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This work from the field of pragmatics introduces the application of the concept of speech acts (see J. L. Austin, J. Searle) to the literary sample of 15 chosen dialogues i.e. 1122 sentences from the novel Pride and Prejudice by the classical English author Jane Austen. It introduces an eight-member modified classification of speech acts: representatives, assertives, directives, connissives, expressives, interrogatives, requestives and daclarations. There are eight literary characters included in the research together with marginally Charlotte Lucas, who use speech acts to express their communicative intentions. The main heroine Elizabeth occurring in 12 dialogues uses mostly representatives, assertives and expressives. The remaining three dialogues involve Mrs Bennet and her husband Mr Bennet. Jane Austen's language is very rich and complex, with frequent occurrence of politeness turns of phrase. Some mixed and multiple categories also add to this complexity (there are 55.8% of simple ones; 39.1% of double, 4.6% of triple, quadruple only 0.5 % of the 969 sentences counted). This work also contains some comments on stylistic analysis featuring selected interesting literary and pragmatic aspects of the dialogical samples.

America’s ‘long early twentieth century’ (1890-1945) was a period of intense industrialization, urbanization, and immigration which fundamentally altered the character of the nation. Between 1900 and 1924, which saw the curtailing of immigration from southern and eastern Europe via the passage of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act (successor to 1921’s stop-gap Emergency Quota Act), more than 14 million people flocked to the U.S. in search of economic opportunity, social equality, and freedom from religious and political oppression. Descendants of these ‘new immigrants,’ as they were called, were by the late twentieth century a staple of white American suburbia, but their progenitors were variously considered ‘off-white,’ ‘dark-white,’ or non-white, with attendant connotations of mental, physical, and moral inferiority. This research examines texts, authored by Jewish immigrants such as Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Rose Cohen, and Mary Antin, which were published between 1890 and 1930, when the onset of the Great Depression saw a rise in anti-Semitism that contributed to the decline in popularity of ‘up by the bootstraps’ Americana whose narratives chronicled, ostensibly, social assimilation and cultural integration; it considers the ramifications of writing in English for a native audience, which frequently alienated Jewish immigrants from their peers, and analyzes the manner in which the United States’ shifting social mores coincided with—and facilitated—new immigrants’ reappraisal of religion, education, commerce, and family life in the ‘new world’ of the west. It argues that the ambivalence contained within many of these texts was both a reaction to nativist prejudices and an effort to expose misconceptions present on both sides of the wildly popular Americanization movement, as well as exploring the way that such narratives attempted the redefinition of American philanthropic, educational and civic paradigms—the preponderance of which passionately espoused rhetoric of equality while reinforcing the stratification of the United States’ class system—into modes of interaction that accommodated difference while seeking to establish common ground upon which could be built a more inclusive, multiethnic future. Finally, it addresses the continuing relevance of these works as texts which both predict and presage modern modes of social interaction and discusses their future in an evolving literary canon that has, historically speaking, been an agent of western patriarchal hegemony.

English is, can be, and ought to be taught through various teaching modes for deeper learning to take place successfully. ‘Creative writing’ has shown to be, according to previous research and interviewed high school teachers, a successful tool for teaching English as a foreign language, just as it can help students reach requirements and course goals constituted by the National Agency for Education in Sweden. Furthermore, creative forms of the English language are shown to be largely what motivate high school students the most to learn English, and what interest them about the English language in general. Nevertheless, ‘creative writing’ is rarely practiced when teaching English as a foreign language at Swedish high schools. Together, these findings suggest that ‘creative writing’ should be used more frequently as a tool for teaching English in Sweden. A prerequisite for actualizing the suggestion is education of English teachers in how to teach it properly.