What is Modern Languages Research? Professor Pam Moores May 2011 Acknowledgments Thanks are due to the many academics from across the country who participated in consultation meetings in London, Leeds and Bristol, and in numerous subsequent email exchanges. The author would like to thank most particularly Matthew Treherne of the University of Leeds for his readiness to sum up exchanges and set the ball rolling. Authors of individual case studies are acknowledged in the text. Author Pam Moores is Professor of Modern Languages and Executive Dean of the School of Languages and Social Sciences at Aston University, where she lectures in French. Chair of UCML for four years from early 2007, she has played a leading role in the Shaping the Future project. Published by Published by UCML with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England. University Council of Modern Languages (UCML) t: +44 (0)23 8059 4814 f: +44 (0)23 8059 4815 e: ucml@soton.ac.uk www.ucml.ac.uk Copyright This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial-No Derivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). www.ucml.ac.uk Contents Abstract 1 Modern Languages Research in the UK 2 Illustrative Case Studies 4 The Algerian demonstrations of 1961 and their repression 5 The History of the French Language in Russia 7 The G8 and G20’s position in global governance and the role of Japan 9 Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Europe: A European-wide project 11 Maintaining a regional language in the 21st century: the example of Low German 13 Learning French from ages 5, 7 and 11: An investigation into starting ages, rates and routes of learning amongst early foreign language learners 15 Dante and Theology 17 Documenting varieties of the Romani language 19 German Autobiographical Writing in the Twentieth Century 21 Russian Media, Culture, and Conceptual Blending 23 Queer Cinema from Spain and France: the translation of desire and the formation of transnational queer identities 25 www.ucml.ac.uk 1 Abstract Given the diverse and fundamentally multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of research in Modern Languages, this document seeks to define the common characteristics and articulate a shared identity for researchers in the field. It explains why such research is distinctive, internationally recognised and valuable, and sets out the reasons for its importance to our understanding of the world, to UK cultural life, higher education, the economy, and the country’s power and influence. Short case studies describing specific research projects and expertise are used to illustrate both the scope and diversity of work in the field, and unifying characteristics across a broad range of research. www.ucml.ac.uk 2 Modern Languages Research in the United Kingdom Introduction Modern Languages research in the UK today is extremely diverse and far-reaching. It embraces such a wide range of languages, countries, cultures and disciplines that its nature, identity and purpose are often not fully grasped. The statements below represent the fruit of extensive consultation and exchange amongst scholars in the field with a view to defining and illustrating the common features of our research. The aim has been to set out in general terms the defining characteristics, scope and value to society of this research in order to define our identity as a research community, and promote better understanding and greater public recognition. What we mean by research in Modern Languages With linguistic and intercultural expertise as its starting point, Modern Languages research is driven by the need for first-hand knowledge and understanding of different languages, cultures and societies, and their interactions; it encompasses analysis of languages and cultures from the distant past to the present day, enriching global understanding and cosmopolitan culture in the twenty-first century; it examines the ways that languages and cultures work, and the ways we learn, teach, interpret and translate those languages and cultures; it constantly crosses disciplinary and national boundaries, furthering understanding of peoples and countries across the world, and their rich diversity of linguistic, cultural and social expression; it embraces and interfaces with a wide range of disciplines, being fundamentally multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary; it provides a multilingual dimension, and intercultural and comparative scope, to research across the Humanities and Social Sciences. Why it is distinctive, internationally recognised and valuable It combines an independent external and often ethnographic perspective with close, in-depth knowledge of diverse languages and cultures, leading to unique insights and findings; www.ucml.ac.uk 3 through analysis of human experience in cultural context, its implicitly comparative lens deepens understanding of the relationship between cultural particularity and the universal that transcends language and culture; flexible and creative in its multidisciplinary approach, it spearheads disciplinary innovation through development of new perspectives and sophisticated methodologies for the study of cultures and their interactions; it is inherently international in outlook. How these qualities make Modern Languages research indispensable? By contributing to: in-depth knowledge and understanding of the world, and meaningful intercultural communication; expansion of the UK’s foreign language capability, through enhanced understanding