Dr Andrea Macrae

This volume advances scholarly understanding of the ways in which discourse deixis underpins the workings of metafictional novels. Building on existing scholarship in the field, the book begins by mapping out key themes and techniques in metafiction and puts forward a focused and theoretically coherent account of discourse deixis—language which points to a section or aspect of the discourse context in which that language is used—in written literary discourse, highlighting its inherent significance in metafiction specifically. Macrae takes readers through an exploration of discourse deixis as used within the techniques of metanarration, metalepsis, and disnarration, drawing on a mix of both well-established and lesser-known metafictional novels from the late 1960s and early 1970s by such authors as John Barth, Brigid Brophy, Robert Coover, John Fowles, Steve Katz, and B.S. Johnson. This comprehensive account integrates and develops a new approach to understanding discourse deixis and innovative insights into metafictionality more broadly and will be of particular interest to scholars in literary studies, postmodern literature, narratology, and stylistics.

This edited collection brings together an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars who together offer cutting-edge insights into the complex roles, functions, and effects of pronouns in literary texts. The book engages with a range of text-types, including poetry, drama, and prose from different periods and regions, in English and in translation. Beginning with analyses of the first-person pronoun, it moves onto studies of the subject dynamics of first- and second-person, before considering plural modes of narration and how pronoun use can help to disperse narrative perspective. The volume then debates the functional constraints of pronouns in fictional contexts and finally reflects upon the theoretical advancements presented in the collection. This innovative volume will appeal to students and scholars of linguistics, stylistics and cognitive poetics, narratology, theoretical and applied linguistics, psychology and literary criticism.--Provided by publisher.

This chapter contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning in extracurricular enterprise and entrepreneurship education. It draws on research from two annual ‘Business Challenge Weeks’ (BCW) held at Oxford Brookes University in 2021 and 2022, in which teams of postgraduate students from three faculties worked on external client projects, supported by an academic mentor. It presents and discusses findings derived from a survey and interviews conducted after the second of these years. The chapter takes a transdisciplinary perspective, after Budwig and Alexander (2020), Piaget (1972) and Klein et al. (2001) and explores the relationship between this and the enterprise and entrepreneurship development pipeline set out by QAA (2018). It analyses the experiences of the three main participating groups engaged in the challenge weeks – students, external clients and academic mentors – and explores the organising challenges inherent in multiparty pedagogical initiatives. The chapter contributes to knowledge in this area by revealing and reflecting on the motivations and expectations of the three participant groups, the roles they played during the week and the outcomes they reported. It also expands understanding of transdisciplinary enterprise pedagogy.

Undergraduate research and inquiry-based learning in economics are on the rise. In this chapter we discuss the benefits and costs of undergraduate research and provide examples of good practice. Our analysis shows that economics students are actively engaged in the research process through various curriculum-based and extracurricular learning opportunities. We also observe that research content is more emphasized than research process in economics students' inquiry-based learning. Non-curricular research activities are best described by research-tutored activities according to the Healey model. Using the literature of distinguished economists and similar writing-based activities remains the most popular inquiry-based learning model in economics.

This chapter explores manipulation of the reader through deictic positioning. It focuses in particular on the functioning of what is sometimes called ‘empathetic’, ‘social’ or ‘relational’ deixis (Lyons 1977; Levinson 1983; Stockwell 2002) . Grishikova (2018: 201) notes that some deictic terms, such as ‘this’ and ‘that’, and ‘here’ and ‘there’, while often primarily having demonstrative or spatial meaning, may also signal ‘empathy or sympathy, intimacy, intensive sensation, joint attention, familiarity, routine’. As Grishikova’s list suggests, neither ‘empathetic’ nor ‘social’ really cover or clarify the range of meanings that words such as ‘this’ and ‘that’ can signal, and this is before we bring honorifics into the mix. ‘Relational’, on the other hand, is perhaps too encompassing: all deixis is relational in the sense of conveying a relationship. This chapter briefly explores some of the main theoretical issues within previous descriptions and discussions of social deixis.

This chapter discusses the origins, activities so far, and future plans of the Integrating English project (https://integratingenglish.org). This project has aims that are very much in line with those of the English: Shared Futures project, since it seeks to celebrate the diversity of the discipline while also seeing the diverse range of activities it encompasses as unified. They are unified by their focus on how texts are produced, understood, circulated and evaluated. In this essay, we present a brief account of the origins and development of Integrating English, explain the project's approach to the nature of English as a diverse academic discipline and describe some of the activities we have carried out so far. We also highlight connections with English: Shared Futures, including some reflection on activities at the conference in Newcastle in 2017, and conclude with thoughts about how we see the future direction of the project. The main conclusions are that the view of English advocated by our project is timely, beneficial and suggests reasons for optimism about the futures of English.

