اللغة الإنجليزية

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Teaching Grammar Through Discourse
(University of Algiers. Faculty of Letters and Languages, 2007) Chaouki, Noureddine; Khaldi, Kamel (Directeur de thèse)
The present work sets as its main purpose to bring some insights from the two areas of discourse analysis and pragmatics into the teaching of English grammar at the university, in an attempt to help learners to become conscious of the processes that operate when they use language. It addresses the issue of developing students' grammatical competence in parallel with a discourse and pragmatic consciousnessraising. A framework for teaching the three English clauses, declarative, interrogative and imperative is proposed. It consists in describing the three clauses within a model whereby discourse analysis and pragmatics interact to provide a new perspective for the elaboration of students’ communicatively-sensitive grammar. The study attends to such areas as cohesion, coherence and pragmatic acceptability in relation to grammar teaching. The assumption underlying the current enquiry is that much can be gained from the proposed framework in raising students' awareness to understand and produce the English clause formally and contextually. The trend is that teachers of grammar at the university have been preoccupied more with the sentence and its components i.e. effectively operating at or below the level of the sentence. Now, it is time we took a turn in a more discourse and pragmatic oriented direction. The suggested methodology does not dismiss students’ previous grammatical competence nor does it have them treat language as an assemblage of isolated units. It urges them to use such a competence creatively so long as it contributes to the whole area of communicative competence. So, in order to investigate the English clauses, the two areas mentioned above are brought into a symbiotic relationship. The main leading principle is that when the grammar of language is taught for communication, clauses are held as resources for the creation and interpretation of discourse in context. A characterization of clauses and sequences of clauses in combination is presented, putting much more emphasis on the functions and acts they are set to serve. Also, the present enquiry aims at helping language teachers interested in incorporating insights from the two areas of discourse analysis and pragmatics into their teaching, by suggesting some classroom tasks and activities where learners use such strategies as inferring, interpreting and predicting discourse evolving by drawing upon their grammatical potential. To meet the demands of the current methodological orientation and for the sake of validity, students are assessed, following the suggested methodology to determine how far what is learnt along the applied methodology can be deployed. A pre-test was administered before training took place. Its main aim was to have the maximum instructional data background, to diagnose students’ ability to cope with the suggested methodological model and to compare their performance before and after being trained. After a one-term formal training, a post-test was administered where students were assessed on the amount of the discourse and pragmatic awareness they have acquired along the training period. The assessment component made it clear that by incorporating discourse and pragmatic data into the teaching of grammar, students will see their awareness being raised in making appropriate choices from their formal stock of knowledge.
CROSS-CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL PERCEPTIONS OF THE OTHER IN W.B. YEATS, JAMES JOYCE, JOSEPH CONRAD, CHINUA ACHEBE AND ASSIA DJEBAR
(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2009) Rebai Maamri, Malika
This doctoral thesis investigates ‘Otherness’ through works which have thoroughly examined and questioned the creation of a “stable self” by putting it in dialogue with its others and to society as a whole, namely William Butler Yeats’s selected poems, James Joyce’s Dubliners, (1914) Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, (1899) Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), and Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, La Fantasia (1985). By representing the results of English, Belgian and French oppression in tangible material terms as well as its spiritual bankrupcies, these writers mark their works as clearly critical of the colonial regime and opposed to colonial exploitation, positioning themselves as postcolonial through their representations. In this sense, their texts raise issues debated in current postcolonial discussions. Speaking in the voice of the oppressed, in the language of the oppressor as a weapon to make cultural difference visible, these writers indeed analyse the problem of identity crisis, displacement, disintegration and the effects of colonialism on the culture and psyche of the colonised subject. These authors moreover offer possibilities of dismantling polarized constructions of alterity in a way similar to postcolonial critics such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, among others, whose theories are central to the analysis of the above-cited narratives. This study also draws on Bakhtin’s theory on the dialogues of voices in texts, heteroglossia and polyphony among others and theories of intertextuality such as Julia Kristeva’s and Roland Barthes’s, who by using metaphors of “mosaic” and “social text,” encourage us to view a text as part of, and being overrun by a larger “social context,” hence the importance of a socio-critical reading of these writers’ texts to show that their artistic creations are social practices and ideological productions. Each theoretical approach mentioned above will be used where appropriate to bear on some aspects of our analysis in the various chapters of this thesis, which has been organised into two parts respectvely comprising four chapters and seven chapters. One important way to understand the effects of colonisation and decolonisation on Ireland, Nigeria, the Congo and Algeria is to gauge the institutional legacies of history. Part one therefore addresses the colonial legacy in Ireland, Nigeria, the Congo and Algeria. The examination of the British, Belgian and French models of colonisation will reveal common features. Our concern however lies elsewhere, with those forms of domination that revolve around the construction of the Other. It is particularly important to see to what extent the otherness of the Nigerians, Congolese, Algerians and Irish, their supposed ‘inferiority’ and ‘savagery’ justified the colonisers’ intrusion on their respective territories. In Part two, we have therefore first examined the role played by ethnocentric prejudices in shaping the relations of England, Belgium and France towards their respective colonies. We have also focused on the repercussions this thinking had on the minds of the British, Belgian and French colonisers. Working against the background of the West’s history of the colonial enterprise and its exploitation of other societies and cultures, postcolonial theory has thus been used as a vital tool to re-read the texts of Western imperialism and offers a powerful framework for analysing identity formation. We have then analysed Yeats’s,Joyce’s, Conrad’s, Achebe’s and Djebar’s aforementioned texts in the light of postcolonial theory such as Edward Said’s, Frantz Fanon’s, Homi K. Bhabha’s and Gayatri Spivak’s among others. The gist of our argument in the various chapters of this doctoral thesis is therefore twofold: colonialism and postcolonialism as essentially a critique of colonialism in Ireland, Nigeria, the Congo and Algeria.
