authority is seen as being crucial to understanding the depth of Vonnegut's early novels and the way in which each novel deconstructs established values and subverts readers' expectations. Occasionally, the thesis discusses the novels' poststructural concerns as appearing to precipitate melancholy within both readers and characters. However, the thesis also explores how melancholy has been seen historically to galvanise the soul and build up, from the depths of depression, a renewal of spirit. Overall, the thesis shows how melancholy is a constituent part of Vonnegut's novels, connecting his work to the tradition in American melancholic writing created by the founders of the nation. This thesis traces the persistence of this melancholic note within selected Vonnegut novels and its connections with other themes identified within his work.

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The announcements concerning the introduction of modern languages in Key Stage Two in England (https://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/ curriculum/national curriculum2014, [accessed 8 March 2013]), although not a new initiative, have renewed the need to train generalist primary teachers in teaching modern languages. Following an initial announcement of the introduction of the English Baccalaureate, the poor outcomes achieved by England in the European languages survey (COE, 2012) and the news that modern languages would be part of the primary curriculum (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18531751 [accessed 21 June 2012]) contributed to refreshing the agenda of languages in the country and the role of early second language learning appears to be slowly resurrecting. In order to provide trainee teachers with the skills necessary for teaching young learners modern languages, this study focuses on increasing subject knowledge and pedagogical competence in a short time by developing trainees’ reflective practice, broadly following the tradition of strategy-based instruction (Macaro, 2001; Cohen, 2007; Oxford, 2011), but within a social constructivist understanding of learning using collaboration. The research, which follows a mixed method case study approach, proposes and trials a teaching approach that incorporates language learning strategies in a collaborative manner. The design of a revised strategy-based approach has a three-fold purpose: (i) to enable primary trainee teachers to develop the linguistic skills necessary to teach another language through the use of the linguistic knowledge they already possess in their own mother tongue (Saville-Troike, 2012); (ii) to use self-regulation to build confidence and competence in the target language; and (iii) to enable trainees and pupils to develop their language learning autonomy. Results indicate that, within the case studies reported here, such an approach seemed to be an effective way of learning and teaching another language simultaneously for adults, as it provided ab-initio language learners with a basis for the development of linguistic skills thus increasing their capacity for languages. Whilst there is no claim to generalisation here, the studies indicate that using language learning strategies may create and sustain interest and engagement in the subject—a condition that has been identified as critical to the success of any teaching approach. Whilst the results were positive in terms of developing acceptable levels of linguistic competence in adult learners over a short time, the use of a strategy-based method with children did not prove satisfactory, perhaps because of the high metacognitive demands placed on them when they had not yet developed high level abstract thinking, particularly the amount of prior knowledge needed and the language required to verbalise complex cognitive processes.

This thesis compares two perspectives on the production of Holocaust memory: a novel that leads up to The Holocaust in Britain and one that reflects the hindsight perspective of a liberator in the Soviet Union. The novels are Virginia Woolf’s BETWEEN THE ACTS and Vasily Grossman’s LIFE AND FATE. The analysis offers a locus of analysis for the diasporic literary energy created by the catastrophe in the 20th and 21st centuries. The project offers a theorized standpoint on the role of literature on official historical archives. Proposing a method through which contemporary readers can engage the diasporic event of The Holocaust, the project adopts both the extended metaphor and literal expression of soundscapes. Soundscapes encompass the immaterial processes of memorialization and the literal sonic textures developed in Holocaust novels. The critical perspective incorporates contemporary notions of narratology, archival practices, and cultural manifestations of language into the notion of literary ethnomusicology.

