English Language and Literature (Theses)

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Gothic trauma in the work of Eugene McCabe
(2025-03-18) O’Connor, Eileen
This research analyses Eugene McCabe’s contributions to modern Irish writing by examining his engagement with three milestone events in Irish history. The study focuses on McCabe’s works in chronological order, beginning with Tales from The Poorhouse (1999), set during the Great Famine of 1845. These short stories provide a platform to explore the trauma and socioeconomic repercussions experienced by the Irish population during this devastating period. The research then delves into Death and Nightingales (1992), McCabe’s only novel, which takes place against the backdrop of the Irish Land Wars of the 1880s. Through this work, McCabe explores historical land issues, offering insights into their impact on Ireland’s history and their relevance to contemporary society. Finally, the study concludes with analyses of shorter fictions, ‘Cancer,’ ‘Heritage,’ and ‘Victims.’ These narratives are set amidst the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. This exploration allows for an examination of the trauma endured by individuals and communities affected by the conflict, and as well as McCabe’s portrayal of loss, heritage, and victimhood. In analyzing McCabe’s literary techniques, themes, and character development, this research sheds light on his treatment of historical events and their lasting influences. The study also situates McCabe’s works within their socio-political contexts, examining how they reflect or challenge prevalent narratives of Irish history. By filling the gap in scholarly research on McCabe’s oeuvre, this study contributes a comprehensive analysis of these three works, offering fresh insights into his literary engagement with Irish history. Through this investigation, a deeper understanding of trauma, historical legacies, and Irish identity emerges, further enriching the appreciation of McCabe’s contributions to modern Irish literature.
Marx and sprectres: a hauntological exploration of the poetry of Seamus Heaney through the lens of Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx
(2024-10-11) Hickey, Ian
This thesis will examine the spectral inheritances and hauntings that dwell within the poetry of Seamus Heaney. It will use hauntology, an idea first coined by Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx, as a way of locating and unearthing the influence of spectres over the unconscious of the poet. A sustained argument that spectres of the past haunt and influence the present and future will carry throughout the course of this thesis. It will be shown that Heaney inherits from these past spectres, be they national or international, and that these ghosts of the past haunt and influence not only Heaney’s unconscious, but Northern Irish society as a whole. The core objective of the thesis is to interrogate and analyse the continuity and repetition of the past in the present of Heaney’s work; in a historical sense but also in a personal, literary manner. The degree to which colonialism, both British and Norse, impacts upon the present will breathe life into the argument that these spectres of past colonialism not only impact upon Heaney’s use of language, his identity, and his place in the world, but also, through the workings of the Derridean spectre, influence and garner the violence that sprung forth in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Similarly the absent presence of the bog people, Virgil, and Dante within the poetry finds Heaney inheriting, and being influenced by, wider, older, broader European mythical hauntings. The degree to which these spectres influence and repeat themselves in the poetry will culminate in the discussion of ‘Route 110’ as a poem that incorporates all of these spectres and shows the overall spectral inheritance at play within the body of Heaney’s work. This study will show that Heaney’s poetry is deeply influenced by the workings of the spectre upon the unconscious of the poet.
Anything but the ideal speaker listener in anything but a homogenous speech community: a study of communication through the medium of lingua franca English
(2024-09-09) Harrington, Kieran
This thesis characterizes the English spoken as a lingua franca by a community of asylum seekers, none of whom spoke English as a native language, and it examines how they use this lingua franca to interact with the English-speaking staff and with one another in the reception centre in which they live. The methodological tools and techniques of ethnography, corpus linguistics and conversation analysis are harnessed in a synergistic, cyclical blend. The ethnography, influenced by the work of Goffman and Hymes, highlights the troubled histories of the residents, including accounts of alleged persecution in their native countries, their flight to perceived safety in Ireland, and their new institutionalized lives, all which impacted on their daily communicative behaviour. Newly-arrived residents made a bigger effort to talk, but the routine of everyday life gradually undermined their communicative efforts. However, this routine and daily social practice also led to the manipulation and economization of language. For example, adjacency greeting pair parts, routinized through daily social practice, were manipulated for use as requests. The analysis of recorded and transcribed data, using methods associated with corpus linguistics, and following parameters set by McCarthy (1999), presents a picture of a notably reduced language system - the lingua franca used by the residents. The last two chapters focus in detail on the pragmatic use of the language at the disposal of the residents. It is argued that at the micro level, the residents exploited to the maximum, discoursally and semantically, yeah and okay and other minimal responses in combination with pauses, silences, intonational contour, pitch and intensity, to negotiate their way through difficult interaction with the staff of the centre, and that at the macro-level such strategy camouflaged the lexicogrammatical limitations, minimized the impression of disfluency, and allowed the residents to maintain subliminal control over the trajectory of talk. It is argued that the residents, in interaction with one another, maintained the orderliness of turn-taking, principally due to mutual collaborative support and recourse to the natural to and fro of communication.
