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Abstract
Urban space in Britain can be said to offer resistance to the motives and aims of immigrants, while at the same time immigrants develop strategies of resistance towards the spatial constraints the city imposes on them. Approaches to the meaning of space have offered concepts with which the tensions between material spaces on the one hand and the meanings attached to them on the other can be captured. They have also pointed to the importance of the practices of inhabiting these spaces. After a brief discussion of the ways in which migrants relate to urban spaces and a discussion of some theoretical concepts, this chapter will look at three British films that stage and negotiate this two-sided relationship of resistance. In a reading of Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things from 2002, Kenneth Glenaan’s 2004 film Yasmin, and Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering from 2006, I will explore the various strategies of spatial coping and the tendencies of resistance and appropriation developed by the migrant characters in the context of the overall spatial semantics established by the films.
Abstract
Urban space in Britain can be said to offer resistance to the motives and aims of immigrants, while at the same time immigrants develop strategies of resistance towards the spatial constraints the city imposes on them. Approaches to the meaning of space have offered concepts with which the tensions between material spaces on the one hand and the meanings attached to them on the other can be captured. They have also pointed to the importance of the practices of inhabiting these spaces. After a brief discussion of the ways in which migrants relate to urban spaces and a discussion of some theoretical concepts, this chapter will look at three British films that stage and negotiate this two-sided relationship of resistance. In a reading of Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things from 2002, Kenneth Glenaan’s 2004 film Yasmin, and Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering from 2006, I will explore the various strategies of spatial coping and the tendencies of resistance and appropriation developed by the migrant characters in the context of the overall spatial semantics established by the films.
Abstract
This article addresses the contributions by Michael Whitenton, and Bonnie Howe and Eve Sweetser, in the present volume. I endorse all three contributors’ use of cognitive-linguistic approaches, highlighting their helpfulness for the reconstruction of frames that shape the reading experience of audiences located in different historical and cultural contexts. The two chapters meticulously trace the complexity and dynamics of understanding exemplary biblical characters. I emphasise that the level of attention to linguistic detail displayed by cognitive stylistics is a desideratum for a reader-oriented analysis of a text’s potential reading effects. At the same time, I question some assumptions in cognitive linguistics concerning the cognitive-emotional processes real readers are actually likely to perform. The two chapters serve as a starting point for me to discuss general tendencies in recent cognitive and empirical literary studies, which have perhaps overstated the intensity and impact of some processes, while overlooking others that may be just as important.
This collection of articles brings together a wide variety of topics, such as the 2011 London riots, the London Olympics of 2012, royal festivities, the Tube anniversary, memorials, and London in recent novels and blockbuster films. The contributions look at the way in which cultural and literary texts articulate competing versions of the contemporary city, oscillating between either supporting or subverting the hegemonic narrative of London as a place of cosmopolitan harmony and inclusion.
This collection of articles brings together a wide variety of topics, such as the 2011 London riots, the London Olympics of 2012, royal festivities, the Tube anniversary, memorials, and London in recent novels and blockbuster films. The contributions look at the way in which cultural and literary texts articulate competing versions of the contemporary city, oscillating between either supporting or subverting the hegemonic narrative of London as a place of cosmopolitan harmony and inclusion.