This thesis seeks to interrogate the presence and purposes of intertextuality in the work of contemporary French filmmaker Claire Denis, with specific focus on Michael Riffaterre’s theories of ungrammaticality, and Paul Ricoeur’s work on discourse as event or performance. Neither Riffaterre nor Ricoeur’s theories of intertextuality have been engaged in much depth in the study of cinema. Denis’s œuvre, which is composed mainly of feature films, but also includes short films, documentaries, music videos and collaborations on exhibitions and live concerts, is vastly intertextual, engaging with other moving image media, music, visual art, philosophy, poetry and literature, and media coverage of real events. In current criticism, Denis and many of her fellow contemporary French female filmmakers are more commonly referred to through a gender-neutral prism of auteurism rather than with reference to their gender, which may be read as a means for a female director to disengage with any categorisation of her work as resolutely female-centric. The auteur label is problematic, however, as it tends to suggest a state of creative isolation and supremacy, where the author’s recognizable creative voice as it appears throughout their work is more important than any other element of a film. This description sits particularly uneasily with the work of Denis, for whom collaboration and intertextual engagement with other sources is vital; this is evident in Denis’s consistent highlighting of the importance of her regular collaborators’ contributions to her work, and the texts with which her films engage, in interviews. Interviews with Denis, therefore, will form as important an element of my primary research material as her corpus of films and other works. In the introduction to this thesis, I will highlight some of the main themes and concerns of Denis’s work, namely foreignness, intrusion and the body, and introduce the corpus of critical work which has explored them. Such themes will certainly arise in my work, but will always be explored through the foregrounding of Riffaterre and Ricoeur’s theories of intertextuality. I will then proceed to briefly examine how Denis may be read as an intertextual auteur, though the phrase may as yet seem something of an oxymoron. The main body of the thesis thereafter will be used to search Denis’s œuvre for intertexts, aligning specific films and other creative endeavours together wherever they share particular themes or may be read productively through a particular theory of intertextuality. My aim, eventually, will be to examine how this intertextual richness may lead to a re-evaluation of Denis not as an auteur in the conventional sense, but as one for whom collaboration and textual openness are crucial.

This thesis wrestles with the normativity of language, its usage and its practices while questioning the signifié-signifiant reality. A structural reading of language designs its translational practices within the source-target framework, thereby essentialising its relationship en passant: everything has meaning as long as we accept the hidden framework of a universal language. Therefore, language outlined as a system of signs is a product of transcendental considerations and consequently it renders practice into a hermeticrealm in which the distinction between eidos and eidolon, right and wrong, familiar and unfamiliar, grammar and gibberish makes perfect sense and in which the translation from A to B is simply a matter of transferring identities. Linguistic power neutralises through its transcendental conditioning ephemera in life and world. We will discover that a phenomenological reading of language is open to layers which questions the dialectic setting of linguistic knowledge production. Phenomenology proposes to study life-world relationships by reducing the power of dialectical denomination to the power of gazing (Husserl’s epoché) or to the lenses of ambiguity (Merleau-Ponty’s être sauvage). Theorising language and translational practices within the phenomenological realm follows the concept of being oriented towards body-life-world while laying bare the phenomenon language. This revealing method supersedes empirical considerations since phenomenological methodology questions permanently our very own positioning. Hence, the transfer from A to B will be challenged by possibilities which are temporary: it is about a transfer zone featuring A as A’ to B (Husserl) or A’ in B / C (Merleau-Ponty). However, the phenomenological possibility reveals that the price for ephemera is tamed by the condition of its possibilities: indeed, the aporia of linguistic identity in polyvalence requires not only phenomenological brackets but also a transcendental backup. Chapter I and II study the translational practice of language and phenomenology by explaining its analysis via dynamised transcendental conditions. The disillusion of the phenomenological inquiry will be yield by radicalising phenomenological reading of language towards a phenomenographical practice of language. Chapter III goes to the extremes in exposing a language without content. The introduction of the trickster figure Narcissistgrotesque Face will be the anti-metaphor in which the grotesque line up (cf. Surrealism and Formalism) forces us to learn bearing A with B and in which the non-content materiality of linguistic practices resemble le bas matérialisme (Bataille). Not explanation, understanding and rendering things plausible is the movens for language but it is all about the spur of its enactment, its style and its story telling that renders translational practice visible. Chapter III is a performative practice in which we turn the text into texture. Translation happens then when your are perplex and the translational void enacts you and me.

