A Short Story By O’ Henry Essay

Themes: Death and Dying: Last leaf is a short story that entails the treasury of life and the existence of faith and hope. It need to the importance of living and how we deal with the hindrances we battle through our life story. It is a moving story across the traps that come across us in the most significant parts of our lives, the value of life is the centerpiece of story, where all the things go back and revolve†¦Apart of this story gives us a hint that God is the only one who knows that whether we ride on with life and chances or trail on and be drawn against the judgment, the melodramatic and picturesque setting of the story connects to the negative status of main character facing life and death subject matter. Pessimism: Johnsy the main character seems to be a very pessimistic person. She has lost the entire positive attitude in life due to her disease and she is waiting for her death. â€Å"Your little lady has made up her mind that she’s not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind† That is the first step of Jhonsy that she has made up her mind that she will die when the last leaf fall. That signifies the mental and psychological conditionn of her and is describing the theme of pessimistic. â€Å"She was looking out of window and counting -counting backwards† The psychological disturbances shown by O’ Henry in these lines as she is tired of waiting that when the last leaf falls, she will be near to death. â€Å"When the last one falls I must go, too.† Here in these lines Henry has showed extreme pessimism. It is the last one, said Johnsy â€Å"I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time.† These words literated by jonsy again show her desperate and chaotic state of mind. She has supposed the things which have no logic and waiting for her death, or waiting for the last leaf to fall. Self-Sacrifice: Mr. Behrman risks his life for Johnsy. He has sacrificed his own life, to give life to Johnsy the painting he made at the wall, shows his self sacrificing, kind and noble nature. He himself catches the pneumonia and  dies, but he didn’t let Johnsy to die. With the character of Mr. Buhrmann, O’ Henry is showing the sacrificing mature of a man and it gives us a message that self sacrificing is a great deed and one has to kind and gentle towards others. â€Å"Mr. Buhrmann died of pneumonia today in hospital.† Hope: Theme of hope is very nicely presented in this story. Doctor is a very optimistic person and he tries to make Johnsy realized that is she has made her mind that she will die when the last leaf fall that could be harmful for her. He told her that he can only provide her medicine and that is effective as 50 cent, the next situation is in her hand. â€Å"I subtract 50 percent from the curative power of medicines.† If you will get her to ask one question about the new writer styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you one-in-five chance for her, instead of† So O’ Henry conveys message one never let go for hope and optimist approach in life. It is out state of mind which can bring worse or better for us in our lives â€Å"Sadie, someday I hope to point the bay of Naples† These lines show Johnsy’s desires and aspirations. It gives the picture of hope and this hope in life gives us the spirit of living in this world. Love and Friendship: In last leaf O’ Henry describes friendship and bondage between two friends. They care and love each other, and she supports Johnsy morally when she falls ill. She proves to be great support for Johnsy and she tries her level best to bring back Johnsy towards life and in the world of optimism. â€Å"Dear, Dear!† said she, learning her won face down to the pillow † think of me, if you won’t think of yourself. What would I do?† These lines show the effective relationship between two friends. Mr. Behrman also shows great deal of love for these girls. Although he is bit careless person but he really cared for Johnsy and his love is shown by his painting for the sake of Johnsy’s life. What is the theme of The Last Leaf by O Henry? The theme of this story is definitely self-sacrifice. Mr. Behrman sacraficed his own health for Johnsy. — One theme of this story is that you should never judge someone by what they appear to be, but by their actions. Behrman acts fierce and aggressive, but his actions show how much he cares about Johnsy. I learned to judge people, not by their looks, but by their actions, because ultimately, actions are the things that make an impact — Passion, hope and personal sacrifice. O Henry gives people hope in a quickly transforming world where big bussinesses and technology were taking over artsy New York. it is about the love between those friends

Main characteristics of a marketing orientated organization Essay

Marketing-oriented organization is defined to have characteristics as having FOCUS ON CUSTOMERS and the customers are regarded as top of organization chart. Continuous analysis of the marketplace helps them to adapt, promote, and differentiate their products and service to meet customers’ needs (Enterprise automation group, accessed 2009). Through satisfying customers, these organizations can get PROFITS. The STRUCTURE of marketing-oriented organization often has few layers and their policies are not very difficult. Moreover, the STRATEGIES of a market oriented organization are generally clear and flexible because it deals with â€Å"market definition and selection, positioning and differentiation, and market entry or exit decisions† (Drumwright & Kosnik, 1989). Finally, before making important decisions, organization has to carefully consider the EXPECTATIONS OF STAKEHOLDERS, their perceptions and attitudes. Analyzing Canon’s position, the company is a marketing orientated organization due to having features as customer orientation, design of organization structure, formulation of strategies and stakeholders (Blurtit, accessed 2010). It can be clearly seen that all of the company’s performances are closely related to the characteristics of marketing orientation. Firstly, all decisions of Canon consider CUSTOMERS FIRST and they share the common value of superior quality of products. Canon attaches special importance to the quality of products and customer’s convenience. This care is shown in the COMMITMENT of the company: â€Å"We are fully committed to earning the trust of customers by providing well-developed services and support along with well-designed products that are easy to use and reliable.† (Canon report 2008). According to the scenario, Canon provides products which offer users â€Å"not only convenience, quality and versatility but also a unique lifestyle†. Furthermore, in Vietnam, Canon centers have been established to provide support services before and after sales for the product line from Canon such as cameras, camcorders, printers and photocopiers (Chau An, 2009). All of these facts show that Canon is a CUSTOMER-ORIENTED company. Secondly, the ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE of Canon is flat structure. Canon focuses on â€Å"an organizational structure in which market and customer feedback is quickly relayed to development teams and swiftly reflected in products, but also the boosting of technological strength on the sales front† (Canon, accessed 2010). Thirdly, the STRATEGY OF MARKET ORIENTATION of Canon is long-term and flexible. Canon has strategies such as â€Å"reposition itself effectively through systematic long range technology forecasting, identification of product segments with high potential and introduction of products in these segments ahead of competitors† and using â€Å"globalization, alliances and innovation in a well-coordinated manner†. The strategy of Canon can be termed as â€Å"dynamic competence building in which distinctive competencies are renewed with the objective of dynamically maintaining its competitive edge†. (Bowonder and Miyake, n.d.). Recently, Canon has developed a strategy named â€Å"VICTORY†, which concentrated on Asian market including India, China and Vietnam. The strategy aims to improve the position of Canon in these markets. â€Å"Vietnam is the first destination of this plan. We are working to implement a dual strategy making Vietnam market both a production location and an important strategic market for the products of Canon†, said Hideki Ozawa – the Chairman and CEO of Canon Asia (Tuyet An, n.d.). In sum, the strategy of market orientation of Canon is very clear, solid and well-established so that Canon can carry out plans in target market effectively. Finally, Canon considers the EXPECTATIONS OF THE STAKEHOLDERS before making important decisions. Canon cares much about how well the company has met stakeholders’ expectations such as requires for information, high-level performance, and meaningful engagement (Sustain ability, accessed 2010). Nowadays, in the age of marketing orientation, businesses are led to be PROFIT-ORIENTED. Following this orientation, Canon produces what people want to buy in order to maximize profit. Grasping the idea that users favor  products which have eye-catching appearance, give them convenience, and save time, Canon has released two product lines SELPHY ES3 & ES30, laser printer LBP3250, LBP5050 & LBP 5050N. By providing market offerings that satisfy customers, Canon can also get the income. Therefore, Canon’s profit can be gained through customer satisfaction. In conclusion, Canon has characteristics of a marketing oriented organization. Canon not only concentrates on the customers’ satisfaction, having the appropriate organizational structure and formulation of strategies but also takes consideration of stakeholders. Through getting these points, Canon can achieve success as gaining profit and enhancing the position in the market.

Conclusion part Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Conclusion part - Essay Example the factors which have an impact on the overall consumer choices with special reference to online purchases. The rise of social media has further added to the choices of the purchasers and literature clearly suggest that reviews and word of mouth spread on the online media can further help consumers to gain more information. Three important constructs were tested in this research including understanding perceptions and purchase decisions of Thai consumers, barriers to online purchase and how they have an impact on the overall purchase decisions made as well as how the ad promotion can actually help to improve the overall perceptions of the consumers over the period of time. In order to complete this research, mixed research methods were used include collecting data through questionnaires and arranging a focus group. The quantitative data and methodology was used along with SPSS to analyze the data and calculate the descriptive statistics. A total sample of 320 respondents, with 45% males and 55% females, was taken and who responded to two-part questionnaire and results were analysed through SPS. Data was collected through fieldwork performed in the shopping malls where based upon the random sampling method, respondents were requested to participate in the research. Focus group technique is a theoretical valid technique in research in social sciences therefore focus groups were conducted to further probe into the overall consumer preferences and how they make decisions and collect information while making purchase decisions. This research was performed at one point in time and assessed the overall attitude of Thai Y generation consumers at a given point in time. This study was cross-sectional and was performed in a given period however; it has not taken into consideration as to how the preferences and choices of the consumers might change over the

Life Cycle Analysis Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Life Cycle Analysis - Case Study Example In the end I have concluded this paper with my final words. The conclusion consisted of possible strategies or plans of action that the company could take to come out of the position it is in at the moment. In the end, I would like to state that the purpose of this paper was only academic and it was not intended to take any unlawful gain from the data used in this paper. Coyote Logistics are industry leader in logistics industry. It was founded in 2006 in Chicago, Illinois. They provide a wide range of services to their clients. These services include: Supply Chain Management, Transportation and Technological Solutions. In terms of revenue the company is going from strength to strength Coyote Logistics' revenue grew 587.5 percent from 2006 to 2008 according to the company. They also increased the number of the employees from 82 in 2006 to about 350 at the end of 2008. In order to qualify, the company had to be privately owned, based in the 20-county metro Atlanta area and not be a subsidiary of another company. It has to have been established in the first quarter of 2006 or earlier, and to have had 2008 revenue between $1 million and $300 million. Coyote logistics is the industry leader in logistics industry. ... If we look at the company from the lens of life-cycle assessment we will determine the company's true worth in the social environment. The Life Cycle Analysis or Assessment is the investigation and it is a means by which we evaluate the true worth of the company for society. It helps us in determining environmental costs and benefits that the company is rendering. These costs are known as social costs. The first thing that used in the life cycle analysis is determining the goal and scope of this analysis. In our case we want to determine the social costs of Coyote Logistics. Coyote Logistics is using modern technology in its operations. So, our scope will deeper in determining how this technology is developed. If Coyote Logistics technology has result in destruction of any natural resources while experimenting then the cost of that natural resources will be apportion to the product in which this technology is used. Similarly, as a result of development of this new technology, some costs would have been reduced and the society would have been benefitted from this cost reduction and these will be considered as possible benefits for the society or social benefits. So, we want to assess the technological aspect of Coyote Logistics and that is where we will set our boundaries. If we do not set these boundaries we will have assess every single detail and that would be impossible to compu te and will be too time consuming. The next step is called Life Cycle Inventory Analysis. In this stage we will collected the data from Coyote Logistic about their products and based on our findings created a model. According to their Coyotelogistics.com, they have been able out perform other companies worth

Using the DIKW Continuum Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 3

Using the DIKW Continuum - Essay Example By properly changing the collected data into useable information, nurses are able to meet the unique needs of the patients in different care settings. The purpose of this treatise is to explore the progression of the four phases of data, informing, knowledge and wisdom scale by using research information to be able to answer a pertinent clinical question in the acute care setting. With the design and application of electronic health record in the acute care setting, physicians are now able to make decision without relying too much on manually recorded data. Such changes, coupled with the available decision support systems have reduced the transcription errors in the processes while at the same time enhancing the overall quality of care offered (Carrington & Effken, 2011). In order to explore how the DIKW continuum is used in the acute care setting, this paper will rely on the research question shown below: According to Moreland,  Gallagher, Bena,  Morrison & Albert (2012), some hospitals are yet to incorporate eMAR in their processes. Errors during the medicine administration process are very common in hospitals and are considered to be among the main inhibitors to quality care. To reduce the errors that occur in the drug administration process, some hospitals rely on technology to improve the quality of the decisions made by the physicians. Stevenson & Nilsson (2012) state that the importance of electronic drug administration and drug issuance has not been well understood. Some care givers are not are not well versed with the benefits of eMAR. The commonly identified benefits of the process include reduced workload, ease of documentation, promotion of evidence based decisions and enhanced team work. Working with the DIKW continuum to answer the question on the application of electronic medication process in the acute care setting begins with the collection of relevant data on the issue.