Identity Quest in Ayi Kwei Armah's Novels
(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2009) Mami, Fouad; Bensemmane, M'hamed (Directeur de thèse)
The Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah (b.1939) has developed his prose fiction into a quest for ways to postulate a satisfying concept of identity. In The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments and Why Are We So Blest? he uncovers the tenets of the present dysfunctional identity which Africa has adopted. Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers seem to attribute the present dysfunctionality to the African past. The same undertaking is repeated in the last two novels: Osiris Rising (1995) and KMT in the House of Life (2002). In both, this writer offers a similar approach to the cultural, social and political impasse in the continent. What is new in these last two works, however, is that Armah excavates historical evidence that attaches West Africa to the land of Kemet, or ancient Egypt. For him, the revival of present day African culture cannot be achieved until African communities connect and identify with the tradition of Ma'at back in Kemetic times. The present malaise and passivity on the part of the African communities, in Armah’s opinion, have been attributed to a long epistemic conditioning rooted in cultural imperialism via the western educational system. Persistent misinformation about African culture and a crude falsification of Africa’s millennial history have paved the way to the slave trade and colonial occupation. Meanwhile, archaic forms of thinking and the institutionalization of legitimacy in tradition have caused a deep-seated self-hatred and inferiority complex on the part of the African before the non-African. In other words, the post independence period is characterized by a lack of any constructive postulation of identity; a fact that has been detrimental to, and perhaps, the principal reason for, the burgeoning of political corruption, military coups, civil wars and illegal immigration. Still, in Armah's opinion, the sorry state of affairs in Africa can be reversed via serious considerations of the millennial past of the continent reaching to the times of ancient Egypt. According to Armah, one should reach a point where ancient Egyptian mythology, philosophy, architecture, egalitarian ethics and other civilizational additions start to be celebrated as African achievements, and thus form the basis for a true cultural renaissance in present day Africa. The deployment of the myth of Isis and Osiris in Armah’s last two novelistic experiments falls in the direction of placing Africa at the heart of ancient Egyptian cosmology and worldview. The authorial intention in iv Fragments, Armah’s second novel, reflects a bleak worldview; a defiled set of values epistemologically rooted in ancient Greece. The switch, in his last two novels, idealising Egyptian worldview, suggests that Armah blames the Greek matrix for generating the present cultural malaise in Africa. A close reading of Armah’s novels suggests that what can be called the ‘Egyptian paradigm’ is favoured over the Greek one, simply because this latter has spelled only patriarchy, hunger for profit and power, plus unjustifiable violence. Additionally, Armah finds the Egyptian paradigm, with its constellative trends of identity, more egalitarian, peaceful, self-enhancing and empowering. This thesis tries to advance the argument that Armah's placement of two mutually contradicting paradigms (Greek versus Kemetic) can be an oversimplification of the problems facing Africa. While some elements in the Greek paradigm, like patriarchy, characterised by the hunt for profit via slavery and violence, is indeed harmful, history proves that patriarchy has not been limited only to ancient Greece. The myth of Isis and Osiris, Armah's principal myth of liberation, itself exudes patriarchal overtones. Besides, Armah's drama is more in favour of polemics where instead it should opt for analysis. Armah neither appreciates African lore as it has always been, nor does he show how western educational schooling is inhibitive when it come to Africa's cultural regeneration. Armah's identity quest is part of that school of thinking whose main problem is its inability to process and evaluate larger quantities of updates than it feels it can handle. As the novels considered in this thesis clearly illustrate, Armah can be qualified as a self-styled realist who often equates imagination with wishful thinking and sees imagination as a way to address the realities of present-day Africa.
AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF KNOWLEDGE AND ACHIEVEMENT IN THE ENGLISH DEGREE STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALGIERS WITH FOCUS ON LITERACY SKILLS
(University of Algiers. Faculty of Letters and Languages, 2009) Gacimi- Boukhedimi, Yasmine; Bensemmane, Faiza (Directeur de thèse)
This thesis attempts to explore the two notions of knowledge and achievement/success in the English Degree Course. It sets out a double aim; one is to explore the nature of knowledge behind degree readers’ successful completion of the course;the second is to examine the extent to which these students’previously acquired literacy in other languages has a qualitative effect on their achievement in a language degree. The research centers on good achievers’ study experience. What they do to complete their studies within the prescribed period, what contribution they make to their English language ability development, how they face study work across subjects are questions addressed in this thesis. Informed by scholarly work on the following themes: academic achievement (Entwistle and Wilson,1977, Norman,1982, Covington, 1922, McMillan, 2000, Curzon, 2001), language ability development/proficiency (Bachman, 1990, Canale & Swain, 1980, Bley-Vroman, 1988, 1989) literacy in both L1 and in an additional language (Reed et al,1985, Winograd, 1977, Eysenck & Keane,1990, McKay, 1992) multilingualism (Ringbom, 1987, Gass & Selinker, 1994, Sanz, 2000, Cenoz, 2001 & 2003), the research seeks firstly to reach a working definition of what FL proficiency stands for. Secondly, it attempts to arrive at a greater understanding of the type of knowledge that is relevant to academic achievement. It also examines the nature of L1 and L+ literacy. Given a consensus on the distinction between declarative knowledge, procedural and strategic knowledge and on their respective but complementary role in language skill and knowledge development, this study highlights the role that both cognition and metacognition play in literacy development and their combined contribution to academic achievement. It analyzes a group of good achievers’ “story” of their study experience. Selected according to a purposive/non-random sampling procedure, the participants were former students in previous tuitions year. Data which were collected by means of a questionnaire, a semi-structured interview and written documents submitted by students for the research purpose, are mostly verbal in nature. They were analyzed and interpreted by means of a step-by-step procedure of meaning v finding, coding and grouping (Strauss and Corbin, 1990, Tesch,1990, Patton, 2002). The themes that this procedure generated were further processed via inductive and deductive processes that led to conceptualization. Data interpretation suggests that early literacy in L1 and or both L1and L2, a sense of achievement at the start of tuition in an additional language, high interest in the language, acceptance of study content, a will to work hard and at a fairly frequent rate lead to course completion by degree readers. The results obtained consistently inform the research questions about participants’ attitude to work, thoughts , study behaviours and work methods. Though limited to be generalizable, the categories that were arrived at mirror academic fitness and schema knowledge (Covington 1992, Marshall 1992) as two prerequisites to academic achievement. Furthermore, when language ability is only developing, participants perceive it as one among other challenges which they face with positive attitude, consistent study action and personal work methods. While these results partly match Entwistle and Wilson’s conclusion on success-predicting factors, other inferred data about literacy use by these students suggest these students’ ease with these two components of their English proficiency. Two participants who, throughout the interview reiterate their interest in English written skills, also mention a link between early literacy in a second language and a fondness for English written skills. This, as well as these participants’ observed study behaviours in the classroom, do not sound in contradiction with multilingualists’ assumption about a favourable role played by previously acquired literacy in the attainment of an additional language literacy. Though in embryo, a link seems to exist between ease with L1/L2 reading and writing and control of the same skills in an additional language. However, the nature of knowledge that leads to a successful completion of studies for the degree course by these students may or may not be due to attainment of high overall language ability in the additional language even if use of declarative, procedural and strategic knowledge can be traced in the participants’ story.
THE AFRICAN JEREMIAD AND THE PROPHETIC ARCHITECTURING OF THE FUTURE IN THE WORKS OF NGUGI AND ARMAH
(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2010) Haddouche, Fethi; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)
This dissertation is about the jeremiadic discourse that underlies the works of Ngugi Wa Thiong’ O and Ayi Kwei Armah. The recurrent African predicaments, from slave-trade and colonialism to neo-colonialism, have made an urgent appeal to the public role of these African intellectuals. Their manifest awareness of the destructive consequences of the scriptural narratives brought by Muslims and Christians to Africa led them to attempt a spiritual decolonization through a typological reproduction of biblical narratives in their works; these narrative reproductions are part of a deconstructive reading of the scriptures, a reading that can be termed “hermeneutics of revolt”. Narrative adaptations and subversions of biblical accounts are performed through typology, parody, irony and satire. While Armah’s fictions tend towards the typological, those of Ngugi are more ironic and satiric. Due to the crisis of leadership in Africa, Ngugi and Armah have endowed their protagonists with prophetic