Origins and Development. 

The project began in response to informal discussions with undergraduate students and university staff. Students approached more than one member of the project team asking about ‘lang-lit’ work. Some of these students had taken A-Level Language and Literature and moved on to BA programmes with titles such as ‘English’ or ‘English Language and Literature’. They had noticed that the modules they were now taking each focused either on aspects of language or on aspects of literature. Very few, if any, genuinely involved ‘lang-lit’ work understood as work that included integrated linguistic and literary study. These conversations suggested that students were used to doing integrated linguistic and literary work at AS and A-Level. We later discovered that this was not an accurate impression. At this stage, we discussed these comments with colleagues in other HE institutions who pointed out that many of their programmes were combinations or had ‘joint honours’ structures. Here too, there appeared to be no more connection between work on language and on literature than there would have been if they had combined one of these with any other subject.

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is an approach to language study developed by Michael Halliday, who from the early days had language education centrally in mind, and who still regards language education as one of most important applications of his work. SFL discusses a very large number of linguistic choices. The most recent account of SFL, Halliday and Matthiessen, runs to 786 pages. SFL recognises three main aspects of context of situation: field, tenor and mode. Field has to do with what the language is about and what kind of social activity is being enacted in the language. Tenor has to do with the participants in the language event, the speakers, writers, hearers, readers, the roles they are adopting and the relations between them. Mode has to do with the channel of communication, for example, whether the language is spoken or written. Mode has to do with channel of communication, the most obvious distinction here being between speech and writing.

This chapter provides an overview of stylistic approaches to drama and performance, surveying methods of analysis of texts on the page and on the stage. The chapter begins by introducing past approaches taken to drama, particularly structuralist approaches to character and plot. The next section discusses two key critical issues in dramatic stylistics: the nature of communication and interpretation of dramatic discourse, and whether or not the performance of drama can and should be critically discussed beyond the (more stable) play text. This discussion is followed by an outline of current stylistic approaches to drama and performance, including socio-pragmatics, schema theory, deictic shift theory, historical and corpus stylistics, and research on multimodality. Socio-pragmatic and multimodal approaches are then employed in an illustrative analysis of an extract from Noel Coward’s (1930) Private Lives. Though the focus is predominantly upon drama and dramatic performance, the chapter indicates the value and possibilities of stylistic analyses of other kinds of literary performance.

This literature review is part of a six-month longitudinal project for the Connect Benefit Series 2021-22 on Student Success, which focuses on embedding employability in higher education as well as a second theme of access, retention, attainment and progression.

This literature review aims to identify specific impact and evidence in relation to embedding employability within higher education since the most recent Advance HE literature review from 2016. Conducted by a research team from Oxford Brookes University consisting of Dr Roger Dalrymple, Associate Dean: Student Outcomes; Dr Andrea Macrae, Principal Lecturer, Stylistics and Student Experience;  Dr Maia Pal, Senior Lecturer in International Relations; and Dr Shirley Shipman, Principal Lecturer (Student Experience) and Programme Lead (Law), the review focuses on peer-reviewed journal articles on employability within higher education which present and/or discuss evidence of 'what works'.

The review illustrates the dominant themes in the literature since 2016, with discussion of how employability has been theorised, critiqued and challenged in this time, featuring examples of long-term cohort studies, case studies, international comparative studies, and analysis of employability outcomes in relation to large-scale data sets. 

This is one of over twenty-five projects which was invited by and created as part of the Commission on the Donor Experience. It is a 12,000 word report summarising research and presenting recommendations on use of language to enhance the experiences of charity supporters. Leading Charity Consultant Chris Washington-Sare served as the project adviser. This a digital resource, available at the SOFII website (Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration) at https://sofii.org/article/cde-project-1-the-use-and-misuse-of-language

This report is based on a workshop held at Middlesex University on 7 July 2012, which focused on
Lang/Lit provision at school in English, Wales and Northern Ireland, and at university across the UK. It presents anecdotal and more formal data which we gathered in preparing for the event, and some aspects of discussions that arose following the workshop. We hope that this report will be the beginning of a fuller investigation of issues about Lang/Lit provision. We plan to explore these further ourselves and hope that they will also be explored by other people and institutions involved in the provision of Lang/Lit work. Section 2 explains some of the informal background and motivation for this work. Section 3 considers integrated Lang/Lit provision at A-level (referring collectively to AS and A2 except where the distinction between the two is relevant), the views of students, teachers/lecturers and examiners, and problems and possibilities around this provision. Section 4 addresses the same for BA-level. Section 5 draws these aspects together and reviews transition between the two levels, investigating content, student and provider experience, and obstacles and opportunities for improving the relationships between A-level and BA-level study. Section 6 concludes the report with a summary and suggested avenues for progress.