Identify the 4ps for the totally different customers Assignment

Identify the 4ps for the totally different customers - Assignment Example Bases for segmentation can be demographic, geographic, psychographic or behavioral. The way city residents will behave as concerned to the type of vehicle they would want to have is the not the same as the way farmers and landowners will behave concerning the same issue. Therefore the company must prepare a market mix that favors both segments by offering brands that are inline with their preferences. A market mix is formed based on the four Ps which are Product, Price, Promotion and Place. The pricing made to farmers and city residents must offer value to both the company and the buyers of the four-wheel vehicles. The product that is the type of four-wheel vehicle preferred by city residents should be differentiated by the type preferred by farmers and landowners. Vehicles targeted for city residents will posses specifications that provide better conditions for human transport. Vehicles sold to the farmers and landowners will have characteristics that provide a favorable condition f or farm activities. Promotion involves branding the products in a way that favors each particular segment. The four-wheel vehicles for farmers and land owners segment must be branded to favor farm activities while those for city residents are branded to favor the comforts of the city residents during human transportation. A good marketing mix for the four-wheel company should conduct promotion in such a way that it creates public relations between the customers and the company hence establishing connections between the two parties. The promotion process must provide effective communication process through identifying the target audience i.e. farmers and city residents, Determine communication objectives i.e. marketing to achieve high sales where they are low, Design a message, Choose a Media and finally collect a feedback from the people. The segmentation itself is defined by the place of use of the vehicle and in this case it is the farm and the city. A preferred marketing mix will have to target consumers in such a way that more sales are conducted (www.udel.edu, Focusing Marketing Strategy with Segmentation and Positioning). These can only be achieved through fulfilling both customer needs in terms of product preference, favorable market prices, better promotion strategies and selling products at best located selling points. Consumer does love products that are likes of the majority and therefore a company must market its products to have high sales if they want to maintain the hold on their customers. The table below offers an example of a preferable market mix. Table 1: Marketing mixes for two different consumer segments (Segment A: Farmers) (Segment B: City residents) PRODUCT Four Wheel drive features are of high standard compared to the ones for consumers. The features they have make them high standard due to the tasks the vehicle is meant to perform. The capacity of sitting will be less but with high speed and acceleration. The standards of consumer fo ur Wheel drive are lower as compared to those of farmers since they are only meant for passenger transport. Huge capacity but low speed is just an example of the features. PRICE High price since farmers and landowners are wealthy to spend huge amount of money to spend on a good Vehicle. The value is comparable to the benefits it offers the

US Economic Performance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

US Economic Performance - Essay Example According to the report findings GDP growth is also boosted by business spending or investments. This could be ascribed favorable financial conditions and rising business confidence levels as well as growth in labor productivity. Economic growth is also fuelled by government spending. Similar to individual consumers, the government also has a high consumption propensity as opposed to saving tendency. Such economic condition may be favorable in the short run. It may also be disastrous in the long run since it may result to increased domestic and foreign borrowings. This paper declares that economic growth is usually accompanied by rising inflation brought about by the increasing aggregate demand. Despite current economic expansion, CPI is maintained at reasonable levels in the US. However, an increase in CPI may be expected within the remainder of year due to the steady increase in the price of energy. Increase in price level is forecasted because of the projected escalation in production cost resulting from the cost of employee benefits and raw material. Generally, the US has performed fairly well and met its economic targets to date. The country has generated GDP growth for the first quarter of 2005. Albeit its unemployment rate is marginally higher than its target, improvements in the labor market are notable. The CPI is also within the normal range. Given these conditions, economic perspective for the short run could be described as promising.

Globalization of trade and business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Globalization of trade and business - Essay Example It was in many ways easier to change the focus, and praise the British for leading the world in abolishing the Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery. There had been an unprecedented campaign by the middle class across the country, which could be turned to national advantage. The Royal Navy was attributed with a new moral mission. We could now paint a picture of slavery as an historic phenomenon, and to contrast it with a modern enlightened citizenship. That would be comfortable and convenient, but false. The tensions between property rights and human rights, which have been discussed since the Ancient Greeks, continue today. Globalisation means that international law now has to rise to meet the challenge of reconciling different traditions. It is not clear that the transition has been fully completed in the UK, as in other countries. Whenever governments emphasise their support for business as a priority, this may be interpreted as possibly implying further adverse consequences for other human beings. There are still silences to be broken. This declared recognition of human rights, as a consequence of abolition and emancipation, was at the expense of property rights and economic freedom for employers. Capitalists could emphasise profit over human rights, and demanded a laissez faire approach to regulation and legislation. Can one human being own another, or must they find ways of working together as fellow citizens Working together requires some kind of mutual recognition as fellow human beings and citizens, on the basis of acceptance of parity of esteem. In turn this assumes some degree of acquaintance and familiarity, meaning that people need experience of more than their own immediate social group. Rigid systems of social class represent obstacles. There is such a thing as society. It is not just a matter of individuals and their families. We need to deal with a wider range of relationships. In addition, we need to recognise the diversity of relationships that can be considered under the same headings. At work, where there are employers and employees, it is hard to envisage a model of citizenship based on full equality. Clearly the power is not equally distributed. In a capitalist society, property rights of the owners have implications for the workers. Adam Smith pointed out the distinction between owners and managers, and complained that the latter group, who are simply one category of employees, can tend to act as if they were the owners. He lamented the consequences of joint stock companies, and the ease with which managers could act against the interests of the workers and of the public. Under indusrialisation, the owners regarded other human beings as their property. The prime task of the owners was to ensure the financial success of their businesses. This was easier if the costs of labour could be minimised. They felt able to disregard matters that did not appear in their accounts. These attitudes could also be applied to the conditions of workers, working in factories and living in industrial towns. Typically such workers did not have the right to vote. Through limited access to education, it was difficult

The Progressive Movement Essay Example for Free

The Progressive Movement Essay Some forms of progressive movement are progressivism which embraces the widespread of many sided efforts to build a better society; scientific investigation the studies by the federal government of immigration; child labor; economic practices and social research by privately funded foundation; academic expertise to have the skills and knowledge about the problems America was facing during the 1900; pragmatism which judged ideas by their consequences; and muckraker journalists who exposed the underside of American life. During this time there were no agreed upon agenda’s nor were there any unifying organizations. Both the Republican and Democratic parties had progressive elements which caused each group to interact with different social groups with different views. This period was the beginning of the analysis of human activity which offered solutions to waste, inefficiency in municipal government, schools, hospitals and homes. Scientific management thought Frederick W. Taylor, could solve the problems of the United States social ills that arise from our acts of ill-directed, or inefficient. Scientific management was an American invention which made America feels like a part of the transatlantic world. Also, the social politics overseas was much more advanced than the United States which made the Americans feel like we have fallen behind. America was no longer the leader in teaching how democracy worked but was learning about democracy from other countries. The main objective was to resist ways of thinking that discouraged purposeful action. Social Darwinists beliefs that society developed according to fixed and unchanging laws was wrong. William James, Harvard philosopher said it is foolish to speak of the â€Å"laws of history† like it is inevitable, which science only has to discover and which anyone can then  foretell and observe, but do nothing to alter or avert. Progressives prided themselves on being tough minded, and on being experts on making things happen. But they were not indifferent to the moral grounds for reform. Progressives were considered to be unabashed idealists. Progressive leaders characteristically grew up in homes imbued with evangelical piety. Many went through a religious crisis, ultimately settling on a career in social work, education, or politics where religious striving might be translated into secular action. Some of the players in there reforms were Jane Adams taken up settlement-house work believing by uplifting the poor, she would herself be uplifted: she would experience â€Å"the joy of finding Christ† by acting â€Å"in fellowship† with the needy. Lincoln Steffen article is credited with starting a trend about writing about â€Å"the shame of the cities† – the corrupt ties between business and political machines. Ida Tarbell attached the Standard Oil monopoly, and David Graham Phillips told how money controlled the Senate William Hard exposed industrial accidents in â€Å"Making Steel and Killing Men† (1907) and child labor in â€Å"De Kid Wot Works at Night† (1908). Hardly a sordid corner of American life escaped the scrutiny of these tireless reporters. Theodore Roosevelt, among many thought they went too far. However the muckrakers became attached to the journalists who exposed the underside of American life. There efforts were in fact health giving. More than any other group, the muckrakers called the people to arms. Women progressives shouldered the burden of humanitarian work in American cities. They were the foot soldiers for charity organizations, visiting needy families, assessing their problems, and referring them to relief agencies. Josephine Shaw Lowell of New York City concluded giving assistance to the poor was not enough. She felt it was better to save them before they go under, than to spend your life fishing them out of afterward. The welfare state, insofar as it arrived in America in these years, was what women progressives had made of it: they erected a â€Å"maternalist† welfare system. During the progressive years, scores of settlement houses sprang up in the ghetto of the nation’s cities, serving as community centers and spark plugs for neighborhood reform. Jane Addams led battles for garbage removal, playgrounds, better street lighting, and police protection. The main goals of the Progressive reforms were: 1) To change other people by having them adopt the Progressive vision of middle class behavior and thought. This particularly applied to issues of recreation and leisure, the status of the family, sexual orientation and behavior. Protecting Social Welfare. 2) Toe end class conflict between the â€Å"have’s† (the privileged class) and â€Å"the have less, â€Å"(or have not). Fostering Efficiency. 3) To effect a measure of control over big business. Moral Improvement. Another movement was segregate society into groups, based on occupation (labor, management, etc.) race, sex (laws protecting women insured secondary status in employment), and immigration status. Segregation of the races was seen by Progressives as a method of stabilizing race relationship. Economic Reform. The major players in these reforms were Cleveland, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge all of them were presidents of this era. Their foreign and domestic policies shaped their world and whose policies continue to impact our world. It is amazing how some of the things are still incorporated in our society today. I think the movements were genuine concern for social problems. As a matter of fact because of the some of the progressive movement some people are still reaping the benefits of their labor today. However, I do feel like some of the people that are benefiting from some of the reforms have caused themselves to be control by trying to live off of the system rather than using it as a stepping stone to do better for themselves. References Henertta, James A Brody, David (2010). America A Concise History. Boston NewYork: Bedford/ St. Martin’s

Chap 2 Homework Essay Example for Free

Chap 2 Homework Essay 1. Performance, Reliability and responsiveness, Serviceability, and Aesthetics are all significant dimensions of quality in fast food restaurants. First of all, the performance and serviceability of a fast food restaurant is very important because like the name states â€Å"fast food† is exactly that†¦ fast! So in order for it to be considered a fast food establishment it if very important to keep up the flow of traffic in and out of the drive thru and the dining room in a timely and efficient manner without compromising the quality of the food. The second thing is to provide reliability and responsive services for a fast food restaurant such as customer service. If customer service is poor and the food isn’t prepared properly or your orders keep getting messed up then by their bad experience word of mouth will spread and it could drive people away from the establishment and they will begin searching for other places to eat. The last form of quality I believe a fast food restaurant should have is Aesthetics or the way the restaurant looks and smells. For example, we went to Golden Corral a long time ago and it literally smelled like feces. It made eating there hard to do because it stunk so badly. Come to find out they had a sewer leak and had to get it repaired but my family and I stopped going there for quite a long time until it was fixed. It is very important that the facility is clean without debris and trash around it and that even the inside facility is kept up with clean bathrooms, tables wiped and floors mopped. In order to exceed my expectations I would expect to run thru the drive thru and hear a happy or courteous person over the speaker that’s not rushing me to make a decision, acknowledgment when I pay and prompt service when I reach the food window. I would also expect that my food be prepared like I asked and that there be condiments or utensils necessary for me to eat or drink my food in the bag. 2. One way that productivity could have been improved is when Jon (the cashier) needed more batteries for his headset, he could have asked someone else or his manager in the kitchen to obtain them for him so that he could have remained at the window with the customer to receive his payment. Therefore, none of the confusion with the other orders would have happened. 3. Employees Materials Needed Services Provided Jon (Cashier) Batteries for headset Took customer order, and accepted payment Supervisor None Corrected order error on computer Mary/third employee Napkins Handed customer order and napkins List of Improvements: Jon could have asked for assistance in obtaining the batteries for his headset to prevent any confusion with the orders and remained at the window with his customer. The Supervisor should have acknowledged the customer and asked how the customers’ service was and if there was anything he could do for the customer for any inconvenience. Mary should have paid more attention to the customer at her window and his needs, therefore he wouldn’t have had to ask twice for napkins.