of the linguistic, social and cognitive processes that underpin language learning the nation’s cultural life and cultural capital - its broad intercultural perspective brings new insights, energy and diversity to the Humanities and Social Sciences, enriching the intellectual life of the nation, promoting the creative industries and economy, and enhancing public understanding of national and transnational contexts; our universities - it is at the vanguard of internationalising research practices and scholarly collaboration, though inward and outward transfer of research findings, facilitating international dissemination in a range of languages and across a variety of cultures; students - through engagement with this research, our students, who will have acquired detailed knowledge of foreign languages in context, gain access to new insights into language and society, and further develop their intercultural awareness and skills, becoming highly employable, internationally mobile graduates and global citizens; the UK economy - it provides the linguistic expertise and cultural knowledge necessary for international trade and global mobility, promoting national growth and prosperity within the European Union and beyond; www.ucml.ac.uk 4 the UK’s power and influence - it provides the foreign knowledge base and expertise required for international diplomacy, the intelligence services and national security. Illustrative Case Studies The outcome of research in Modern Languages may be communicated in various forms, including traditional scholarly outputs such as the publication of books, special collections and editions, journal articles and reviews; presentation through lectures, seminars, conferences, workshops and textbooks; advice to government departments, other organisations and businesses through expert reports, policy papers and briefings; and engagement of the wider public through exhibitions, media reports, interviews, websites and so on. In a digital era, when research is increasingly published online and ever more accessible, in principle we have to have the search mechanisms needed to enable all who are interested to access an extensive range of bibliographical information and to sample research in the field of Modern Languages directly. In practice, however, this work is unlikely to be grouped together and presented under the general label of Modern Languages research. The purpose of the short case studies presented here is, therefore, to offer examples that illustrate the unifying characteristics set out above, and thus deepen understanding of the identity, diversity and value of research in Modern Languages conducted in UK universities today. This selection of case studies is designed to serve as a starting point in order to generate discussion, elicit complementary contributions, and thereby develop an ever more extensive and useful, illustrative collection. The order in which examples are listed is random, deliberately avoiding any notion of hierarchy or systematic organisation, and aiming to emphasise diversity. All academics willing to offer case studies which would usefully extend understanding of the key messages of this document are invited to bring these to our attention at ucml@soton.ac.uk. www.ucml.ac.uk 5 The Algerian demonstrations of 1961 and their repression Dr Jim House, University of Leeds J.R.House@leeds.ac.uk Through detailed historical study of a specific moment of colonial violence and its memorial afterlives – the repression by the Paris police of a peaceful proindependence demonstration by Algerians on 17 October 1961 – this project assessed the continuing relevance of the past to contemporary French and Algerian societies. In doing so, the study engaged with hotly-discussed contemporary social and political issues affecting postcolonial France and Algeria: colonial violence and its legacies, colonial memory, immigration and racism. Background and context The project grew out of a doctoral thesis on the history of antiracism, and published work on Algerian migration history in collaboration with Neil MacMaster. The aim was to provide a new reading of the violence of October 1961 by situating the repression within a longer historical timescale, and to trace the re-emergence in France of the public visibility of this violence since the 1980s. Interviews allowed us to understand the lived experience of Algerian migrants and the motivations of their French supporters. Description of activity The book project, between 2000 and 2005, led to publication in English in 2006 (Jim House and Neil MacMaster, Paris 1961. Algerians, State Terror, and Memory, OUP), and translation into French in 2008 (Tallandier). A high level of interest in both France and Algeria led to numerous invitations to present the findings of this research, and engage more widely in debates on France’s colonial past. Specifically, this involved addressing public meetings organised by town councils and cultural associations, writing the text for a public exhibition, contributing to an exhibition catalogue, advising numerous documentary film makers and a novelist, giving numerous oral and written interviews to newspapers and radio in France and Algeria, appearing on Radio France Culture, and working in an advisory capacity for France’s national museum for immigration history (Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration), in addition to academic papers in the UK, France, Algeria, the USA, Netherlands and Morocco. www.ucml.ac.uk 6 Outcomes