This thesis argues that nineteenth-century shifts in hermeneutics enabled women to re-vision Victorian conceptions of womanhood by reinterpreting biblical narratives within fictional texts. Due to these shifts, the meaning of biblical symbols was increasingly tied to the personal experience of the reader. This enabled women to reinterpret these symbols to reflect their own experiences as women. This hermeneutic approach was formulated out of critical enquiry into the nature of the biblical text which resulted in questioning the authority of the Bible. Questions regarding the authority of scripture opened up the possibility for Victorian authors to use fictive texts in order to reinterpret biblical symbols, resulting in the constant re-visioning of biblical symbols by readers and writers. As the authority of scripture became unstable, gender roles, which were rooted within a biblical symbolic, also became destabilized. The novels of female authors who reimagined biblical symbols gave voice to these authors’ own experiences as women as they embodied these symbols within their life and work, resulting in new understandings of Victorian womanhood. George Eliot was particularly conscious of the hermeneutic shifts which were taking place throughout the century due to her extensive involvement in the philosophical and theological movements of the era, and her novels demonstrate how these shifts influenced her work. The reinterpretation of biblical narratives within her novels also reflects how she embodied these female biblical symbols within her own life. While Eliot’s awareness of the shifts taking place within hermeneutic practice is evident in her work, she was not alone in adopting this hermeneutic practice. Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell also reimagined and embodied biblical symbols, yet her experience as a Victorian woman was strikingly different from Eliot’s own and led her to distinct reinterpretations of these symbols in her life and novels. Likewise, social activist Josephine Butler reinterpreted female biblical narratives in order to understand her life in relation to the ‘fallen’ women she worked with. These three women have been chosen for this project because of how they represent nineteenth-century shifts in hermeneutic practice toward biblical symbols in addition to the shared affinities and prominent differences between them. To explore these issues requires a theoretical framework which encompasses literature, philosophy, sociology, history, theology, and feminist theory; however, fundamentally this project is concerned with theological hermeneutics and the nature of biblical symbols. This project examines the influence of nineteenth-century theologians David Friedrich Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach on Victorian hermeneutics and applies more recent work by Paul Ricœur, Jacques Rancière, and Caroline Walker Bynum to formulate a framework through which to understand the Victorian interpretation of biblical symbols. As Victorian women readers re-visioned female biblical symbols as encountered through sacred and fictive texts, the fresh interpretations of these symbols enabled women to negotiate new ways of understanding gender. These hermeneutic shifts toward biblical symbols created a symbolic understanding of womanhood which was able to better convey the complexity of female experience, providing women with an understanding of womanhood that better correlated with their own experience as women.

This thesis contextualises the life and work of John Josias Conybeare (1779-1824), one of the first to hold the Rawlinson chair of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, and considers his contribution to the development of Old English studies as a discipline. I argue that he has been unduly marginalised as a result of posthumous criticism that has failed to acknowledge the extent of his contribution to Old English scholarship. Part I of the thesis considers this issue from the perspective of John Josias himself, setting him in the context of the period in which he lived and the longer continuum of Old English studies as a whole. It also reconstructs what is known of his associates and friends, illustrating that he occupied a central position among the literati of his day alongside figures such as Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855), Joseph Hunter (1783-1861), Robert Southey (1774-1843), and Sharon Turner (1768-1847). Part II focuses on Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1826), the scholar’s most well-known and significant contribution to Old English studies, which was published posthumously by John Josias’ brother, William Daniel (1787-1857), and widow, Mary (1790-1848). This section traces the composition of the book from its first conception through to its final publication and critical reception, using previously unpublished correspondence to disambiguate the contribution of the author from that of his editors. This is followed by an examination of John Josias’ ability as an early editor of Old English, which critically evaluates some of his transcriptions, translations, and interpretations as they appeared in Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, with particular attention to his work on Widsith and the Exeter Book. Part III contains transcripts of unpublished correspondence and other documents that provide details about John Josias’ life and, in particular, about the preparation and posthumous publication of his Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. This thesis, which brings together genealogical, scholarly, and archival materials, constitutes the first comprehensive study of his life and work. My reassessment of his scholarship concludes that John Josias in fact made a substantial and influential contribution to the discipline, deserving of greater recognition today.

