The diploma thesis is concerned with the portrayal of the Windrush generation, the first wave of immigrants coming to Britain from its former colonies, in Andrea Levy's Small Island (2004) and Samuel Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956). The theoretical part of the thesis outlines the socio-historical and cultural overview of the rising immigration to Britain after the Second World War, which according to the selected secondary sources contributed to the increase of racism and discrimination, namely against people of Caribbean origin. The thesis further presents principal concepts of postcolonial and Anglophone Caribbean literature and examines both authors' personal experience with immigration as well as the idiosyncratic features of their writing. These are essential for understanding the literary works of the selected authors and the subsequent interpretation of their literary depiction of the immigrant experience. The practical part of the thesis relies on the theoretical part and focuses on the comparison of the two novels, their presentation and view of the so-called Windrush generation with specific attention paid to their form and content. Simultaneously, the work examines how the literary depictions of the immigrant experience correspond to the theory presented. Moreover, the thesis...

This study explores storybook illustrations in learning word meanings among English learners in a university intensive language program. The impact of children’s literature on the comprehension and vocabulary development of second language children is well-documented. However, the use of the literature with adults still needs to be researched. Therefore, a mixed-method study was designed (1) to investigate whether readers who read an authentic illustrated story differed from those who read the same story without illustrations; and (2) to learn more about the readers’ process of learning words from storybook illustrations. Results suggest that illustrations play an important role in both comprehending the text and learning individual words, however issues related to the accessibility of the text and readers’ ability to use context should also be taken into consideration. The findings support prior research that the benefits of learning from context take time to become robust. The study suggests that illustrated storybooks provide a rich context for adults to infer word meanings and recommends children’s literature as an alternative source of reading in programs serving adult English learners.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-190).

The dissertation engages the concept of Heimat, home(land), from new angles. Over its long and fraught history, this (to many scholars) “quintessentially German” concept has prominently acquired autochthonous, politically regressive significations. The present study, however, traces how these static and exclusionary implications shift in the deployments of Heimat by German Orientalists, German-Jewish émigrés in Istanbul, and contemporary writers of migration. Its scope, therefore, cuts across periods, locales, and genres. In comparative and interdisciplinary configurations, the dissertation investigates new articulations of Heimat in Friedrich Schlegel, Goethe, Leo Spitzer, Meral Kureyshi, Mehrnousch Zaeri-Esfahani, and Fatih Akın. In its reformulation of Heimat from these readings, it demonstrates the indispensable role of cross-cultural engagements and the integral function of the so-called East in constructing Heimat and German identities. In this way, the project at hand re-envisions the lingual and cultural heritages of the field to flesh out a complex nexus of multilingual, transcultural, and intergenre literary engagements while rethinking paradigms from postcolonial, trauma, and diaspora studies, among others.

Diss. Univ. Zürich, 2004/05. - Ref.: Elisabeth Bronfen. / Im Buchh.: Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press. Register. Literaturverz.

Dans ce travail on essaye de donner une définition et une historicisation de ce qu’on appelle « littérature italienne de la migration ». Il y a tout de suite une distinction à faire entre les écrivains étrangers qui écrivaient en italien avant le grand flux migratoire des années ’80 et ceux qui sont issus de cette vague, dont la thèse s’occupe dans une manière plus spécifique (années 1989-2007). Les changements sociaux et culturels que les nouveaux immigrés ont apporté, ont transformé l’Italie de pays d’émigration en pays d’immigration. Au niveau littéraire ces écrivains ont d’abord utilisé un langage standard, pour se faire comprendre du public et pour témoigner les difficultés du voyage migratoire et de l’intégration ;les dernières œuvres, pourtant, analysées dans la deuxième partie de la thèse, ont été écrites par des écrivains qui manipulent plus facilement la langue italienne, utilisant un plurilinguisme témoin d’un lien très stricte entre oralité et écriture, et entre langue d’origine et langue d’accueil. Enfin, les oeuvres des écrivains italophones postcoloniaux et de ceux issus de la deuxième génération peuvent rapporter la littérature italienne contemporaine avec des autres situation (France, Allemagne, Angleterre, Etats Unis) qui semblent très similaires.<p><p><p>ENGLISH: On this work we want to give a definition about “Italian Migrant Literature”. There is a difference between writers came in Italy before or after the migration’s fluxes on the 80’s. With this social and cultural changes, Italy became immigration country. First, migrant writers used a standard language, to have a big public and to talk about migration. Last works are more interesting because they use a plurilingualism that can show the relationship between oral and write. Finally, Postcolonial Italian writers and Second Generation writers make a connection with the literary situation in the other countries (France, Germany, Britain, United States). <p><p><p> / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished