Forgiveness, empathy and gender - a Malaysian perspective

Recent theorising has suggested that in non-Western collectivist contexts, the need for social harmony may play a greater role than empathy in motivating forgiveness, and that women may be more impacted than men by this cultural value. In this study, a sample of 233 Malaysian undergraduate students, 100 males and 133 females, recruited from four English-mediated universities completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-12 (TRIM-12) to assess dimensions of empathy and forgiveness. Women exhibited greater empathic concern than men, but not greater perspective-taking. Men were less forgiving in terms of revenge-seeking behaviour, but men and women did not differ in avoidance of transgressors. The relationships between empathic concern and both facets of forgiveness were similar for men and women, as was the relationship between empathic concern and avoidance. However, the relationship between perspective-taking and avoidance was stronger among men than women. We found little support for the prediction that in this collectivist cultural context, perspective-taking would play a greater role than empathic concern in forgiveness. Further research is recommended to explore empathy and forgiveness in non-Western populations, with a need to take into account cultural factors.

Where I'm calling from : alterity and the other I of the unconcious

As I assess my fractured novel manuscript: a narrative in multiple first-person voices, I engage with writing that I produce at a primal/generative moment of narrative composition; I encounter writing that is both familiar and strange, known and other.

The sense in which I produce writing that is ‘other’ to me is intriguing. I recognise that a dichotomy between ‘self’ and ‘self-as-other’ exists in my writing and, in this, I am drawn to Derrida’s concept of alterity: to the idea that language is ghosted by the trace of the other. I am intrigued by the haunting shadow of trace: by the ‘other’ that simulates presence and makes the otherwise empty sign ‘full’ of meaning. 

When I acknowledge that my writing is at once strange and other, as well as familiar and known, I realise that the writing that I produce at a primal/generative moment of narrative composition is produced under the delusion of self-presence; it is produced under the delusion that meaning is present to consciousness ‘at a given moment’; it is produced when I am both ‘I’ and ‘not I’. This leads me to ask: What is my attitude to the effects that I produce when I am not I? What is my reaction when the other takes the floor?

To engage with these questions in the context of my fractured novel manuscript, is to engage with the possibilities for meaning that narrative, as a language map, encompasses; it is to engage in an inquiry about the relationship between language and semantic intention; it is to ask how my attitude toward the voice of the other in my writing affects the ‘finished’ product of the narrative text.

As I tackle these questions, I plot the operation of alterity; I plot the work of the unconscious as it operates at a primal/generative moment of narrative composition; I ask: how does the language of my fractured narrative mean? I ask: what is the relationship between meaning and authorial intention?

The concept of alterity explicates the ghostly shadow that lurks behind the sign, simulating presence and making the otherwise empty sign full of meaning. The concept of alterity therefore explains how my writing might be strange to me, in the sense that I am estranged from it (because it is not consciously, logically determined) but, simultaneously, how my writing is familiar, strangely familiar (in the sense of a latent, ghostly shadow, a web of unconscious associations).

Alterity recognises that the present (surface narrative) is infected by a past (primal/generative moment of narrative composition) that I cannot access in a definitive way.

Light the towel : narrative and the negotiated unconscious

This investigation is a practice-based inquiry. It takes place in the context of writing and editing a novel manuscript: The earth does not get fat (Prendergast 2012). The unpublished novel manuscript is a fractured narrative, a tale told in multiple first-person voices. One of the problems the writer encountered, as the novel developed, was a problem from the perspective of logic and continuity: the stories did not fit together in a linear way. As a result, the writer felt estranged from the writing and, at the same time, strangely familiar with it. Despite having produced the narrative, the writer felt that it was ‘other’. This paper summarises the writer's methodology; it explains the writer's attachment to this fractured style of telling. This fractured style is assessed within the context of the mind's ability to produce its effects without full consciousness. The analysis of authorial intention therefore focuses upon the influence of altered states of consciousness upon narrative material. In particular, the writer uses Andreas Mavromatis’ (1987) work on hypnagogia: described as ‘the unique state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep’ to describe the experience of the operation of the unconscious in authorial intention.