These activities enabled me to gain a comparative viewpoint on academic and nonacademic approaches to the past, and how the October 1961 events are spoken about in France in relation to Algeria. Meetings with prominent politicians (ministerial level, mayors of large cities), diplomats and cultural activists offered the opportunity to promote the idea that research and teaching in departments of French in the UK are truly inter-disciplinary and multi-faceted, and have an important contribution to make in re-shaping postcolonial studies and enhancing cross-cultural understanding. The engagement with a wider public has in turn produced new teaching resources (e.g. documentary films, activist literature) and work by research students in these areas. The research has enhanced my cross-cultural awareness with regard to France, Algeria, and the place of the Algerian diasporas in France. I am continuing my Arabic language studies to enable further research using this language. www.ucml.ac.uk 7 The History of the French Language in Russia Professor Derek Offord, School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol Derek.Offord@bris.ac.uk The overarching aim of this three-year project is to fill a large gap in knowledge about the development of modern Russian society and culture by providing the first multidisciplinary history of the French language in Russia This project spans the period from c.1700, before which France was unknown to most ordinary Russians, until the October Revolution of 1917, after which most of the few remaining French-speaking Russian aristocrats emigrated, many of them to France. Its main focus is on the period from the mid-eighteenth century, when French was coming to be widely used by the political and social elite, to the midnineteenth century, when social and cultural factors meant the use of French was becoming more restricted. The project will include a brief examination of the status of French in Russia in the late tsarist period and in the USSR. The research explores, in the first place, how French influenced the Russian language and Russian linguistic usage. (Much modern Russian phraseology and vocabulary is of French origin.) It also examines how French affected the way Russians thought about their own language. More broadly, it looks at the influence French had on Russian culture and thought, especially on manners, social and political attitudes, and various forms of Russian nationalism during the period when a rich secular literature was being created and an emergent intelligentsia was constructing an identity for the nation. Little research has previously been conducted in this area, chiefly because the use of French by the Russian nobility, as an aspect of elite culture, was of less interest to Soviet scholars working within a Marxist framework than were the phenomena that tended to break down that culture. Moreover, revelation of a strong foreign influence on Russian life and culture could be adversely perceived in a patriotic tradition of scholarship as capable of diverting attention from native Russian virtues. The research draws on various disciplines, including sociology, cultural theory and history, and the team will work closely with an international advisory board of distinguished scholars. By means of a two-volume monograph, a website, the www.ucml.ac.uk 8 proceedings of a seminar series, a conference and a colloquium, and through a PhD thesis, the project seeks to: deepen understanding of the process by which, and the degree to which, Russia was integrated into the mainstream of modern European civilisation during an age when nations were being formed; contribute to understanding of the development of national self-consciousness and forms of nationalism; illustrate the linguistic, social, cultural, political and intellectual effects of major language contact, identifying both the benefits that bilingualism may bring to a community and the anxieties and tensions it may cause; contribute to the emergent field of historical scholarship on language; promote interdisciplinary dialogue, throwing light on the extent to which theories, models and methods can prove valid and useful across disciplinary boundaries. www.ucml.ac.uk 9 The G8 and G20’s position in global governance and the role of Japan Professor Hugo Dobson School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield h.dobson@shef.ac.uk This ongoing research explores the development of the G8 and G20 within the architecture of global governance, both historically and specifically during the recent and intensive period of summitry since 2008 as a result of which the G8’s legitimacy has been seen to erode and the G20 has risen to become the ‘premier forum for international economic cooperation’. Since 1975, Japan has been the only Asian member of the predominantly North American/European forum of the G8 and sought to be regarded as a responsible member of international society, whilst carving out a role for itself as the representative of the Asian region. However, within the expanded forum of the G20, which includes developing and developed countries (including five other Asian countries), Japan’s role is under threat. The central question driving this ongoing research is how are the Japanese government and its people responding to these challenges? Since 2008, I have gained accreditation to attend the G8 and G20 summits held annually in Japan, Italy, Canada and France. Specifically, I work in the international media centres of each summit, which