Drawing on contemporary approaches to otherness, this thesis aims to show that, despite the growing interest in so-called foreignizing translation strategies, the current theory and practice of translation in Western Europe is to a large extent still caught in nationalist self-confirmation. In the first part of my study I expose the nationalist agenda underlying the influential theories of translation developed by Antoine Berman and Lawrence Venuti by contrasting them with the ideas formulated by Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. Basing their arguments on Friedrich Schleiermacher's essay on translation, both Berman and Venuti intend to undermine the nationalist stance of current translation practice by replacing it with the belief that translation primarily serves to further the understanding of the foreign other. However, this seemingly noble purpose ultimately veils the fact that the foreign other is a construct which is devised by and thus confirms the national community receiving the translation. Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, by contrast, whose ideas were anticipated by Friedrich Schlegel, believe that the aim of translation is to reveal the otherness of the translating self. Based on these theoretical premises, I examine the significance of otherness in the current practice of translation. This case study focuses on the multidimensional reduction of otherness, as it becomes apparent in the translation of contemporary German prose in Britain, in particular, and to some extent also in France in the two decades preceding and following German unification (1980-1999). In a general overview which compares the selection of texts chosen for translation, the strategies used for their publication as well as the reception of these texts in the press, I conclude that three factors are of particular importance for the rejection of and the ensuing delimitation from German otherness in British and French translations during this period: ideological, generic and linguistic otherness. These particular areas are then further explored in the detailed studies on Monika Maron, Edgar Hilsenrath and Anne Duden. My case study proves that the translators and/or publishers of these authors tend to reject or appropriate those elements of their texts which would highlight the otherness underlying the British and French selves. However, these strategies of dealing with otherness are not limited to interlingual translation. They are anticipated in the reception of the respective texts within Germany.

This thesis examines the widespread use of bestial imagery in satirical verse, prose and prints published between 1789 – 1820, through a study of Shelley, Spence, Gillray, Gifford, Robinson, Catherine Ann Dorset, Thelwall, Eaton, and Wolcot. The thesis asks why these writers and printers used animal metaphors so frequently, but moreover, what impact the use of this imagery had on the political landscape of satire in the period. Recent criticism has focussed on the historical and political contexts of Romantic-era satire, and this thesis follows that criticism with an historicist methodology, combining literary, historical and political approaches. Furthermore, the thesis analyses verse, prose and pictorial satires as contributing to the same political discourse and as doing so in closely related cultural arenas. This thesis claims originality on the basis that not only the use of animal imagery has a significant impact on how both contemporary and modern readers interpret its political meanings and contexts, but also that this is an argument that has not yet been posited by other critics. In addition, this thesis argues that through bestial metaphors, satirical writers and artists create a community wherein imagery is exchanged, developed and manipulated, and that this practice of cultural exchange significantly shapes those satires’ historical contexts. Each of the thesis’ five chapters focuses on a major satiric animal metaphor, whereby close readings of satires are offered alongside wider political and historical contexts. Consequently, this thesis provides a map of the most common satiric animal metaphors and their concomitant politics, and in doing so creates a new critical framework in which the growing interest in Romantic- period satire can be further developed.