Queer ecofeminism: from binary feminist environmental endeavours to postgender pursuits
(2023-11-03) Ourkiya, Asmae
Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: Ecofeminism: Inception; Development and Challenges Chapter 2: On De-Essentialising Ecofeminism Chapter 3: Gendered Climate Politics: Between the Far Right and Social Justice Chapter 4: Queering Ecofeminism: Challenging Heteronormative Far-Right Politics Chapter 5: Post-Gender Semiotics Conclusion References
‘Trying to draw a map of a child’s mind’: a study of the influence of childhood experience on the literary works of J. M. Barrie through a Freudian lens
(2023-10-27) O’Brien, Marie
This project aims to investigate what lies beneath the surface of J. M. Barrie’s work, from his representation of fictional characters to his subtle references to perplexing themes in his diary entries and factual recollections of his childhood. Through the use of Sigmund Freud’s theories, the thesis will trace strong, but often occluded, connections between Barrie’s repressed early childhood experiences, and some of the characters that he created in some of his early books Better Dead, Sentimental Tommy, Tommy and Grizel, The Little White Bird, and his memoir Margaret Ogilvy, and of course, in Peter Pan, where the timeless child is juxtaposed with children who are growing into adulthood. In doing so, this reading will allow for an analysis of the repressed elements of Barrie’s life, allowing them to be seen more clearly, which will enhance the significance behind his story-telling. There are several of Freud’s theories that occur in Barrie’s texts, from the use of flight to the inherent instincts that drive us towards life or death. One of the most compelling, perhaps, is the use of dreams in Peter Pan. Freudian studies suggest that the ego’s defences are lowered whilst we dream, therefore, our repressed feelings float to the surface, allowing an insight into how the unconscious mind works. Peter Pan appears to Wendy through her dreams, suggesting that Peter is an illusion of repressed desired feelings. Although dream analysis can be examined in the fantastical tale of Peter Pan, looking at the fictional novel in contrast to some of Barrie’s texts that are rooted in reality, allows a clear distinction to be drawn between dreams that occur in childhood and those that the adult characters experience. This interlinks with the core conclusion of this thesis, that Peter is the result of Barrie’s repressed desire to relive his childhood and return to a state of heightened consciousness. As Kavey and Friedman explain, Peter is a representation of ‘the most appealing aspects of childhood,’ with the most envious trait being his lack of memory (Kavey & Friedman, 2009, p. 10). Furthermore, whilst the occurrence of dreams provides a foundation for this thesis, the stages of psychosexual development also provide essential information by giving an insight to the reason why Barrie described Peter Pan as the villain of the text. By remaining a child forever, Peter Pan cannot complete the five stages of sexual development; oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital (Freud & Strachey, 2000, p. 7), which is believed to be detrimental to the human psyche. Peter will forever live as a child, which means he will never reach maturity. Thus, this project will examine this idea of immaturity, and Barrie’s depiction of the impacts caused by the failure to surpass childhood naivety, ultimately concluding that typical villainous traits such as immaturity, selfishness and impulsivity may impact others, but the full extent of consequences fail to affect someone whose conscience will never develop.