allows me to respond to events as they happen and conduct interviews with Japanese government and non-governmental representatives. I have also been available to speak to a range of UK, Japanese, Chinese and global media outlets and provide them with informed analysis of the G8, G20 and Japan’s role therein. These have included Japan’s second-largest newspaper Asahi Shinbun (readership of 11 million), China Radio International (the PRC’s equivalent of the BBC World Services), Kyodo News (Japan’s major news agency and source of news for Japanese newspapers, radio and television), The Wall Street Journal (readership of 2 million), and Xinhua (China’s major news agency and source of news for Chinese newspaper radio and television). Next year, the G8 will be held in the US and the G20 in Mexico. I intend to apply for accreditation once again and continue my research into evolution of these mechanisms of global governance and Japan’s role whilst disseminating this research through global media www.ucml.ac.uk 10 outlets in addition to the more traditional outlets of academic journals and research monographs. www.ucml.ac.uk 11 Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Europe: A Europeanwide project Professor Naomi Segal, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London Naomi.Segal@sas.ac.uk Background This strategic activity was launched in October 2007 by the Standing Committee for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation, whose UK representative I have been since 2005. A small working group of four literary scholars on the SCH set out to examine what research is now being engaged in by scholars whose formation was in literary studies. We decided to define this interdisciplinary field of research as ‘literary-and-cultural studies’ [LCS]. The objects of LCS researchers are very varied indeed, but the ways in which they read and investigate these objects are characterised by a combination of four key concepts: textuality, rhetoricity, fictionality and historicity. Our work included two meetings organised at the IGRS in 2008 to which we invited around forty researchers, senior and early-career, from Europe and beyond. In 2009, the current project, jointly funded as an ESF-COST synergy, was launched. Project The overall aim of Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Europe is to encourage European stakeholders, policymakers and research funders to understand better both LCS research itself and its contribution to Europe’s responses to the Grand Challenges of the 21st century. In the course of the project, run by eight scholars from ESF and COST, four key areas of LCS research were highlighted and a Strategic Workshop held on each: Remembering & Forgetting (December 2009 in London); Cultural Migration & Translation (May 2010 in Dublin), Electronic Textuality (June 2010 in Istanbul) and Biopolitics, biosociality & the body (August 2010 in St Gallen). In March 2011, a Strategic Workshop was held in Brussels to present to an audience of European stakeholders the preliminary outcomes of these events and the first draft of a Science Policy Briefing which will be published and disseminated in September www.ucml.ac.uk 12 2011. An additional outcome will be a volume of essays bringing together all strands of this interdisciplinary project, which I will co-edit with Daniela Koleva (BG). International and interdisciplinary impact This project is both innovative and ambitious, since its aim is to reconceptualise a field and contribute to a new way of understanding it, for the sake both of researchers and of those who fund our work and who formulate the policies that make it possible – at national as well as European level. The project reaches beyond the specific research conducted by any one scholar, by placing that work in its real collaborative and cross-disciplinary context and focus. For instance, in the London workshop, cultural-memory theorists defined the centrality of narrative textuality in their material; at St Gallen a historian investigating online gene histories discussed rhetoric with a literary scholar looking at metaphors of grafting; in Dublin theories of linguistic translation and publication history met; and in Istanbul a graphic designer and a geographer debated the fictive qualities of SMS or online journalism. English has been our main language of debate, but none of this complex and enriching international exchange could have happened without the intercultural and multilingual research and understanding of the original four MFL scholars in the SCH’s Working Group. www.ucml.ac.uk 13 Maintaining a regional language in the 21st century: the example of Low German Professor Gertrud Reershemius, School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University g.k.reershemius@aston.ac.uk Background Low German is a Germanic minority language, spoken by 2.5 million speakers mainly in Northern Germany. Two representative linguistic surveys conducted in 1984 and 2007 show that Low German has lost more than half of its active speakers in less than thirty years, mainly due to the fact that speakers no longer raise their children in the language. If these trends continue, it is foreseeable that within a relatively short time Low German might be lost. Yet at the same time, recent studies show that attitudes towards Low German are become overwhelmingly positive. What used to be stigmatised is now considered an important part of regional culture and heritage, and the regional administration supports