Janet Holmes's second book of poems explores and interrogates the quotidian life of the late twentieth century for what exists behind its often seductive appearance. In these poems we see beneath acceptable, sleek surfaces into the turbulence they often conceal, as the splendid green tuxedo of the title may disguise a heart that harbors racism, fear, and violence. Holmes exhorts us to look beyond the face value of what presents itself, to resist literal interpretations, and to plumb the many depths afforded by each encounter with the world outside ourselves. In the second half of The Green Tuxedo, Holmes draws on recently discovered diaries kept by her journalist father nearly fifty years before her birth. Sifting through evidence and memory, she entwines actual diary entries (such as a seventy-seven-name list of "Wild Women I Have Known") with speculation and invention to generate a portrait that discovers him- re-invents him-as a young man. This sequence, searching and elegiac, affords closure to a book whose questionings suggest less a need for absolute answers than a declaration of the need to explore. Holmes leads us through a world of appearances, celebrating the necessary examination of what is concealed.
The poetry in Humanophone, the third volume from award-winning poet Janet Holmes, celebrates composers and creators such as Harry Partch, Raymond Scott, Leon Theremin, and George Ives, who had to invent new instruments to capture the music heard in their "mind's ear." Taking its title from a George Ives invention—an instrument made from a group of humans, each of whom sings a single note, arrayed like a xylophone—Humanophone appears on its surface to be about music. But its real subject is the artist's creative dilemma—how to deliver a new idea, whether it be a song or a poem, through existing media. Holmes works language into a variety of forms both familiar—syllabics, couplets, villanelles, sonnets—and engagingly new. With everything from kumquats to abandoned wedding pictures, Clara Bow to Bill Robinson, Keats's belle dame to Dante's Francesca, feng shui to a recipe for octopus, Humanophone celebrates how the body shapes art from the world it is given. In Humanophone, Holmes not only chronicles events such as Harry Partch's transformation of glass chemical containers from the Berkeley Radiation Lab into the melodious and beautiful Cloud-Chamber Bowls, but also traces a playful path through the familiar, as a trombone's upwards glissando becomes "a backwards pratfall/in brass." Engaging a broad array of subjects, Holmes's poetry is as delightful as it is thoughtful, as simple as it is complex.
The poetry in Humanophone, the third volume from award-winning poet Janet Holmes, celebrates composers and creators such as Harry Partch, Raymond Scott, Leon Theremin, and George Ives, who had to invent new instruments to capture the music heard in their "mind's ear." Taking its title from a George Ives invention—an instrument made from a group of humans, each of whom sings a single note, arrayed like a xylophone—Humanophone appears on its surface to be about music. But its real subject is the artist's creative dilemma—how to deliver a new idea, whether it be a song or a poem, through existing media. Holmes works language into a variety of forms both familiar—syllabics, couplets, villanelles, sonnets—and engagingly new. With everything from kumquats to abandoned wedding pictures, Clara Bow to Bill Robinson, Keats's belle dame to Dante's Francesca, feng shui to a recipe for octopus, Humanophone celebrates how the body shapes art from the world it is given. In Humanophone, Holmes not only chronicles events such as Harry Partch's transformation of glass chemical containers from the Berkeley Radiation Lab into the melodious and beautiful Cloud-Chamber Bowls, but also traces a playful path through the familiar, as a trombone's upwards glissando becomes "a backwards pratfall/in brass." Engaging a broad array of subjects, Holmes's poetry is as delightful as it is thoughtful, as simple as it is complex.
f2f: Shorthand for "face-to-face," as in meeting someone in real life, flesh-to-flesh, as opposed to in the electronic world of cyberspace. Used in chat rooms and while instant messaging on the Internet. At the core of this challenging new collection from Janet Holmes is the conceit of the sense of sight and the complex role it plays in women's self-identities and relationships. Emily Dickinson is introduced as the iconic female writer who, unread in her time, is frequently misinterpreted and unheard. Holmes relates Dickinson's self-isolation to the writer's isolation from the reader and the intimacy of the act of reading. Echo, Eurydice, and Eros—other "E" figures, these mythological, their stories relying on seeing and being seen—are related by Holmes to twentieth-century counterparts manifesting as an anorexic, a flamboyant dresser, and a love god, respectively. Holmes intersperses her meditation with the language of online text-messaging, employing it as a vehicle for probing the dual limitations and liberties afforded on-line correspondents. Through her correspondents' postings, we chart their relationship evolving without benefit of ever meeting or exchanging photographs, the participants deeply affected by the absence of the sense of sight. By turns provocative and timid, lyrical and terse, the voices in f2f exhibit myriad human reactions to how seeing each other influences how we behave.