Skin Diseases Affect On Peoples Health

Skin Diseases Affect On Peoples Health In modern society, more and more people are attacked by a variety of diseases. In medicine, relevant skin diseases seriously affect peoples health. As one of the common diseases, skin diseases such as leprosy, scabies, fungal disease, bacterial skin infections appear frequently. With the form, structure and functions changing, skin (including hair and armor) is influenced by external and internal factors, which produce the pathological process, and the corresponding produce all sorts of clinical successively performance. This is the cause of skin diseases. They have a high incidence of dermatitis, but relatively the symptoms are not serious, they often do not affect health, but a few heavier are even life-threatening. As a typical kind of skin diseases, photodermatoses are among the most common skin disorders in the world. Some of them acquired a particular importance in some regions because of their high frequency, severity, and also beÂÂ ­cause of their different diagnostic and therapeutic apÂÂ ­proaches. Photo medicine is a rapidly developing subspeÂÂ ­cialty of dermatology concerned with skin diseases caused by radiation in the UV and visible spectra. Initiation or exacerbation of a rash after sun exposure that occurs in typical light-exÂÂ ­posed areas is features that point toward a sunÂÂ ­light-induced condition. The diagnosis of photosenÂÂ ­sitive conditions may be difficult, and the use of investigations such as light, patch, and photopatch testing may be necessary to confirm the diagnosis. [1] Background and history With the development of modern medicine, every Teaching Hospital Department is in treatÂÂ ­ment development dilemmas. For becoming involved in a new therapy, they still need to promise to be at the speculative stage. In the early 1990s, the problem about whether to actively become involved in the development of PDT for skin cancers was discussed by the Photobiology Unit within the Department of Dermatology in Dundee. As a new invest significant reÂÂ ­sources, its so difficult for PDT to have a fairly certain outcome. By 1998, with the position changed and enough good quality data existed, treatment outcomes justiÂÂ ­fied become involved in the development of both PDT and photodiagnosis (PD) for pre-malignant and malignant skin lesions. From a clinical reÂÂ ­search and therapeutic point of view, the skin has two huge advantages. Firstly, it can be easily exÂÂ ­amined with the naked eye, and secondly, it is the most accessible organ for investigation, biopsy an d treatment. Although PDT firmly has its roots at the beginning of the last century, it is only over the last 15 years that it has gained considerate popularity as a topical treatment of great promise for the treatment of skin cancers.[2] In 1900 a German medical student Oscar Raab famously reported the concept of cell-induced death subsequent to light interacting with chemicals. In subsequent experÂÂ ­iments he demonstrated that this effect was greater that with alcidine red alone, light alone or alcidine red exposed to light and then added to the paramecium. He postulated that in vitro toxicity occurred as a result of fluorescence caused by the transfer of energy from the light to the chemÂÂ ­ical. Professor von Tappeiner soon after predicted the future of fluorescent substances in medicine. In 1904 von Tappeiner and Jodlbauer identified that oxyÂÂ ­gen was integral component in photosensitisation reactions and termed the phrase photodynamic action in 1907. Since its incidental discovery in 1900 photodynamic therÂÂ ­apy (PDT) and all aspects relating to it from mechanism of action, differing photosensitisers through to clinically based applications have been studied. Three components are required for PDT to occur; a photosensitiser, oxygen and a light source. [3] The Photobiology Unit (photobiology = the study of tight on living systems) has the purpose in Scotland of diagnosing tight sensitive skin disease (the photodermatoses) and the development of new forms of tight therapy (phototherapy). This Centre, which has been in existence since 1973, has always combined clinical skills (photodermatology) with a strong scientific base (photophysics) and laboratory biology (photobiology). This combination of applied science and clinical service in the same unit has proÂÂ ­vided exciting research opportunities. Applied photo physics, through the Medical Physics Department, has dedicated members of staff whose only rote is optical physics. The necessary expertise in tight de-tivery and measurement is essential for predictable PDT and PD. Basic knowledge of sun and the skin Nm 254 290 320 360 X-rays UVC UVB UVA Visible light Figure 1 the place of ultraviolet radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between ultraviolet radiation and the other types of non-ionizing radiation, such su natural light an infra-red radiation. It will be seen that ultraviolet radiation from the sun is divided into three different wavelengths-UVA, UVB, and UVC. The UVA waves are the longest and the UVC the shortest. At present, UVC is prevented from reaching the earths surface by the ozone layer, and is not therefore a natural hazard. There is, however, concern that the loss of the protective layer of ozone above the earths atmosphere will continue, and that in future more UVB might reach the earth. The main ultraviolet component of travel of natural that does each the earths surface is UVB. This penetrates the epidermis and reaches the more superficial layer of the dermisthe papillary dermis. UVA is also present in sunlight and ,in the early spring, a high proportion of natural sunlight in countries at latitudes 50 degrees or more north of south of the equator is composed of UVA. As the summer develops the proportion of UVA falls. UVA is the main, but not the only, wavelength found in the long tubes in UVA sunbeds. The effects of UVA go deeper into the skin than those of UVB. A very simple rule of thumb is that chronic over-exposure to UVB causes wrinkles, chronic over-exposure UVA causes saggi ng, and chronic over-exposure to both increases the risk of developing skin cancer. One of the important points of difference between UVB and UVA exposure is that acute over-exposure to UVB causes the redness and soreness recognized as sunburn. This is maximal 12-24 hours after the exposure has taken place, and is a useful warning that the skin should be protected for a few days until the redness has disappeared. The chemicals in sun-screens that protect against UVA and UVB can be divided into those that absorb ultraviolet radiation and those that reflect it away. The absorbing chemicals include para-aminobenzoic acid-PAMA- cinnamates, and salicylates, which protect against UVB alone. Benzophenones protect against both UVB and UVA and are also chemical sun-screeners.[4] Photosensitivity The skin is our main defense against light, and in particular against ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Sometimes the skin reacts abnormally to light by becoming inflamed. This is called photosensitivity. There are many causes of photosensitivity. Some of the most important are below: Acute parts like Sunburn Xeroderma pigmentosum, Porphyria, Solar urticaria, Pellagra, and Photosensitivity disorders like Polymorphic light eruption, Juvenile spring eruption, Hydroa vacciniforme, actinic prurigo. Disorders exacerbated by light include Drug reactions, Lupus erythematosus, Rosacea Dariers disease Eczema (including actinic dermatitis and photo contact dermatitis Psoriasis Lichen planus. These reactions are either a direct toxic effect of light, or have an immunological component, either provoked by light alone or in conjunction with something else such as a drug. Diagnosis and treatment of common causes of photosensitivity The acute effects of sun on the skin are all too familiar. They are caused largely by medium wavelength UV radiation (UVB), but the dose required producing sunburn depends on: (1)An individuals skin type (2)The intensity of the radiation (greatest near the equator and around midday) (3)The length of exposure to UVB Mild sunburn causes erythema: more severe damage leads to extensive blistering and epidermal boss. Treatment makes little difference to the acute changes, but symptomatic relief can be obtained with soothing lotions, such as calamine. These include avoiding the midday sun, seeking shade, wearing appropriate clothing and eyewear, and using sunscreens, this is more important for those with skin type I and II than for those with a more radiation skin. There are several special examples which are listed and explained: (1) Porphyria: Some forms of porphyria are associated with photosensitivity. In a European child the most common is erythropoietic protoporphyria, whereas an adult presenting for the first time probably has porphyria cutanea tarda. The latter is often associated with alcoholic liver disease. Screening tests involve blood ,urine and stool samples and are best undertaken in a specialist setting. (2)Solar Urticaria: Rarely, exposure to light leads to urticarial weals. (3)Pellagra: In western societies, nicotinic acid deficiency is seen most commonly in alcoholics. It presents a triad of changes: Diarrhoea Dementia Dermatitis, which is light sensitive. (4)Polymorphic light eruption This is perhaps the most important, and certainly the commonest of the primary photosensitivity disorders. Patients often refer to their skin changes asprickly heat, but true prickly heat (or miliaria rubra)is quite different. Polymorphic light eruption presents a day or two after sun exposure, with changes on light exposed areas, for example the forearms, legs the V of the neck and the face. The lesions are itchy and morphologically variable (hence polymorphic). There may be papules, plaques, and blisters of areas resembling eczema. They increase in intensity over a week or so before subsiding. Treatment with topical steroids provides some relief, but some patients require systemic steroids to control an acute attack. Prevention is a better approach. Unfortunately, sunscreens are often not effective, but pre-season PUVA works well and can last for a whole summer. An alternative is the use of antimalarial medication (notably hydroxychloroquine) taken during sunny periods, or while abroad. A variety of polymorphic light eruption occurs almost exclusively in boys. Clusters of small blisters appear on the topes of the ears, especially in early spring. The condition settles spontaneously with age. Clinics in Photodermatosis Actinic Prurigo Actinic prurigo (AP) is a dermatosis that belongs to the group of idiopathic photodermatoses. Many names have been given to it, such as: solar dermatitis, GuaÂÂ ­temalan cutaneous syndrome, solar prurigo, light-sensitive eruption in American Indians,familial actinic prurigo, polymorphous light eruption, (prurigo type) solar prurigo of high plateaus, and hereditary polyÂÂ ­morphic light eruption of American Indians; howÂÂ ­ever, it is the term actinic prurigo, coined by Lon-dono11 in 1968, which is preferred and used by most authors today. Actinic prurigo is a chronic photodermatosis that has frequently been confused with polymorphic light erupÂÂ ­tion (PLE). However, there are now enough clinical, histologic, epidemiological, and immunogenetic data to suggest that they are two different diseases. AP begins in the first decade of life usually around ages 4 to 5, affects females more than males (ratio 2:1). The lesions are symmetrical in the sun-exposed areas of the face (eyebrows, dorsum of the nose, malar reÂÂ ­gions, upper and lower lips), V-area of the neck, dor-sum of hands and forearms. The primary lesions are erythematous papules although excoriaÂÂ ­tions, crusts, and lichenified plaques are commonly seen. Pruritus is a rule and usually very intense. One of the clinical features which distinguish this disease from PLE is the absence of vesicles as primary lesions in AP. Of course, whenever a secondary dermatosis such as eczema, impetigo, or contact dermatitis ensues, vesiÂÂ ­cles may be seen. Two other differences between AP and PLE are lip and conjunctival affection in AP. CheiÂÂ ­litis of actinic prurigo affects 84% of patients. AlÂÂ ­though lesions are usually seen in both lips, the lower one being more exposed to sun rays is affected first an d more intensely; severe cases show edema, crusts, fisÂÂ ­sures, shallow ulcerations, and hyperpigmentation, while in mild cases only dry lips with scaling may be found. Atopic dermatitis with photosensitivity where the key findings are a familial incidence, an early infancy onset, the presence of xerosis, the sparing of the tip of the nose, and a good response to topical cortico-steroids and emollients. Chronic actinic dermatitis which is quite infrequent, starts much later in life has a reduced UVB minimal erythema dose induction, and/or positive photo-patch testing. Persistent light reactors and actinic reticuloid show histologically dense lymphocytic inÂÂ ­filtrates, which especially in the latter may resemble true lymphomas. [5] Phytophotodermatitis Phytophotodermatitis is a very common skin disease in some countries. It is an acute phototoxic reaction where a substance containing psoralens comes in conÂÂ ­tact with the skin which is then exposed to UVA light. The clinical picture is that of sunburn ranging from mild erythema to severe blistering; it is usually accomÂÂ ­panied by stinging or burning sensations. A residual hyperpigmented macule is the final stage of the disease and usually persists for weeks to months; some dark-skinned individuals (skin types IV to VI) may only present with this hyperpigmentation without any preÂÂ ­vious signs or symptoms of sunburn. The most common phototoxic compounds are the furocoumarins which contained in a wide variety of plants, especially of the Umbelliferae, Rutaceae, and Moracea families. Commonly occurring photosensitizÂÂ ­ing plants include citrus fruits such as limes and orÂÂ ­anges, figs, and many vegetables such as celery, parsÂÂ ­nip, parsley, carrots, and dill32; furocoumarins in lime pulp are 13 to 182 times less concentrated than those in the peel. Treatment is only symptomatic. Topical corticoste-roids help alleviate the burning sensations but do not seem to improve skin healing. Sunscreen use helps the resolution of the hyperpigmentation, and is the most important prophylactic measure for high-risk people. Melasma Melasma (chloasma) is characterized by light or dark brown hyperchromic macules with undefined borders, affecting mainly and symmetrically, the sunlight-exÂÂ ­posed areas of the face. Melasma predominates in women, although it also affects men and has been reÂÂ ­lated to sunlight exposure as well as hormonal, racial, and hereditary factors. Melanocytes are well known to be stimulated by estrogen and other sex-related hormones. Pregnancy and the ingestion of oral contraceptives can produce or exacerbate melasma, with an increase of melanogenesis and the presence of large melanocytes. Facial melano-cytes appear to be especially sensitive to hormonal inÂÂ ­fluences but sunlight is always necessary for melasma to occur. Melasma has been reported to have a greater inciÂÂ ­dence in tan or dark-skinned persons, especially in skin types III, IV, and V, but also depends, as stated before, on sunlight exposure (including UVA and visiÂÂ ­ble light). Piquero-Martin has observed that pigment dispoÂÂ ­sition (as seen with woods light), tends to occur more superficially in lighter skins and deeper in darker skins, the latter being more difficult to treat and eradicate. In some dark-skinned patients with clinically evident melasma, under woods light, the hyperpigmentation disappears. Apparently, this can be related to melanic pigment located deep in the dermis. Differential diagnoses include Rhiel melanosis, Ashy dermatosis, Addison disease, pigmented lichen planus, and postinflammatory hyperpigmentation. Many treatment modalities have been used, such as mercury compounds, vitamin C, tretinoin, topical steÂÂ ­roids, glycolic acid, azelaic acid, and hydroquinone. Pytiriasis Alba Pytiriasis alba is a chronic asymptomatic dermatosis of unknown ethiology, characterized by hypochromic macules, 1 to 5 cm in diameter, covered by a very fine scale, with an ill-defined and occasionally hyperpig-mented border. The macules are mainly located on the sun-exposed areas of the face (malar areas, forehead, around the nasal and moth orifices) and extremities. The cause of this dermatosis is unknown, but many factors have been attributed to it. The main cause is sunlight exposure on a tan or dark skin, and it has been described as a reactive dermatosis to a distant staphy-loccocal or streptoccocal upper respiratory tract infection. The lesions have been attributed to postinflamma-tory hypopigmentation, with a decrease in melanosome number and size, low keratinocyte melanin uptake, and light refraction from a hyperkeratotic and parakeratotic stratum corneum. The histopathology shows an epiÂÂ ­dermis with hyperkeratosis and parakeratosis, acantho-sis, and mild spongiosis. In the papillary dermis, vaso-dilation and mild perivascular inflammatory infiltrate and occasional pigment incontinence can be seen. Sunlight radiation (UVA, UVB, and visible light) in atopic patients with tan or dark skin are the most commonly affected. Treatment of pytiriasis alba must include sunlight protection, sun filters, low potency corticosteroids with a topical antibiotic (mupirocin, vioform). If an upper respiratory tract infection is detected, specific treatment should be given. Pellagra Also named Gaspar Casals disease, pellagra is a nutriÂÂ ­tional disorder due to nicotinic acid deficiency, a B complex vitamin. Niacin is a nonessential vitamin and can be synthesized from the aminoacid tryptophan via the kynurenine pathway. It is mainly expressed on the skin, gastrointestinal and central nervous system. Pellagra is a bilateral and symÂÂ ­metrical dermatosis affecting sun-exposed areas. The avitaminosis can be caused by drugs, such as isoniazid, 6-mercaptopurine, 5-fluouracil, and chloram-fenicol. Phenytoin and sodium valproate51 have also been related to nicotinamide deficiency. Clinical findings in pellagra include dermatitis, diarÂÂ ­rhea, and dementia (the 3Ds). Pellagra is characterized by a intense red, scaly and hyperpigmented plaques on areas exposed to sun, heat, friction, or pressure. The lesions can be edematous with a burning sensation and occasional vesicules and des-quamation. In chronic lesions, the skin is thickened, hyperpig-mented with a dark brown hue. A typical finding is Casals necklace, a scaling collarette around the neck which extends down toward the sternum. Flexural fold may be macerated, and on seborrheic areas, follicular hyperkeratotic plugs are freÂÂ ­quently present. Frequently, angular cheilitis, glossitis with papillary atrophy with a tender beefy red tongue, and esophagitis are seen. Manifestations in adÂÂ ­vanced disease cases are vomiting, diarrhea, and weight loss with secondary anemia or amenorrea. CenÂÂ ­tral nervous system symptoms include irritability, headaches, insomnia, amnesia, and anxiety. Later on, patients develop tremor, movement disorders, numbÂÂ ­ness, encephalopathy, paralysis, and psycosis.[5] PDT in dermatology Photodynamic therapy (PDT) harnesses the power of light and oxygen to enact biologic change. In its infancy, the use of PDT in the treatment of dermatologic disease was limited due to the prolonged and pronounced photosensitivity resulting from systemic photosensitizing agents. HowÂÂ ­ever, in the early 1990s Kennedy and Pottier described the use of topical 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) to create endogÂÂ ­enous protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) from which came a limited, localized, photodynamic response. With this development, many of the early limitations of PDT were alleviated, and the treatment became much more convenient. Early application focused primarily on the treatment of dysplastic and neoplastic disease; however, during the past few years, the versatility of PDT has been more fully realized, and it is now also being used to treat a wide variety of inflammatory and infectious processes. The effectiveness of PDT depends on the photosensitizer used, its ability to selectively penetrate diseased tissue, and the duration of application; the activating light source, its ability to penetrate to the desired target, and its duration of exposure; and the type of target cells and their oxygenation status. To be effective, the damage resulting from PDT must surpass cellular repair mechanisms, a feature referred to as the minimum photodynamic dose. [6] Summary According to the lecture the Professor Moseley gave us and the materials I get from relative books and papers. We can know that the photodermatology is a huge branch of skin disease. First I give the introduction and a review of background and history, it can clear explain what is photodermatology especially photodermatosis in clinic use. Next I focus on Photosensitivity, PDT in dermatology and Clinics in Photodermatosis, which explain different parts of the whole photodermatology. In Clinics of photodermatosis, there are many kinds of photodermatosis listed and illustrated, including the principles, treatment and prevention. As new to dermatology, PDT is an effective therapy to cure dermatosis by penetrating diseased tissue.