characteristic features. In The Beautyful Ones, Armah expressed his disillusionment about the possibility of the emergence of a committed leadership in Africa. However, in his later novels, he opts for the figure of the prophet as a suitable form of leadership in a community in crisis. While Armah supports this idea through his retelling of the biblical story of the Exodus in Two Thousand Seasons, he warns against the false prophets and charlatans who intend to lead Africa and its people astray. Ngugi offers a powerful representation of leaders who become prophetic saviours as a result of the popular imagination. He points to the importance of hearsay in the construction of the authoritarian personae. The Ruler, in Wizard of the Crow, is a dramatization of the process of deification of leaders by the community. Likewise, in A Grain of Wheat, Mugo, in spite of his act of betrayal, becomes a prophetic saviour in the eyes of people. Prophecy constitutes the central part of the religious discourse that informs the works of both novelists. Being a persuasive rhetorical device, the prophetic language informs the narratives of Ngugi and Armah with authority mainly because of its power to endow their protagonists with authenticity. Knowledge of the future makes the prophet the transcendental person that he might become. In Two Thousand Seasons, Anoa becomes a prophetess only after the fulfilment of the first part of her prophecy, namely the one thousand season of slavery. To fulfil the second part of this prophecy, Armah makes use of what Thomas Merton has termed the “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy”. Although this kind of prophecy is mainly rhetorical, it can be fulfilled without divine intervention. This prophecy is hypothetical in the sense of convincing people to work for a possible future utopia. Ngugi also opens his novels with prophecies that are to be realized in the course of the events of their stories. The plots of The River Between and A Grain of Wheat are part of this proleptic narrative scheme. The prophecies that shape Armah’s and Ngugi’s plots define African history as a necessary apocalypse for a coming Afrotopia. The latter can never take place before a redemptive chaos that redeems the evil committed by blacks against themselves. This redemptive interpretation of African history shows Armah’s and Ngugi’s conviction about a metaphysical form of social justice, a justice that makes blacks worthy of the future one thousand years. This millennialist thinking is also part of Ngugi’s worldview. Ngugi considers popular revolts as the necessary Armageddon for a classless socialist heaven.
INFLUENCE AND THE SEARCH FOR CREATIVITY IN NGUGI’S FICTION
(University of Algiers 2. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2011) Kaci-Mohamed, Salah; Bensemmane, M’hamed Directeur de thèse
This is a study of Ngugi wa Thiong‟o‟s creative undertaking in view of the influences that he has undergone hitherto. We enquire how, on the one hand, Ngugi‟s fiction interacts with the works of Anglo-Saxon, African and Marxist authors – mainly D. H. Lawrence, Chinua Achebe and Frantz Fanon. These writers are identified here as Ngugi‟s main “literary fathers,” but they are also treated as mediators of his relationships with the traditions to which they belong. On the other hand, we explore the major creative processes which underlie his fiction as it develops through time. Put otherwise, we attempt a reading of Ngugi‟s fiction based on the contemporary theory of influence. In the first chapter, we try to set the theoretical and contextual frameworks by investigating the ways in which Ngugi‟s writings can reasonably be said to relate to the notions of influence and creativity theoretically. First of all, we briefly set forth our approach to literature, criticism, influence and creativity as a necessary first step. Next, we attempt to explain why we have chosen to tackle the topic through an “eclectic” concept of influence rather than relying on any of the theories of influence and intertextuality in their radical forms. We then argue that a more rewarding approach to Ngugi‟s fiction requires departure from the polemical creed and the “ideological perspective” by which he is traditionally read, and an examination of his “intertexts” with an eye to disclosing the creative processes by which his fiction is composed. Finally, we try to provide an overview of the works, writers and traditions that have mattered for Ngugi, with preliminary inferences – or a hypothesis – on how the concepts of influence and creativity pertain to his example notionally. This hypothesis is the following: on the one hand, Ngugi has three sets of influences: the Anglo-Saxon, the African and the Marxist ones, each of which can be best exemplified through studies of his affiliations with D. H. Lawrence, Chinua Achebe and Frantz Fanon. On the other hand, Ngugi‟s is a story of a synchronic and diachronic search for creativity both by struggle with the influence of those writers and traditions and by „extra-textual‟ processes of literary creation. In Chapter Two, we introduce a first case-study of the concept of influence in Ngugi‟s fiction, namely the impact of D. H. Lawrence, identified as his foremost Anglo-Saxon precursor. We first attempt to draw attention to the crucial character of Ngugi‟s relationship with Lawrence, whose impact on him seems even more powerful than that of Conrad. We then attempt to explore the origin and nature of this relationship. It follows from our analysis of this affiliation that Ngugi is mainly indebted to Lawrence‟s “neo-romanticism,” i.e. to his half-mystic-half-naturalistic imagination, his view of the world through nature, his writing by symbol and myth and to many of the techniques which he typically uses in that pursuit. We also have observed that though Lawrence‟s influence on Ngugi is less substantial, less manifest and more troubled in some of his narratives than in others, Lawrence is omnipresent in all Ngugi‟s fiction. In the