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Kim, Yeonmin. “W. H. Auden’s Poetry: An Affirmation of the Affirmative Character of Art.” Studies in English Language & Literature 42.4 (2016): 1-27. W. H. Auden left Britain for America in search of the autonomy of art unaffected by political ideologies; and at the same time he acknowledged the limitation of poetry, that is, the affirmative character of art, its frustrated realization of revolution in society. With his ambivalence toward art in mind, I will demonstrate how Auden searches for ways in which art works on society despite its limitations. First, Auden notices the problem of dishonesty in political poetry. Criticizing his own political poems published during the 1930s, he takes heed of a dramatized role of the poet as a public speaker during a political crisis. Second, Auden recognizes that art cannot change reality but can allow a revolutionary reformation of the social order only within the realm of art itself. Art delimits itself to the logic of the affirmative character of culture. Auden nonetheless shows that only if art retains its autonomy can it raise a critical voice against a society in which all individualities are sacrificed to collective ideology. The autonomy of art is the core of its social indictment. Last but not least, in his ekphrases, Auden alludes to the way art allows one to question one’s attitude toward the suffering of others. His ekphrases interrogate the guilty conscience of the onlooker. (Chonnam National University)

Yu, Jie-Ae. “Byron’s Hebrew Melodies and the Manifold Repercussions of Music.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 29-47. The main purpose of this article is to investigate how Byron's Hebrew Melodies features his diverse deployment of the function of music in personal, social, and spiritual domains. Byron's utilization of music is closely entwined with enhancing his thematic considerations such as the curing process of the speaker's heavy heart imposed by the continual sense of private, inward distress. The author's manifestation of music is also used to enact the imperishable achievement and fame of a dead person whereby his absence does not leave friends and relatives bereft and miserable. In addition, Byron accentuates the social function of music which enables the Hebrews to maintain their identity and unification in sharing their afflictive moment of slavery. Hebrew Melodies further embodies the spiritual power of music which drives the Hebrews to yearn for regaining their past glory and liberation. (Changwon National University)

Yoo, Jihun. “No Country for Old Men and Mythic Frontier Landscape.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 49-69. While many critics approach Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men in terms of the postmodern and late capitalistic setting, this essay approaches the novel within the frontier tradition. Despite the novel’s strong association with the frontier tradition, it variously deals with the development of a new frontier. This essay will explore the relationships between the new frontier tradition, determinism, free will and the American Dream. In fact, Moss, as an agent of free will, is created out of the violent confrontation between Bell’s nostalgic traditionalism and Chigurh’s destructive nihilism. In the novel, Moss emerges as a variant of a frontier character who is able to resist these two opposing world views and forces by constantly enacting his free will. But as a new frontier figure, Moss, together with Bell’s dream figure, becomes associated with the American Dream—the mythic vision of a man who must struggle on despite impossible odds. (Kookmin University)

Yook, Sung Hee. “(Re)membering Trauma: Joy Harjo’s Prose Poetry and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee.” Studies in English Language & Literature 42.4 (2016): 71-90. Both Joy Harjo's prose poetry and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee deal with historical memories resulting from traumatic events including colonialism, genocide, displacement, racism, and so on. These two women remember these traumatic histories by writing long poems, which, as Susan Stanford Friedman points out, are a very important tool for marginalized subjects to claim their status of subject and recover agency. Transcending the established binary between lyric and narrative, the lyric narrative and prose poetry used by Harjo and Cha evokes and historicizes their hidden and silenced stories and experiences. This paper is particularly interested in the ways Harjo, a Native American poet, views the past as connected to the present and the future, and Cha, a Korean American avant-garde artist, displays how traumatic memories are formed and characterized through her fragmented, broken, and disintegrated language, attempting to revive traumatic remnants of the past through a diseuse. This paper also emphasizes how Harjo and Cha politically take part in the struggle against the colonial power of the dominant discourses and the symbolic order of reality. (Sookmyung Women’s University)