the use of Low German in education and also the workplace to a certain extent, devoting considerable effort to preserving the language. To mention but one of the achievements of language planners and activists, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was signed by the German government in 1999, recognizing Low German as a regional language worth preserving, supporting and promoting. Research and impact In May 2009 I was invited to give a keynote speech at the annual gathering of the Verein für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung, an organization dedicated to researching and promoting Low German since 1874. At this event, in discussion with scholars, language activists and representatives of regional government, a list of research priorities was drawn up. The purpose was to focus on areas of daily life today and critically analyse how Low German is presented, for example on the Internet, in tourism, in regional advertising and in public language display. The aim of further research in these areas is to enable researchers to advise and support language activists and regional policy makers. www.ucml.ac.uk 14 Since May 2009 I have worked on three studies: • Low German and the Internet: ‘Niederdeutsch im Internet. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen computervermittelter Kommunikation für den Spracherhalt’ to appear in Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik in 2011. • Low German in public language display: ‘Reconstructing the past? Low German and the creating of regional identity in public language display’, published in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32 (1) 2011, 33–54. • Low German in regional tourism and advertising: ‘A new role for Low German? Language insertion as bilingual practice in the process of language shift’, to appear in the Journal of Sociolinguistics in 2011. A key finding of these studies is a matter of concern for language activists: Low German is in the process of being turned into an emblem of a bygone age by the tourism industry and many language activists alike, for example on the Internet. The forms of commodification and identity construction analysed in these studies may have their value for individuals and certain areas of business and commerce. However, they work against attempts to convince parents to raise their children bilingually insofar as they associate Low German with the past and a pre-modern society. Close contact is being maintained with the Institut für niederdeutsche Sprache (Bremen) and the Plattdütskbüro (Aurich) as they are interested in the results of this research. The findings will be disseminated in an invited talk on ‘Low German in the public space’ hosted by the organization Oostfreeske Taal in Emden, Northern Germany, in August 2011. www.ucml.ac.uk 15 Learning French from ages 5, 7 and 11: An investigation into starting ages, rates and routes of learning amongst early foreign language learners Professor Florence Myles, Newcastle University Florence.myles@ncl.ac.uk Professor Ros Mitchell, University of Southampton R.F.Mitchell@soton.ac.uk ESRC funded project: Oct 2009-Sept 2011 There is worldwide enthusiasm for including second language instruction in the primary school curriculum. In England, the National Languages Strategy (2002) set a framework for the introduction of language learning in primary schools. This strategy is driven partly by the popular belief that the younger the better, with the underlying assumption that younger learners will learn a second language in a similar way to their first language. However, the empirical basis for this belief is ambiguous at best; there is little definitive knowledge about the impact of the age at introduction of an L2 in the classroom. This study aims to fill this gap, by documenting and analysing linguistic development and the language acquisition process in 5-, 7- and 11-year-old beginner learners of French in the North East of England. The project has four broad objectives: (a) to document the development of linguistic competence among young classroom learners of French at three different starting ages, in primary and early secondary school classrooms, and identify similarities and differences; (b) to compare rates of development at different ages after the same amount of classroom exposure; (c) to document and compare classroom learning strategies used by children at different ages and their attitudes to language learning; (d) through this evidence, to contribute to theoretical understandings of language learning among young learners, and consequently inform primary languages initiatives and educational practices in the UK and internationally. www.ucml.ac.uk 16 The project provides similar French language teaching to three groups of 20 learners (with starting ages of 5, 7 and 11 years), delivered in an age-appropriate manner by the same qualified teacher following national schemes of work for primary languages. The learners are tested at several points in time to assess their linguistic development. The data is then analysed using computerised tools and made available to the research community through a French Learner Language Oral Corpora website (www.flloc.soton.ac.uk). In addition, children's motivation and learning strategies are tracked, through classroom observation and small focus group discussions. The unique characteristics of the study lie in the ability to directly compare learners starting from different ages while controlling and documenting all their