Borrowings; or ways of making poetry by taking, working and returning: a study in creative practice

The collaborative poetry project ‘Borrowings’ investigates and theorises some of the processes of poetic composition. Two collaborators, by making use of incepts from each other's work, have generated new poems by exploring the nature of intertextual genesis. This paper presents key ideas generated by this activity and, in doing so, applies Deleuze's analysis of games to its consideration of the nature of poetic composition, along with his contention that ‘[t]o pass to the other side of the mirror is to pass from the relation of denotation to the relation of expression … It is to reach a region where language no longer has any relation to that which it denotes’. The project explores some of the ways in which poetry makes ‘sense’, both to the writer and reader; as well as questioning the extent to which poetry depends on its author's ‘decision’ about what to write. It also teases out some of the implications for how we understand authorship if authorial decisions may be generated by incepts of one kind or another that occur to the poet apparently randomly, or may be given to them by a line or phrase that they encounter while reading. This paper's ultimate wager, and one put to the test in the project itself, is that limitation has an expansive effect on the generation of creative work.

From score to work? Making a group, improvising a dance

A questioning of the authorial role in dance-making through the creation of an improvised group dance.

Shifting between third and first person points of view in EFL narratives

This article reports on the difference between points of view in narrating a short story. The EFL learners taking part in the control group were required to recount the events from the third person perspective and the subjects in the experimental group from the first person perspective. The methodological frame of the study was based on Koven’s (2002) ‘content analysis’ of codification of various speaker role inhabitances, published in the Journal of Pragmatics. The results demonstrate that the first person narrators’ recall performance and the length of their stories are closer to the original version of the story than those of the other group, which indicates a specific ‘orientation’ towards the sequence of events. This was seen in the patterning of clauses as well as in authorial and interlocutory double voicing speech in the first person narrators, which may be justified by the enhancement of two components essential to literary engagement: namely, ‘aesthetic reading’ and ‘personal response’ as parts of ‘critical focalization’.

Student perspectives on the reasons for physical violence in a Thai vocational college: an exploratory study

Physical violence in Bangkok schools has been the subject of considerable public concern in recent years and yet relatively little is known about the nature of violence perpetrated by vocational college students. This study sought to understand the reasons for such violence through a series of semi-structured interviews with 32 male students. The analysis identified revenge from previous fights as a key motivation for violence. Students described a range of different responses to threats of violence, including renting safe accommodation and concealing weapons. These findings are discussed in relation to how an understanding of cross-cultural risk factors for violence is important for the development of effective prevention strategies.

Novas formas de pensar/dizer, dizer/pensar: a imagem como linguagem mediadora da experiência do formador de professores

Pós-graduação em Artes - IA

As trímeras de Riobaldo: a constituição de uma personagem como narrador

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Esboço com luz e sombra: problemas de inscrição e apagamento do sujeito em Um sopro de vida

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Manifestações do herói trágico em O tempo e o vento

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Trans-formações (a) temporais em Il Decameron: de Pasolini a Boccacio

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

A ironia nas Terceiras estórias: Tutaméia

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

O professor avaliado em textos jornalísticos: análise da avaliatividade em reportagens de Veja e Isto é

Este trabalho analisa como o professor é avaliado em reportagens das revistas Veja e Isto é publicadas no período compreendido entre os anos de 2006 a 2008. Aos textos jornalísticos é comumente atribuído um caráter imparcial e objetivo. Nesse sentido, a priori, a avaliação não seria um recurso produtivo de se analisar, de modo particular em reportagens, escritas para ser um relato fidedigno dos fatos. Porém, conforme é demonstrado neste trabalho, a dimensão avaliativa da linguagem desempenha um papel importante na criação do efeito retórico pretendido pela voz autoral. Nesta pesquisa, o referencial teórico é composto pelo sistema de avaliatividade proposto por Martin (1999) e Martin & White (2005), o qual tem sua origem na Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional de Halliday (1989, 1994) e Halliday & Matthiessen (2004). Utilizando esse sistema é possível investigar as avaliações feitas por meio da língua, que podem estar explícitas ou implícitas nos textos. A avaliatividade refere-se, portanto, “... ao lado interpessoal na linguagem, à presença subjetiva dos escritores/falantes nos textos, na medida em que eles adotam posições com relação ao material que eles apresentam e àqueles com quem eles se comunicam” (Martin & White, 2005, p.1). As análises e reflexões desenvolvidas nesta pesquisa mostram que a apreciação é o recurso avaliativo mais utilizado nos textos analisados. Contudo, no que diz respeito aos comportamentos humanos sob avaliação, o professor é o participante sobre quem mais julgamentos são realizados. Em Veja a maioria desses julgamentos é negativa. Em Isto é há uma pequena diferença entre o número percentual de realizações positivas e negativas, havendo uma leve inclinação para o polo positivo. A catalogação das avaliações atitudinais afetivas e apreciativas mostra que o entorno do co-texto é também um ambiente negativo proporcionado pelas avaliações por meio do afeto e da apreciação.