Assignment 6

1. Quote:

“These, then, are some of the main ways in which readers and critics engage with literary texts and begin to put forward accounts of what they mean. So, where does it leave us? The situation is this. We will always need these ten elements of interpretation. Literary criticism can never grow out of them, and they can never be superseded. It's impossible to do English without them. It always was, and it always will be.

And yet, equally, they are never enough. What, then, is missing? Well, they mostly look inwards into the text itself, and we also need to look outwards. This necessary looking outwards from the text is why we have and why we need literary theory. The text principles do not contain much that would focus us on the cultural contexts and co-texts of a literary work. Theory can help us especially in considering four major aspects of the relationship between literature and the world beyond, these being firstly, literature and history, secondly, literature and language, thirdly, literature and gender, and finally, literature and psychoanalysis”

Paraphrase:

The author Peter Barry argues that the ten traditional ways that are used when interpreting a text are very essential for literary criticism, that they are irreplaceable, and absolutely necessary tools when working with the English language and doing literary criticism. Despite their importance Barry however argues that they still are not enough because they do not to give the reader all the information that he or she needs to do a thorough interpretation. According to Barry the traditional methods used in interpretation only tend to look at the text itself without taking surrounding factors into consideration, while literary theory looks at the world outside the text and takes into consideration how elements like time and norms in society effect the text, which he uses as an argument to why literary theory is so important. Further Barry states that literary theory can be especially useful when examining the connection between the four areas: literature and history, literature and language, literature and gender, and literature and psychoanalysis.

Quote:

“The process of deconstructing a text often involves fixing on what looks like an incidental detail - such as a particular word, or a particular metaphor - and then bringing it in from the margin of the text to the centre. In this way the text is 'de-centred' by the reading process, and the overall effect is often perverse, obsessive, manic, or even apparently malevolent towards author and text, reader and literature. If we think of the text as a cat, then old-style close reading involves stroking the cat so that it purrs and curls in upon itself contentedly feeling good. Deconstructive reading is like stroking the cat the wrong way, against the grain of the textual fur, so that the cat bristles and hisses, and the whole situation becomes less predictable. The close-reader aims to show a unity of purpose within the text: the text knows what it wants to do, and having directed all its means towards this end, it is at peace with itself. By contrast, the deconstructor aims to show that the text is at war with itself, and that it is characterised by disunity rather than unity. So the deconstructor looks for such things as, firstly, contradictions, secondly, linguistic quirks and aporia, thirdly, shifts or breaks (in tone, viewpoint, tense, person, attitude, etc.), and finally, absences or omissions.”

Paraphrase:

According to Barry the term “deconstructing a text” has to do with focusing on individual words or metaphors in the text. These word or metaphors should then be lifted it form the text itself so they get the readers full attention and instead give the text as a unity less focus. According to Barry this way of reading a text is the opposite of the traditional “close reading”, which often can seem to be offensive towards the author, the reader and the text. Further Barry exemplifies this kind of approach by comparing the text with a cat, where the traditional ways of interpreting a text is to stroke a cat with the fur, which makes the cat content, and where “deconstructive reading” is to stroke the cat against the fur, which makes the cat irritated but which also can give unexpected situations. Barry continues to explain the difference between “deconstructive reading” and the traditional ways of interpreting a text by explaining that “close reading” focuses on the whole text and tries to show the overall meaning that the text is trying to convey while “deconstructive reading” is focusing on contradictions and disagreements within the text. To find these tensions within the text “deconstructive reading” looks for tings that seems to be misplaced like “contradictions”, “linguistic quirks and aporia”. “shift or breaks (in tone, viewpoint, tense, person, attitude, etc.)” and “absence or omissions”.

2. Firstly I think terms like “Close-reading”, “literary theory”, “deconstructive reading”, “deconstruct”, “literary criticism” should be quoted directly since they are so important terms in the article.

Further I think quotes like the three following are good to quote directly since they give good and striking explanations that are hard to do better when paraphrasing.

“Deconstructive reading is a kind of dowsing tool which is designed to pick up that counter-current that runs beneath the linguistic surface.”

“By contrast, the deconstructor aims to show that the text is at war with itself, and that it is characterised by disunity rather than unity.”