A Rose For Emily Essay -- essays research papers

William Faulker's " A Rose for Emily" tells the story of a young woman who is violated by her father's strict mentality. After being the only man in her life Emily's father dies and she finds it hard to let go. Emily was raised in the ante-bellum period before the Civil War. This story takes place in the Reconstruction Era after the war when the North takes control of the South. Like her father, Miss Emily possesses a stubborn outlook towards life and refuses to change. This short story explains Emily, her mystified ways and the townsfolk's sympathetic curiosity. The plot of the story is mainly about Miss Emily's attitude about change. "On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter asking her to call the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her herself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that's he no longer went out at all. The tax notice was enclosed, without comment." (189). Miss Emily was convinced that she had no taxes in Jefferson because before the Civil War the South didn't have to pay taxes and since her father had made a contribution to the town of a generous amount, Colonel Sartoris, mayor at that time had remitted her taxes, she felt that that promise or rather gift still stood good. "After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all."(190). Miss Emily might have stayed out the public eye after those two deaths because she was finally alone, something she in her life was not used to. Emily's father never let her alone and when he died Homer Baron was a treat she was never allowed to have. Miss Emily's stubborn attitude definitely came from her father's strict teachings. The characters of this story are very briefly mentioned, Miss Emily and Mr. Homer Barron are the two main characters described. Miss Emily was described as a short, fat, aged and mysterious women during her later years. Miss Emily had been through much and had seen many generations grow before and around her. This brings to reason her strong Confederate beliefs. Homer Barron; on the other hand was quite the opposite, "A Yankee... ..., and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a ling strand of iron gray hair."(195). This excerpt leaves the reader shocked and disgusted. Faulkner's style is quite difficult to read because it isn't written in chronological order. It begins by telling about Emily's past and her family history. This information explains her future behavior and opinions. The ending seems rather abrupt and sudden, but very chilling and non-expectant. The diction and sentence structures are fairly advanced, but soon lead to a greater understanding of the passage because it sets the mood of that specific time. "And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of the Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at battle of Jefferson". (194). Terms like this were used throughout to aid in setting the Reconstruction Era mood. In conclusion, "A Rose for Emily" is a shocking tale about Emily Grierson, her love, and her inability to accept change. Emily is a prime example of the Old South and it's changing hardships.

Marijuana Use: An Ethical Examination Essay -- legalization of marijuan

Works Cited Missing Instead of addressing the tiresome argument about whether or not marijuana should be legalized in the United States, I would like to examine a much more fundamental question: whether or not it is right to use the drug. This problem is strictly an ethical one. If we are to examine only the moral implications of the action then we must discard governmental laws from the equation, for this decision could be made anywhere, at any time, under any sort of governmental regime, under any set of laws, which after all are only that particular government’s best guess at morality and who’s to say their judgment is any better than yours? Knowing that this decision is a rather daunting one, I’ve enlisted the help of three friends, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, to aid in the decision making process. It just so happens that they are experts in the field of ethics. Aristotle is an ancient Greek philosopher, really the first philosopher to use the word â€Å"ethics†. His major book on ethics is titled Nicomachean Ethics (Bostock 1). In order to understand Nicomachean Ethics and apply it, we must first understand how Aristotle viewed the world. Aristotle sees the world in terms of ends, purposes, and functions. In nature, the end of the acorn is to become an oak tree. In human affairs, the end of architecture is to produce buildings; of shipbuilding, to produce ships; of medicine, to promote health. Humans too have a function, an ultimate end; this Aristotle calls eudaimonia. The traditional translation is happiness, but this translation is misleading. To put it most aptly eudaimonia â€Å"connotes overall success and prosperity and achievement, though it also connotes something that we may call... ... the world would most likely be made up of people enjoying pleasure, something that can not really be considered bad. Many would argue that the world would be full of drug addicts, but this is not the world that we have set up. According to our perceived duty, all must use marijuana in moderation, and to use it to excess would be just as offensive to the duty as would be not using it at all. We have now heard from three very distinguished Moral philosophers, and all have said that moderate use of marijuana is not a bad thing, one even calling it our duty. The most common type of actual moral reasoning is a loose combination or confusion of methods (Sweet 4). So, if we combine all that we have heard, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the use of marijuana, as a bodily pleasure, is morally justifiable, probably more so than not using the drug.

Promote Children’s Welfare and Well Being in the Early Years

EYMP 3: Promote children’s welfare and well being in the early years 1. Welfare requirements were bought in, in September 2008 as part of the EYFS welfare requirements and are compulsory. Theses are split into 5 groups, which our operational planning covers. Safeguarding and promoting children’s welfare has legal and statutory guidance general legal requirements cover and the provider must take necessary steps to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.The provider must promote the good health of children and take necessary steps to prevent cross infections, and take appropriate action when they are ill. Children’s behaviour must be managed effectively and in a manner appropriate for their stage of development and particular individual needs. Specific legal requirements and statutory guidance covers safeguarding, information and complaints, premises and security, outings, equality of opportunities. Medicines, illness and injuries, food and drink, smoking, b ehaviour management. 2.The lines of reporting and responsibility in the work setting. In my staff handbook has how to report and my responsibility in my setting. Attached to this document. 2. 2 Explain systems for supporting children’s safety when: ? When receiving children into the setting we make sure they come in with a parent/carer. We ensure every child has the correct clothing and footwear for the appropriate weather. When receiving new children to join the setting all the correct paperwork is filled in the parents and child have settling in sessions.If a child has certain people that cannot pick them up we ensure people picking up that child are checked at the gate and I. D is checked we have passwords and photos of parents and carers. ? When a child leaves nursery at the end of the day we ensure they leave with a parent/carer if another person is picking up the nursery make sure everyone’s seen a photo of that person and a password is given at the gate their I. D is also checked, this all has to be confirmed with a parent/carer before pick up. Each child is then signed out by a parent/carer and signed ut by staff on a register. ? During offsite visits each child is either in a buggy or were a high visibility jacket with the teddies number on the back and each child wears a wrist strap attached to a member of staff. The ratio on a walk is 1. 2 on each walk there needs to be a head of unit, first aider, first aid bag, evacuation bag, water and phones. A register is taken every 15mins on a outing and a walks form is filled out of who is going on a walk, the ratio, time of departure and returning and were the walk is. . 4 Explain giving examples, why minimum requirements for space and staff ratios and necessary for children’s safety. ? The space in each room in nursery is necessary for children’s safety. In all the rooms below the age of three have a capacity of 12 children to four members of staff. In a room above three years o ld is a capacity of 20 children with for members of staff. If there is to many children in a room it would become unsafe for the children as there wouldn’t be enough room to play and take part in activities.If a room is over crowded for the amount of children it can cause more accidents, staff may not be able to care to a high standard. ? Staff ratio is very important for a child’s safety. The ratio for 0 – 2 years is 1:3, 2 – 3 is 1:4 and 3 years above is 1:8 this is set by the government and ofsted. This is to allow each practitioner to look after a correct amount of children at a safe level to ensure each child’s needs are met and not put in danger.