input/teaching. The value of this research is clear: it provides empirical evidence on classroom learning processes and outcomes, which will inform primary language initiatives both in the UK and internationally. www.ucml.ac.uk 17 Dante and Theology Dr Claire Honess, Leeds Centre for Dante Studies C.E.Honess@leeds.ac.uk Dr Matthew Treherne, Leeds Centre for Dante Studies M.Treherne@leeds.ac.uk Since 2009, the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies (LCDS) has been working on a longterm and multi-stranded research project on Dante’s theology, building on the existing research interests of the Centre’s co-directors, Claire Honess and Matthew Treherne. The initial phase of this project aimed to provide an overview of the many different aspects of and approaches to Dante’s theology. In March 2009, funding from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Leeds and from the British Academy enabled the LCDS to bring together fifteen international Dante scholars to discuss these issues, and to plan the publication of a volume entitled Reviewing Dante’s Theology, which will provide the first comprehensive overview of Dante’s relationship with theological thought. Since that first meeting in March 2009, follow-up meetings have been held at the Universities of Notre Dame (USA) and Cambridge. The project has been further strengthened by various funding awards (from the Society for Italian Studies Research Collaboration Fund, a British Academy Visiting Research Fellowship, a Newton International Fellowship, and a Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellowship) which have both brought collaborators to Leeds from the US and Italy and enabled one of the Centre’s directors to spend time at the University of Notre Dame working on aspects of the project. This preparatory work has led to the elaboration of a major funding bid entitled Dante and Late-Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society. This project aims to reassess our understanding of Dante as a religious thinker and poet by emphasising the relationship between theology, society and culture in the Florence of his time, and by exploring the connection between Dante’s theological thought and www.ucml.ac.uk 18 his poetic practice. More specifically, the project aims to examine the ways in which theology was encountered in both learned and popular contexts in Dante’s Florence and how these may have shaped his poetry’s engagement with theology, while also considering the relationship between theological ideas and social questions. The project will lead to the publication of two edited volumes and a number of articles and book-chapters, as well as three PhD theses on related themes. The LCDS has, from its inception, been keen to ensure that its work reaches as broad an audience as possible. The directors have therefore worked to make the findings of their research accessible in a variety of ways, which have included a series of podcasts analysing both aspects of Dante’s text and the theological issues which it raises, public lectures on Dante and his cultural context, and a concert of illustrated readings from Dante’s text and relevant liturgical music. The multi- and interdisciplinary nature of this project (which draws on literary studies, art history, manuscript studies, theology, history and political thought in relation to a foreign poet) illustrates particularly clearly the breadth of scope and the vitality of modern languages research in the UK at the start of the twenty-first century. www.ucml.ac.uk 19 Documenting varieties of the Romani language Professor Yaron Matras, School of Languages, Linguistics & Cultures, University of Manchester yaron.matras@manchester.ac.uk This research documented the structures of dialects of the Romani language in more than 150 locations across Europe, using recordings of questionnaire responses and free expression. The recordings were transcribed and structural information was extracted and entered in a database, which serves as a comprehensive grammatical description in electronic form. This resource has been made freely accessible online. For the specific, mixed variety of Romani used in England, an online dictionary was produced. In addition to monographs and research papers, the project also produced a series of audio CDs and multilingual DVD-ROMs outlining the history and present status of Romani, aspects of Romani culture, and differences between the dialects of the language. A comparative study of dialect diversity and the state of codification led to production of two policy papers and a briefing for the Council of Europe and the Expert Committee for the Implementation of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Another study, which was commissioned by Manchester City Council, focused on the needs and aspiration of the Manchester community of Romani immigrants from Eastern Europe. The research has had significant impacts: Raising awareness of Romani language and culture The online database and accompanying website have been accessed more than 120,000 times by visitors from over 45 different countries within a three-year period. Reactions from the Romani community worldwide and links from other sites operated by Romani associations indicate considerable interest within the community and use of this resource for learning and teaching. Wide press coverage in several countries has contributed to a rise in popular awareness of Romani and its origins, thereby helping to reduce prejudice and modify