Norm and Anomaly in Language, Literature, and Culture

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Introduction

This volume collection of articles published under the title Norm and Anomaly in Language, Literature and Culture is aimed at analysing norm and anomaly in various contemporary Anglophone linguistic, didactic, literary and culture studies. Part of the articles included in the publication are modified versions of the presentations delivered during the Norm and Anomaly in Language, Literature and Culture Conference, which the Institute of Modern Languages and Interdisciplinary Research of Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities had the pleasure to host in September 2016. The conference organized by the Department of Anglophone Literature and English Language of the Institute of Modern Languages and Interdisciplinary Research of Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities provided an exciting international forum for the discussion and exchange of ideas related to the following issues: conventionality vs. nonconformity, normativity vs. transgression, order vs. chaos and anarchy, hegemony vs. opposition, protest and rebellion, evolution and continuity vs. revolution and disruption, alienation and appropriation vs. inclusion and communality, beauty and body cultivation vs. deformity and mutilation, language as a rule-governed system vs. language as a usage-based model, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and phonological variation, sociocultural norms (formality vs. informality/politeness vs. impoliteness), transparency vs. opacity of meaning, equivalence vs. non-equivalence in translation, standard vs. non-standard varieties of English, idiomaticity vs. non-idiomaticity in the language classroom, accuracy vs. fluency and testing vs. assessment. As the editors, we hope that the articles published will prove stimulating and inspiring to their readers, be it other specialists in literature, culture, linguistics and didactics, or English philology students.

The volume has been divided into two sections: Part I: Linguistics and Methodology, and Part II: Literature and Culture. The articles are presented in alphabetical order according to the surname of the author. The contents of each section will be briefly introduced in the paragraphs which follow.

Part I: Linguistics and Methodology includes a collection of 7 articles that focus on examining diverse facets of norm and anomaly from a linguistic and didactic perspective. The article by Eduardo José Varela Bravo, which deals with norm transgression and humour, analyses the main transgressive features of a small corpus of 46 internet rage comics from an online database to interrogate the kind of popular humour produced. Iwona Czyżak and Eivind Karlsson examine riddles as texts and an extraordinary diversity regarding their linguistic ← 7 | 8 → characteristics. The authors show how language experiences through riddles are ideal for language sensitivity training. The article by Aleksandra Kowalczyk discusses the mechanism of foodsemy, particularly dealing with the cases of metaphorical transfers where the source domain is formed by lexical items from the category FOODSTUFFS and the target domain is the macrocategory HUMAN BEING. The main purpose of Katarzyna Mroczyńska’s study is to present various realizations of Polish antipassive-like structures (flagged with the marker się) based on examples culled from the National Corpus of Polish against their English counterparts. The article by Magdalena Wieczorek addresses the types of humour pertinent to sitcom discourse, which are contingent on the norm/anomaly dichotomy. The paper draws on the participatory framework which encompasses the two levels: fictional characters and TV recipients, with distinct viewers relevant to each communicative layer. The main part of Jarosław Wiliński’s article constitutes a quantitative corpus-based study of normal and anomalous occurrences of adjectives in extraposed constructions with to-infinitive clauses. Last but not least, Agnieszka Wróbel’s study discusses a perception of idiomaticity in ELT that narrows the phenomenon to the traditional concept of idiom as an opaque and fixed turn of phrase that usually conveys a noun or verb meaning. The paper argues that a more systematic approach to teaching idiomaticity should focus on awareness raising and noticing tasks.

Part II: Literature and Culture includes 5 articles on Anglophone literature and culture which address forms of expression and repression, the problem and problematic of order and chaos, autonomy and oppression, harmony and discord in modern and contemporary British and US literature and culture. The article by Iwona Filipczak examines the representation of the non-normative bodies in John Updike’s The Poorhouse Fair and In the Beauty of the Lilies: ageing, terminally ill, deformed or mutilated characters. It is argued that they serve as a means to expose and criticize the American cult of youth and beauty. The article by Agata Sitko is devoted to the analysis of the YBA as an example of an anomaly in the British artworld. The main purpose of Justyna Stiepanow’s essay seeks to retrace Derrida’s statement that in Western culture murder and the death penalty are construed as each other’s opposites: though both include killing, there is no affinity between them. The author juxtaposes Derrida’s work with Garland’s Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. The article by Joanna Stolarek’s addresses the role of violence in the process of human salvation, man’s communication with God, and the complex, unpredictable, awesome nature of grace in Flannery O’Connor’s selected short stories. Finally, the issues of normality and abnormality in the context of the ← 8 | 9 → Republican Party and Donald Trump as a Republican presidential candidate are the focus of Anna Wortman’s essay.

As the editors of this volume, with the contributors coming from different universities, all we could wish for is to reach with it a wider group of readers, believing a publication like this can be found beneficial in the didactic process, touching upon various aspects of norm and anomaly and presenting diverse methodologies that can be applied to analyse them.

The editors of the volume wish to express their gratitude to all the contributors to this volume.

Joanna Stolarek

Jarosław Wiliński

(Editors)

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Part I: Linguistics and methodology

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Eduardo José Varela Bravo

University of Vigo, Spain e-mail: evarela@uvigo.es

Norm Transgression and Humour in a Corpus of Rage Comics: Self-Affirmation and Complicity

Abstract: In this study, we consider the main transgressive features of a small corpus of 46 internet rage comics from an online database to interrogate the kind of popular humour produced. This amateur humour is creator-centred, potentially offensive and pursues self-affirmation, which seems to correspond to the relief theories of humour. However, the creators do not think they are going against any pre-established norm. Rather, they transgress to gain the complicity of their readers, by being personal and jocular about a reality that is ugly, frustrating and absurd, with no clear standards or values. As is characteristic of postmodern online popular culture and also of critical artistic manifestations such as Dada, Pop Art and Graffiti Art, it is up to the reader to decide whether it is acceptable or unacceptable humour.

Keywords: Humour, Relief theory, Norm Transgression, Rage comic, Meme Postmodernism