A literary and cultural analysis of the mistreatment of women portrayed in the works of female Irish writers and critical social events in Ireland 1984-2022
(2023-10-25) Murphy, Madeleine
This thesis examines the treatment of women in Irish society through a cultural and literary approach. The analysis includes a variety of literature dating from 1936 to 2015. The authors discussed are all female: Teresa Deevy, Rosaleen McDonagh, Kimberley Campanello, and Louise O’Neill. They are examined in chronological order while also exploring the cultural context of the time period in which the works were published. It also looks at the historical narratives of Ann Lovett, Joanne Hayes and the Belfast and Cork rape trials. Each cultural discussion focuses on women’s lives and the challenges present for them at this time. Feminist theory is a lens through which the literature is explored, including theorists such as Luce Irigaray, Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. These feminist theorists offer an ongoing explorative critique of traditional, and patriarchal, values present in Irish culture, regarding women in particular. The impact of the Catholic Church on Irish society at this time is woven into the discourse throughout the thesis, along with themes such as reproduction, racism, specifically of those in the Traveller community, and ableism that are present in some of the works, therefore depicting Irish society. The combination of theory, fictional representations and historical events within the context of a patriarchal Irish society allows for a rich examination of the mistreatment of women in Ireland. The thesis highlights the development of women’s position in Irish society over eighty years and while there has been slow progress, the examination shows that total equality has not yet been reached.
Constitutionally codified, the myth of the maternal in the national imaginary
(2023-10-25) Murphy, Lorna
This thesis will address Article 41.2 of the Constitution to examine how it affected Irish women for the succeeding eighty years. It will draw from De Valera’s ideology of nation building in 1937, which situated women in the private realm of the home. It will examine the special position afforded to the Catholic Church that wedded the function of women to a biological one of purity and sacrifice. Analysing a longitudinal selection of short stories from four different authors, their identifiable set of characteristics will convey a complete treatment of a subject. These subjects seek to question the symbolisation of women by an autocracy that enshrined their domestic position constitutionally. The analyses will employ the lens of literary critic and philosopher Julia Kristeva to appraise the role of motherhood and support a better understanding of their lived experience. Irish women and girls historically carried a disproportionate share of caring responsibilities, that left them discriminated against at home and in the workplace. Her philosophy of abjection responds to the way the selected authors narrated their female marginalisation, objectification and latterly racism, which features in the more contemporary texts. This aligns with her theory that posits females as subjects-in-process who can actively advance their social progress. The final topic concerns the recent Citizen’s Assembly on gender equality exampling such progress. Chaired by Dr Catherine Day, the findings concluded the need for a referendum to remove or reword Article 41.2 from the Constitution and replace it with non-gender specific language, that simultaneously includes protection of non-marital families.
Revolution, rebellion and vampires: colonial hybridity in Irish gothic literature and historical documents
(2023-10-24) Gallagher, Stephen
Colonial hybridity remains one of the most widely deployed and disputed literary theories within Postcolonial Studies. This thesis will provide an overview of colonial hybridity in Irish historical documents as well as Irish folklore and Irish gothic literature. I will use Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994) as the primary theoretical resource to highlight the examples of colonial hybridity throughout Irish history, folklore and literature. I will also discuss the debatable idea that Ireland is postcolonial. In this thesis I examine the 1641 legal depositions relating to the Irish rebellion of 1641, tracing colonial hybridity through the murder of Bridget Cleary and the involvement of Irish fairy folklore in her death. I discuss the vampires of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker towards the end of the 19th century in relation to the principal theorists of hybridity; Homi Bhabha, Néstor García Canclini, Gayatri Spivak, Robert J.C. Young and Paul Gilroy. I also discuss the more contemporary research of Angela Bourke, Seamus Deane, David Lloyd and Luke Gibbons. The final chapter discusses postcolonial trauma in Patrick McCabe’s Winterwood (2006), and examines how even the term postcolonial can be contentious as Anne McClintock argues that while the Republic of Ireland might be considered postcolonial, the people of Northern Ireland might feel differently. While acknowledging the valid criticisms of colonial hybridity, I argue that Robert J.C. Young’s view that hybridity can be used as a source of assimilation is relevant in a world that is increasingly having more debates on hybridity in relation to such issues as nationality, colonialism, gender and sexuality.