Lee, Geon-Geun. “Wall-E and Star Trek IX: Insurrection: Romance Surviving Space Dystopia and Schopenhauer’s Voluntarism.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 91-113. Science fiction films, since the release of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in 1927, have consistently covered the topic of space dystopia based on the conflicts between the strong and the weak. Over time, the ruling classes in the movies are distinctive of using their advantage of scientific and technological weapons by giving superiority to material affluence and mechanical amenities rather than human love and natural environment. This condition can be interpreted as the confrontation between intellectualism and voluntarism. Arthur Schopenhauer, a remarkable pessimistic philosopher supporting voluntaristic metaphysics, insists that the will is before the reason as a governing principle of the world, which is more appropriate for observing the dystopian scenes of the films, such as WALL-E and Star Trek Ⅸ: Insurrection. This paper aims to discuss the two works from Schopenhauer’s angle so as to illuminate the relationship between human reason and will (or strengthened emotion) around the space dystopia. Through this analysis, the films share an ecological theme that humans’ body is an essential part of nature, and only love can save the deplorable world. On the other hand, the intellect is just a representational phenomenon of the will, which should be trained and controlled by romantic love following the nature’s law. (Chosun University)

Lee, Young-Zun. “On the Desire and the Imaginary Fantasy in Peter Pan and Wendy.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 115-134. For children, fairy tales are a kind of the Imaginary spaces in that their desires play active roles as the protagonists. The Imaginary fantasy provides an imaginative way of their escaping from the Symbolic castration. However, while children enjoy their fantasies, their true selves are alienated. In Wendy's Imaginary fantasy, Peter Pan emerges as an object a by which she resolves her wishes and desires; he annihilates all the repressed and distorted energies which James Hook insinuates. Peter Pan is Wendy's ego ideal, that is, her mirror image. In the narcissistic fantasy, Peter Pan is her, and she is him. He is also an archetype image, working as a kind of psychic cathexis. However, he is created as an Imaginary veil to hide the lack of her subjectivity. Thus, Peter Pan's mirror image becomes the unconscious core of both Wendy's construction of her ideal self and her Imaginary fantasy based on it, while she is lured, seduced and alienated by her false image. (Hannam University)

Kim, Chan-Bin. “Teaching and Reading Peter Pan Through Four Tasks From Critical Literacy(CL): Centering on Enhancing Students; Interests and Critical Awareness on the Text.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 135-162. This study aims to ascertain the effects of critical literacy(CL), using a qualitative research consisting of four tasks performed on four middle school students. The first purpose of this study is for students to equip the perspectives of CL to discover biases, discriminations, injustice and inequality hidden in J. M. Berrie’s Peter Pan in terms of gender, appearance and power. The second is to demonstrate how beneficial CL is in terms of improving readers’ interests in English texts. To achieve these goals, this study introduces four tasks based on strategies of CL: problem-posing question, switching, alternative texts/pictures and juxtapositioning. Through the four tasks, students can equip critical awareness to reveal biases and discriminations in illustrations and texts. The third purpose of this study is to observe whether students can apply their own enhanced critical awareness to another text to suggest that CL can positively affect students’ reading. By implementing CL-based classes, students can gradually change themselves into active learners and independent readers as partners with the teacher. An increased sense of democracy in a classroom can allow students to overcome biases and discriminations in texts and challenge an author’s intentions with diverse perspectives, not relying on a teacher who is equal to a bank of knowledge. (Korea University)

Bae, Daekweon, Green, Randy & Hayashi, Hideo. “Roles of Perceived Needs for English of Adult EFL Learners and Differences in Social Contexts between Korea and Japan.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 163-187. Motivation plays a key role in learning a foreign language but learners in EFL settings generally show low levels of motivational factors which are influenced by their perceived needs depending on their social contexts. The purpose of this study is to examine and compare the perceptions of adult English learners in both Japan and Korea regarding the need to learn English as a Foreign Language. In order to achieve this objective, a total of 225 university students in Japan and 602 university students in Korea completed a Perceived Needs for English (PNE) questionnaire. The study tested the hypothesis that the PNE levels in each social context are different, investigated the effect that the overall PNE had on motivation to learn English, and explored what subtypes of PNE had the strongest effects on motivation. In comparing the results between the Japanese and Korean participants, it was found that students in both countries showed a general lack of confidence or interest in English classroom experiences; however, the Japanese students were less motivated by career-oriented purposes than their Korean counterparts. The results of this study not only have implications for English language educators and those interested in the role that motivation plays in the learning process but also provide insight into how similarities and differences in social and cultural contexts might affect the motivation to learn English. (Gyeongnam National University of Science and Technology, Kumamoto Gakuen University)

