The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: Reading Littoral Space

From early colonial encounters to the ecological disasters of the twenty-first century, the performativity of contact has been a crucial element in the political significance of the beach. Conceptualising the beach as a creative trope and as a socio-cultural site, as well as an aesthetically productive topography, this collection examines its multiplicity of meanings and functions as a natural environment engendering both desire and fear in the human imagination from the Victorian period to the present. The contributors examine literature, film, and art, in addition to moments of encounter and environmental crisis, to highlight the beach as a social space inspiring particular codes of behaviour and specific discourses, as a geographical frontier between land and water, as an historical site of contact and conflict, and as a vacationscape promising regeneration and withdrawal from everyday life. The diversity of the beach is reflected in the geographical range, with essays on locales and texts from Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, South Africa, the United States, Polynesia, and New Zealand. Focusing on the changed function of the beach as a result of processes of industrialisation and the rise of a modern leisure and health culture, this interdisciplinary volume theorises the beach as a demarcater of the precarious boundary between land and the sea, as well as between nature and culture.

The largest floods in the High Rhine basin since 1268 assessed from documentary and instrumental evidence

The magnitudes of the largest known floods of the River Rhine in Basel since 1268 were assessed using a hydraulic model drawing on a set of pre-instrumental evidence and daily hydrological measurements from 1808. The pre-instrumental evidence, consisting of flood marks and documentary data describing extreme events with the customary reference to specific landmarks, was “calibrated” by comparing it with the instrumental series for the overlapping period between the two categories of evidence (1808–1900). Summer (JJA) floods were particularly frequent in the century between 1651–1750, when precipitation was also high. Severe winter (DJF) floods have not occurred since the late 19th century despite a significant increase in winter precipitation. Six catastrophic events involving a runoff greater than 6000 m 3 s-1 are documented prior to 1700. They were initiated by spells of torrential rainfall of up to 72 h (1480 event) and preceded by long periods of substantial precipitation that saturated the soils, and/or by abundant snowmelt. All except two (1999 and 2007) of the 43 identified severe events (SEs: defined as having runoff > 5000 and < 6000 m 3 s -1) occurred prior to 1877. Not a single SE is documented from 1877 to 1998. The intermediate 121-year-long “flood disaster gap” is unique over the period since 1268. The effect of river regulations (1714 for the River Kander; 1877 for the River Aare) and the building of reservoirs in the 20th century upon peak runoff were investigated using a one-dimensional hydraulic flood-routing model. Results show that anthropogenic effects only partially account for the “flood disaster gap” suggesting that variations in climate should also be taken into account in explaining these features.

Just Reading? How Gender-Fair Language Triggers Readers' Use of Gender-Fair Forms

Gender-fair language, that is, referring to men and women with symmetrical linguistic forms, has been found to promote gender equality, but it is largely unknown which factors help make gender-fair forms more common in everyday life. Two studies examined whether speakers of German used more gender-fair forms after reading a text with gender-fair wording (vs. masculine generics vs. no personal nouns vs. another topic). Both studies showed consistently that women used more gender-fair forms after reading the gender-fair text than the other texts, whereas men did not. Men employed more gender-fair forms only after being made aware of these forms (Study 2). To conclude, merely reading gender-fair texts enhances women’s inclination to use gender-fair language, whereas men need to be made aware of this type of language use. Both studies highlight the importance of using gender-fair language frequently and consistently in everyday life.

Reading performance is not affected by a prism induced increase of horizontal and vertical vergence demand

PURPOSE Dyslexia is the most common developmental reading disorder that affects language skills. Latent strabismus (heterophoria) has been suspected to be causally involved. Even though phoria correction in dyslexic children is commonly applied, the evidence in support of a benefit is poor. In order to provide experimental evidence on this issue, we simulated phoria in healthy readers by modifying the vergence tone required to maintain binocular alignment. METHODS Vergence tone was altered with prisms that were placed in front of one eye in 16 healthy subjects to induce exophoria, esophoria, or vertical phoria. Subjects were to read one paragraph for each condition, from which reading speed was determined. Text comprehension was tested with a forced multiple choice test. Eye movements were recorded during reading and subsequently analyzed for saccadic amplitudes, saccades per 10 letters, percentage of regressive (backward) saccades, average fixation duration, first fixation duration on a word, and gaze duration. RESULTS Acute change of horizontal and vertical vergence tone does neither significantly affect reading performance nor reading associated eye movements. CONCLUSION Prisms in healthy subjects fail to induce a significant change of reading performance. This finding is not compatible with a role of phoria in dyslexia. Our results contrast the proposal for correcting small angle heterophorias in dyslexic children.

The modulation of reading strategies by language opacity in early bilinguals: an eye movement study

Converging evidences from eye movement experiments indicate that linguistic contexts influence reading strategies. However, the question of whether different linguistic contexts modulate eye movements during reading in the same bilingual individuals remains unresolved. We examined reading strategies in a transparent (German) and an opaque (French) language of early, highly proficient French–German bilinguals: participants read aloud isolated French and German words and pseudo-words while the First Fixation Location (FFL), its duration and latency were measured. Since transparent linguistic contexts and pseudo-words would favour a direct grapheme/phoneme conversion, the reading strategy should be more local for German than for French words (FFL closer to the beginning) and no difference is expected in pseudo-words’ FFL between contexts. Our results confirm these hypotheses, providing the first evidence that the same individuals engage different reading strategy depending on language opacity, suggesting that a given brain process can be modulated by a given context.