Women, Men and Politeness focuses on the specific issue of the ways in which women and men express politeness verbally.Using a range of evidence and a corpus of data collected largely from New Zealand, Janet Holmes examines the distribution and functions of a range of specific verbal politeness strategies in women's and men's speech and discusses the possible reasons for gender differences in this area. Data provided on interactional strategies, 'hedges and boosters', compliments and apologies, demonstrates ways in which women's politeness patterns differ from men's, with the implications of these different patterns explored, for women in particular, in the areas of education and professional careers.
Gendered Talk at Work examines how women and men negotiate their gender identities as well as their professional roles in everyday workplace communication. written accessibly by one of the field’s foremost researchersexplores the ways in which gender contributes to the interpretation of meaning in workplace interactionuses original and insightfully analyzed data to focus on the ways in which both women and men draw on gendered discourse resources to enact a range of workplace rolesillustrates how a qualitative analysis of workplace discourse can throw light on the many ways in which workplace discourse provides a resource for constructing gender identity as one component of our complex socio-cultural identity
Gendered Talk at Work examines how women and men negotiate their gender identities as well as their professional roles in everyday workplace communication. written accessibly by one of the field’s foremost researchersexplores the ways in which gender contributes to the interpretation of meaning in workplace interactionuses original and insightfully analyzed data to focus on the ways in which both women and men draw on gendered discourse resources to enact a range of workplace rolesillustrates how a qualitative analysis of workplace discourse can throw light on the many ways in which workplace discourse provides a resource for constructing gender identity as one component of our complex socio-cultural identity
If you write out "The Poems of Emily Dickinson" and erase some of the letters very neatly and precisely, you can get to The ms of m y kin - the manuscript of my kin, as it were; the manuscript of my family. It might also be said to be the manuscript of my kind. The practice of erasure was most famously accomplished (and perhaps invented) by the British artist Tom Phillips in his book A Humument (an erasure of a Victorian novel titled A Human Document) and later, by the American poet Ronald Johnson, who erased Milton's Paradise Lost into a book called Radi os. In Phillips's books-he did more than one version of A Humument-the artist created paintings over each page of the novel, reserving only certain words that told a different story than did the original work. (A new character, called "Toge," emerged from the word "together," for example.) Johnson, a poet, simply removed the words he did not wish to use as if whiting them out-the remaining words stood in the same relationship to each other as they did in the original poem. (Janet Holmes)
This is the first book in the field of workplace discourse to examine the relationships among leadership, ethnicity, and language use. Taking a social constructionist approach to the ways in which leadership is enacted through discourse, Leadership, Discourse, and Ethnicity problematizes the concept of ethnicity and demonstrates the importance of context-particularly the community of practice-in determining what counts as relevant in the analysis of ethnicity. The authors analyse everyday workplace interactions supplemented by interview data to examine the ways in which workplace leaders use language to achieve their transactional and relational goals in contrasting "ethnicized" contexts, two of which are Maori and two European/Pakeha. Their analysis pays special attention to the roles of ethnic values, beliefs and orientations in talk.
This is the first book in the field of workplace discourse to examine the relationships among leadership, ethnicity, and language use. Taking a social constructionist approach to the ways in which leadership is enacted through discourse, Leadership, Discourse, and Ethnicity problematizes the concept of ethnicity and demonstrates the importance of context-particularly the community of practice-in determining what counts as relevant in the analysis of ethnicity. The authors analyse everyday workplace interactions supplemented by interview data to examine the ways in which workplace leaders use language to achieve their transactional and relational goals in contrasting "ethnicized" contexts, two of which are Maori and two European/Pakeha. Their analysis pays special attention to the roles of ethnic values, beliefs and orientations in talk.
Sociolinguistics is the study of the interaction between language and society. In this classic introductory work, Janet Holmes and Nick Wilson examine the role of language in a variety of social contexts, considering both how language works and how it can be used to signal and interpret various aspects of social identity. Divided into three parts, this book explains basic sociolinguistic concepts in the light of classic approaches, as well as introducing more recent research.This sixth edition has been revised and updated throughout, using key concepts and examples to guide the reader through this fascinating area, including:• New material on gender, social media and online use of language, codeswitching, and language policy• An updated companion website that is fully cross- referenced within this book and features video and audio materials and links to useful websites• Revised examples and exercises that include new material from Asia and South America• Fully updated further reading and references sectionsAn Introduction to Sociolinguistics is an essential introductory text for all students of sociolinguistics and a splendid point of reference for students of English language studies, linguistics, and applied linguistics.