third Chapter, we introduce a second case-study of influence in Ngugi‟s fiction, that of his indebtedness to Chinua Achebe – his major African literary father. We argue that Ngugi‟s relationship with Achebe is complex, and sometimes troubled, that it touches on various and changing types of influence, ranging from inspiration of a very deep kind, to different types of borrowing, rewriting, allusion, and – from Petals of Blood onwards – even subversion. We also note that these types of influence affect, to different extents, each of Ngugi‟s narratives and every aspect of them. On the whole, we submit that Ngugi owes Achebe his vision of fiction as art, but with a pointed functional dimension. Among the many more specific ways in which Ngugi dialogises with Achebe discussed in this chapter, we attempt to highlight his treatment of Africa‟s history with realism. We argue that Ngugi has learnt from Achebe how to play the role of the “novelist as historian” with efficiency. Another seminal aspect of Achebe‟s impact on Ngugi that we try to illumine is concern with colonialism. We attempt to point up Ngugi‟s Achebean “anxiety of colonialism;” that is to say, the Achebean subtlety with which the question of colonialism is “problematised” in his fiction. Ngugi, we finally argue, is heavily indebted to Achebe in terms of characterisation. We try to demonstrate that his typical character schemata are nearly identical to those of Achebe. We also attempt to show how he “transplants the minds” of Achebe‟s characters into his own characters by applying to them the fundamental psychosexual postulates, and by following Achebe‟s method of doing it with considerable faithfulness. We infer that if Ngugi owes Lawrence his striving to endow his characters with souls so that they can look alive, he owes Achebe his endeavour to endow them with proper (general) psychological profiles so that they can appear „real’. In Chapter Four, we introduce the third and last case-study of influence in Ngugi‟s fiction, that of his relationship with Frantz Fanon. We pinpoint Fanon as the most shaping source of inspiration and influence of Ngugi‟s since he discovered him. We argue that Ngugi owes Fanon the lyrical, prophetic and pamphleteering qualities which characterize his style in parts of A Grain of Wheat and the later novels, as well as much of the content of his theory developed in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. After a brief foreword about Ngugi‟s relationship with discursive literature, we first recall that Fanon‟s theory has three sides, namely the psychoanalytic, the psychiatric and the socio-political ones, and argue that they are interlocking and inseparable. All three aspects of Fanon‟s theory, we submit, have had a powerful impact on Ngugi‟s fiction from A Grain of Wheat onwards. Ngugi‟s indebtedness to the socio-political side of Fanon‟s theory is significant but is already documented, as we specify. Thus, it has been treated as matter of fact here. Concerning the impact of the psychoanalytic aspect of Fanon‟s theory on Ngugi, we argue that Ngugi applies Fanon‟s postulates about “Negro-psychopathology,” “Negrophobia,” and “Negrophobiogenesis” to make up aspects of his characters in A Grain of Wheat and, in a more concise way, in the later novels. We also submit that Ngugi applies two other Fanonian psychoanalytic postulates, namely his descriptions of the psychologies of the “native bourgeoisie” and the “native intellectual,” to his characters in Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross and, more concisely, in the later two novels. As to the impact of the psychiatric side of Fanon‟s theory on Ngugi, we attempt to shed light on how mainly two of them – the “pathology of atmosphere” and the “pathology of the tortured” – are adapted to his characters from A Grain of Wheat on. In brief, we argue that in the same way that Ngugi uses Lawrence‟s method to endow his characters with souls, and Achebe‟s method to endow them with general psychological profiles, he draws on Fanon to endow them with mental profiles that pertain to the colonial and “neo-colonial” situations of the novels which he has written after he is said to have read Fanon. The fifth and last chapter is devoted to the concept of creativity in Ngugi‟s fiction. Here, we submit that Ngugi‟s fiction is creative in several ways and to different extents, and that it is so both thanks to influence and in spite of it. We argue that Ngugi‟s experience as a creative writer reveals his search for creativity synchronically (in each of his individual works) as well as diachronically (as we progress from one of his narratives to the next one). We first attempt an analysis of the typical creative dynamics and processes by which Ngugi‟s narratives are written, stressing the changes and continuities in those processes as the novelist „matures‟. Then we specify that Ngugi seems to write by reference to two major types of creative dynamics: an “Oedipal,” or “psychogenetic” dynamic, reflecting his search for creativity through struggle with his influences, and a „non-Oedipal‟ creative dynamic standing for his search for creativity in extra-textual inspirations. In brief, our investigation would allow submitting the following: “anxious” about influence, Ngugi, like all other serious novelists, “clears imaginative space for himself” through “struggle” with the influence of his precursors. Although he has sometimes borrowed elements from previous works, the reality of his dialogical and intertextual affiliations makes them emerge, on the whole, as cases of “transmutation of historically given material” and “deserved self-appropriation,” rather than ones of mere “transmission of motifs between authors.” Furthermore, being one of those writers who “respond to a world outside of textuality” and who “draw elements of their fiction from their own lives and family backgrounds,” Ngugi also often creates fiction outside of the processes of intertextuality and influence in their strictly intra-poetic senses.