Electronic Bulletin Board for Slsu Gumaca Essay

As the trend of technology rises, there is a lot of improvement and other modifications has been taken place in every technology systems that are existing. Through the creative thinking of the people nothing is impossible when it comes to developing or improving new technology. Delaying information using communication devices, equipments and gadgets is not new anymore in the world of communication. It is very important to be transmitted must reach its recipient in the shortest possible time in order to obtain the essence of the information. A bulletin board (pin board, pin board, notice board, or notice board in British English) is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise items wanted or for sale, announce events, or provide information. Bulletin boards are often made of a material such as cork to facilitate addition and removal of messages, or they can be placed on computer networks so people can leave and erase messages for other people to read and see. Bulletin boards are particularly prevalent at universities. They are used by many sports groups and extracurricular groups and anything from local shops to official notices. Dormitory corridors, well-trafficked hallways, lobbies, and freestanding kiosks often have cork boards attached to facilitate the posting of notices. At some universities, lampposts, bollards, trees, and walls often become impromptu posting sites in areas where official boards are sparse in number. Internet forums are becoming a global replacement for traditional bulletin boards. Online bulletin boards are sometimes referred to as message boards. The terms bulletin board, message board and even Internet forum are interchangeable, although often one bulletin board or message board can contain a n umber of Internet forums or discussion groups. An online board can serve the same purpose as a physical bulletin board. Magnet boards, or magnetic bulletin boards, are a popular substitute for cork boards because they lack the problem of board deterioration from the insertion and removal of pins over time. In the present society, competition is on its peak more specifically in the rapid growing technology. Technology advancement leads to more effective and progressive living. Technology conquers the world in terms of information and communication. As has been said all computers require a program, or a list of instructions to guide their activity. Sometimes the program is designed, or resides, within the hardware of the computer and cannot be changed without redesigning the hardware. More often the program is entered as software into memory and maybe easily removed or altered. (Grolier Family Encyclopedia, Vol. 5, p 150) Information technology has become an increasingly important component of an organization. Technology facilities the ongoing of affirm have been contributing to its competitive strategy, and for those organizations, the key to survive is through the intelligent application of this technology. With the help of computer programs, any information and special announcements can become ease to forecast. Today, computers played an important role in every aspects of human living. Computer is a broad subject that includes a wide range of topics such as networking, software, hardware and the likes. Computers have the most development reported everyday. Such technology evolves, and benefits everyone a vast variety of modern equipment, net software that is important in this growing technological industry. (Scott F. Midkipp, 2003) This study was designed to help SLSU Gumaca students in giving or forecasting information and special announcements in fast and accurate service at all times. Manual system of forecasting or announcing information of SLSU Gumaca is extremely time consuming and hardly be found. The study helps eliminate the problems encountered using the manual system. The chaos during forecasting of information and special announcements and the advancements in computer technology has pushed for the conversion of the manual system of forecasting information and special announcements into digital and electronic manner. Background of the Study The main purpose of the researcher is to improve the quality of giving information to all of the students of Southern Luzon State University Gumaca Campus, and to know how effective and productive it is in terms of the quality of execution and implementation. The researchers had proposed a system that is an improvement of bulletin board in the campus; the data/information would be displayed in a digital way and interpreted automatically, with the help of this, the students will have a convenience in knowing different essential announcements like schedules of examination, time schedule of daily activities of the institution, and other relevant information that students must know. In connection to that the students will be informed well and the level of accuracy is highly acceptable in terms of receiving valid information. The hassle and the waste of time of distributing paper announcements and other sort of giving information to the students made the researchers decide to improve the system in order to meet the most desirability Since Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is a sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message. Information can be recorded as signs, or transmitted as signals. Information is any kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system. Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed and also that’s one of the reasons behind why the researchers decided to make it electronic and digital for it to be decoded easily. Objectives The researchers aimed to answer the following sets of objectives that are worthy for the system evaluation: 1. To determine different problems in giving information using papers and other resourced materials. 2. To evaluate the design of the newly improved bulletin board in SLSU Gumaca. 3. To evaluate the performance of the Bulletin Board in terms of the execution of the programs and other templates. 4. To determine the significant difference between the old ways and modern ways of giving information to the students. Significance of the study The study deals with the A Electronic Bulletin Board for SLSU Gumaca Campus†. This study will help the researchers and all of the Students of SLSU Gumaca to determine the importance of giving information through Digital Electronic Bulletin Board. The old or manual systems of forecasting information to the students would then be replaced by the highly advanced improvement of technology. For the future researchers, this study will serve as a guide for them if ever they will be conducting this kind of project study. For the Students of SLSU Gumaca, it will be an effective way of receiving a valid, real time information. Res Admin Statement of the Problem This particular study will be undertaken to analyze the design features and the effectiveness of the proposed project entitled â€Å"A Digital Electronic Bulletin Board for SLSU Gumaca.† This research/study aims to answer the following questions. 1. How would it be more productive for the students of SLSU Gumaca in getting information via Digital Electronic Bulletin board? 2. Why does it help a lot to both faculty and students for trading information and updates etc.? 3. What will be the appropriate design in order to catch up the attention of the students? 4. How will the proposed system be monitored and maintained? 5. What is the level of acceptability in terms of a. security and b. reliability? c. Jj d. Jjj e. Jj f. Nnn g. Hh h. Scope and constraints The study covered only the evaluation and implementation of the Digital Electronic Bulletin Board in SLSU Gumaca. The proposed system will run only in either win XP or win7 operating system. The researchers will be using standard PC unit serves as the server that has an installed Microsoft office (2003/2007) access database wherein all of the relevant information like special announcements events updates and other schedule of the activities will be stored and be encoded by the campus clerk or the person assigned to do that certain job. The designs for the templates and hardware for the proposed system will be made used of the resourced materials that are set visible and easy to use just like VB 6.0 for all of the software and templates, a flat screen wide monitor with the size of 32† and has modified and specialized features that is able to support the software the researchers had made. VGA connectors for the cabling connections that have the measurement of not more than 100 ft. depending upon the distance and location of the widescreen monitor. The proposed system has limited special effects when it comes to the animation and transitions of the texts and other objects. The recommended screen resolution will be 1920Ãâ€"1080 it will no longer be connected to the internet. Definition of Terms The following terms are operationally defined for clear understanding of this study: Evaluation – is assessing and judging the value of a piece of work; an organisation or a service. Its main purpose is to help an organization reflect on what it is trying to achieve, assessing how far it is succeeding, and identify required changes. Information – is the data that have been organized and meaningful to the persons receiving it. SLSU Gumaca – it is the institution wherein the study was being conducted Bulletin Board – A bulletin board (pin board, pin board, notice board, or notice board in British English) is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise items wanted or for sale, announce events, or provide information. Digital – Of pertaining to, or like the fingers or digits digitate showing information such as numerals by means of electronics Vb 6.0 – is a programming language that was being used in the system Electronic – of or pertaining to electrons, operating or produced by the movement of free electrons or other carries of electric charge, as in an electron tube pertaining to electronics. Database- A database is a data structure that stores organized information. Most databases contain multiple tables, which may each include several different fields. For example, a company database may include tables for products, employees, and financial records. Each of these tables would have different fields that are relevant to the information stored in the table Chapter II REVIEW RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES This chapter covers the review of related literature and studies the design paradigm. Literature and studies were gathered from the book, journals, internet sites, and other resources that could help the researchers fully understood the related topics relevant of the study. Bulletin board A bulletin board (pinboard, pin board, noticeboard, or notice board in British English) is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise items wanted or for sale, announce events, or provide information. Bulletin boards are often made of a material such as cork to facilitate addition and removal of messages, or they can be placed on computer networks so people can leave and erase messages for other people to read and see. Bulletin boards are particularly prevalent at universities. They are used by many sports groups and extracurricular groups and anything from local shops to official notices. Dormitory corridors, well-trafficked hallways, lobbies, and freestanding kiosks often have cork boards attached to facilitate the posting of notices. At some universities, lampposts, bollards, trees, and walls often become impromptu posting sites in areas where official boards are sparse in number. Internet forums are becoming a global replacement for traditional bulletin boards. Online bulletin boards are sometimes referred to as message boards. The terms bulletin board, message board and even Internet forum are interchangeable, although often one bulletin board or message board can contain a number of Internet forums or discussion groups. An online board can serve the same purpose as a physical bulletin board. Magnet boards, or magnetic bulletin boards, are a popular substitute for cork boards because they lack the problem of board deterioration from the insertion and removal of pins over time. A bulletin board system, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users, either through email, public message boards, and sometimes via direct chatting. Many BBSes also offer on-line games, in which users can compete with each other, and BBSes with multiple phone lines often provide chat rooms, allowing users to interact with each other. Originally BBSes were accessed only over a phone line using a modem, but by the early 1990s some BBSes allowed access via a Telnet, packet switched network, or packet radio connection. Ward Christensen coined the term â€Å"bulletin board system† as a reference to the traditional cork-and-pin bulletin board often found in entrances of supermarkets, schools, libraries or other public areas where people can post messages, advertisements, or community news. By â€Å"computerizing† this method of communications, the name of the first BBS system was born: CBBS – Computerized Bulletin Board System. During their heyday from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, most BBSes were run as a hobby free of charge by the system operator (or â€Å"sysop†), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access, or were operated by a business as a means of supporting their customers. Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web, social network services and other aspects of the Internet. As the use of the Internet became more widespread in the mid to late 1990s, traditional BBSes rapidly faded in popularity. Today, Internet forums occupy much of the same social and technological space as BBSes did, and the term BBS is often used to refer to any online forum or message board. Although BBSing survives only as a niche hobby in most parts of the world, it is still an extremely popular form of communication for Taiwanese youth (see PTT Bulletin Board System). Most BBSes are now accessible over Telnet and typically offer free email accounts, FTP services, IRC and all of the protocols commonly used on the Internet. Some offer access through packet switched networks, or packet radio connections. Early BBSes were often a local phenomenon, as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay additional long distance charges for a BBS out of the local calling area. Thus, many users of a given BBS usually lived in the same area, and activities such as BBS meets or get togethers were common, where users of the board would gather at a local restaurant, the sysop’s home or similar venue and meet face to face. Research Paradigm Figure 1: Research Paradigm Figure 1 shows the process in evaluating computerized sales transaction in Quickfox Computer Sales and Services plus. The process has two inputs consist of computer system database design and questionnaire. Procedures/Data Collection The researchers used the most common techniques of data gathering by means of survey and interview and interview processes. First, the researchers had the survey by means of using a questionnaire then distributed to the target respondents. The questions dealt only with the topic interest of the research. And then the interview process had been done to answer one of the objectives of the study. Then, the researchers raised another set of questions through the use of checklist questionnaire to the owner for their cooperation for another survey to test how much time consumed using the manual transaction and using the computerized transaction sales.

Issue In Health Policy And Management Essay

Introduction The element of well-being is a natural concern for the whole of mankind. It involves the maintenance of a balance, within him or her, with his or her fellow being and with the environment. The integral role of the individual’s health however is of extreme importance. The spectator of health care verses medical care. Health care refers to the prevention, remedy and handling of illness and the upholding of mental and physical stature through the services of the allied institutions include social insurance, which is a government undertaking for the underprivileged, injured, aged or even jobless citizenry. A pool of contributions from employers and also government income funds social insurance. Health care also includes medical aid, and is a federal state funded program that avails health care form the needy. Primary health care is the aspect of professional health care availed to the patients or distressed at first contact with the health care system. Medical care or Medicare is an insurance section of health care for the aged, focusing on the age 65 and over, that is funded and managed by the federal system. Whereas medical care is dedicated to serving a given age, health care is a broad section (that also includes medical care). The relationship between Health care, and the roots of our cultural convictions; Cultural convictions, existing as ethical and social values dictate the context within which systems function. Civil values like the special stewardship for safeguarding the sacredness of life and the Hippocratic oath influence health care immensely. The relationship of health care and other society demands creates another set of values i. e.availing consumers their respect, high quality service, provision and good value for money whereas consuming employee safely, fairness and a sensitive system (to their plight) they can be proud of. † Religion; essentially spirituality counts more so in matters of health care. Take the example of the Salvation Army movement on the blood transfusion debate. Some other religions will not allow the grafting of tissue from other individuals other than the patient. Constraining health care outreach to the desired of subject, as doctors and nurses refuse to perform medical procedures due to their personal beliefs. Dr. Saha Somnath in the study of the â€Å"Relevance of Cultural Distance between Patients and Physicians to Racial Disparities in Health care† portends that; â€Å"patients reported better relationship when seeing physicians of their own ethnicity or race. † explains the cultural racial disparities in health care. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As addressed to the health care forum, in May 1998 by Daniel Yankelovich† Americans have embraced an expanding pluralism of groups, ways of thinking, points of view, subcultures and values. † That as the world changes and newer systems are embraced its necessary that our social values which concurrently impact on the economy and spiritual (belief) beings be on a balance with the health policy we pursue. References 1. Harold G. , A cross cultural Dialogue On Healthcare Ethics, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999, USA. 2. Lee G. , A Cross Cultural Analysis of Values and Political Economy Issues. Greenwood/Praeger 1994, USA. 3. Susan H. , Religions, Culture and Healthcare: A practical handbook for use in Healthcare Enviroments, Radcliffe Publishing, 2006.