Good grief: changing attitudes to childhood grief in children's literature
(2023-10-24) Clifford, Rachel
In the modern context, it is understood that childhood grief is a normal response to loss and that bereaved children require support and guidance to navigate their grief. However, less than a century ago it was believed children did not grieve at all. When childhood grief was eventually acknowledged, it was thought best for children to avoid discussing their grief, that they were resilient, and would eventually learn to adapt to their loss. Research into childhood grief was limited, however two studies into childhood grief by Dr Maria Nagy in the 1940’s and Dr Elisabeth Kubler Ross in the 1970’s resulted in the development of age specific stages of grief. However, it took until the 1990’s before any major research was conducted into childhood grief. The Harvard Child Bereavement Study questioned how children mourned when a parent died and if grief in children differed from that of adults. More recent research has discovered longterm implications if a child’s grief is not adequately acknowledged and resolved. However, the portrayal of childhood grief in children’s literature or whether this portrayal is reflective of the changing attitudes to childhood grief has not been studied. Therefore, through the lens of literary trauma theory, this thesis examines this under researched area. It utilises critical perspectives from literary trauma theorists Cathy Caruth, a traditional literary trauma theorist, and Michelle Satterlee, a pluralistic literary trauma theorist, and offers a critique of both theoretical approaches and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. This thesis 5 investigates how changing attitudes to childhood grief are represented in children’s literature. It looks at a range of texts from the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first century and considers the influence of beliefs and attitudes surrounding death within the temporal and cultural contexts in which they were set. The primary texts analysed are: The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Yearling (1938) by Marjorie Kinnan Rawling, Goodnight Mr Tom (1981) by Michelle Magorian, A Taste of Blackberries (1973) by Doris Buchanan Smith, Bridge to Terabithia (1977) by Katherine Paterson and A Monster Calls (2011) by Patrick Ness. These texts span a century from 1911 to 2011, and were selected to represent a range of childhood losses, including the loss of parents, friends, siblings, and pets. It provides an in-depth analysis of childhood grief in children’s literature and analyses how society shapes the treatment of childhood grief. Additionally, it will explore bibliotherapy as a therapeutic approach to help children understand and cope with grief and loss and how literature can facilitate a deeper understanding of their traumatic experiences and the resulting emotional and psychological challenges it can evoke.
Sarah Atkinson (1823-1893) in The Irish Quarterly Review, Duffy’s hibernian magazine, Duffy’s hibernian sixpenny magazine, the month and the Irish monthly: a study of nineteenth-century Irish women writers and their literary and publishing networks (1857-1893)
(2023-10-23) Brassil, Geraldine
Anchored in the nineteenth-century periodical archive, this recovery project takes Sarah Atkinson (1823-1893) as a centripetal force. An influential Irish Catholic middle-class writer and philanthropist, Atkinson lists work across a range of genres in the Irish Quarterly Review, Duffy’s Hibernian Magazine, Duffy’s Hibernian Sixpenny Magazine, The Month and the Irish Monthly. Her recovered periodical contributions guide the trajectory of this thesis. Also traced via a series of periodical case studies are the various contemporaries whose work appears alongside Atkinson’s. The list includes Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877), Mary Banim (c.1847-1939), Rosa Mulholland (1841-1921), Ellen Fitzsimon (1805-1883) and Katharine Tynan (1859-1931). From the vantage point of a safe but also enabling Catholic periodical space, Irish women writers’ exploitation of flexible and fluid genres is demonstrated to have reflected modern female attitudes that subverted gendered constructs of cultural authority in a male-dominated profession. Reclaiming these Irish women writers from contemporary periodicals. I explore how they pushed outwards to expand limiting expectations about the role and position of women . Literary critic and cultural historian John Wilson Foster argues that Atkinson was ‘one of the most brilliant Irish women of her generation’ (2008, p.125), yet her diverse non-fiction writing remains invisible on the Irish literary landscape. My thesis addresses such lacunae. Through recovery work, I demonstrate that Atkinson’s encouragement of other women writers, her social activism, and her until now unexamined connections with early English feminist Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829-1925) created networks out of which come broader understandings of the period and new insights into Dublin's literary and publishing networks - the core project of this thesis.