Strategies of Subversion and Transgression in the Novels of Assia Djebar and Gloria Naylor
(University of Algiers 2 Abou El Kacem Saadallah, 2014) HAMDI, Houda; DERAMCHIA, Yamina
Through a comparative perspective, and within the theoretical framework of post-colonial feminism, the present thesis aims at analysing the strategies of subversion and transgression in selected novels by contemporary Algerian francophone female novelist Assia Djebar and African American woman writer Gloria Naylor. The research aims primarily at demonstrating that despite the distinct and distanced contexts of the two writers, the double marginality of their female group communities -a marginalization based simultaneously on race and gender- urges the two authors to use similar strategies to voice the concerns of long silenced and excluded minorities. The examination of novels such as Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (1980), L’Amour la fantasia (1985), Ombre sultane (1987), Vaste est la prison (1995), and La Femme sans sépulture (2002) by Djebar, and The Women of Brewster Place (1983), Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988), and Bailey’s Cafe (1992) by Naylor, shows that the subversive and transgressive strategies employed by both Djebar and Naylor operate at the levels of both form and content. This reflects already in the linguistic dimension where Djebar and Naylor challenge the dominance of the major languages they are employing, i.e. respectively French and English
The intellectuel, history and society in the novels of John Don Passos, sembene Ousmane and Ngufgi Wa Thiong's
(university Abou el Kacem SaadAllah جامعة الجزائر2, 2014) Ait Ammou, Houria; Amrane, Nadjia
In this doctoral thesis entitled ''The Intellectual, History and Society in the Novels of John Dos Passos, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and Sembene Ousmane: A Comparative Study", we look at the way the American and African intellectuals respond to the historical and social events of their societies, namely to war, capitalism and consumerism. The first axis concerns the attitude of American and African intellectuals towards war ,as represented in J. Dos Passos's Three Soldiers, W.Ngugi's Weep not, Child and The River Between and O. Sembene's Opays, mon beau peuple.The second axis centers on the intellectuals' denunciation of capitalist exploitation and corruption in J. Dos Passos's the 42 Parallel, Ngugi's Petals of Blood and Sembene's Les bouts de bois de Dieu . As to the third axis, it deals mainly with that violent attack against the post-war American leisure class in Dos Passos's the Big Money and the masterful post-independence African national bourgeoisie in Ngugi's Devil on the Cross and Sembene's Xala .
THE REPRESENTATION OF THE WEST AND THE QUEST FOR ‘A NEW AFRICA’ IN THE NOVELS OF AYI KWEI ARMAH, NGUGI WA THIONG’O AND AMA ATA AIDOO
((University of Algiers2 Abu El Kacem Saad Allah جامعة الجزائر2 أبو القاسم سعد الله, 2015) Chaabane Ali, Mohamed; Bensemmane, M'hamed
Cette thèse étude la relation entre la représentation de l'Occident dans les romans d'Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngugi wa Thiong'o et Ama Ata Aidoo et leur vision d'une nouvelle Afrique caractérisée par une existence utopienne. En utilisant la forme du grotesque, le (néo-) colonialiste est présenté comme une incarnation de décadence et d'exploitation et par conséquent un agent de destruction pour leur continent. En revanche, le processus de régénération nationale est évoqué par le discours essentialiste d'Armah qui fait recours aux mythes, y compris les paradigmes de l'ancienne civilisation d'Egypte (ou Kemt). Par contre, les ouvres de Ngugi appartiennent au mode de réalisme sociale, et plus précisément insistent sur le concept Fanonien-Marxiste- de la violence pour établir une société postcoloniale égalitarienne. Cependant, Aidoo prend une position féministe concernant la militance de la femme africaine, mais pas au détriment des valeurs de la communauté noire. Autrement dit, cette recherche encourage une lecture postcoloniale des romans d'engagement sociale au-delà de Manichéisme car la pensée occidentale, comme argumenté par Edward Said, peut être appropriée à l'objective de développement.
The Concept of Nation-State in the African Novel
(University of algiers2 Abu El Kacem Saad Allah جامعة الجزائر 2 أبو القاسم سعد الله, 2015) Babkar, Abdelkader; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)
The idea of the nation in Africa has been widely dealt with in modern African literature, arising from the fact that writers are bent on expressing their concern about the future of their countries. Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Kofi Awoonor are some such writers, as witness their efforts at conceiving of Afrotopia, or at best viable socio-political systems in the wake of colonial situation. The present research work aims to examine closely these novelists’ ideological convictions as they are expressed in their fictions and often shown to be in opposition to the practices established by the state apparatuses in place. My study shows how the African situation has been characterised in African novels by both a common continental experience and a number of facts that dramatise the historical predicament of slavery, colonialism and a problematic independence. These representations carry dialogical voices which underpin the authoritative voice of the authors. The narratives of the nation are shown to be ambivalent, for they seem to act in defence of the novelists’ culture, yet they jettison its very quintessence in the sceptical view they reflect about its significance in modern times.