Stylistics

STYLISTICS In Stylistics Richard Bradford provides a definitive introductory guide to modern critical ideas on literary style and stylistics. The book includes examples of poems, plays and novels from Shakespeare to the present day. This comprehensive and accessible guidebook for undergraduates explains the terminology of literary form, considers the role of stylistics in twentieth-century criticism, and shows, with worked examples, how literary style has evolved since the sixteenth century.This book falls into three sections: Part I follows the discipline of stylistics from classical rhetoric to poststructuralism; Part II looks at the relationship between literary style and its historical context; Part III considers the relationships between style and gender, and between style and evaluative judgement. Richard Bradford is Professor of English at the University of Ulster. He has written books on Kingsley Amis, Roman Jakobson, Milton, eighteenth-century criticism, visual poetry and li nguistics. THE NEW CRITICAL IDIOMSERIES EDITOR: JOHN DRAKAKIS, UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING The New Critical Idiom is an invaluable series of introductory guides to today’s critical terminology. Each book: †¢ provides a handy, explanatory guide to the use (and abuse) of the term †¢ offers an original and distinctive overview by a leading literary and cultural critic †¢ relates the term to the larger field of cultural representation. With a strong emphasis on clarity, lively debate and the widest possible breadth of examples, The New Critical Idiom is an indispensable approach to key topics in literary studies. See below for new books in this series. Gothic by Fred Botting Historicism by Paul Hamilton Ideology by David Hawkes Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form by Philip Hobsbaum Romanticism by Aidan Day Stylistics by Richard Bradford Humanism by Tony Davies Sexuality by Joseph Bristow STYLISTICS Richard Bradford LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1997 by Routledge 11 New F etter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. â€Å"To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www. Bookstore. tandf. co. uk. † Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001  © 1997 Richard Bradford All rights reserved. No part of this book my be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bradford, Richard Stylistics / Richard Bradford. p. cm. —(The new critical idiom) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Style, Literary. I. Title. II. Series. PN203. B68 1997 809–dc20 96–27990 CIP ISBN 0-203-99265-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-09768-1 (Print Edition) 0-415-09769-X (pbk) To Jennifer Ford CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE INTRODUCTION iii ix xi PART I A SHORT HISTORY OF STYLISTICS 1 2 3 4 5 Rhetoric Stylistics and modern criticism Textualism I: poetry Textualism II: the novel Contextualist stylistics 2 11 14 50 72 PART II STYLISTICS AND LITERARY HISTORY 6 7 8 9 10 11 Renaissance and Augustan poetry Literary style and literary history Shakespeare’s drama: two stylistic registers The eighteenth-and nineteenthcentury novel Romanticism Modernism and naturalization 98 110 117 126 143 151 PART III GENDER AND EVALUATION vii 12 13 Gender and genre Evaluative stylistics BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX 67 183 201 206 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the Faculty of Humanities and the School of English, University of Ulster, for providing me with the time to finish this book, and to John Drakakis, a scrupulous editor. The author and publisher are grateful for the permission to reproduce extracts from T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909– 1962, reprinted courtesy of Faber & Faber Ltd. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use copyright material in this book. Please contact the publisher if any omissions have inadvertently occurred.SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE The New Critical Idiom is a series of introductory books which seeks to extend the lexicon of literary terms, in order to address the radical changes which have taken place in the study of literature during the last decades of the twentieth century. The aim is to provide clear, well-illustrated accounts of the full range of terminology currently in use, and to evolve histories of its changing usage. The current state of the discipline of literary studies is one where there is considerable debate concerning basic questions of terminology.This in volves, among other things, the boundaries which distinguish the literary from the non-literary; the position of literature within the larger sphere of culture; the relationship between literatures of different cultures; and questions concerning the relation of literary to other cultural forms within the context of interdisciplinary studies. It is clear that the field of literary criticism and theory is a dynamic and heterogenous one. The present need is for individual volumes on terms which combine clarity of exposition with an adventurousness of perspective and a breadth of application.Each volume will contain as part of its apparatus some indication of the direction in which the definition of particular terms is likely to move, as well as expanding the disciplinary boundaries within which some of these terms have been traditionally contained. This will involve some re-situation of terms within the larger field of cultural representation, and will introduce examples from the x are a of film and the modern media in addition to examples from a variety of literary texts. INTRODUCTIONStylistics is an elusive and slippery topic. Every contribution to the vast and multifaceted discipline of literary studies will involve an engagement with style. To accept that the subject of our attention or our critical essay is a poem, a novel or a play involves an acceptance that literature is divided into three basic stylistic registers. Even a recognition of literary studies as a separate academic sphere is prefigured by a perceived distinction between literary and non-literary texts.Stylistics might thus seem to offer itself as an easily definable activity with specific functions and objectives: Stylistics enables us to identify and name the distinguishing features of literary texts, and to specify the generic and structural subdivisions of literature. But it is not as simple as this. When we use or respond to language in the real world our understanding of what the words mea n is supplemented by a vast number of contextual and situational issues: language is an enabling device; it allows us to articulate the sequence of choices, decisions, responses, acts and onsequences that make up our lives. Style will play some part in this, but its function is pragmatic and purposive: we might admire the lucid confidence of the car advertisement or the political broadcast, but in the end we will look beyond the words to the potential effect of their message upon our day to day activities. The style and language of poems, novels and plays will frequently involve these purposive functions, but when we look beyond their effect to their context we face a xii INTRODUCTION otentially disorientating relation between what happens in the text and what might happen outside it. Stylistics can tell us how to name the constituent parts of a literary text and enable us to document their operations, but in doing so it must draw upon the terminology and methodology of disciplines which focus upon language in the real world. The study of metre, narrative and dramatic dialogue is founded upon the fundamental units and principles of all linguistic usage: phonemes, rhythmic sequences, grammatical classes, forms of syntactic organization and so on.But these same fundamentals of communication also underpin the methodology of pure linguistics, structuralism and semiotics, discourse theory, sociolinguistics, gender studies, linguistic philosophy and a whole network of disciplines which involves the context and pragmatic purpose of communication. Consequently, modern stylistics is caught between two disciplinary imperatives. On the one hand it raises questions regarding the relation between the way that language is used and its apparent context and objective—language as an active element of the real world.On the other, it seeks to define the particular use of linguistic structures to create facsimiles, models or distortions of the real world—literary la nguage. This problematic relationship is the principal subject of this book. In Part I, I will consider the progress of modern stylistics from its origins in classical rhetoric to its function in modern literary studies. This will focus upon the tension between stylistics as a purely literary-critical discipline—its function in defining literature as an art form (which I call textualism)—and its operations within the broader field of structuralism and social studies (contextualism).Part II will re-examine this tension in relation to literary history: what is the relationship between literary style and historical context? Part III is a detailed study of two issues that feature in the margins of Parts I and II. ‘Gender and Evaluation’ will be concerned with the way in which the twin elements of feminist criticism and women writers relate to stylistics. INTRODUCTION xiii ‘Evaluative Stylistics’ will look at how the discipline of stylistics underp ins our subjective experience of reading. PART I A SHORT HISTORY OF STYLISTICS 1 RHETORIC The academic discipline of stylistics is a twentieth-century invention.It will be the purpose of this book to describe the aims and methods of stylistics, and we will begin by considering its relationship with its most notable predecessor —rhetoric. The term is derived from the Greek techne rhetorike, the art of speech, an art concerned with the use of public speaking as a means of persuasion. The inhabitants of Homer’s epics exploit and, more significantly, acknowledge the capacity of language to affect and determine nonlinguistic events, but it was not until the fifth century BC that the Greek settlers of Sicily began to study, document and teach rhetoric as a practical discipline.The best-known names are Corax and Tisias who found that, in an island beset with political and judicial disagreements over land and civil rights, the art of persuasion was a useful and profitable prof ession. Gorgias, one of their pupils, visited Athens as ambassador and he is generally regarded as the person responsible for piloting rhetoric beyond its judicial function into the spheres of philosophy and literary studies. Isocrates was the first to extend and promote the moral and ethical benefits of the art of speech, and one of Plato’s earliest Socratic dialogues bears the name Gorgias.It is with Plato that we encounter the most significant moment in the early history of rhetoric. In the Phaedrus Plato/Socrates states that unless a man pays due attention to philosophy ‘he will never RHETORIC 3 be able to speak properly about anything’ (261 A). ‘A real art of speaking†¦which does not seize hold of truth, does not exist and never will’ (260E). What concerned Plato was the fact that rhetoric was a device without moral or ethical subject matter.In the Gorgias he records an exchange between Socrates and Gorgias in which the former claims that p ersuasion is comparable with flattery, cooking and medicine: it meets bodily needs and satisfies physical and emotional desires. Rhetoric, he argues, is not an ‘art’ but a ‘routine’, and such a routine, if allowed to take hold of our primary communicative medium, will promote division, ambition and self-aggrandizement at the expense of collective truth and wisdom, the principal subjects of philosophy.Plato himself, particularly in the Phaedrus, does not go so far as to suggest the banning of rhetoric; rather he argues that it must be codified as subservient to the philosopher’s search for truth. Aristotle in his Rhetoric (c. 330 BC) produced the first counter-blast to Plato’s anti-rhetoric thesis. Rhetoric, argues Aristotle, is an art, a necessary condition of philosophical debate. To perceive the same fact or argument dressed in different linguistic forms is not immoral or dangerous.Such a recognition—that words can qualify or unsettle a single pre-linguistic truth—is part of our intellectual training, vital to any purposive reconciliation of appearance and reality. Aristotle meets the claim that rhetoric is socially and politically dangerous with the counterclaim that the persuasive power of speech is capable of pre-empting and superseding the violent physical manifestations of subjection and defence. The Plato-Aristotle exchange is not so much about rhetoric as an illustration of the divisive nature of rhetoric.It is replayed, with largely Aristotelian preferences, in the work of the two most prominent Roman rhetoricians, Cicero and Quintilian; it emerges in the writings of St Augustine and in Peter Ramus’s Dialectique (1555), one of the founding moments in the revival of classical rhetoric during the European Renaissance. Most significantly, it operates as 4 RHETORIC the theoretical spine which links rhetoric with modern stylistics, and stylistics in turn with those other constituents of the cont emporary discipline of humanities: linguistics, structuralism and poststructuralism.Plato and Aristotle did not disagree on what rhetoric is; their conflicts originated in the problematical relationship between language and truth. Rhetoric, particularly in Rome and in post-Renaissance education, had been taught as a form of super-grammar. It provides us with names and practical explanations of the devices by which language enables us to perform the various tasks of persuading, convincing and arguing. In an ideal world (Aristotle’s thesis) these tasks will be conducive to the personal and the collective good.The rhetorician will know the truth, and his linguistic strategies will be employed as a means of disclosing the truth. In the real world (Plato’s thesis) rhetoric is a weapon used to bring the listener into line with the argument which happens to satisfy the interests or personal affiliations of the speaker, neither of which will necessarily correspond with the tru th. These two models of rhetorical usage are equally valid and finally irreconcilable. Lies, fabrications, exaggerations are facts of language, but they can only be cited when the fissure between language and truth is provable.For example, if I were to tell you that I am a personal friend of Aristotle, known facts will be sufficient to convince you (unless you are a spiritualist) that I am not telling the truth. However, a statement such as, Aristotle speaks to me of the general usefulness of rhetoric’ is acceptable because it involves the use of a familiar rhetorical device (generally termed catachresis, the misuse or mis-application of a term): Aristotle does not literally speak to me, but my use of the term to imply that his written words involve the sincerity or the immediate relevance of speech is sanctioned by rhetorical-stylistic convention.What I have done is to use a linguistic device to distort prelinguistic truth and to achieve an emotive effect at the same time. M y reason for doing so would be to give a RHETORIC 5 supplementary persuasive edge to the specifics of my argument about the validity of Aristotle’s thesis. Such devices are part of the fabric of everyday linguistic exchange and, assuming that the hearer is as conversant as the speaker with the conventions of this rhetorical game, they are not, in Plato’s terms, immoral or dishonest.But for Plato such innocuous examples were merely a symptom of the much more serious consequences of rhetorical infection. The fact that Aristotle lived more than two millennia before me cannot be disputed, but the fabric of intellectual activity and its linguistic manifestation is only partly comprised of concrete facts. Morality, the existence of God, the nature of justice: all of these correspond with the verifiable specifics of human existence, but our opinions about them cannot be verified in direct relation to these specifics.The common medium shared by the abstract and the concrete di mensions of human experience is language and, as a consequence, language functions as the battleground for the tendentious activity of making the known correspond with the unknown, that speculative element of human existence that underpins all of our beliefs about the nature of truth, justice, politics and behaviour.Plato and Aristotle named the conditions of this conflict as dianoia and pragmata (thought and facts, otherwise known as res or content) and lexis and taxis (word choice and arrangement, otherwise known as verba or form), and the distinction raises two major problems that will occupy much of our attention throughout this book. First of all it can be argued that to make a distinction between language—in this instance the rhetorical organization of language—and the pre-linguistic continuum of thought, objects and events involves a fundamental error.Without language our experience of anything is almost exclusively internalized and private: we can, of course, m ake physical gestures, non-linguistic sounds or draw pictures, but these do not come close to the vast and complex network of signs and meanings shared by language users. The most important consequence of this condition of language 6 RHETORIC dependency is that we can never be certain whether the private world, the set of private experiences or beliefs, that language enables us to mediate is, as Plato and Aristotle argue, entirely independent of its medium.The governing precondition for any exchange of views about the nature of existence and truth—a process perfectly illustrated by Plato’s Socratic dialogues—is that language allows us to disclose the true nature of pre-linguistic fact. However, for such an exchange to take place at all each participant must submit to an impersonal system of rules and conventions. Before any disagreement regarding a fact or a principle can occur the combatants must first have agreed upon the relation between the fact/principle an d its linguistic enactment.An atheist and a Christian will have totally divergent perceptions of the nature of human existence, but both will know what the word ‘God’ means. The twentieth-century alternative to Aristotle’s and Plato’s distinction between dianoia/pragmata and lexis/taxis has been provided by Ferdinand de Saussure, a turn-of-thecentury linguist whose influence upon modern ideas about language and reality has become immeasurable.Saussure’s most quoted and influential propositions concern his distinction between the signified and the signifier and his pronouncement that ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms’. The signifier is the concrete linguistic sign, spoken or written, and the signified is the concept represented by the sign. A third element is the referent, the pre-linguistic object or condition that stands beyond the signifiersignified relationship. This tripartate function is, to say the lea st, unsteady.The atheist and the Christian will share a largely identical conception of the relation between ‘God’ (signifier) and ‘God’ (signified) but the atheist will regard this as a purely linguistic state, a fiction sustained by language, but without a referent. For such an individual the signifier God relates not to a specific signified and referent, but to other signifiers and signifieds— concepts of good and bad, eternity, omniscience, omnipotence, the whole network of signs which enables RHETORIC 7 Christian belief to intersect with other elements of the human condition.In Saussure’s terms, the signified ‘God’ is sustained by the differential relationship between itself and other words and concepts, and this will override its correspondence with a ‘positive term’ (the referent). Plato and Aristotle shared the premise that it is dangerous and immoral to talk about something that does not exist, and that it is the duty of the philosopher to disclose such improper fissures between language and its referent. Saussure’s model of language poses a threat to this ideal by raising the possibility that facts and thoughts might, to an extent, be constructs of the system of language.The relation between classical philosophy/rhetoric and Saussurean linguistics is far more complicated than my brief comparison might suggest, but it is certain that Saussure makes explicit elements of the divisive issue of whether rhetoric is a potentially dangerous practice. And this leads us to a second problem: the relationship between language and literature. Plato in The Republic has much to say about literature—which at the time consisted of poetry in its dramatic or narrative forms.In Book 10 an exchange takes place regarding the nature of imitation and representation: the subject is ostensibly art, but the originary motive is as usual the determining of the nature of truth. By the end of the dialo gue Socrates has established a parallel hierarchy of media and physical activities. The carpenter makes the actual bed, but the idea or concept behind this act of creation is God’s. The painter is placed at the next stage down in this creative hierarchy: he can observe the carpenter making the bed and dutifully record this process.The poet, it seems, exists in a somewhat ambiguous relation to this column of originators, makers and imitators. Perhaps they [poets] may have come across imitators and been deceived by them; they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the 8 RHETORIC truth, because they are appearances only and not realities. (1888:312) In short, the poet is capable of unsettling the hierarchy which sustains the clear relation between appearance and reality.Poets, as Aristotle and Plato recognized, are pure rhetoricians: they work within a kind of metalanguage which draws continuously upon the devices of rhetoric but which is not primarily involved in the practical activities of argument and persuasion. As the above quote suggests, they move disconcertingly through the various levels of creation, imitation and deception, and as Plato made clear, such fickle mediators were not the most welcome inhabitants in a Republic founded upon a clear and unitary correspondence between appearance and reality.Plato’s designation of literature as a form which feeds upon the devices of more practical and purposive linguistic discourses, but whose function beyond a form of whimsical diversion is uncertain, has for two millenia been widely debated but has remained the dominant thesis. During the English Renaissance there was an outpouring of largely practical books on the proper use of rhetoric and rhetorical devices: for example R. Sherry’s A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes (1550), T. Wilson’s The Arte of Rhetorique (15 53), R. Rainolde’s A Book Called the Foundation of Rhetorike (1563), H.Peacham’s The Garden of Eloquence (1577) and G. Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589). These were aimed at users of literary and non-literary language, but a distinction was frequently made between the literary and the non-literary function of rhetoric. In George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie we find that there are specific regulations regarding the correspondence between literary style and subject (derived chiefly from Cicero’s distinction between the grand style, the middle style and the low, plain or simple style).The crossing of recommended style-subject borders was regarded as bad writing, but a far more serious offence would be committed RHETORIC 9 if the most extravagant rhetorical, and by implication literary, devices were transplanted into the serious realms of non-literary exchange. Metaphors or ‘figures’ are, according to Puttenham, parti cularly dangerous. ‘For what else is your Metaphor but an inversion of sense by transport; your allegorie by a duplicitie of meaning or dissimulation under covert and darke intendments’ (1589:158).Judges, for example, forbid such extravagances because they distort the truth: This no doubt is true and was by then gravely considered; but in this case, because our maker or Poet is appointed not for a judge, but rather for a pleader, and that of pleasant and lovely causes and nothing perillous, such as be for the triall of life, limme, or livelihood†¦they [extravagant metaphors] are not in truth to be accompted vices but for vertues in the poetical science very commendable. (ibid. : 161)Poetry does of course involve ‘perillous’ matters, but what Puttenham means is that the poetic function is not instrumental in activities concerned with actual ‘life, limme, or livelihood’. As a spokesman for the Renaissance consensus Puttenham shows that the P lato/Aristotle debate regarding the dangers of rhetoric, especially in its literary manifestation, has been shelved rather than resolved: in short, Puttenham argues that in literature it is permissible to distort reality because literature is safely detached from the type of discourse that might have some purposive effect upon the real conditions of its participants.What Puttenham said in 1589 remains true today: literary and non-literary texts might share a number of stylistic features but literary texts do not belong in the same category of functional, purposive language as the judicial ruling or the theological tract. This begs a question which modern stylistics, far more than rhetoric, has sought to address. How do we judge the difference between literary and non-literary discourses? We 10 RHETORIC ave not finished with rhetoric, but in order to properly consider the two issues raised by it—the relation between language and non-linguistic reality and the difference betwee n literary and non-literary texts—we should now begin to examine its far more slippery and eclectic modern counterpart. 2 STYLISTICS AND MODERN CRITICISM Two groups of critics have had a major influence on the identity and direction of twentieth-century English studies: the Russian and central European Formalists and the more disparate collection of British and American teachers and writers whose academic careers began during the 1920s and 1930s.The term New Criticism is often applied to the latter group. The objectives of the majority of individuals in each group were the same: to define literature as a discourse and art form and to establish its function as something that can be properly studied. Until the late 1950s the work of these groups remained within mutually exclusive geographical and academic contexts: the New Critics in Britain and America and the Formalists in Europe. During the 1960s New Criticism and Formalism began to recognize similarities and overlaps in the ir goals and methods.Since the 1960s their academic predominance has been unsettled by a much broader network of interdisciplinary practices: structuralism, poststructuralism, feminism and new historicism, are all significant elements of contemporary literary studies, and each draws its methodologies and expectations from intellectual fields beyond the traditional, enclosed realms of rhetoric and aesthetics. This, I concede, is a simplified history of twentiethcentury criticism, but it provides us with a framework for an understanding of how rhetoric has been variously transformed into modern stylistics.The New Critics and the Formalists are the most obvious inheritors of the disciplines 12 STYLISTICS AND MODERN CRITICISM of rhetoric, in the sense that they have maintained a belief in the empirical difference between literature and other types of language and have attempted to specify this difference in terms of style and effect. Structuralism at once extended and questioned these p ractices by concentrating on the similarities, rather than the differences, between literature and other discourses.Poststructuralism took this a stage further by introducing the reader into the relation between literary and non-literary style, and posing the question of whether the expectations of the perceiver can determine, rather than simply disclose, stylistic effects and meanings. Feminist critics have examined style less as an enclosed characteristic of a particular text and more as a reflection of the sociocultural hierarchies—predominantly male—which control stylistic habits and methods of interpretation.Similarly, Marxists and new historicists concern themselves with style as an element of the more important agenda of cultural and ideological change and mutation. For the sake of convenience I shall divide these different approaches to stylistics into two basic categories: textualist and contextualist. The Formalists and New Critics are mainly textualists in t hat they regard the stylistic features of a particular literary text as productive of an empirical unity and completeness. They do not perceive literary style as entirely exclusive to literature—rhythm is an element of all spoken language, and narrative features in ordinary onversation—but when these stylistic features are combined so as to dominate the fabric of a text, that text is regarded as literature. Contextualism involves a far more loose and disparate collection of methods. Its unifying characteristic is its concentration on the relation between text and context. Some structuralists argue that the stylistic features of poetry draw upon the same structural frameworks that enable us to distinguish between modes of dress or such social rituals as eating.Some feminists regard literary style as a means of securing attitudes and hierarchies that, in the broader context, maintain the difference between male and female roles. STYLISTICS AND MODERN CRITICISM 13 The rem ainder of this Part is divided into three chapters. The first two will examine in basic terms how modern criticism has employed stylistics to evolve theories of poetry and fiction: these chapters will be concerned predominantly with textualist method and practice. Chapter 5 is more concerned with contextualism and will consider the ways in which the interface between text and context can unsettle textualist assumptions. TEXTUALISM I: POETRY The first part of this chapter will give brief definitions, with examples, of the devices and linguistic elements that constitute the stylistic character of post-medieval English poetry: prosody and poetic form; metre; rhyme and the stanza; the sonnet; the ode; blank verse; free verse; metaphor; syntax, diction and vocabulary. Following this is a section on critical methods, which will include examples of how the listed devices and linguistic elements are deployed by critics in their attempts to show how poetic style creates particular meanings a nd effects.PROSODY AND POETIC FORM The most basic and enduring definition of poetry is that the poem, unlike any other assembly of words, supplements the use of grammar and syntax with another system of organization: the poetic line. The poetic line draws upon the same linguistic raw material as the sentence but deploys and uses this in a different way. Our awareness of the grammatical rules which govern the way that words are formed into larger units of meaning is based on our ability to recognize the difference between individual words.Words are made up of sound and stress, identified respectively by the phoneme and the syllable. The function of sound and stress in non-poetic language is functional and utilitarian: before we understand the operative relation between nouns, verbs, adjectives and TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 15 connectives we need to be able to relate the sound and structure of a word to its meaning. Traditional poetry uses stress and sound not only as markers and indicator s of meaning but also as a way of measuring and foregrounding the principal structural characteristic of the poem: the line.In most poems written before the twentieth-century the line is constructed from a combination of two or more of the following elements: †¢ A specified and predictable number of syllables. The most commonly used example of this is the ten-syllable line, the pentameter. †¢ A metrical pattern consisting of the relation between the stress or emphasis of adjacent syllables. The most frequently used metrical pattern in English involves the use of the iambic foot, where an emphatic syllable follows a less emphatic one, with occasional variations, or ‘stress reversals’. †¢ Rhyme.The repetition of the phonemic sound of a single syllable at the end of a line. †¢ Assonance and alliteration. The repetition of clusters of similar vowel or consonant sounds within individual lines and across sequences of lines. The persistent and predictable d eployment of two or more of these features is what allows us to recognize the traditional line as an organizing feature of most pre-twentieth-century poems. METRE The iambic pentameter, consisting of ten syllables with the even syllables stressed more emphatically than the odd, is the most frequently used line in English poetry.It is the governing principle of Shakespeare’s blank verse; of nondramatic blank verse poems, including John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and William Wordsworth’s Prelude, and of the heroic couplet, the structural centrepiece of most 16 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY (from Milton’s Paradise Lost) (from Swift’s ‘Cassinus and Peter’) of the poems of John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Examples of its shorter version, the octosyllabic line or tetrameter can be found in many of the couplet poems of Swift, in Matthew Arnolds ‘Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse’ (1885), and in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850).The iambic pentameter consists of five iambic feet, its tetrameter counterpart of four. The following are examples of these, with ‘indicating the most emphatic and—the less emphatic syllables. These are examples of stress-syllabic metre, in which a consistent balance is maintained between the number of syllables of a line and its stress pattern. Alternative stresssyllabic lines include seven-syllable tetrameters (see William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’), which are comprised of three iambic feet and a single stressed syllable,Lines such as this, with an odd number of syllables, can also be scanned as trochaic The trochaic foot more frequently features as a substitute or variation in a line of iambic feet. This occurs in the first foot of Shakespeare’s line: Stress-syllabic lines consisting of three-syllable feet are generally associated with comic poetry and song. The threesyllable foot creates a rhythmic pattern that deviates from the modulati on of ordinary speech far more than its twosyllable counterpart; as in Oliver Goldsmith’s couplet, consisting of anapestic (––/)feet. TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 17Some poems vary the syllabic length of a line, while maintaining the same number of emphatic or stressed syllables in each. This is called pure stress metre. An early example of pure stress metre is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ (1816) and a more recent one occurs in T. S. Eliot’s ‘Ash Wednesday’ (1930), in which the differing length of each line is anchored to a repeated pattern of two major stresses. Lady of si ences Calm and distressed Torn and most whole Rose of memory The internal structure of the poetic line is only one element of its function as the organizing principle of poetry.RHYME AND THE STANZA Rhyme binds lines together into larger structural units. The smallest of these is the couplet, rhyming aa bb cc (as in the majority of poems by Dryden, Pop e and Jonathan Swift). More complex rhyme schemes enable the poet to create stanzas, the simplest of these being the quatrain, rhyming ab ab. (The octosyllabic quatrain is used by John Donne in ‘The Ecstasy and its pentameter counter-part in Thomas Grays ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’(1751). The stanza can play a number of roles in the broader structure of the poem.Narrative poems, which tell a story, often use the stanza as a way of emphasizing a particular event or observation while tying this into the broader narrative (as in Edmund Spenser’s long The Faerie Queene, John Keats’s The Eve of St Agnes and Lord Byron’s Don 18 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY Juan). Tennyson’s In Memoriam uses the socalled ‘envelope stanza (a b b a). This couplet within a couplet provides a formal counterpoint to the tragic or emotional focus of each stanza. Shorter, lyric poems which focus on a specific sensation, feeling or single event often use the stanza as a counterpoint to improvisation and spontaneity.Donne’s ‘The Relic’ consists of three very complicated stanzas. 8 8 8 8 6 10 7 10 10 10 10 syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables syllables When my grave is broke up again Some second guest to entertain, (For graves have learned that woman-head To be to more than one a bed) And he that digs it spies A bracelet of bright hair about the bone, Will he not let us alone And think that there a loving couple lies, Who thought that this device might be some way To make their souls, at the last busy day Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?On the one hand the complex permutations of line length and rhyme scheme create the impression of flexibility and improvisation, as if the metrical structure of the poem is responding to and following the varied emphases of speech. But this stanzaic structure is repeated, with admirable precision, three times; an d as we read the poem in its entirety we find that the flexibility of the syntax is matched by the insistent inflexibility of the stanza. THE SONNET The sonnet resembles the stanza in that it consists of an ntegrated unit of metre and rhyme: the Shakespearian sonnet consisting of three iambic pentameter quatrains followed by an iambic pentameter couplet, its Petrarchan counterpart rhyming abba abba cdc dcd. It differs from the stanza in that TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 19 the sonnet is a complete poem. Most sonnets will emphasize a particular event or theme and tie this into the symmetries, repetitions and parallels of its metrical and rhyming structure. THE ODE The most flexible and variable stanzaic form will be found in the ode. Wordsworth’s ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality’ consists of eleven sections.Each of these has a pattern of metre and rhyme just as complex and varied as Donne’s stanza in ‘The Relic’, except that in the ‘Immortality Ode’ the same pattern is never repeated. The open, flexible structure of the ode is well suited to its use, especially by the Romantic poets, as a medium for personal reflection; it rarely tells a particular story, and it eschews logical and systematic argument in favour of an apparently random sequence of questions, hypotheses and comparisons. BLANK VERSE A form which offers a similar degree of freedom from formal regularity is blank verse, consisting of unrhymed iambic pentameters.Prior to Milton’s Paradise Lost blank verse was regarded as a mixture of poetry and prose. It was thought appropriate only for drama, in which language could be recognizably poetic (i. e. metrical) while maintaining realistic elements of dialogue and ordinary speech (without rhyme). Paradise Lost offered blank verse as an alternative to the use of the stanza or the couplet in longer narrative or descriptive poems. Milton’s blank verse creates a subtle tension between the iambic patt ern of each line and the broader flow across lines of descriptive or impassioned speech (see below, pp. 28–9, for an example).A similar balance between discursive or reflective language and the metrical undertow of the blank verse line is found in the eighteenth-century tradition of landscape poems (see James Thomson’s The Seasons and 20 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY William Cowper’s The Task) and in Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ and The Prelude. The most flexible examples of blank verse, where it becomes difficult to distinguish between prose rhythm and metre, are found in the poems of Robert Browning, particularly The Ring and the Book (1868– 9): So Did I stand question and make answer, still With the same result of smiling disbelief, Polite impossibility of faith.FREE VERSE Before the twentieth-century, poems which involved neither rhyme nor the metrical pattern of blank verse were rare. Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno (1756) and Wal t Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) replaced traditional metre with patterns redolent of biblical phrasing and intonation, and Blake in his later visionary poems (1789– 1815) devised a very individual form of free verse. It was not until this century that free verse became an established part of the formal repertoire of English poetry. Free verse (from the French vers libre) is only free in the sense that it does not conform to traditional patterns of metre and rhyme.The poetic line is maintained as a structural counterpoint to syntax, but is not definable in abstract metrical terms. Free verse can be divided into three basic categories: 1. Poetry which continues and extends the least restrictive elements of traditional poetry, particularly those of the ode and blank verse. T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917) is a monologue with an unpredictable rhyme scheme and a rhythmic structure that invokes traditional metre but refuses to maintain a regular beat or pattern. A similar effect is achieved in TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 21 W. H. Auden’s ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’.In The Four Quartets (1935–42) Eliot often uses an unrhymed form that resembles blank verse, of which the following, from the beginning of ‘Little Gidding’, is an example: M dwinter spr ng is its o n season Sempiternal though sodden towards s ndown, Suspended in ti e, between pole and tropic. The lines of the poem vary between 9 and 13 syllables. Regular metre is replaced by the distribution of three to five major stresses across each line. Although the lines cannot be scanned according to expectations of regularity they do create the impression that Eliot is giving special attention to rhythmic structure. . Poems in which the line structure reflects the apparent spontaneity of ordinary speech, where, unlike in ‘Little Gidding’, no concessions are made to a metrical undertow. Line divisions will often b e used as an imitation of the process through which we transform thoughts, impressions and experiences into language. Easthope (1983) calls this form ‘intonational metre’. A typical example of this is D. H. Lawrence’s ‘Snake’. A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. 3.Poems in which the unmetrical line variously obstructs, deviates from or interferes with the movement of syntax. In Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’ the two lines function as an alternative to the continuities of grammar. The apparition of those faces in the crowd Petals on a wet black bough. 22 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY The space between the lines could be filled by a variety of imagined connecting phrases: ‘are like’, ‘are unlike’, ‘remind me of’, ‘are as lonely as’. Individual lines offer specific images or impressions: the reader makes connections betw een them.In William Carlos Williams’s ‘Spring and All’ the line structure orchestrates the syntax and creates a complex network of hesitations and progressions, and for an example of this turn to pp. 154–7. The most extreme example of how the free verse line can appropriate and disrupt the structural functions of syntax will be found in the poems of e. e. cummings, where the linear movement of language is effectively broken down into visual units. The best, brief guide to the mechanics of prosody and metre is Hobsbaum’s Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form (1996).A more methodical survey of linguistics and poetic form is Bradford’s A Linguistic History of English Poetry (1993). T. V. F. Brogan’s English Versification 1570–1980 (1981) provides a comprehensive annotated bibliography of works on all types of metre and verse form. METAPHOR Metaphor is derived from the Greek verb that means ‘to carry over’. When words are used m etaphorically, one field of reference is carried over or transferred into another. Wordsworth (in ‘Resolution and Independence’) states that ‘The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth. ’ He carries over two ery human attributes to the non-human phenomena of the sky and the morning: the ability to rejoice and to give birth. I. A. Richards (1936) devised a formula that enables us to specify the process of carrying over. The ‘tenor’ of the metaphor is its principal subject, the topic addressed: in Wordsworth’s line the tenor is the speaker’s perception of the sky and the morning. The ‘vehicle’ is the analogue or the subject carried over from another field of reference to that of TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 23 the subject: in Wordsworth’s line the activities of rejoicing and giving birth.Metaphor is often referred to as a poetic device but it is not exclusive to poetry. Metaphors will be found in newspaper articles o n economics: ‘The war [vehicle] against inflation [tenor]’; in ordinary conversation: ‘At yesterdays meeting [tenor] I broke the ice [vehicle]’; in novels: ‘He cowered in the shadow [vehicle] of the thought [tenor]’ (James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man); and in advertisements: ‘This car is as good on paper [vehicle] as it is on the road [tenor]’. The principal difference between Wordsworth’s metaphor and its non-poetic counterparts is its integration with the iambic pentameter.We could retain the metaphor and lose the metre; turn it into the kind of unmetrical sentence that might open a short story or a novel: ‘I watched the sky rejoice in the birth of the morning. ’ One thing lost is the way in which the pentameter organizes and emphasizes the tenor and vehicle of the metaphor—sky r joic s and mor ing’s bi th. In order to properly consider differences between poetic and no n-poetic uses of metaphor we should add a third element to tenor and vehicle: the ground of the metaphor (see Leech, 1969:151).The ground is essentially the context and motivation of the metaphor. For the journalist the ground of the metaphor is the general topic of economics and inflation and the particular point that he/she is attempting to make about these issues. For the conversationalist the ground is the awareness, shared with the addressee, of yesterday’s meeting and his/her role in it. For the advertiser the ground involves the rest of the advertisement, giving details of the make, price and performance of the car, and the general context in which cars are discussed and sold.In non-poetic uses of metaphor the ground or context stabilizes the relation between tenor and vehicle. The metaphor will involve a self-conscious 24 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY departure from the routine and familiar relationship between language and reality. It would be regarded as bizarre and mildly d isturbing if the conversationalist were to allow the original metaphor to dominate the rest of his/her discourse: ‘I sank through the broken ice into the cold water of the boardroom. There we all were: fishes swimming through a dark hostile world†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢.In poems, however, this relation between ground, tenor and vehicle is often reversed. It is the language of the poem, as much as the reader’s a priori knowledge, which creates its perceived situation and context. It constructs its own ground, and metaphor becomes less a departure from contextual terms and conditions and more a device which appropriates and even establishes them. In John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ the tenor is the insect itself and the bite it has inflicted on the male speaker and the female listener.The speaker carries over this tenor into such an enormous diversity of vehicles that it becomes difficult to distinguish between the ground outside the words of the text and the ground whi ch the text appropriates and continually transforms. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed and marriage temple is. We know that ‘this flea is the tenor, but the relation between tenor and ground becomes less certain with ‘is you and I’. On the one hand it is literally part of them since it has sucked and mixed their blood.On the other the speaker has already incorporated this image of physical unity into a vehicle involving their emotional and sexual lives. He builds on this with the vehicle of the ‘marriage bed’ and extends it into an image of spiritual, external unity in the ‘marriage temple’. Throughout the poem the flea and the bite become gradually detached from their actual context and threaded into a chain of speculative and fantastic associations. In ordinary language metaphor usually stands out from the rest of the discursive or factual nature of the statement. In TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 25 oetry a particular use of meta phor will often underpin and influence the major themes of the entire text. Donne’s ‘The Ecstasy’ opens with a simile (the bank ‘is like’ a pillow, rather than ‘is’ a pillow) but thereafter maintains a close, metaphoric, relation between tenor and vehicle, Where, like a pillow on a bed, A pregnant bank swelled up to rest The violet’s reclining head Sat we two, one another’s best; The tenor is the garden in which ‘we two’ are situated; the vehicle is a combination of images denoting intimacy and sexuality: pillow, bed, pregnant, swelled up, the violets (flower, denoting female) reclining head.This opening instance of the carrying over of rural horticultural images into the sphere of human sexuality becomes the predominant theme of the entire poem, underpinning more adventurous speculations on the nature of the soul. Again the dynamics of contrasting and associating verbal images has unsettled the stabilizing fun ction of ground or context.Donne is one of the so-called metaphysical school of poetic writers whose taste for extended metaphor is a principal characteristic of their verse, but the practice of creating tensions and associations between the words and images of the poem at the expense of an external context transcends schools, fashions and historical groupings. In Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ the image of the real bird becomes a springboard for a complex sequence of associations and resonances: song, poetry, immortality, age, youth, death.The sense of there being a specific place and time in which Keats saw the bird and heard its song is gradually replaced by the dynamics of Keats’s associative faculties: the relation between the vehicles unsettles the relation between vehicle and tenor. The following is from the beginning of stanza 3: 26 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weari ness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; The principal vehicle is Keats’s transformation of the bird into an apparently ratiocinative, cognitive addressee, who understands his words.This at the same time is unsettled by his constant return to the commonsense tenor of a bird without human faculties. The dynamic tension here becomes evident in Keats’s contradictory request that the nightingale should ‘forget’ those human qualities or frailties which, as he concedes in the next line, it had never and could never have known. A classic case of vehicle undermining tenor occurs in T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (lines 15–22).This begins with the tenor (the city fog) being carried over into the vehicle of an unspecified animal which ‘rubs its back upon the window-panes’, ‘rubs its muzzle on the window-panes’, ‘Licked its tongue into the corners of the eveni ng’. By the end of the passage the actual vision of city streets which inspired the comparison has been overtaken by the physical presence of this strange beast, which ‘seeing that it was a soft October night,/Curled once about the house, and fell asleep’. Metaphor is the most economical, adventurous and concentrated example of the general principle of ‘carrying over’.Samuel Johnson defined metaphor in his Dictionary (1755) as ‘a simile compressed in a word’. Donne’s metaphor (from ‘The Relic’), ‘a bracelet of bright hair about the bone’, would, as a simile, be something like: ‘the brightness of the hair about the bone reminds me of the difference between life and death’. Simile postulates the comparison: X is like Y. Metaphor synthesizes the comparison: X is Y. Metonymy is logical metaphor, in which the comparison is founded upon an actual, verifiable relation between objects or impressions: ‘crown is used instead of TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 27 ‘king’, ‘queen’ or ‘royalty’.Allegory involves an extended parallel between a narrative and a subtext which mirrors the relation between the text and reality. Spenser’s The Faerie Queen (1590–6) is a medieval fantasy with allegorical parallels in the real world of the Elizabethan court. Simile, metonymy and allegory establish a balanced relationship between the use of language and conventional perceptions of reality, and occur as frequently in non-poetic discourse as in poetry. Metaphor involves language in an unbalancing of perceptions of reality and is more closely allied to the experimental character of poetry.SYNTAX, DICTION AND VOCABULARY The terms ‘poetic diction’ and ‘poetic syntax’ should be treated with caution. Any word, clause, phrase, grammatical habit or locution used in non-poetic language can be used in poetry. But their presence with in the poem will subtly alter their familiar non-poetic function. For example, in Donne’s ‘The Flea’ the speaker reflects upon the likely objections to his proposal to the woman: Though parents grudge, and you, we are met And cloistered in these living walls of jet. We might explain the use of the phrase ‘and you’ as a result of hurried and improvised speech. ‘Though you and your parents grudge’ would be a more correct form. ) But the fact that the placing of the phrase maintains the movement of the iambic metre and the symmetry of the two lines of the couplet shows us that the speech is anything but improvised. The metrical structure of a poem can accommodate the apparent hesitations and spontaneities of ordinary speech, but at the same time fix them as parts of a carefully structured artefact. Consider what happens when syntax crosses the space between two poetic lines, an effect known 28 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY s enjambment. A classic ex ample of this occurs in the opening lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste The implied pause at the line ending might suggest, on Milton’s part, a slight moment of indecision: is he thinking of the figurative ‘fruit’ (that is, the result and consequences) of man’s disobedience, or the literal fruit of the act of disobedience? He chooses the latter. The placing of the word might also be interpreted as the complete opposite of fleeting indecision.The tension between the actuality of the fruit and the uncertain consequences of eating it is a fundamental theme of the poem, and Milton encodes this tension within the form of the poem even before its narrative begins. In non-poetic language the progress of syntax can be influenced by a number of external factors: an act or verbal interruption by someone else, the uncertainty of the speaker or the fraught circumstances of the speech act: known in stylistics as the pragmatic or functional registers of language.For example, conversations often consist of broken, incomplete syntactic units because both speakers are contributing to the same discourse, which will also involve a shared non-verbal frame of reference: ‘Look at this, its†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ ‘Well, it’s big enough’, ‘Whoa, sorry. ’ ‘It’s OK, it’ll clean up. ’ In poetry apparent hesitations or disturbances of syntax are a function of the carefully planned, integrated structure of the text. The ability of poetry to absorb and recontextualize the devices and registers of non-poetic language is evident also in its use of diction, vocabulary, and phrasing.The social or local associations of particular words or locutionary habits TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 29 can be carried into a poem but their familiar context will be transformed by their new structural framework. In Tony Harrison’s V ( 1985) the poet converses in a Leeds cemetery with an imagined skinhead whose hobbies include the spraying of graffiti on to gravestones: ‘Listen cunt! ’ I said, ‘Before you start your jeering The reason why I want this in a book ’s to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing! ’ A book, yer stupid cunts not worth a fuck.The diction and idiom of both speakers is working class and Northern, but this specific, locative resonance is itself contained within a separate language, with its own conventions: each regional idiomatic flourish is confidently, almost elegantly, reconciled to the demands of the iambic pentameter and the quatrain. The realistic crudity of the language is juxtaposed with the controlled irony of Harrison’s formal design: the skinhead’s real presence is appropriated to the unreal structure of the poem, involving the internal and external rhymes, ‘book’ and ‘fuck’.In a broader context, the language of working-class Leeds is integrated with the same stanzaic structure used by Gray in his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, in which the poet similarly appropriates the voice of a ‘hoary-headed swain’. Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, ‘Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.Gray’s and Harrison’s language and experience are centuries and worlds apart—the diction of the hoary-headed individual is rather more delicate than that of his skinheaded counterpart—but their differences are counterpointed against their enclosure within the same ahistorical stanzaic framework. 30 TEXTUALISM I: POETRY This tendency for poetry to represent and at the same time colonize the habits of non-poetic discourse is a paradox that has taxed poets and critics—most famously in Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798).Wordsworth rails agai nst the stultifying poeticization of ordinary language, of how the conventions and style of eighteenth-century verse had dispossessed poetry of the ‘real language of men’. But while he advocates a new kind of poetic writing he concedes that poetry must announce its difference in a way that will ‘entirely separate the composition from the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life’. In short, although poetry should be about ‘ordinary life’ it must by its very nature be separate from it. D. H.Lawrence’s poems in the Nottinghamshire dialect, Robert Burns’s and Hugh MacDiarmid’s use of Scots idiom, grammar and diction emphasize region and very often class, but no matter where the words come from or what social or political affiliations they carry, they are always appropriated and acted upon by the internal structures of poetry. Wordsworth’s desire to separate poetry from the Vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life’ s ounds suspiciously elitist and exclusive, and there is evidence of this in the work of a number of our most celebrated poets.In Part II of The Waste Land (1922) Eliot represents the speech patterns and, so he assumes, the concerns of working-class women: Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. We will be expected to note the difference between this passage and the sophisticated command of metre and multicultural references of the poem’s principal male voice, Tiresias. With whom would we associate T. S. Eliot? Tiresias or the women?The sense of poetry as carrying social and political allegiances (principally male, white, English, middle class, TEXTUALISM I: POETRY 31 educated) has prompted acts of stylistic revolution. William Carlos Williams in the free verse of Spring and All and Paterson (1946–58) effectively discards those conventions of rhyme and metr e that restrict his use of ordinary American phrasing and vocabulary (see pp. 154–7 for examples). Linton Kwesi Johnson makes the structure of his poems respond to the character of his language. But love is just a word; give it MEAN IN thruHACKSHAN. ‘MEANIN’ and ‘HACKSHAN’ are words appropriated from ‘standard’ English by West Indians, and the fact that Johnson has used poetry to emphasize their ownership is significant. The unusual concentrations and foregroundings of poetry can unsettle just as much as they can underpin the allegiances and ideologies of diction and vocabulary. CRITICAL METHODS So far I have considered three principal characteristics of poetry and the