pre-conception about ‘Gypsies’. One of the project’s audio CD’s was broadcast in sequels on BBC regional radio. The multilingual DVD was distributed and downloaded from the website in more than 12,000 copies (with probable further distribution in many cases) reaching a likely www.ucml.ac.uk 20 audience of over 40,000 worldwide. It has been used in teaching in schools in Hungary, Poland and elsewhere. Impact on language policy at trans-national level The project’s policy papers and briefings have led to the adoption of an active Romani language policy by the Council of Europe which embraces structural and dialectal pluralism (rather than centralised unification). This has led in turn to the launch of a European Language Curriculum Framework for Romani, which is currently being adopted on a trial basis in six countries. A language course following the Curriculum Framework is being prepared by a consortium in which this project is a key participant. Impact on local policy and community cohesion Recommendations for an engagement plan made in the report to Manchester City Council have been adopted and are currently being implemented in the South Gorton area of East Manchester. This involves recruitment of Romani-speaking outreach workers and training of young Roma from the community as interpreters and mediators, in order to facilitate access to services and employment, as well as to improve community relations. www.ucml.ac.uk 21 German Autobiographical Writing in the Twentieth Century Professor Roger Woods, University of Nottingham roger.woods@nottingham.ac.uk Background This project took shape against the background of arguments by some academics that accounts of the past that deal primarily with social structures and institutions do not capture the tensions and full complexity of individuals’ lives.. It has rightly been argued that the varied perspectives provided by autobiographical texts undermine generalisations by demonstrating how different groups – minorities and majorities, intellectuals and people with little education, women and men - experience society differently. This project examines the extent to which study of personal accounts and sources that take the individual as starting point reveal a complexity and subtlety of human experience which deepens understanding of societies that have undergone major upheavals. The Project The project draws on the expertise of literary scholars, political historians and philosophers from the UK, Germany, and the USA who share a broad and inclusive understanding of what sources may be regarded as autobiographical - from traditional (literary) autobiography to published and unpublished diaries, political memoirs, letters, interviews, and even photographs. It examines German autobiographical writing after major turning points in Germany’s history, including the First World War, the Nazi era, the collapse of socialism and German Unification. These turning points prompted an outpouring of autobiographical writing with a variety of purposes related to the point in time when they were written. Some were produced in diary form as events unfolded, others long after the event in autobiographical form, but common to all is the attempt by individuals to make sense of their experiences and to reassess their lives against the background of a broader public reassessment of the past and struggles to promote a particular interpretation of that past. www.ucml.ac.uk 22 The project was launched at an international conference in 2007 at the University of Nottingham, UK, at which Writer in Residence, Annett Gröschner, discussed her 1998 book Jeder hat sein eigenes Stück Berlin gekriegt. This collection of literary portraits, recounted in the first person, is based on Gröschner’s interviews at an East Berlin Erzählcafé with an older generation of Berliners shortly after German Unification in which they related their life-stories from the Weimar and Nazi periods through to the end of the GDR. The project has led to the edited volume, German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century, edited by Birgit Dahlke, Dennis Tate and Roger Woods, (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2010). Outcomes The project demonstrates how the inclusive and multidisciplinary approach that characterises much Modern Languages research can provide new insights into complex interactions between individuals and society. Some of the case studies confirm the principle that autobiographical writing is dominated in form and content by the prevailing conventions of a group. Yet groups rarely show entirely consistent attitudes and behaviours. More frequently the analyses highlight the conflicts within individuals as they set about remembering their lives in the highly politicised context of twentieth century Germany. In its next phase the project will go beyond Germany, expanding its multidisciplinary and international network in order to examine how individuals portray their lives between compulsion and autonomy in countries with authoritarian regimes. www.ucml.ac.uk 23 Russian Media, Culture, and Conceptual Blending Dr Anna Pleshakova, Russian and East European Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford anna.pleshakova@area.ox.ac.uk Funding from the UK Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies (CEELBAS http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk) has been used to support the development of language teaching materials based on the findings of my cognitive linguistic research, and to organise a one-day conference on the application of cognitive linguistic methods to interdisciplinary cultural analysis. The conceptual integration or blending research framework (of Fauconnier and Turner, 2002) has served to explore post-Soviet Russian media discourse in relation to questions of national identity and political communication. The findings have been reported at international conferences, and have been published or submitted for publication. In ‘Werewolves in Epaulettes’ (2008 - 2009) - a case study of the novel Russian metaphor oborotni v pogonakh, research illustrated the utility of conceptual blending as a tool for cultural analysis through the construction of the multi-scope network ‘werewolves in epaulettes’, and demonstrated that this metaphorical network became a new Russian national construal of the post-Soviet mythologised concept of enemy. In ‘Strike, Accident, Risk, and Counterfactuality’ (2007 - 2010), drawing upon Paul Chilton’s (2005) framework of manipulative discourse analysis, a research project looked into how, through exploitation of the ideas of risk and blame at the time of the presidential election campaign of 1996, Yeltsin and his team of ‘reformers’ manipulated news media management almost invisibly with a view to restoring Yeltsin’s political credibility. A current research project, ‘Metaparody through Conceptual Blending: the Case of Dmitrij Bykov’ (2010 - 2011), explores the revival of civic poetry in relation to the nation-building process in post-Soviet Russia. The study shows that Bykov is interested in the performance of metaparody (a concept introduced by Morson,1989) rather than the revival of tradition per se. Using a conceptual blending research framework, I explore the performance of metaparody in Bykov’s work through his poem ‘Zaraznoe’ (Contagious) published in Novaya Gazeta in 2009. The project examines how specific aspects of linguistic, cultural and historical knowledge related www.ucml.ac.uk 24 to the key Russian concept of ‘Self/Other’ contribute to the emergence of metaparody. A one-day international workshop (June 2011) on ‘The Use of Cognitive Linguistics and Interdisciplinarity in the Area of Russian and East European Studies’ examines the question: How do cognitive linguistic methods allow us to map new directions in the exploration of such issues as national identity, post-communist treatment of history, symbolic use of language, and the role of the mass media in the formation of new social identities? As interdisciplinary and explicitly language-based research, these projects illustrate the relevance and value of Modern Languages research to UK understanding of the world today. www.ucml.ac.uk 25 Queer Cinema from Spain and France: the translation of desire and the formation of transnational queer identities Professor Chris Perriam, University of Manchester christopher.perriam@manchester.ac.uk This project, involving staff from two language departments in the University of Manchester, focuses on transnational sexualities and their representation in film. It considers Spain and France as sites of production, distribution and reception, and Britain as a site of distribution and reception. Its core concerns are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) films and their audiences; the processes of transnationalisation in relation to cinema and cultural identities; and how the cultural particularities of the countries and audiences in question interact with broader-based and international understandings of LGBTQ identities. How do they come about, and how do they feed into notions of ‘nation’ and ‘culture’? The work involves archival and web-based investigation (including on-line forums and fan sites), festival visits, film and performance analysis, and audience research. In the current phase the archival and web-based work focus on questions around the textual formation of LGBTQ communities (and the contested notion of ‘community’ itself) in Castilian, Catalan, French and Galician (as well as working with Basque, but through translation). A book is underway on Film and Queer Spanish Culture which has a special focus on independent, web-based film production and radical thought. (It also covers some World Classics in Spanish). In the second phase, audience research and related festival-based presentations of ongoing findings will involve queer communities directly in a range of locations in France, Spain and Britain. In a third phase, a series of publications (mostly joint-authored) will draw the materials, languages, communities and images together. Engagement with local lesbian, gay and queer communities and groups in the various language areas is essential to the project’s contribution to cross-border and trans-cultural understandings of the complex relationship of self to (queer or European) community. The project has a cross-disciplinary remit in that it responds to current priorities in Cultural Studies and Screen Studies research from an MFL base. Through its crossborder focus and the ability to access in-depth, language-specific knowledge, it is designed to make a distinctive contribution to Queer Studies (an important but arguably Anglo-centric field of inquiry) which has a history of bridging the spheres of www.ucml.ac.uk 26 scholarship and social commitment. Overall, the aim is to further the cultural understanding of the mechanisms, strategies and discourses which add up to and question the category of queer cinema in local and transnational contexts. www.ucml.ac.uk