This thesis investigates the character and role of non-Christian belief in medieval societies, and how we can reconstruct it using written sources. It focuses on Anglo-Saxon culture, contextualising Anglo-Saxon material with analyses of Middle English, Older Scots, Scandinavian and Irish texts. We lack Anglo-Saxon narratives about elves (ælfe, singular ælf), but the word ælf itself is well-attested in Old English texts. By analysing these attestations, it is possible to discover much about the meanings of the word ælf— from which, I argue, it is possible to infer what ælfe were believed to be and to do, and how these beliefs changed over time. Using methodologies inspired by linguistic anthropology (discussed in Chapter 1), I develop these analyses to reconstruct the changing significances of non-Christian beliefs in medieval English-speaking societies, affording new perspectives on Christianisation, health and healing, and group identity, particularly gendering. The body of the thesis, chapters 2–9, is in three parts. Because of its historiographical prominence in discussions of Anglo-Saxon non-Christian beliefs, I begin in Chapter 2 by reassessing Scandinavian comparative evidence for elf-beliefs. I also show that it is possible to correlate the meanings of Old Norse words for supernatural beings with other Scandinavian mythological sources for world-views, providing a case-study supporting similar approaches to Anglo-Saxon evidence. Chapters 3–6 reassess Anglo-Saxon linguistic and textual evidence, tackling in turn prehistoric naming patterns and morphological developments, poetry, glosses, and medical texts. The long-standing assumption that ælfe were incorporeal, small and arrowshooting proves to be both unfounded and implausible. Traditionally, ælfe were conceptually similar both to gods and to human ethnic others, all of whom were opposed to monsters in Anglo-Saxon world-views. They were probably only male. In textual evidence, ælfe are paradigmatic examples of dangerously seductive beauty and they are possible causes of prophetic speech and certain kinds of ailments. They inflicted ailments at least at times by a variety of magic called siden, cognate with the much-discussed medieval Scandinavian magic seiðr. Both of these points associate ælfe with femininegendered traits, and I show that by the eleventh century, ælf could also denote otherworldly, nymph-like females. These otherworldly females seem to have been new arrivals in Anglo-Saxon belief-systems. Demonisation is clearly attested from around 800, but ælfe were not conflated with demons in all or even most discourses, even after the Old English period. Chapters 7–9 develop this core evidence to argue for the cultural significance of the beliefs it reveals. By adducing comparative texts from medieval Ireland and Scandinavia and from the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials, Chapter 7 shows how the characteristics of ælf in Old English could occur together in coherent, ideologically significant narratives. Chapter 8 considers the Old English charm Wið færstice in a similar comparative context, focusing on the trial of Issobel Gowdie for witchcraft in 1662, and considering the importance of elf-beliefs in Anglo-Saxon healing. These chapters emphasise cultural continuity in North West European beliefs, questioning inherited scholarly constructions of fairy-beliefs as distinctively ‘Celtic’, and showing striking continuities between Anglo-Saxon and early modern Scottish beliefs. Chapter 9 concludes by combining earlier findings to make new assessments of Anglo-Saxon Christianisation and constructions of group identity, danger and power, and gendering. I examine gender in particular, combining evidence from throughout the thesis with comparative textual and archaeological material to argue that mythological gender transgressions were important to early Anglo-Saxon gendering. Beliefs in effeminate ælfe helped to demarcate gender norms, but also provided a paradigm whereby men could in real life gain supernatural power through gender transgression. I link the subsequent rise of female ælfe to changes in Anglo-Saxon gendering, whereby gender roles were enforced with increasing strictness. By combining detailed linguistic and textual analyses in a suitable comparative context, I reconstruct aspects of non-Christian belief which are marginalized in our early medieval sources, and detect how they changed over time. Such beliefs illuminate various aspects of medieval culture, including social identity, health and healing, the sources and use of supernatural power, and Christianisation. My methods, meanwhile, provide paradigms for taking similar approaches to studying belief and ideology in other areas of medieval Europe.

This three-phase, sequential mixed methods study explores two aspects of communicative language teaching in Taiwanese senior high schools. Firstly, it examines the extent to which the communicative approach is implemented in the English classroom in Taiwan and secondly it investigates the attitudes of senior high school students towards their learning of English at school. This research study employed the dominant-less dominant mixed method design, with a combination of a dominant qualitative approach and a less-dominant qualitative data aggregation procedure. Results from the focus group interviews are mostly consistent with those of the classroom observations. The findings revealed that the traditional approach, which focuses on the teaching of vocabulary, grammar and the explanation of the textbook contents, still prevailed in the English classroom. Teachers’ classroom practices reflected students’ current learning purpose, which is to achieve good exam results, as revealed in the focus group interviews. The questionnaire survey found that despite their pressing need to “pass exams”, the majority of students had positive attitudes communicative activities in class, believing that the best way of learning English is to be able to use it in real situations outside of the classroom. Nevertheless, students exhibited contradictory attitudes in that they showed inhibitions about speaking or participating actively in class, even though they had the belief that English is best learned through speaking. Finally, the data analysis revealed that some variables, such as “gender” and “major”, played important roles in influencing learner attitudes towards English learning at school. On the other hand, there was little relationship between the variables “programme” and “mother tongue” and learner attitudes in this study.