Sociolinguistics is the study of the interaction between language and society. In this classic introductory work, Janet Holmes and Nick Wilson examine the role of language in a variety of social contexts, considering both how language works and how it can be used to signal and interpret various aspects of social identity. Divided into three parts, this book explains basic sociolinguistic concepts in the light of classic approaches, as well as introducing more recent research.This sixth edition has been revised and updated throughout, using key concepts and examples to guide the reader through this fascinating area, including:• New material on gender, social media and online use of language, codeswitching, and language policy• An updated companion website that is fully cross- referenced within this book and features video and audio materials and links to useful websites• Revised examples and exercises that include new material from Asia and South America• Fully updated further reading and references sectionsAn Introduction to Sociolinguistics is an essential introductory text for all students of sociolinguistics and a splendid point of reference for students of English language studies, linguistics, and applied linguistics.
Power and Politeness in the Workplace has become established as a seminal text for courses in language and professional communication.Co-authored by bestselling author Janet Holmes, this text provides insights into the way we all talk at work, including a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people "do" power and politeness in the workplace, and examines the discourse strategies involved in balancing the competing demands of meeting workplace objectives and getting things done on time with maintaining good collegial workplace relationships. Drawing on a large and very varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. Attention is also paid to the important contribution of less obviously relevant types of workplace talk such as humour and small talk, to the construction of effective workplace relationships. In the final chapter some of the practical implications of the analyses are identified.This Routledge Linguistics Classic is here reissued with a new preface from the authors, covering the methods of analysis, an update on the Language in the Workplace project and a look at the work in the context of recent research. Power and Politeness in the Workplace continues to be a vital read for researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics and communication studies.
Power and Politeness in the Workplace has become established as a seminal text for courses in language and professional communication.Co-authored by bestselling author Janet Holmes, this text provides insights into the way we all talk at work, including a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people "do" power and politeness in the workplace, and examines the discourse strategies involved in balancing the competing demands of meeting workplace objectives and getting things done on time with maintaining good collegial workplace relationships. Drawing on a large and very varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. Attention is also paid to the important contribution of less obviously relevant types of workplace talk such as humour and small talk, to the construction of effective workplace relationships. In the final chapter some of the practical implications of the analyses are identified.This Routledge Linguistics Classic is here reissued with a new preface from the authors, covering the methods of analysis, an update on the Language in the Workplace project and a look at the work in the context of recent research. Power and Politeness in the Workplace continues to be a vital read for researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics and communication studies.
The Weidners in Wartime is the intimate story, told in their own words, of a family separated by war. Despite the dangers of writing under the inspection of censors, their letters paint a vivid portrait of decent human beings fighting valiantly to maintain their courage, their humor, and their faith during one of history's darkest hours. It so happens that one member of the family is also a leader of the resistance, whose heroic actions to save fleeing refugees will make him a hunted man and one of the greatest rescuers of World War II.In 1942, Jean Henri Weidner founded the "Dutch-Paris Line" to guide Jews, downed Allied pilots, and other persecuted people out of Nazi-occupied Europe to freedom in Switzerland and Spain. The Line spanned four countries and hid or escorted to safety an estimated 3,000 people, many faced with certain death. After the war, Jean was awarded the French Legion of Honor and the United States Medal of Freedom. He is honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations at Israel's Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. Yet Jean's actions to save the lives of strangers came at a terrible cost to those he holds most dear.Through these never-before-published documents-expertly selected, translated, and introduced by Janet Holmes Carper-readers will encounter the daily lives of an "ordinary" but remarkable family bound together by their deep love for each other and by their prolific correspondence across great distances. The frequently unvarnished words of the Weidners (including Jean; his spirited younger sisters, Gabrielle and Annette; his stalwart parents, "Papa" and "Mama" Weidner; and his fianc and soon-to-be bride, Elisabeth Cartier) provide a unique window into historical events that continue to resonate in the present.Jean's secret resistance work is barely alluded to in the family's letters. What emerges instead are the distinctive personalities, voices, and moral characters of the Weidners as they face the harsh realities of the war with as much bravery and good cheer as they can muster.The Weidners in Wartime builds to a devastating climax, raising profound questions about humanity and inhumanity, loyalty and betrayal, duty, and sacrifice, that do not admit easy answers and that linger after the book is set down. These letters, written more than 75 years ago, might inspire in new generations a commitment to selfless and courageous action in the spirit of Jean, Gabrielle, Annette, and the other members of the Dutch-Paris escape line.