Back, Juhyun. “The Dialogic Features of L1 and L2 Argumentative Writing: The Functions of Questions in Newspaper Editorials.” Studies in English Language & Literature 42.4 (2016): 189-214. This paper examines the roles that dialogic features play in developing argument within a journalistic genre. Combining the use of corpus techniques with discourse analysis, contrastive rhetoric research focuses on the use of questions employed in both L1 and L2 newspaper editorials written by university students. The results showed that there are cross-sectional variations in regard to the distribution and use of questions within the rhetorical structure of editorial discourse. A further structural analysis revealed that both L1 and L2 corpus have slightly different profiles in terms of the rhetorical functions of questions. These all suggest that the L2 writers may rely on a more inductive reasoning process to attain rhetorical persuasion than L1 writers. Pedagogical L2 writing resources should be given to teach Korean L2 writers alternative strategies for both genre-specific and culture-specific rhetorical conventions that are frequently used in newspaper editorials. (Busan National University of Education)

Shim, Soo-Jin & An, Chi-Hyun. “Korean College Students’ Perceptions and Preferences in Their English Textbook Evaluation.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 215-243. This study investigates students’ evaluations and perceptions of the textbooks after they use them. The findings reveal which factors influence students’ textbook preferences and identify whether there are any achievement differences between two student-groups using different textbooks. 118 low-level college students in English proficiency participated in this study, which employed a mixed methods approach using both quantitative and qualitative data: a textbook-evaluation survey, student interviews, and achievement scores. The results suggest that the students tend to be more attracted and motivated by the physical make-up of textbooks: layout, organizational and illustrative clarity, and visually clear representation of content with graphic devices (e.g., colored boxes and tables). Also, the detailed explanation for textbook exercises is considered important. In light of students’ achievement, the two groups showed a statistically significant difference in their vocabulary achievement. Textbook B group evaluated their textbook more highly than Textbook A group did, and it showed higher vocabulary score. It is generally assumed that more clearly organized presentation of vocabulary/relevant exercises and students’ preference about it might have positive effects on their learning motivation and achievement. (Hanyang University & Kyunghee University)

Yu, Ho-Jung. “College Students’ Perceptions about the Connection between English Reading and Writing in L2 Reading-Based Writing.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 245-262. The purpose of this study is to investigate college students’ perceptions about the connection between English reading and writing in L2 reading-based writing. The participants of this study were 24 college students who took an introductory English writing course. The students were supposed to complete six writing tasks throughout a 15-week-long semester while critically reading two articles for one writing task in class. The data of this study involved surveys before and after the course. The findings indicated that most of the students did not have any concrete perceptions about reading and writing connection at the beginning of the course; however, at the end of the course, they became more aware of it to the extent that they could utilize their awareness for reading and writing tasks. (Kyungil University)

Lee, Minkyung. “A Serial OT Approach to English Consonantal Harmony.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 263-292. This paper aims to provide a serial OT approach to English consonantal harmony in a word/phrase or across a morpheme boundary under the architecture of Harmonic Serialism (HS). Assimilation as featural spreading in Autosegmental Phonology can be established by two mechanisms in Optimality Theoretic Grammar; long-distance Align and local Agree. However, as identified in previous literature, pro-spreading markedness constraints such as Align and Agree have implausible typological predictions, thus they are not a sound basis for the phonology of harmony. The target data dealt with here are well-known English featural agreement of place, manner and voicing found in colloquial speech whereby two agreeing segments become similar or identical. Without resorting to Align or Agree under parallelism, Share[F] approach to harmony is quite straightforward to the analyses of harmony with no analytic chaos. Given the premise of gradualness in harmonic improvement under serialism, consonant cluster simplification or schwa syncope precedes place of articulation assimilation while degemination follows manner of articulation assimilation. (Daegu University)