To be able to develop their reading skills, pupils need not only to practise but also to be willing to practise. Being enticed to read is therefore an important factor for the development of reading. Research has shown that part of the attraction of reading is that readers can recognize themselves in the different constituents of a book, for example being able to identify with characters and finding the setting plausible. The books about Harry Potter have enticed many young people all over the world to read, and the question of what this attraction consists of is an interesting one, especially with regard to the fact that the books have many elements of magic and seemingly alien elements. The aim of this study is to investigate and reveal potential opportunities for self-recognition offered to the reader by the Harry Potter books. The study consists of a textual analysis focusing on Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The study shows that both books offer the reader multiple opportunities for self-recognition, which can be linked to factors such as the reader’s emotional participation and the motifs in the books.

Dieser Beitrag möchte Reflexionen über ein prominentes Beispiel der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur anhand des Zauberlehrlings Harry Potter mit seinen Geschichten und magischen Welten vorstellen. Die britische Autorin Joanne Kathleen Rowling hat im Jahr 1990 den Zauberschüler Harry Potter erfunden. Aus dem Blickwinkel von Hauptfiguren im Alter von Kindern und Jugendlichen beschreibt Rowling das Angesicht einer überraschenden, aufregenden und faszinierenden aber auch ungleichen, in sich zerrissenen und auseinanderdriftenden Schule und ihrer Umwelt – diese Welt wirkt wie ein Spiegel unserer Zeit und vielleicht ist genau deshalb Harry Potter als Bildungsromanreihe so erfolgreich.

This thesis examines the French translation of the 224 neologisms in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh book in J.K. Rowling’s fantasy series. By analyzing the original neologisms and their French equivalents, this research compares the word formation processes used by both the author and the translator, Jean-François Ménard. Additionally, to categorize Ménard’s translation techniques, this study adapts a framework designed by Jacqueline Henry to classify translations of word play. While Ménard uses the same types of word formation as Rowling to create his lexicon, this study reveals that he often chooses a different neological process or distinct lexemes to recreate the effect of the original neologism. To achieve this, Ménard relies on his own creativity and embraces the norms of the French language to give his audience a reading experience comparable to that offered to the readers of the original text. / Graduate

The Harry Potter series has been part of many kids’ socio-cultural context since 1997, and is a phenomenon that has had a huge impact on them (many of whom are now adults). It is argued that some kids’ identities and spiritualties may have been directly shaped, and may continue to be directly shaped, by the alternative sacred story presented by Rowling. As this has the Christ discourse woven into its narrative, there are kids who are using the Gospel values on a daily basis, whether they are aware of it or not. Rowling’s fantasy asks readers to question the impact that the dominant discourses of their ‘realities’ may be having on their identities and spiritualities, putting them in a position to question if that is indeed who they want to be. This study was motivated by how kids, who live in a Western society where one of the sacred stories is power/materialism/consumerism, can not only appreciate, but also live out (in lived theology) values of the Harry Potter series which are in complete opposition to the Western sacred story of power/consumerism/materialism. Since the consumerist discourse places a heavy burden on people to keep up with their socio-world, if they do not live up to these demands they will simply not ‘fit in’. People, especially kids, do not want to be perceived as outcasts. Practical theology seeks to react to, and understand the shifts that have a direct implication on how people’s lives are lived out and affected daily, in response to their socio-cultural world. One such shift is how people are now seeking ultimate answers from alternative sources such as for example literature, and specifically in this thesis, the Harry Potter series. Therefore, when a fantasy, such as Harry Potter, is published, it is important to question what kind of transformational and even transcendental impact it may be having on them. This is also an important question from a lived theology perspective as the Harry Potter series is lived religion. Lived theology seeks to understand how people practice and apply the sacred outside the Church and the four Gospels, while still using the Gospel message to live out their life on some level every day. These values include people’s practices, their actions towards others within their socio-cultural context and their personal sacred experiences that may allow them to transcend the way in which materialism affects their identity and spirituality. Lived theology seeks to understand how these values may affect practical theology. While some people no longer feel comfortable with/drawn to the Church, and feel alienated from the Gospels that were written for a socio-cultural context that is very different from Western society today, this does not mean that human beings are no longer spiritual/religious/Christian. They continue to seek for answers to the ultimate question at different stages of their lives. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2015 / Practical Theology / PhD / Unrestricted

No description available.