“Language seems to have a natural tendency to undermine and contradict itself, to be one thing on the surface and another ting underneath”

I also think that the authors own opinions in the end of the article should be quoted directly.

“Literary theory often intensifies the difficulties of reading, and constantly throws up more problems than it is capable of solving. So why do it? Two reasons come at once to mind. Firstly, the complexities it gets itself knotted up in really are there. And secondly, trying to unravel them is enlightening, and sometimes even fun.”

3. I think Peter Barry’s article Tackling Textuality - With Theory is a very well written and convincing article. The thesis statement of this article is clearly stated and Barry has many convincing arguments to support his claim. I thought the article was quite long but it was pedagogical of Barry to, in the beginning of the article, present what he was going to discuss in the text. It was also very good that Barry guided the reader through the text by thoroughly explain the elements that are included in close reading and after that compare them with literary theory. To make it even easier to understand for the reader Barry also used poems to exemplify literary theory, which was very good. Despite the fact that I thought the article was to long, it was convincing and I agree with Barry that literary theory is something good to use as a complement to ‘close reading’ when studying texts.

Assignment 5

Summary of Peter Barry’s article Tackling Textuality – With Theory

In the article “Tackling Textuality- With Theory” from the paper The Use of English (Volume 52, Number 1, Autumn 2000), the author Peter Barry argues that the most common way of interpreting a text, referred to by Barry as ‘close reading’, in most cases are not enough to really be able to understand literary text and that literary theory therefore is needed. To explain this theory Barry first gives a thorough account of how the traditional ‘close reading’ works by listing ten ways of working with a text, where he includes methods like examining general patterns and patters dealing with details, similarities and dissimilarities, obvious meanings and hidden meanings, metaphors and literal meaning, how a literary work is divided into stages, what genre the work belongs to, and possible semantic changes. After listing all these ten methods Barry emphasizes the importance of them and states that they are necessary for literary criticism and therefore irreplaceable. Despite the importance of these, Barry further states that these elements however still are not enough to be able to do a thorough interpretation and claims that one must not only look at the text itself but also at elements surrounding the text to really be able understand it. This can, according to Barry however be done by means of literary theory where the relationship between a literary work and the four areas history, language, gender and psychoanalysis are examined. To explain how these four elements are an essential add to the’ close reading’ analysis Barry uses them when analyzing one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, and thereby shows what an analysis of ‘close reading’ misses in terms of interpretation. In Shakespeare’s sonnet Barry connects and examines metaphorical meanings with contemporary historical events, ‘micro- patterns’ such as word order with the author’s hidden meanings, the author’s gender and contemporary gender norms effects on the text, and the hidden meaning behind the words connected to psychological processes. After this Barry goes deeper into the area that deals with language and something referred to as ‘deconstructive reading’. Deconstructive reading is according to Barry ‘ to show that the text is in war with itself’ which basically means to examine where and how the language in the literary work contradicts itself by looking at linguistic features that seem strange, changes in style and so on. To show how deconstructive reading works Barry further exemplifies it by analyzing the two ambiguous poems ‘Oread’ and ‘Transit’. By doing this he shows how much more one can understand by using ‘deconstructive reading’ as a tool for interpretation, which can be se as another argument to why literary theory should be used when analyzing a text. Finally Barry writes that using literary theory can bring forth problems that are hard to solve, to this problem Barry however has to tings to say: the problems will be there even if one chooses not to use literary theory and trying to solve them can actually be a very interesting and informative matter.

Keywords: Literary theory, close reading, literary analysis, destructive reading, texts

Grades in Swedish primary school is not the answer!

According to recent studies Swedish children are lagging behind in subject knowledge when comparing to other European countries. This has made the government react and several of the Swedish parties are now considering to introduce grades earlier in the Swedish school to break these trends. Instead of giving Swedish students their first grade in year 8, the new proposal is to grade the students from year six, and even make it possible to give even as early as in year 1.

The purpose with these changes is of course to increase the standard in school and make children learn more. This may seem as reasonable idea, but grades themselves will not however increase the amount of knowledge the children acquire. Introducing grades earlier in primary school will not create a better school; instead earlier grades can have the opposite effect.