Self and Other in the Works of African American Novelists during the Black Renaissance and Algerian Novelists during the Algerian War of Independence
(University of algiers2 Abu El Kacem Saad Allah جامعة الجزائر 2 أبو القاسم سعد الله, 2015) KACED, ASSIA; Deramchia, Yamina (Directeur de thèse)
Through the present research work, we aim at confronting four contemporary post-colonial writers, who are, Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston from the United States of America, and Kateb Yacine and Assia Djebar from Algeria with notions of representation, identity, and culture. While Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston wrote their novels at the time when the African American people suffered from political, economic and cultural inequities between the white and the black people in America, Toomer’s Cane in 1922 and Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937 ; both Kateb Yacine and Assia Djebar wrote their novels during the period of Algerian colonization, Nedjma in 1955, and Les enfants du nouveau monde In fact, this thesis operates on the principle that there are recurrent, common parameters existing within the two peoples, Africa American and Algerian, and which stem from shared historical, political and cultural referents, those of peoples deprived of their identities and self-esteem by colonizing and oppressing powers. The writers we explore in the present work bridge racial, cultural, and linguistic divides in facing the same prejudices and stereotypes that have ‘Othered’ them. They adopt the same methods in reconstructing the Self that has been negated by the colonizing Other. In both cases, the people oppressed by a superior power are depicted in stereotypical terms, their culture belittled, and their identity blurred. in 1962. Through the present research work, we aim at analyzing the thematic correspondences between the two pairs of writes, particularly in the way they conceive of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’
BLAIR’S BRITAIN AND THE IRAQ WAR (2003)
(University of algiers2 Abu El Kacem Saad Allah جامعة الجزائر 2 أبو القاسم سعد الله, 2016) Douifi, mehamed; Mansouri, Brahim (Directeur de thèse)
Within the framework of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) the orthodox reductionist views on language have been superseded by a much more flexible and manifold conceptualization of meaning-making in language use. The latter is, therefore, seen as a highly complex social practice which is a product of, among many other things, the cultural, historical, and political conditions in a given 'epistemic community'. Based on a cross-disciplinary approach, this research undertakes a systematic analysis of Britain's involvement in the 2003 Iraq War. As it stands, this research posits that cognition in discourse analysis could not be ignored or relegated to an auxiliary status. Rather, it lays emphasis on the relevance of what van Dijk calls the "cognitive interface" to adequately dismantle the construction of ideology in language use
Outward Voyages, Inner Journeys in the Travel Novels of Joseph Conrad, Henry James and Graham Greene
(University of Tlemcen. Faculty of Letters and Languages, 2016) Baghli Berbar, Soaad; Benmoussat, Smail Directeur de thèse
This thesis explores the inner, spiritual journey inherent in any outward, physical voyage and seeks to examine the reflection of the introspected on the observed, usually found in travel writing, in the fictional genre of the novel. It also proposes the label “travel novel” to categorize novels that rely on trips and whose characters travel largely in the course of the narrative. Resting on the premises that travel writing which is autobiographical and often takes the form of diaries and memoirs is generally a pretext for self-exploration in parallel with the discovery of other vistas in trips, it subsumes that travel which permits knowledge of the outside world and of the other equally fosters self-knowledge. This assumption is extended to fictional novels about travels wherein the traveller-character epitomizes the same process of self-discovery in parallel with outer voyages and understanding of the other. It is further generalized to third-person narratives by demonstrating that the surrounding scenery and the geographical spaces of travel novels reverberate the psychological states of the characters and that their spiritual questioning is echoed and projected onto the moving setting without being voiced in the first person. To encompass as broad a range of travel novels and narrative patterns as possible, the selection of the corpus under study includes the sea travel novels of Joseph Conrad, the transatlantic ones of Henry James and the global, worldwide works of Graham Greene. Lord Jim, The Ambassadors and The Power and the Glory are respectively chosen for their heterodiegetic narratives and various and wide topoi as well as their epitome of the different forms of trips such as navigation, tourism and escape. The three travel novelists are hence showed to avail themselves of psychogeography, heterotopias and even heteroglossia to substantiate metaphysical journeys and enhance both outer and inner knowledge.
Realities of the English Teacher: Revisiting the Curriculum at Ecole Normale Supérieure, Bouzareah,(ENSB) in Algiers
(2 universitry ABOU HJLKJ of qlgiers2جامعة أبو القاسم سعد الله الجزائر, 2016) Belhouchet-Brahimi, Fatma Zohra; Bensemmane
Women Rewriting History and Writing a Literary Tradition
(University of Algiers2 Abu EL Kacem Saad Allahجامعة أبو القاسم سعد الله الجزائر, 2017) BOUSSOUALIM-Hamda, Malika; Deramchia, Yamina
"Women Rewriting History and Writing a Literary Tradition" is a work that shows interest in the novel written in western languages by postcolonial Africana female writers, who write to re-examine the history of Africana women, which was either forgotten or distorted in existing accounts about it. In fact, this doctoral project is a critical evaluation of three novels, two continental: The Joys of Motherhood by the Nigerian Buchi Emecheta and La femme sans sépulture by the Algerian Assia Djebar and a novel from the diaspora,Possessing the Secret of Joy by the African American Alice Walker. The three novels are selected as samples for a case study aimed to explore the motivations, aspirations and challenges of this novel. This research project is a comparative contrastive study woven into the textual analysis of these three representative works, and focused on demonstrating the intertextual relations between them.