It has been previously established that when engaged in a difficult attention intensive task, which involves repeating information while blocking out other information (the dichotic listening task), participants are often able to report hearing their own names in an unattended audio channel (Moray, 1959). This phenomenon, called the cocktail party effect is a result of words that are important to oneself having a lower threshold, resulting in less attention being necessary to process them (Treisman, 1960). The current studies examined the ability of a person who was engaged in an attention demanding task to hear and recall low-threshold words from a fictional story. These low-threshold words included a traditional alert word, "fire" and fictional character names from a popular franchise-Harry Potter. Further, the role of stimulus degradation was examined by including synthetic and accented speech in the task to determine how it would impact attention and performance. In Study 1 participants repeated passages from a novel that was largely unfamiliar to them, The Secret Garden while blocking out a passage from a much more familiar source, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Each unattended Harry Potter passage was edited so that it would include 4 names from the series, and the word "fire" twice. The type of speech present in the attended and unattended ears (Natural or Synthetic) was varied to examine the impact that processing a degraded speech would have on performance. The speech that the participant shadowed did not impact unattended recall, however it did impact shadowing accuracy. The speech type that was present in the unattended ear did impact the ability to recall low-threshold, Harry Potter information. When the unattended speech type was synthetic, significantly less Harry Potter information was recalled. Interestingly, while Harry Potter information was recalled by participants with both high and low Harry Potter experience, the traditional low-threshold word, "fire" was not noticed by participants. In order to determine if synthetic speech impeded the ability to report low-threshold Harry Potter names due to being degraded or simply being different than natural speech, Study 2 was designed. In Study 2 the attended (shadowed) speech was held constant as American Natural speech, and the unattended ear was manipulated. An accent which was different than the native accent of the participants was included as a mild form of degradation. There were four experimental stimuli which contained one of the following in the unattended ear: American Natural, British Natural, American Synthetic and British Synthetic. Overall, more unattended information was reported when the unattended channel was Natural than Synthetic. This implies that synthetic speech does take more working memory processing power than even an accented natural speech. Further, it was found that experience with the Harry Potter franchise played a role in the ability to report unattended Harry Potter information. Those who had high levels of Harry Potter experience, particularly with audiobooks, were able to process and report Harry Potter information from the unattended stimulus when it was British Natural. While, those with low Harry Potter experience were not able to report unattended Harry Potter information from this slightly degraded stimulus. Therefore, it is believed that the previous audiobook experience of those in the high Harry Potter experience group acted as training and resulted in less working memory being necessary to encode the unattended Harry Potter information. A pilot study was designed in order to examine the impact of story familiarity in the attended and unattended channels of a dichotic listening task. In the pilot study, participants shadowed a Harry Potter passage (familiar) in one condition with a passage from The Secret Garden (unfamiliar) playing in the unattended ear. A second condition had participants shadowing The Secret Garden (unfamiliar) with a passage from Harry Potter (familiar) present in the unattended ear. There was no significant difference in the number of unattended names recalled. Those with low Harry Potter experience reported significantly less attended information when they shadowed Harry Potter than when they shadowed The Secret Garden. Further, there appeared to be a trend such that those with high Harry Potter experience were reporting more attended information when they shadowed Harry Potter than The Secret Garden. This implies that experience with a franchise and characters may make it easier to recall information about a passage, while lack of experience provides no assistance. Overall, the results of the studies indicate that we do treat fictional characters in a way similarly to ourselves. Names and information about fictional characters were able to break through into attention during a task that required a great deal of attention. The experience one had with the characters also served to assist the working memory in processing the information in degraded circumstances. These results have important implications for training, design of alerts, and the use of popular media in the classroom.

Populärkultur uppstår inte i ett vakuum. Det är inte konstigt att västerländsk populärkultur hämtar inspiration från Bibeln och västerländsk kristen kultur. Bokserien om Harry Potter tycks vara ett sådant exempel. Jag är intresserad av det intertextuella mötet mellan Harry Potter-böckerna och Bibeln. Detta är ett relevant ämne att studera inom bibelvetenskapen då intertextualitet är tolkning i flera led och alltså påverkar vår läsning av såväl Bibeln som skönlitteratur. Som Lina Sjöberg visar kan intertextuella studier mellan Bibeln och skönlitteratur vara ett sätt att exegetiskt arbeta med mellanmänskliga aspekter av bibelberättelser som i sin tur plockats upp av skönlitteraturen genom intertextuella referenser.1 Utifrån bibelvetarens uppgift att tolka och förstå Bibelns texter blir intertextuella studier en framkomlig väg bland flera.2Harry Potter är en bästsäljande bokserie skriven av den brittiske författaren J.K. Rowling.3 Bokserien har filmatiserats och även filmerna är mycket populära. Det har skapats en fandom4 kring Harry Potter. Fansen kallas för ”Potterheads”5 och J.K. Rowling har skapat plattformen ”Pottermore” som är en nöjessite, nyhetssite och online-butik för allt Potter-relaterat.6 Det genomslag Harry Potter har gjort gör serien till ett intressant ämne för intertextuella studier. Många älskar bokserien och även de som inte läst böckerna känner ofta till handlingen i viss utsträckning.

No description available.

In this study I apply social constructionism as propounded by Vivian Burr (1998) to show that although J. K. Rowling uses stereotypes in the Harry Potter series as a reflection of how gender is constructed across a wide range of societal institutions in contemporary Britain, she created complex characters who on an individual level subvert social constructs and thereby offers her readers alternatives to culturally defined concepts of gender. I explore the all-pervasive social phenomenon of gender and examine how it is constructed in present-day Britain and reflected in the series (bearing in mind that the first book was published in 1997 and the last one in 2007). My analysis of female and male characters in the books, and their interpersonal relationships, shows that Rowling's often tricky portrayal of femininities and masculinities gives us an honest view of teenagers’ lives and contemporary gender relations in an ever-changing, complex world. / English Studies / M. A. (English)

In this study I apply social constructionism as propounded by Vivian Burr (1998) to show that although J. K. Rowling uses stereotypes in the Harry Potter series as a reflection of how gender is constructed across a wide range of societal institutions in contemporary Britain, she created complex characters who on an individual level subvert social constructs and thereby offers her readers alternatives to culturally defined concepts of gender. I explore the all-pervasive social phenomenon of gender and examine how it is constructed in present-day Britain and reflected in the series (bearing in mind that the first book was published in 1997 and the last one in 2007). My analysis of female and male characters in the books, and their interpersonal relationships, shows that Rowling's often tricky portrayal of femininities and masculinities gives us an honest view of teenagers’ lives and contemporary gender relations in an ever-changing, complex world. / English Studies / M. A. (English)