There are, despite good intention several reason to why introducing grades earlier than today is bad idea. First of all, grades are for many students associated with stress. Several studies show that stress among children and minors are increasing today. The reason for this stress often has to do with school. To introduce grades earlier in school would introduce stress among children earlier, and stress is preferably something to avoid in a good learning environment.

Another disadvantage of introducing grades earlier would also be that children unavoidable would start to compare their grades with each other. This would further result in a unhealthy competition among the children, where they soon would be able to divide themselves into “good” or “bad” students, which would be inciting for some (the “good” students) and devastating for others (the “bad” students). To separate graded performances from the student’s self- worth can be hard enough to do for youngsters in 8^th grade, for younger children it is even harder.

There is of courser more views to this matter than those listed above. One of the strongest arguments for introducing grades earlier in school is that grades would increase children’ s knowledge level in all subjects. It is true that grades can motivate some children to learn more, but if increasing the children’s level of knowledge is the goal, smaller classes and more teachers would have be more effective than grading students.

Another argument that supporters of this proposal may have is that grades would help parents to understand how their child/ children are doing in school. This however is not something that parents necessarily only can understand thorough grades, which actually gives quite poor idea of how the child really is developing. More informative and important is instead the teacher- parent meetings were teacher and parents can discuss the child’s development.

The last and most important argument that the supporters of this claim may have is that grades would make it easier to the find weak students earlier and be able to give them the accurate help as early as possible. Grades is however not the solution to this problem. Teachers today are well aware of what their pupils know or do not. The problem is rather that the teachers with as large groups as they have today, do not have the time or resources to help them.

To introduce grades earlier than today would probably make some students more motivated in school. For the majority however would the effect be the opposite. Grades do not themselves increase knowledge, find weak students earlier or helps parents to understand, smaller groups and more teachers however do. Introducing grades earlier in school will not create a better school.

Skip the ordinary Christmas gifts this year- buy a goat!


We all know how hard it is to find the right Christmas gift to our loved ones. Most of them, for instance, do not know what they want for Christmas because they already seem to have everything that they need, while others who really know what they want often buys it before Christmas themselves. In most cases the result of this is that the things given away as Christmas gifts are impulse purchases, which often are things that the person actually do not need. To buy a gift that really is needed and makes a difference can seem to be an impossible matter, but there is a great, easy solution to the problem, - buy a goat; because the goat deserves to be the Christmas Gift of the Year 2010!

To make a goat the Christmas gift of year 2010, may sound like an absurd idea, but it is however not as strange as it sounds. When buying this above-mentioned goat one does not actually receive the goat oneself, instead the goat is given away to poor families living in developing countries, as a form of charity. Once the goat arrives to the family it can provide them with milk that can be used both as food or be sold on the market. As can be understood, the income that the goat gives can actually be the difference between surviving or not for a poor family, which -if anything- is a very strong reason to why the goat deserves to be the Christmas gift of the year 2010!

Another argument in favour for this matter is that the goat, in contrast to many other items, is a very environmental friendly gift, which is preferable in a world with growing environmental issues such as our own. When buying a goat no harm to the environment is made, and that is another strong reason to support the matter.

Despite all these advantages there is of course other opinions. The opponents of making the goat the Christmas gift of 2010 may for instance argue that a goat is not a very fun gift, because the one who receives it does not actually get anything at all. This is however not true. Despite receiving a beautiful card with a picture of the goat the person also gets the pleasure of feeling that he or she actually has made a big difference to another human being’s life, which indeed is one of the best feelings that can be experienced.

Another counter argument, which opponents could claim, is that one never can be sure that the money paid for the goat, really results in a goat given to a poor family. This is however not a very likely scenario - the majority of all the companies providing these services are very reliable and can guarantee that the money is used as it is supposed to. This fear is clearly unnecessary and therefore not a good counter argument to the matter.

As can be read above there are very strong reasons, both humanitarian and environmental, to why the goat deserves to be the Christmas gift of the year 2010. Some people may still claim that a goat is a boring Christmas gift but when considering what Christmas really is about one can ask oneself the question of what they would like the most; Is it to receive a gift that they probably do not need or is it to receive the knowledge of that their gift actually makes a big difference to someone who really needs it?