The Irish question: an investigation into Irish language self-efficacy beliefs in adults
(2023-10-23) Barry, Shane
The vast majority of adults that have received their education in Ireland undertake compulsory Irish for around 13 years. However, over 60% of adults claim to have no Irish speaking ability (CSO, 2018). This study seeks to assess the relationship between Irish language self-efficacy beliefs and performance on an Irish language proficiency test. Self-efficacy represents a task-specific, self-assessment of skills in a specific domain. Utilising a quasi-experimental, quantitative research design, an Irish language proficiency test and suite of self-efficacy scales were created and administered via an online survey platform. 1,501 participants completed the full manipulation study. Based on results at phase 1, participants were auto assigned to groups and an intervention was administered. Performers with low results were provided false, inflated results and efficacy-raising feedback. High performers were provided false, deflated results and efficacy-lowering feedback. A control group was presented with actual results. Phase 2 testing revealed that sources of self-efficacy could be manipulated to significantly affect Irish language performance with low performers improving average performance by almost 30%. Self-efficacy ratings, were significantly reduced in the high performing group upon receiving the negative intervention. Self-efficacy revealed itself as a more robust predictor of performance than a single Irish skills-based question such as that employed in the Census of Population.
‘Jaysus, keep talking like that and you’ll fit right in’- an investigation of oral Irish English in contemporary Irish fiction
(2023-10-02) Terrazas-Calero, Ana Maria
This project is an interdisciplinary and comparative investigation of the reproduction of linguistic features of Irish English (IrE) present in contemporary IrE fiction. To do this, a corpus of over 1 million words comprising 16 works of fiction published in the Republic of Ireland by 8 authors was compiled: the Corpus of Contemporary Fictionalized Irish English (CoFIrE). The goal of this thesis, therefore, is to determine 1) which are the most frequently reproduced features of IrE orality in contemporary IrE fiction, 1a) how realistic is their fictional portrayal when contrasted against real spoken uses, 2) what does the use of the most frequently reproduced features in the corpus encode with regard to speaker identity, and 3) in what manner may modern Irishness be encoded through the reproduction of pragmatic items in fiction. Utilizing a variety of interdisciplinary methodologies, including Corpus Stylistics, Corpus Linguistics, Sociolinguistic, and Pragmatic techniques, the thesis identifies signature linguistic features that are thought to be representative of IrE in the corpus via quantitative and qualitative, comparative corpus analysis. To evaluate the level of realism inherent in the fictional rendition, the findings are contrasted against the Limerick Corpus of Irish English and the BNC2014. A second corpus comprising books by one of the CoFIrE authors, i.e. Paul Howard, was also compiled. Thus, the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly Corpus (CoROCK) was created given this series’ reputation for being a chronicler of modern Ireland and because of the high frequency of IrE orality reproduction these books were found to contribute to CoFIrE. Two case studies on non-standard, non-traditionally IrE high frequency intensifiers are conducted on CoROCK to better answer the research questions regarding the potential indexation of modern Irishness through speech reproduction in fiction. Finally, by evaluating the type of speaker identity these features may index when used in contemporary fiction, this thesis determines the type of modern Irishness that appears to be encoded through fictional speech representations.
A journey through learner language: tracking development using POS tag sequences in large-scale learner data
(2023-09-29) Mark, Geraldine
This PhD study comes at a cross-roads of SLA studies and corpus linguistics methodology, using a bottom-up data-first approach to throw light on second language development. Taking POS tag n-gram sequences as a starting point, searching the data from the outermost syntactic layer available in corpus tools, it is an investigation of grammatical development in learner language across the six proficiency levels in the 52-million-word CEFR-benchmarked quasi-longitudinal Cambridge Learner Corpus. It takes a mixed methods approach, first examining the frequency and distribution of POS tag sequences by level, identifying convergence and divergence, and secondly looking qualitatively at form-meaning mappings of sequences at differing levels. It seeks to observe if there are sequences which characterise levels and which might index the transition between levels. It investigates sequence use at a lexical and functional level and explores whether this can contribute to our understanding of how a generic repertoire of learner language develops. It aims to contribute to the theoretical debate by looking critically at how current theories of language development and description might account for learner language development. It responds to the call to look at largescale learner data, and benefits from privileged access to such longitudinal data, acknowledging the limitations of any corpus data and the need to triangulate across different datasets. It seeks to illustrate how L2 language use converges and diverges across proficiency levels and to investigate convergence and divergence between L1 and L2 usage.