This is an exploratory mixed methods case study which investigates a number of critical issues regarding the teaching and learning of an English Language and Literature Department (henceforth the ELLD) in a Chinese university, including curriculum development, content-based instruction, and teachers’ cultural, professional and disciplinary identities etc. It originally aimed to examine three university teachers’ codeswitching behaviours. Classroom observation, interview and stimulated recall were employed to collect data for the Phase I of the study. However, analysis of codeswitching categories identified a predominance of extended expositions of Western and Chinese literature, culture and philosophy etc., which prompted the follow-up interviews (Phase II) further exploring the relevant issues concerning the disciplinary construction of ELLD in China. Findings from follow-up interviews suggested that teachers’ classroom practice was influenced by their cultural, professional and disciplinary identities. It also became clear that in the ELLD context, approaching literature, culture and philosophy from both the Chinese and Western perspectives reflected a cross-cultural view of the content-based teaching for the teachers. Moreover it highlighted the current lack of courses on liberal arts and excessive emphasis on English language skills in the national curriculum for the English majors. This study reveals a fundamental problem of the development of the ELLD in Chinese universities. It is suggested that awareness should be raised of target language use in both skills-based and content-based courses in the EFL context in China. In addition, it recommends further research to explore ways in which the national curriculum might be reformed to reflect the humanities characteristics of ELLD and universities should be given more space and freedom to address their specific requirements within the national curriculum.

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) would be an effective tool to meet the English for specific purposes (ESP) needs of language learners. A single tertiary education institution in Malaysia was used as the context of the study. A preliminary investigation was conducted to analyze present and target situation needs and lacks of Computer Science students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). Results revealed Computer Science students at UTM need training and practice in the specific communication skills of interviewing and group discussion for systems analysis and design for their current academic needs and future career as CSPs. In order to be successful CSPs the students need to be competent in both face-to-face and electronic forms of communication which include synchronous CMC to elicit information or conduct group discussions such as joint application design (JAD) with their clients. Findings also indicated that Computer Science students and CSPs who graduated from local universities experienced problems articulating orally in English due to speech anxiety, lack of confidence and lack of practice. A set of tasks called CMC ESP tasks were designed and conducted via a synchronous CMC environment to address these needs and lacks. Prior to the Main Study, I conducted two feasibility studies to find out the practicality and suitability of using CMC tools and CMC task types with Computer Science students at UTM. Seventy-two second year Computer Science students participated in the first feasibility study and tested the practicality of using two synchronous CMC tools: 1) NetMeeting for computer-mediated written interaction and 2) Device Duo for computer-mediated oral interaction. Results suggested it was logistically possible to use both synchronous CMC tools but it was more feasible to use Net Meeting because it can simulate real-time text-based discussions and meetings which are common among CSPs. Twenty-seven first year Computer Science students participated in the second feasibility study which confirmed the usability of several CMC ESP task types for investigating the effects of the CMC ESP method on Computer Science students at UTM. I then conducted a longitudinal study. During the main study, an intact group of 32 first year Computer Science undergraduates were subjected to the CMC ESP method (treatment) as part of the activities in their English for Academic Communication (EAC) module. Students were given pre- and post-treatment oral assessment to find out the short term effect of the CMC ESP method on the development of their interviewing and group discussion skills for systems analysis and design. Findings from these assessments were triangulated with the results of pre- and post-treatment self-assessment attitude questionnaires and the analysis of the chat transcripts from the tasks. Results were encouraging. Participants achieved a significant gain in their overall oral performance and in terms of task fulfilment, language and communication ability in the oral assessment.

This study is concerned with the linguistic analysis of a cognitive training programme for offenders which was run at Prison X in 1996. Several Cognitive Skills classes run by prison officers and attended by groups of five to eight prisoners were videotaped and analysed to investigate the discourse practices used in these sessions. I also explored the written discourse of the Cognitive Skills Handbook used by the offenders as a reference-text for running the classes. In my research, I have borrowed insights from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), particularly Fairclough's three-dimensional model of discourse, as it forms a framework for studying language in its relation to power and ideology. I have attempted to show through this case study that the discursive practices investigated are ideological in that they produce and reproduce unequal power relations in the way they represent and classify offenders. Following the Hallidayan tradition, I have taken a systemic functional approach as my point of departure for the analysis and interpretation of texts.

