Putting Crisis in Perspective: Analyses of Past and Present Crises in Literature, Culture, and Foreign Language Teaching (Second Language Learning and Teaching)

This collected book analyzes the phenomenon of crisis manifested across various historical periods. It offers unique, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary perspectives on the issues of crises and finds numerous applications in the fields of literature, linguistics, advertising, photography, and foreign language teaching. The collection is divided into two parts. The chapters in its first part analyze literature and language: from medieval England to cultural changes in America occurring under the influence of the transformation caused by the propagation of print culture. The incisive commentaries consider the works of culture that span not only literature but also film. They reveal how much we can learn by considering how past generations perceived reality in times of crisis. The second part of the book contains chapters, which examine texts related to contemporary crises expressed in the visual media of advertising and photography, but also in foreign language teaching. As the authors show, both ads and non-commercial, socially engaged photographs can influence the viewer in a swift and impactful manner by conveying messages of great social importance. The authors convincingly that argue both photographs and ads can be used for social benefit by visualizing even the unpleasant or shocking sides of reality. Finally, the notion of crisis experienced by students of English as a foreign language is analyzed and supplemented by research which may prove useful for researchers and practitioners alike. Acknowledgements 6 Contents 7 Introduction 9 References 16 The Crises of the Past 17 Pragmatic Play in Response to the Crisis in the “Magical World of the Ear” in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Its 1999 Film Adaptation 18 References 33 The Clash of Divergent Political Strategies, Moral Categories and Literary Conventions in the Early Fifteenth Century Poetry: Mum and the Sothsegger as a Reflection of the Tensions Within the Crisis-Ridden Late Medieval Society 35 1 The Fourteenth Century as the Age of Crisis 35 2 Late Medieval Poverty Controversies 38 3 Conflicting Views on Poverty and the Ambiguous Defense the Poor in Mum and the Sothsegger 40 4 Conclusion 47 References 48 The Crisis Appearing in the Construal of the Mediaeval Concepts of Truth, Soth and Faith in The Canterbury Tales with Their Contemporary Counterparts 50 1 Introduction 50 2 The Semantic Analysis of Trouthe 52 2.1 The Link Between Trouthe and Love 52 2.2 The Link Between Trouthe and Light 54 2.3 The Link Between Trouthe and Wisdom 55 3 The Semantic Analysis of Soth 55 4 Faith as a Discourse Marker 57 5 The Juxtaposition of ME and PDE Concepts of TRUTH, SOTH and FAITH 58 6 Conclusions 60 References 61 Present Crises 63 Different Shades of Crisis in Selected Advertising Messages 64 1 Introduction 64 2 Advertising—Selling Ideas and Selling Images 65 2.1 Ads’ Categorisation by Purpose 66 2.2 The Power of the Visual and the Multimodal in Ads 67 3 The Sociocultural Impact of Ads Featuring the Theme of Crisis 68 4 The Topic of Crisis in Selected Ads—Analysis 70 4.1 Health Crisis 72 4.2 Equality Crisis 72 4.3 Environmental Crisis 73 4.4 War-Related Crisis 73 5 Conclusions 74 References 76 Human and Space. Images of Conflict in the Levant Trilogy Project by Rita Leistner 78 1 More Than a Thousand Words 79 2 Pain Between the Nations 81 3 The Neighbors 83 4 Project: Into the Conflict 84 5 Our Home Was Here 85 6 Looking for the Shelter 86 7 On the Other Side of the Wall 87 8 Summary 88 References 89 The Influence of the Feeling of Crisis and Anxiety on High School Students’ Oral Performance 91 1 Introduction 91 2 Research 95 2.1 Research Questions 95 2.2 Participants 95 2.3 Research Instruments 95 2.4 Research Procedure 96 2.5 Research Results 97 2.6 Research Discussion 103 2.7 Limitations of the Research 105 3 Conclusion 105 References 106 Conclusion 108 Reference 109