A corpus-based comparative pragmatic analysis of Irish English and Canadian English
(2022-04-06) Almuways, Yasir Sulaiman
This PhD thesis is a comparative study of the spoken grammar of Irish and Canadian Englishes within the framework of Variational Pragmatics at the formal level, used to study the pragmatic variation (the intra-varietal differences) in terms of forms and pragmatic functions. It is a study of spoken grammar as a whole (in a comparative and representative way between and across two varieties of English). Corpus linguistics is used as a methodological tool in order to conduct this research, exploring the nature of spoken grammar usage in both varieties comparatively in relation to their pragmatic functions and forms. The study illustrates an iterative approach in which top-down and bottom-up processes are used to establish pragmatic markers and their pragmatic functions in spoken grammar in the two varieties. Top-down analysis employs a framework for spoken grammar based on existing literature while the bottom-up process is based on micro-analysis of the data. The corpora used in the study are the spoken components of two International Corpus of English (ICE) corpora, namely ICE-Ireland and ICE-Canada comprising 600,000 words each (approximately). Methodologically, this study is not purely corpus-based nor corpus-driven but employs both methods. This iterative approach aligns with the notions of corpus-based versus corpus-driven linguistics and perspectives. Corpus tools are used to generate wordlists of the top 100 most frequent word and cluster lists. These are then analysed through qualitative analysis in order to identify whether or not they are a part of the spoken grammar. This process results in a candidate list that can then be functionally categorised and compared across varieties in terms of forms and functions. Specifically, the study offers insights on pragmatic markers: discourse markers, response tokens, questions, hedges and stance markers in Irish and Canadian English. The results offer a baseline description of the commonalities and differences in terms of spoken grammar and pragmatics across the two varieties of English which may have application to the study of other varieties of English. Also, the prominent forms of spoken grammar across these two varieties can be further explored from a macro-social perspective (e.g. age, gender, or social class) and a micro-social perspective (e.g. social distance or social dominance) and how these interplay with pragmatic choices.
Céad mίle fáilte: a corpus-based study of the development of a community of practice within the Irish hotel management training sector
(2022-04-05) Healy, Margaret
This thesis examines the discourse of a unique third-level academic institution in order to identify the variety of linguistic features, which align it, first of all, to the higher education sector in general, but more specifically to a specific professional world where students are being educated for their future careers. Specifically, a college of hotel management education in the south of Ireland is the locus of research. Students complete a four-year Business Degree in International Hotel Management during which time they gain academic and theoretical knowledge along with practical industry experience during placement internships in the industry. Data collection using oral recordings spanned a twelve-month period and two academic years. This allowed for a comprehensive matrix of recording events encapsulating the full gamut of college academic life across the three years of student presence on campus. Recordings included a variety of hotel-specific and business lectures, practical working sessions, language classes and some miscellaneous events, thus creating a one-million word spoken corpus devoted to this sector. The primary research question concerns the identification and quantification of the discourse specific to this academic and professionally-oriented environment, using corpus linguistics methodologies. Parallel to and supported by this specialised linguistic repertoire lies the development of the emergent identity among the students themselves and their place and future careers within the international hotel management sector. This aspect will be analysed within Wenger’s (1998) framework of community of practice and Lave and Wenger’s (1991) initial theory of legitimate peripheral participation. In addition, an ethnographic lens will be employed to shed light on the day-to-day operations of this college and how the totality of this unique community, expressed through its discourse, but not only so, establishes and fosters an environment where the students develop their future professional identities supported by the academic professionals who are experienced industry practitioners in the field of international hotel management.