Higher Taxes on Junk Food Will Have Positive Effects on Current Food Trends

Current food trends in society are all pointing in a similar direction; more and more people are forming habits of regularly eating junk food and the numbers of people suffering from obesity are increasing rapidly. Scientists have for a long time been able to provide evidence for the close connection between junk food and obesity but several studies have also shown that the consumption of junk food in the long run also increases the risk of having cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancer diseases. Too much consumption of junk food is obviously bad but despite the above-mentioned risks the consumption of junk foods is increasing, junk food companies are flourishing and the health cost for treatment of junk food related diseases are growing bigger every day. Governments around the world are now trying to find solutions how to break these negative food trends in human health and one question, which has been raised on the subject, is whether the solution to this problem would be to increase the taxes on junk food. As will be argued in this essay, the answer to this question is yes.


The arguments to why there should be higher taxes on junk food are several. One of the most important is of course the one dealing with human health issues, and on this area there are some very convincing evidence that higher taxes on junk food actually would increase people’s health and decrease the health costs of junk food diseases. One good example of this can be found when looking at a similar case, the sin taxes on cigarettes, where these higher taxes have reduced both the number of people smoking and the number of people dying from smoking related diseases. The example of sin taxes can of course be compared with junk food; people today are aware of the risks of eating too much junk food but this does not however stop them from doing so. As can be seen in the case of taxes on cigarettes, people are in general not inclined to change theirs habits only based on the information they have. Money on the other hand seems to be a very effective instrument for changing peoples’ habits and therefore, higher taxes would be a step in the right direction to improve the health of thousands of people.

Another reason to why junk food should be taxed has to do with environmental issues. In most of the cases the food sold by the junk food companies are produced with the intention to minimize the costs and increase the profits, which in most of the cases means that the companies have their production in several different countries and that the raw- material that is used often is as cheap as possible and therefore seldom ecological. In a world with growing environmental issues, such as ours, it is not tenable that the consumption of junk food, which has a larger negative impact on the environment than ecological locally produced food, is increasing. Higher taxes on junk food would not only decrease people with obesity but maybe also change their habits into buying the expensive but healthier ecological and locally produced food, when the higher taxes would reduce the differences in price between junk food and ecological and locally produced food.

To introduce these kind of taxes would however not be an entirely unproblematic matter and opponents of this proposal would probably claim the difficulty in deciding where to draw the line between healthier food and junk food. As the opponents claim it is of course true that the categorizing of food could be a problematic matter but when consulting all the experts on the area and when using all the knowledge there is about food today it is unlikely that this actually would remain an unsolvable matter.

Another argument that opponents of this proposal might have is that higher taxes on junk food only would make the junk food companies produce even cheaper and unhealthier food. This could of course be risk, but producing unhealthier food would also mean even higher taxes for the companies and with the bad reputation that unhealthy food has today, producing even unhealthier food would give the companies a bad reputation themselves. That the junk food companies would produce even unhealthier food is always a risk but considering above-mentioned reasons it is more likely that junk food companies will try to produce healthier food instead.

A better solution that might be presented by the opponents would be to try to lower the costs on better healthier food. This is a good thought but unfortunately not very easy to carry through. Even though it sounds very good with lower prices on healthier food it would not be possible to produce healthy food as cheap as junk food is produced today. The fact that healthy food has a higher price than junk food is not very strange; healthier food has often better raw material, the food may be locally and ecologically produced and the people working with producing the food have a decent salary. When looking at how the money is used when producing healthy food, one finds that healthier food actually is not very expensive; it is instead junk food that is suspiciously cheap.

To inform people to eat better, as the opponents to higher taxes on fast food could claim to be one of the better solutions, is a very good thing to do. Unfortunately, the human being is good at ignoring good advices and just as the case with cigarettes to only inform about the risks will not be enough. Taxes, which affects peoples economy on the other hand has a big influence on people and if bad habits are expensive it is very likely that these habits, like eating a lot of junk food, change.

