https://hdl.handle.net/10481/21923 2026-04-26T05:52:56Z 2026-04-26T05:52:56Z Gómez Jiménez, Eva María Bartley, Leanne Victoria https://hdl.handle.net/10481/86904 2024-01-22T12:27:07Z

‘Rising Number of Homeless is the Legacy of Tory Failure’: Discoursal Changes and Transitivity Patterns in the Representation of Homelessness in The Guardian and Daily Mail from 2000 to 2018 Gómez Jiménez, Eva María; Bartley, Leanne Victoria Experts in different fields have claimed that the UK has experienced a process of growing economic inequality since the 1970s. Following Fairclough’s dialectal-relational approach, this paper presents a detailed, systematic analysis of the representation of homeless people and homelessness in The Guardian and Daily Mail from 2000 to 2018, in order to explore how these have been discursively represented over time. Therefore, our study addresses two specific research questions: How have homelessness and homeless people been represented in the UK press? Are there any discoursal changes in representation with the passing of time? The analysis, which has employed mostly qualitative but also quantitative (statistical) methods drawing on corpus-assisted discourse analysis, is informed by the theory of TRANSITIVITY within Systemic Functional Linguistics. Results indicate that, within an overall negative representation of homeless people and homelessness in this period, there have been some significant discoursal changes over time. As such, this paper contributes to critical discourse studies and transitivity research on a relevant social problem, that of growing economic inequality in the UK.

Gómez Jiménez, Eva María https://hdl.handle.net/10481/85970 2023-12-01T08:26:37Z

‘An insufferable burden on businesses?’On changing attitudes to maternity leave and economic-related issues in the Times and Daily Mail Gómez Jiménez, Eva María This paper analyses the ways in which maternity leave has been reported, within the broader context of economic inequality, in the periods from 1971 to 1977 and from 1997 to 2001, in the right-of-centre British national press. The aim is to answer the following research question: Has the representation of maternity leave changed in the right-of-centre UK press with the adoption of new policies, particularly in relation to economic matters, and if so, in what ways? Discussions of maternity leave in newspapers are identified by uses of the phrase maternity leave. Selected findings are presented from a corpus compiled for this study of news stories (641,996 words) in the Times and the Daily Mail, in the years in which maternity leave policies were changed in the UK (1973, 1975, 1999) plus two years before and after each of those years. Combining qualitative with quantitative methods, the analysis shows that maternity leave becomes monetized in the later period, from 1997 to 2001. The economic term that undergoes the most noticeable shift in frequency of use is afford, which is used five-times more frequently in the 1997 to 2001 period. A close reading of all those stories containing the term afford reveals considerable opposition in these newspapers to the introduction of new entitlements for women with new-borns, a hostility that was not apparent when improvements to maternity leave provisions were first introduced in the 1970s. This paper addresses the representation of maternity leave in the belief that this system benefit (like any other state-backed benefit in the UK system) helps in mitigating wealth inequality, and it is part of a larger study exploring changes in the way in which British newspapers have represented wealth inequality in the UK from 1971 to the present.

Gómez Jiménez, Eva María https://hdl.handle.net/10481/85969 2023-12-01T08:24:45Z

Unconventional patterns in the experimental poetry of E. E. Cummings: A stylistic approach to punctuation marks Gómez Jiménez, Eva María For some time scholars have examined unconventional linguistic patterns in E. E. Cummings’ poetic style. Of all the aspects under consideration, it is grammar, lexis and morphology that have been most widely researched, while only a small number of studies have looked at graphology or, least of all, punctuation. This article is a contribution to the latter research field, and is aimed at developing a systematic approach to the use of punctuation marks in E. E. Cummings’ experimental poetry. I deal with two fundamental research questions: What foregrounding patterns are present in E. E. Cummings’ unorthodox use of punctuation marks, and what effects derive from his singular use of marks? Using 157 experimental poems as a corpus, I identify any instances of unconventional punctuation and classify the different devices that break with convention, determining the meaning implications (if any) that derive from these particular uses. An in-depth analysis of these poems reveals that there are three basic unconventional devices in Cummings’ use of punctuation marks (substitution, omission and insertion) and that these help Cummings to achieve a variety of purposes: emphasize certain elements within the poem, shift the tempo of the lines, create chaotic scenes, produce iconic effects, schematize any unit within the poem, omit letters and words, signal heteroglossia, indicate imperative voice, articulate the poem into different layers, create plays on words, and reproduce features of spoken language.

Gómez Jiménez, Eva María https://hdl.handle.net/10481/85968 2023-12-01T08:21:41Z

‘oride lesgo eckshun’: Spelling foregrounding in the experimental poetry of E. E. Cummings Gómez Jiménez, Eva María Unconventional linguistic features in E. E. Cummings’ poetic style have long been a focus of study. Linguists have researched this aspect of this poet’s technique mainly in connection to grammar, lexis and morphology; however, few approaches have looked at graphology in depth and even fewer at spelling. The present paper addresses this by analysing the use of lettering in E. E. Cummings’ experimental poetry. More concretely, two research questions are posed here: Which foregrounding devices are involved in E. E. Cummings’ unconventional use of spelling? And also, which effects are achieved by means of this particular use of lettering? To answer these questions, I first selected a group of 66 experimental poems displaying features of misspelling. After identifying and classifying the devices employed by Cummings for spelling foregrounding, I determined the meaning implications and functions produced through those misspellings. The research on these poems reveals that substitution, transposition, insertion and omission are the four basic patterns that permit such an unconventional use, and that this practice allows Cummings to reproduce linguistic varieties, create plays on words, control the reading process, indicate interruptions and create iconic effects.

Gómez Jiménez, Eva María https://hdl.handle.net/10481/85963 2023-12-01T08:13:45Z

‘nearerandnearerandNEARER’: Foregrounding effects of the unconventional capitalization in the experimental poetry of E. E. Cummings Gómez Jiménez, Eva María Marked linguistic structures in E. E. Cummings’ poetry have long been an issue within literary criticism and stylistics. In this sense, critical approaches to Cummings’ style have dealt mainly with grammar, lexis and morphology, while only few works have examined his graphology extensively. Departing from these trends, in this paper I analyse the use of unorthodox capital letters in 96 of his experimental poems. My aim is twofold: to identify the processes present in Cummings’ unconventional use of capital letters and to determine the effects observable in such unusual patterns. The analysis reveals that the foregrounding of capitals is materialized by the insertion of initial caps, middle caps, final caps, all caps or mixed caps where these are not expected or required. It also suggests that these unconventional patterns mainly emphasize certain elements within the poems, produce iconic effects, generate wordplay and create chaotic scenes. To a lesser degree, they also schematize words, lines or a whole poem, and reproduce differences in the tone of some poetic voices or depict elements that are capitalized in real life.