A literary theoretical exploration of silenced African women from psychoanalytic and feminist perspectives
(2022-04-01) Kisweka, Deogratias
The study explores the gender relationship in the three English speaking regions of Sub Saharan Africa through three novels: Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga; Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; and Parched Earth by Elieshi Lema. The aim of this research is to raise awareness of, and contribute to, the general discussion regarding gender equality and promoting the empowerment of silenced African women through the study of fiction. This research examines the discourses underpinning the lives of Africa women through a literary theoretical perspective, with feminism and psychoanalysis the primary modes that are utilised. The study further uses autoethnography as a qualitative research approach that seeks to systematically describe and analyze personal experience to understand cultural experience. It is a form of self-reflection and writing that explores the researcher’s personal experience and connects this autobiographical account to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. Findings from textual analysis reveal that the texts do convey strong messages in favour of deconstructing the primacy of male perspectives, and further argue that literature can offer a concrete and particularist understanding of the felt and lived realities of oppression. The findings also reveal the hidden sufferings of African women and critique the traditional constructions of masculinity and femininity portraying women as subordinate to men and victims of domestic violence, and certain strands of traditional African practices, while acknowledging the differences in different countries. The thesis concludes by appreciating the contribution made by women to African literature, especially in voicing the unvoiced and in deconstructing patriarchal hegemony. It is recommended that a more critical engagement with gender issues is important in bringing change and promoting a fair representation and treatment of women in contemporary African society.
Teacher talk at three stages of English language teacher career development: a corpus-aided study
(2021-03-30) Brennan Seely, Jane
Classroom discourse (CD) and teacher talk (TT) have received much attention over the years across a range of research perspectives, from qualitative case studies of individual teacher narratives to large-scale quantitative research using corpus linguistics (CL) tools. The present study aims to combine the affordances of qualitative and quantitative approaches by using a mixed-method research design to examine the espoused beliefs and classroom discourse of fifteen English language teachers at three stages of career development: novice, developing, and expert. Under the theoretical framework of expert–novice research (e.g. Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1980, 1986; Berliner 1988, 1989; Bereiter and Scardamalia 1993; Tsui 2003, 2005), the present study incorporates corpus-linguistic and discourse-analytical (DA) methodology using a corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) approach (e.g. Partington 2008) in the analysis of two original, spoken corpora, built for the purposes of this research. The first is a corpus of classroom talk titled the ‘Dublin Corpus of Teacher Talk’ (DUBCOTT) and the second is a corpus of face-to-face interviews with the same teachers, titled the ‘Teacher Interview Corpus’ (TIC). Although commonly used to investigate classroom discourse, there is currently a dearth of studies into teacher cognition, in particular the area of teacher beliefs specifically using CL approaches. Using a CADS approach in the analysis of a corpus of face-to-face teacher interviews allows the researcher to identify beliefs and perceptions of teachers at different career stages through the use of thematic analysis, complemented by CL tools, particularly frequency, cluster and keyword analyses Analysis of how teachers at three career stages talk about their teacher talk is conducted concurrently with an examination of classroom discourse at each of the stages, with particular focus on operationalisation of initiation and feedback acts. As well as identifying patterns of language use specific to each stage, overall results indicate the presence of some shared beliefs and approaches of teachers at all three stages, while clearly showing the differentiation and change in beliefs and approaches across the three career stages.