To increase the taxes on junk food may seem to be a radical proposal, but the advantages are several. As in the case with the sin taxes on cigarettes where the number of smokers have decreased it is very likely that a tax on junk food also will decrease the number of people suffering of obesity, which is very good. Higher taxes on the cheaper junk food would also give the healthier, ecological and locally produced food more of an even chance to compete with the junk food, which would be a very positive development on the food market. It is a lovely thought that people would change their bad food habits if enough information is given and common sense is used, however this it is not how human beings work. If we want to change the increasing unhealthy habits in food trends among people it is not enough with information. To increase the tax on junk food on the other hand will change peoples’ habits and it will have very positive effects on current food trends.

1. Define the term "style" in academic writing.

Style in academic writing has to do with the language, the tone, the grammar and the vocabulary that the writer uses when he or she is writing an academic text and what type of language that is appropriate when writing that kind of text type. There are several features that characterize the style of academic writing. It is for example important that the language that is used is formal, that the things that the writer writes are written in Standard English and that the texts are explicit. It is important for the author to choose words with a precise meaning as much as possible and at the same time tentative in his or her writing. It is also important that the text is objective.

2. Formal writing

” Climate change is also likely to affect water quality and quantity in Europe, and hence the risk of contamination of public and private water supplies (Miettinen et al., 2001; Hunter, 2003; Elpiner, 2004; Kovats and Tirado, 2006). Higher temperatures have implications for food safety, as transmission of salmonellosis is temperature sensitive (Kovats et al, 2004; Opopol and Nicolenco, 2004; van Pelt et al. 2004). Both extreme rainfall and droughts can increase the total microbial loads in freshwater and have implications for disease outbreaks and water quality monitoring (Howe et al., 2002; Kistemann et al., 2002; Opopol et al. 2003; Knight et al., 2004; Schijven and de Roda Husman, 2005).”

Extract from IPCCs report Climate Change 2007: Working Group II: Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability

(http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch12s12-4-11.html)

Informal writing

"FAITH EVER MORE: THE MELBOURNE SLAM RALLY

godDAMN i could not have had a more awesome day.

i just came home from a random surprise Melbourne dinner with fucking mike patton and the entire reunited Faith No More.
all incredibly down-to-earth, inspiring guys. i sat next to roddy bottum and we had great talks about bands and music and what it’s like to leave and re-unite again.they weren’t at the rally; they’re in town for their own shows & for soundwave (my nemesis festival!), but i literally bumped into a mutual pal (well, our promotor-in-common, michael gudinski, not SO random)

and he invited me out with them.

we ate delicious vegetarian chinese….

….my plans in life have officially collapsed. and you know what? i’m fucking fine with it.

when huge street protests and vegetarian chinese dinners with amazing people call, you FUCKING GO. you GO."

Extract from Amanda Palmers blog (http://blog.amandapalmer.net/)

The two pieces of text that can be seen above are examples of formal and informal writing. The first text, which is a report about the climate change from IPCC, is an example of a text written in formal language. The second text is a text from a blog with a text written in informal language. There are of course a lot of differences between these texts. For example one can find differences in:

1. Vocabulary. – The formal text uses a more formal vocabulary than the informal text. A sentence like ”i’m fucking fine with it”, found in the informal text, would not be appropriate to use in formal writing

2. The writer’s opinions- the formal text is objective, while the informal text is subjective. The formal text deals with clear facts, without the authors’ feelings involved in the text, while the informal text has a lot of the author’s feelings in it.

3. Contractions- the formal text uses no contractions such as weren’t or they’re, which occurs several times in the informal text.

4. Grammar. - Also the grammar differs between the texts. In the informal text sentences without a capital letter in the beginning of the sentence or in proper names occurs several times, while lack of capital letters is something that does not occur in the formal text.

3. My own examples of one formal and one informal text

Formal writing

That people in Sweden today should be treated equivalent despite of their sex is something that most people agree on. Despite this fact there are still a lot of areas in society where people are treated differently because of their gender. One of these areas is the labour market were equivalent job assignments performed by men and women still are valued unequal in forms of salaries.

Informal writing

I think it’s very important that we treat girls and boys at the same way. I also think that Sweden is quite good at doing it, but at the same time i don’t really believe that we’re there yet. I mean, men and women still have different salaries, is that equal? But this is not only about salaries, there are more things to talk about. How come in certain occupations there are almost only men who are working, and in others only women? And how come fathers still doesn’t get to stay home with their newborn children as much as mothers do?