The Weidners in Wartime is the intimate story, told in their own words, of a family separated by war. Despite the dangers of writing under the inspection of censors, their letters paint a vivid portrait of decent human beings fighting valiantly to maintain their courage, their humor, and their faith during one of history's darkest hours. It so happens that one member of the family is also a leader of the resistance, whose heroic actions to save fleeing refugees will make him a hunted man and one of the greatest rescuers of World War II.In 1942, Jean Henri Weidner founded the "Dutch-Paris Line" to guide Jews, downed Allied pilots, and other persecuted people out of Nazi-occupied Europe to freedom in Switzerland and Spain. The Line spanned four countries and hid or escorted to safety an estimated 3,000 people, many faced with certain death. After the war, Jean was awarded the French Legion of Honor and the United States Medal of Freedom. He is honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations at Israel's Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. Yet Jean's actions to save the lives of strangers comes at a terrible cost to those he holds most dear.Through these never-before-published documents-expertly selected, translated, and introduced by Janet Holmes Carper-readers will encounter the daily lives of an "ordinary" but remarkable family bound together by their deep love for each other and by their prolific correspondence across great distances. The frequently unvarnished words of the Weidners (including Jean; his spirited younger sisters, Gabrielle and Annette; his stalwart parents, "Papa" and "Mama" Weidner; and his fianc and soon-to-be bride, Elisabeth Cartier) provide a unique window into historical events that continue to resonate in the present. Jean's secret resistance work is barely alluded to in the family's letters. What emerges instead are the distinctive personalities, voices, and moral characters of the Weidners as they face the harsh realities of the war with as much bravery and good cheer as they can muster.The Weidners in Wartime builds to a devastating climax, raising profound questions about humanity and inhumanity, loyalty and betrayal, duty, and sacrifice, that do not admit easy answers and that linger after the book is set down. These letters, written more than 75 years ago, might inspire in new generations a commitment to selfless and courageous action in the spirit of Jean, Gabrielle, Annette, and the other members of the Dutch-Paris escape line.
At long last—a book-length biography celebrates Toni Cade Bambara, a seminal literary, cultural, and political figure who was among the most widely read and frequently reviewed of the well-regarded black women writers to emerge in the 1970s.A Joyous Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist is the first-ever, full-length biography of a trailblazing artist who championed black women in her fiction as well as in her life. This incisive study provides a comprehensive treatment of Bambara's published and unpublished works, and it also documents her emerging vision of her role as an agent of change.The biography allows readers into the personal life of Bambara, offering personal insights into a woman with a strong public persona and friendships with other celebrated artists of her era. Perhaps most important for those seeking to understand and appreciate Bambara's legacy, it connects her oeuvre to the context of her experience and places all of her wide-ranging creative work in the context of her singular vision.
A Ms. Magazine "Most Anticipated Feminist Book of 2023" After a less-than-positive experience giving birth as a Black woman in the 1970s, Linda Janet Holmes launched a lifetime of work as an activist dedicated to learning about and honoring alternative birth traditions and the Black women behind them. Safe in a Midwife's Hands brings together what Holmes has gleaned from the countless midwives who have shared with her their experiences, at a time when their knowledge and holistic approaches are essential counterbalances to a medical system that routinely fails Black mothers and babies. Building on work she began in the 1980s, when she interviewed traditional Black midwives in Alabama and Virginia, Holmes traveled to Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya to visit midwives there. In detailing their work, from massage to the uses of medicinal plants to naming ceremonies, she links their voices to those of midwives and doulas in the US. She thus illuminates parallels between birthing traditions that have survived hundreds of years of colonialism, enslavement, Jim Crow, and ongoing medical racism to persist as vital cultural practices that promote healthy outcomes for mothers and babies during pregnancy, birth, and beyond.
The nineteenth century opened in the flicker of tallow candles and closed in the glare of Edison's electric lamp. Between those two events inventors and manufacturers developed a wonderful assortment of progressively more efficient lighting devices, burning a variety of fuels. Loris Russell records with scientific attention to detail – backed up by more than 200 illustrations – how these lamps were made and used. His text is interspersed with accounts of his own experiments with the fuels and mechanisms of earlier generations. Russell drew on his own large collection of lighting devices and on the collections of museums and of other individuals for his study, and documented his research with Canadian and United States patent papers, trade catalogues, newspapers, magazines, memoirs, and books. This is the first detailed story of that technological revolution in North America, and while told in the setting of the Canadian home, the developing technology of lighting was common to both sides of the border. A Heritage of Light is of equal importance to collectors and historians in the United States and Canada. This newly reprinted edition of Russell's classic 1968 study has a new introduction by Janet Holmes.