The Popular, Religious, and Philosophical Roots of American Radicalism
(2 universitry ABOU HJLKJ of qlgiers2جامعة أبو القاسم سعد الله الجزائر, 2017) Mihoubi, Houria; Amrane, Nadjia
and the labor movement which all struggled to improve life inside the American society and make it conform to the democratic principles that were adopted by the American government. The present study argues that American radicalism has historical, religious, and philosophical roots. It also demonstrates that these roots are, at the same time, in the very origins of the American republic and democracy. The historical approach is to be used to trace the different roots of American radicalism and then analyze how these roots intermingled together to allow the shaping of the unique and innovating American radical attitude.
Cognitive Poetics in Contemporary Literary Criticism
(2 universitry ABOU HJLKJ of qlgiers2جامعة أبو القاسم سعد الله الجزائر, 2017) Mechraoui - Salmi, sara; Bensafi, Zoulikha
L'étude des métaphores du discours littéraires constitue un espace particulièrement nouveau. Depuis la linguistique cognitive, la métaphore est conçue comme un phénomène linguistique et conceptuel présent dans les interactions communicatives quotidiennes, scientifiques ou littéraires. A partir de ces cadres théoriques, les résultats des différents travaux mettent en évidence que dans les textes pour des experts ou pour des non-initiés, le discours littéraire inclut des métaphores conceptuelles. L'objectif de cette étude est d'analyse les romans de Milan Kundera L'insoutenable Légèreté De L'être et La Vie Est Ailleurs. Les résultats quantitatifs de l'étude ont confirmé que la sensibilisation aux métaphores dans le discours littéraire a contribué à l'interprétation adéquate du discours spécialisé de l'écrivain.
Tradition and the Individual Talent in T.S. Eliot’s and Wallace Stevens’ Poetry
(2017) Benmezal, Farid; Amrane, Nadjia (Directeur de thèse)
This thesis is a comparative study of two American poets, T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, whose poetry exemplifies the two major opposing trends in American Modernism. My aim is to examine the different ways in which the two poets respond to the solipsism of Romantic poetry. Eliot turns to the historical past of Europe to find a cultural transcendental ego to suppress the individual ego of Romanticism. Against the Romantic solipsism and Eliot’s appeals to tradition, distant and abstract from the contemporary conditions of modern America, Stevens seeks a poetics that focuses on immediate conditions of American experience to forge a literary tradition more fully responsive to the cultural and material impulses of the new world
Exploring First-Year and Third-Year LMD Algerian University Students’ Use of Language Learning Strategies
(University of Algiers 2 Abou El Kacem Saadallah, 2017-01) Aoudjit-Bessai, Nesrine
The present study aims at investigating the patterns of language learning strategy use employed by two groups of students enrolled in a three-year English degree course in the department of English of the University of Algiers 2, each one including 56 learners among first and third-year students. The study tries to identify the possible difficulties encountered by first-year students when studying linguistics and making use of their reading and writing skills in this course, and see whether low or absence of language learning strategy (LLS) use can influence their learning and achievement. The study also seeks to explore the extent of teachers’ awareness of the existence of LLS and their integration into their daily instruction.
Lecturers' Approaches to Teaching and the Relationship to Conceptions of Teaching and Learning
(University of Algiers 2 Abou El Kacem Saadallah, 2017-01) SARI-AHMED- BOUCHAMA, Anissa Fizya; KHALDI, Kamel
The present study aims at investigating Algerian lecturers’ conceptions of teaching and learning, the approaches to teaching they adopt, and the correlation between the conceptions and approaches identified. The study was carried out with fourteen Algerian EFL lecturers in the department of English. These lecturers teach diverse courses: listening/speaking, reading/writing, grammar, cultural issues, schools of linguistics, study skills, applied statistics and research methods, research paper writing, methods of teaching, critical writing, literary genres, and Anglophone literature. This research uses a phenomenographic method of data collection and analysis including three instruments: interview, questionnaire, and classroom observation. A lecturers’ conceptions of teaching and learning interview along with a lecturers’ conceptions of teaching and learning questionnaire were constructed to explore lecturers’ conceptions of teaching and learning. A lecturers’ approaches to teaching interview was designed in addition to a classroom observation scheme in order to investigate lecturers’ approaches to teaching. A lecturers’ training experience questionnaire was also designed to explore the teacher training experience of the three lecturers who fell in the highest categories of conceptions and approaches