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9SECTION 6 LETTERS TO THE EDITORS
Political Correctness?
Dear Editors,
In the 4th issue of “Footpath” there was an interesting article by Ekaterina Yashurina that particularly attracted my attention. The article deals with the “politically correct” themes in “Nice Work” and “White Teeth”. As I am currently conducting seminars on “Nice Work” with senior students, we have a lot of discussions on the different points of view represented in the novel, especially the ones connected with racial and gender (in)equality.
It is primarily through Robyn Penrose’s views and the situations she finds herself in that the novel addresses vital social issues and gives a broad panorama of modern social life. However, I am inclined to think that the term “politically correct”, which is used by the author of the article, does not accurately reflect the behaviour and world outlook that is presented in “Nice Work”. Although originally political correctness was supposed to protect disadvantaged minority groups (disabled people, ethnic and sex minorities, etc), it has now acquired quite a few negative connotations and has come to be associated with hypocrisy and unnatural distortion of the language. Euphemisms that political correctness engenders tend sometimes to be even more offensive than the more “traditional” words.
Thus, what Robyn advocates and personifies would be more accurately described as “tolerance”, “integrity” and “active social position”. For instance, in her discussion with Brian Everthorpe on the “anti-feminist” calendar she never hesitates to use quite a strong language which would seem strange coming from a proponent of “political correctness”. Besides, for her, actions definitely speak louder than words, so it’s mostly through action rather than picking of the “appropriate” language that she asserts her social views.
Ekaterina Purgina,
Urals State Federal University
More books, less reading Dear Editors,
In his article ‘The Misery of Russian Literary Education, or About the Role of the Perm Seminar in Communion with Good Literature’ (Footpath-2), Boris Proskurnin touches upon a very serious problem of the constantly decreasing level of the literary education of the Russian schoolchildren who pass entrance exams to philological departments. I fully share his concern, and can state that the same problem often remains during the whole university course. Paradoxically, in our more open society with Internet access and international travelling the importance of extensive reading is obviously underestimated in Russia by the majority of students and, regretfully, by some university teachers. Thus, nowadays we can observe the substitution of bright quality fiction with vivid images by the texts of mainly mass media discourse. It fills in the students’ minds with the communicative fragments of a certain type, and in the future this substitution can lead to the situation that the students’ linguistic competence in the sphere of foreign language would be rather limited by cliches. Such a situation when more books are available and fewer books are read causes certain difficulties in the foreign language acquisition, especially in grasping the complex concepts and senses of polysemic words. Only dealing with the word in its ‘textual field’ can provide active cognitive processes of perceiving and remembering its features in a complex.
Svetlana Bogdanova,
Irkutsk State Linguistic University
Cutting off with an axe?
Dear Editors,
I’d like to share with you some of my thoughts and ideas concerning FOOTPATH. The first one is on the editors’ request for commenting on previous articles. It seems to me that Russians do not like writing letters commenting on previous pieces in the journals which they read. Such kind of writing means being critical and, probably, we trust too much to the written word to question it officially. We have a sort of mysterious respect to texts (the so called ‘Literature Centrism’) reflected in the folk proverb “what is written with a pen, can’t be cut off with an axe’. It is easier to write a new piece than to come back to what is already organized in the form of a text.
As for FOOTPATH itself, it’s very valuable because it shows the Russian reader both contemporary authors and non-standard approaches to the literary process. We have the opportunity to perceive English Literature as something not only classical and worshipped but living and moving. It is different and can be treated differently (and nobody will “punish” for this) - that’s the main thing I have understood after reading the books. Also, FOOTPATH introduces both the teachers’ and students’ points of view which are not treated as equal sometimes (teachers’ is more “correct”).
And one more thing I’d like to attract the attention of the readers and submitters. To my mind, it would be interesting and thought-provoking to see more comparative analysis of fiction, especially searching some parallel motifs and ideas in the works of contemporary British and Russian authors.
Lyudmila Tatarnikova,
Zabaikalsky State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, Chita.
Do we want poetry?
Dear Editors,
Footpath is of great help for advanced learners of English and lovers of English literature. It lets us learn more about British society today through joint discussions. We do appreciate your work. But we think that one very important issue is missing in the journal. And that is POETRY!
We want to suggest starting a Poetic Corner. We here, at our department, have a special course devoted to analysis of poetry. We mostly discuss works by English and American poets, paying attention to peculiarities of poetic writing and versification.
Students find poetry very difficult to understand and interpret but after joint discussions they start enjoying it. Unfortunately our modern life style makes us less sensitive and more self-centered. And we are absolutely sure that poetry is a perfect tool that may help us to find pleasure in very simple things.
Some students do rather good translations and others succeed in analysing poems. It would be interesting for us to discuss both modern and classical works by British poets and share our students’ understanding of them.
Elena Vasilyeva Buryat State University