While there exists an extensive research literature that focuses upon literacy development in monolingual, English speaking children, very little research has been conducted regarding the problems encountered by children learning English as an additional language (EAL). Recent political and educational concerns have been the educational under-achievement of minority ethnic children and their underrepresentation in those identified as having specific learning difficulties. This thesis aims to further our understanding of factors underlying literacy development in both monolingual and EAL children to produce evidence to inform policy and practice in addressing these concerns. A three-year longitudinal study is reported together with a series of experimental studies. The longitudinal study examines the developmental pattern of the processes underlying literacy development in children learning EAL and also their monolingual peers. Forty-three children learning EAL and forty-three monolingual (English speaking) children were assessed on a range of cognitive-linguistic measures in School Year 2. Testing was repeated in School Years 3 and 4. The experimental studies explored in more detail the comprehension-related difficulties identified in the EAL children in the first year of the longitudinal study. Given that boys' underachievement in literacy is a general concern in the monolingual population, gender differences within both the monolingual and EAL children are also examined in the longitudinal study. Children learning EAL and their monolingual peers achieved similar levels of success on reading accuracy-related measures and made similar progress over the three years. For the EAL children there was no evidence of gender differences whilst for the monolingual children there were lower scores for the boys. On comprehension-related measures, although both groups of children made a similar level of progress at each point in time, children learning EAL experienced more difficulty than their monolingual peers. Gender differences in comprehension were, in general, not found for either group of children. The findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications for addressing the educational underachievement of ethnic minority children and the identification of specific learning difficulties in these children.

Term i ddisgrifio'r ffenomen o gyfuno dwy iaith mewn un datganiad yw 'cyfnewid cod'. Mae defnyddio geiriau ac ymadroddion Saesneg yn nodwedd gyffredin o Gymraeg llafar, anffurfiol nifer o siaradwyr. Nid yw'r ffenomen hon yn unigryw i'r Gymraeg; yn rhyngwladol, ceir cymdeithasau sy'n defnyddio cyfnewid cod, gan gynnwys Canada ffrancoffon. Yn ogystal â bod yn nodwedd o iaith lafar, mae'n nodwedd hefyd mewn rhai testunau llenyddol. Bwriad y traethawd hwn yw astudio rhai o'r testunau hyn, gan archwilio patrymau o gyfnewid cod a'u cymharu â damcaniaethau ysgolheigion eraill. Datblygwyd methodoleg wreiddiol i ddadansoddi'r testunau'n ieithyddol gan dynnu ar fethodoleg ysgolheigion megis Callahan (2004) a Montes-Alcalá (2013b; 2015). Yn ogystal â thrafodaeth ieithyddol, dadansoddir y testunau yng ngoleuni damcaniaethau ôl-drefedigaethedd ac ôl-foderniaeth, gan bontio maes ieithyddiaeth a theori lenyddol er mwyn archwilio pa fath o destunau sy'n defnyddio cyfnewid cod ac i ba bwrpas. Rhennir y traethawd yn bedair prif adran. Mae'r bennod gyntaf yn cynnig arolwg o'r maes ac yn trafod gwaith ysgolheigion sy'n astudio cyfnewid cod, yn ogystal â darparu cyd-destun hanesyddol a chymdeithasol ar gyfer Cymru a Chanada. Mae'r ail bennod yn trafod methodoleg yr ymchwil presennol, yn arbennig y fethodoleg a ddefnyddir i ddadansoddi'r testunau. Yna, symudir i drafod canlyniadau'r gwaith codio (penodau 3-8), cyn trafod y corpws yn ei gyfanrwydd (pennod 9). Yn y bennod olaf, ehangir y drafodaeth gan ddadansoddi'r testunau fel llenyddiaeth yn hytrach na'u trin fel corpws ieithyddol. Bwriad y traethawd hwn yw deall elfennau o Gymru a Chanada'n well - eu hieithoedd, eu llenyddiaeth a'u cymdeithasau - drwy drafod y defnydd o gyfnewid cod mewn sampl o'u llenyddiaeth greadigol. Defnyddir methodoleg wreiddiol, sy'n defnyddio elfennau rhyngddisgyblaethol blaengar, gan gyfrannu at faes cyfnewid cod llenyddol a datblygu ar y modelau sy'n bodoli eisoes. Gobeithir y bydd yr astudiaeth yn cyfrannu at y drafodaeth ryngwladol wrth gymharu cyfnewid cod mewn llenyddiaeth o ddwy gymdeithas a chanddynt ieithoedd lleiafrifol.