Breaking through the looking-glass: (re)imagining Alice through visual representation
(2020-12-17) Dillon, Jade
This thesis focuses on the visual iconography of the ‘Alice’ figure created in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, and it traces the progression of Alice’s characterisation through multimodal platforms including illustration, cinematography and fine art photography. It investigates the altering dynamic of the ‘Alice’ figure through a close reading of selected and representational visual texts. Similarly, this thesis examines the growth of Alice from child subject to adult woman, something that is a significant aspect of visual (re)imagining. These multimodal representations inaugurate a new sense of identity that merges with the overall idea of Alice. This thesis considers Alice as a kind of collective and ongoing iconotext; she is an amalgam of image and narrative character that transcends her literary origins. The images allow Alice to outgrow the text and give us an Alice that is far more developed than the singular character who appears in the written form. This thesis argues that the initial conception of the ‘Alice’ figure stems from the photographic existence of Alice Liddell. Therefore, Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum is essential to this research; this thesis traces the journey from the referent (Alice Liddell) to the end result of pure simulacrum (Alice as an idea that transcends her original state). The version of Alice Liddell that is captured in Carroll’s photographs is the beginning of a universal ‘Alice’ figure, and thus, becomes a referent for all other (re)creations. Hence, the ‘Alice’ figure maintains a polymorphic identity throughout her illustrative career. As she evolves, the identity of Carroll’s protagonist widens while the referential origin of Alice Liddell is inevitably altered (or completely lost) through pure simulacrum. Therefore, given that the referent of Alice is continuously echoed throughout the (re)imagined illustrative works, Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology is also relevant when analysing the ‘Alice’ figure. This haunting effect of being an omnipresent figure is interesting when analysing the impact of Carroll’s imagination on other illustrators. Effectively, she becomes an idea that echoes in the works of ‘Alice’ artists, decisively present and non-present all at once.
‘With great power comes great responsibility’: The impact of the parent-child relationship on the development of the heroic identity within comic book and graphic novel culture
(2020-12-17) Fitzmaurice, Hollie
The aim of this thesis is to explore the impact of the parent-child relationship on the development of the heroic identity within the comic book and graphic novel genre. The life of a hero is seen as a solitary one. For many, this solitary life begins in childhood, often with the loss of the parent. For many heroes, their origin story begins with trauma and isolation. It is this trauma and loss that will be explored throughout this thesis. In a similar manner, many characters have developed surrogate parental relationships, impacting their heroic identities in a very real way. For many heroes the parental relationship, loss, and subsequent pseudo parental relationships are the reasons for their heroics. This thesis will explore the motivating factors for each hero based on their attachment types with their parents, as well as the significance of any loss they face. The core objective of this thesis is to understand why certain heroes behave as they do, be it craving isolation or their perpetual search for a new family. While many heroes have iconic, instantly recognisable origin stories, others are more recognisable because of their role as a hero, with their origin being somewhat more obscure, with each hero being impacted in a different way as a result. Many of the heroes discussed in this thesis are superpowered beings, however there are some that will be discussed who possess no superpowers, but are heroes, nonetheless. While each hero has developed a different type of heroism, based off a different origin story, each hero discussed is deeply impacted by the parent-child relationship.
'Take him to the cleaners and make him do your homework': a corpus-based analysis of lexical structure used by English language learners
(2020-12-16) McNamara, Justin
The present study is an empirical corpus based analysis of the use of four lexical bundles or strings by ESL students at a higher education centre in Ireland. The overall aim was to ascertain if students at both ends of the language learning spectrum used the following multi-word items in their speaking and writing: 1) Multi-word verbs 2) Delexical verbs 3) Collocations and 4) Idiomatic expressions. There are two levels of learners who took part in this study: A2 and C1. The learner’s use of language was analysed over a period of twelve weeks. Recorded interactions and oral presentations in class were analysed as well as written homework and assignments. Integral to this study is corpus linguistics and the researcher’s created Adult Corpus of English (ACE). This corpus-based methodology enabled the identification of the frequency and number of the four lexical strings used by the language learners. Overall, twenty four students agreed to take part in the research and as a result the corpus amounts to 170,000 words: 20,000 written and 150,000 spoken. The use of WordSmith Tools (2016) and manual sifting of the corpus identified that both cohorts clearly use the four lexical strings in their speaking and writing. Multi-word verbs such as come back and put in, delexical verbs such as make an effort and do your homework, collocations for example spend time and write a letter and idiomatic expressions such as the grass is always greener and black and blue were recorded, identified and tagged. It is argued that though the classroom is not the most natural of contexts the majority of language used is produced by the learner without prompting or explicit teaching. Overall, the C1 cohort was found to use the majority of opaque lexical structures while the A2 cohort used less and transparent strings.

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