Since language is an important means of communication between human beings, it is held that writers or speakers can affect their readers or hearers by using certain linguistic means. The manipulation of semantics and syntax, namely the use of emotive language, is seen as an affective means resorted to by text producers to influence the people's acceptance of the truth. Emotional language aims ultimately at persuading the addressee to accept the facts as they are presented by writers. It is regarded as a necessary condition for persuasion to be successful. This is due to the persuasive force of emotive meaning exerted upon the receiver. In addition, the employment of emotive language may be attributed to ideological considerations. This will be demonstrated in Chapter II. Emotiveness, as a means of persuasion, can be expressed by using certain devices such as repetition, intertextuality, word-order, figures of speech, intensifiers ... etc. These strategies will be discussed in detail with reference to translation in Chapter III. Furthermore, I must say that some of my remarks have been based on the findings of outstanding grammarians and linguists, and therefore, I have been obliged to quote from such works to substantiate my points of view. Before proceeding with the investigation, I must point out that the entire data of my work will be confined only to news reports and editorials both in Arabic and English, and for this end a number of articles have been used from official newspapers in both languages.

The main focus of this research was to examine the effects of extensive reading on junior high school students' language proficiency and learning attitude development, compared with those who received the current reading IR (grammar/translation-based) instruction. The potential of graded readers and books for native English speaking children in English learning was also investigated. The research aimed at finding evidence to support the adoption of extensive reading in the school syllabus in Taiwan, and to raise the awareness of educational authorities about the desirability of adopting ER in the school curriculum. The results of the study consistently showed that extensive reading is more effective on improving all the variables mentioned than the current IR instruction. While the positive outcomes stand in line with the results of previous studies, this study also gave insight into the use of the materials, the amount of reading time and accompanying activities. The findings indicated significantly the strength of the graded readers (GR) approach on students' language learning in all circumstances. The effects of reading books for native EngRsh speaking children (BNESC) proved positive only when the amount of time per week given to ER was doubled. Moreover, the results appeared to be contrary to the widely held belief that reading interesting books is alone sufficient to improve student attitudes. In fact, with this level and type of learners, without accompanying activities ER appeared to take away their enthusiasm. Once collaborative activities were introduced, ER showed great potential for improving language, proficiency, reading ability and attitudes toward reading. The findings demonstrate the potential of ER for improving students' language proficiency and learning attitudes. Thus, they provide support for integrating ER into the English curriculum for improving current learning and teaching approaches. Moreover, the findings indicate the desirability of investing in ER as paving the way for students' long-term development. Implications of this study can be deduced in several aspects: the adoption of ER, the need of book provision, the need of reading strategy training, the use of authentic reading materials, the amount of reading time and the use of accompanying activities.

The English language was in a state of transition during the Early Modern period, which is defined here as extending from 1500 to 1700. In particular, it is suspected that changes were taking place on the borderline between speech and writing. However, these changes have rarely been researched in a systematic way. This study investigates these changes with reference to the writing contained within a corpus of original manuscript letters from Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (known as Bess of Hardwick), c.1527 to 1608. Manuscript letters are an excellent data source to use in order to investigate the changes taking place on the borderline between speech and writing during the Early Modern period because the writing contained within them has a different, possibly closer, relationship to speech than the writing contained within other kinds of text dating from the period. However, the use of manuscript letters as data sources is not straightforward because the notion of authorship is complex. In particular, letters can be holograph or scribal. In order to address this authorship issue, this study marries techniques from the fields of palaeography and historical pragmatics. Following an introduction, it is divided into two analytical parts. Part 1 outlines how a specially-designed scribal profiling technique was used to identify Bess’s holograph handwriting, and the handwriting of five of her scribes in a corpus of her manuscript letters. Part 2 outlines how four lexical features, namely AND, SO, FOR and BUT, were identified as salient discourse-organizational devices within the prose of Bess’s holograph letters, before presenting four case studies that compare the discourse function of these four lexical features in the six hands identified in Part 1. Having identified how these features pattern in the letters, Part 2 compares the results of the case studies with previous studies, and draws conclusions about linguistic change in the period. The study’s original contribution to knowledge is therefore threefold. Firstly, it showcases a reliable, replicable scribal-profiling methodology that can be assessed and critiqued on its own terms. Secondly, it shows how it is possible to successfully combine a sensitivity to the complex nature of Early Modern English manuscript letters with effective qualitative analyses of the language contained within them. Thirdly, with the findings produced by the four case studies, the thesis offers significant and important contributions to the fields of historical linguistics, manuscript studies and literary scholarship. The study also has implications for the editing of Early Modern English letters, the study of women’s history and letter- writing, and for biographical studies of Bess of Hardwick more specifically.