Impersonality

Modernism is far from being a monolithically conceivable theoretical entity, as its various popularisations and canonizations may lead us to think. As a matter of fact, having been constructed and negotiated by the most heterogeneous literary personalities of world culture, it is highly predictable that many of  its ‘canonical’ features might substantially vary according to the author analysed. A category in particular, that of impersonality, might appear as the most universally applicable: T. S. Eliot envisioned a “continuous extinction of personality”; Ezra Pound had his personae and “absolute rhythm”; Joyce himself purported that “The artist […] remains within or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, […] indifferent, paring his fingernails”. And many other examples might be added to this nuclear catalogue. Yet, when the magnifying glass is pointed at Virginia Woolf, and in particular at her non-fiction (the literary space in which she is allowed to reflect more freely on literature), we immediately recognize that,  in her opinion, an artist is never entirely allowed to step out of his/her creation. Even if in A Room of One’s Own she affirms that: “One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth”, many other pronouncements maintain a diametrically opposed position, for instance, the concept of “presence” she sketches while speaking of the essay as a genre. With a comparative point of view, my contribution aims at retracing and commenting some of these non-fictional remarks to reassess the impact of authorial idiosyncrasy in the wider scope of Woolf’s aesthetics, in relation with the more general “Modernist Manifesto of impersonality”. http://www.esse2016.org/seminars.html

The aim of this dissertation is to study how facework, mitigation and impersonality are configured in the discourse of jurists (judges and lawyers) during trials.
To elaborate this work, we base our study in a corpus of eight trials (two for each jurisdiction in the Spanish legal system). This corpus has been transcribed following the transcription system of the group Val.Es.Co. (2003.) Our corpus contains 4 hours, 7 minutes and 9 seconds of recording (49,227 words), and has been analysed adapting Albelda et al.’s (2014) method to the needs of our genre and the four objectives that guide this research.
The first of these objectives was to specify the characteristics of the communicative situation and the formal register in trials. This goal has been one of the key factors used to identify the contextual parameters of the genre, as well as the attributes of the face (Goffman, 1967 [1970]) of judges and lawyers during their professional performance.
The second objective was to study facework, understood as the sum of enhancing, threatening and neutral activities involving face (Tracy, 2011), in trials. The analysis of our data has led to the conclusion that the enhancement of the face is associated mainly to ritual values. However, it is possible to identify a number of cases where face enhancement is related to strategic purposes. Regarding the cases where the face is threatened, we follow the proposal of Archer (2008), which distinguishes between face threat and impoliteness. Thus, in trials we can properly talk about impoliteness when an action involving a potential damage to the face of a participant is also a transgression of what might be expected from the genre, and from the particular communicative situation in which the trial occurs.
In connection with facework, we pursue a third objective related to the study of attenuation, which is one of the discursive manifestations of facework. In our study, we assume that attenuation must be understood as a pragmatic strategy whose aim is not only related to face protection, but also aims to facilitate negotiation and agreement. Our analysis of the functions of attenuation in trials supports this latter idea: the functions found in our corpus range from the speakers’ concern for the face, in its social dimension (as in the cases of self-correction or mediation between the parties) to a rhetorical-argumentative use where the satisfaction of social needs is not that relevant (this happens, for example, when attenuation is used to bring objectivity to the discourse).
Finally, the fourth objective is to undertake a more thorough study of impersonality in trials, since impersonality is one of the resources that most frequently relates to attenuation in court. According to the data, there is a tendency to use impersonality with an attenuating value when the speaker seeks for self-protection or acceptance. In fewer cases, impersonality is employed as an attenuation device in order to prevent a conflict. We found no cases in the corpus where impersonality serves to the function of redress the negative effects of a threat or a conflict.
In conclusion, this study shows that, with regard to the concept of facework and, more specifically, impoliteness, it must be rethought the equation that has been done so far between ‘face threat’ and ‘impoliteness’. In some genres, such as trials, it can be proven that the relationship between these two types of facework is not equivalent. Regarding attenuation, the study of this pragmatic phenomenon from a genre such as trials, being intrinsically transactional and decidedly argumentative, has highlighted the need to understand attenuation as a pragmatic strategy whose motivation is not always taking care of the face, but which can also reflect the desire of convincing others or preventing a conflict. Lastly, with regard to the mechanisms of attenuation, impersonality has emerged as a resource where the de-focalization of one of the participants in the interaction relates primarily to self-protection or care of the own face.

RESUMEN
Esta tesis trata de determinar la manera en que se configuran las actividades de imagen, la atenuación y la impersonalidad en el discurso de los profesionales del derecho (jueces y abogados) durante el transcurso de los juicios orales.
Para la elaboración de este trabajo, partimos de un corpus de ocho juicios orales (dos por cada jurisdicción presente en el ordenamiento jurídico español) que ha sido transcrito siguiendo el sistema de transcripción del grupo Val.Es.Co. (2003). En total, el corpus suma 4 horas, 7 minutos y 9 segundos de grabación y consta de 49227 palabras. El corpus se ha analizado adaptando la ficha metodológica de Albelda et al. (2014) a las necesidades de nuestro género y los cuatro objetivos que guían esta investigación.
El primero de estos objetivos ha sido precisar las características de la situación comunicativa y el registro formal en los juicios orales. Este objetivo ha sido una de las claves para poder identificar los parámetros contextuales y los atributos de la imagen de jueces y abogados durante su ejercicio profesional.
El segundo objetivo se ha centrado en estudiar las actividades de imagen, entendidas en el sentido de Tracy (2011) como aquellas actividades valorizadoras, amenazantes y neutras por lo que respecta a la imagen (Goffman 1967 [1970]), en los juicios orales. En concreto, el análisis de nuestros datos ha permitido concluir que la valorización de la imagen se relaciona, fundamentalmente, con valores rituales. Con todo, es posible identificar casos donde el refuerzo de la imagen desarrolla propiamente fines estratégicos. En lo que se refiere a la amenaza a la imagen, seguimos la propuesta de Archer (2008), que distingue entre amenaza a la imagen y descortesía. Así, en los juicios orales podremos hablar de descortesía cuando una amenaza a la imagen suponga, además de un potencial daño a la imagen de algún participante, una transgresión de lo esperable en el género y la situación comunicativa concreta.
En relación con las actividades de imagen, se planteó un tercer objetivo relacionado con el estudio de una de sus manifestaciones discursivas, la atenuación. Para nuestro estudio partimos de que la atenuación debe ser entendida como una estrategia pragmática destinada no solo a proteger la imagen sino a facilitar la negociación y el acuerdo. La manera en que se concretan las funciones de la atenuación en nuestro corpus refuerzan esta idea, puesto que van desde una preocupación por la imagen en su dimensión más social (como sucede en los casos de autocorrección o mediación entre las partes) hasta usos retórico-argumentativos donde la imagen se sitúa en un segundo plano (esto sucede, por ejemplo, cuando la atenuación se emplea para la creación de un discurso objetivo).
Finalmente, el cuarto objetivo se ha concretado en estudiar uno de los mecanismos que más frecuentemente se asocia a la atenuación, la impersonalidad, en el contexto de los juicios orales. Los datos muestran una tendencia a emplear la impersonalidad con valor atenuante para proteger al propio hablante y que se acepten sus ideas, y en menor medida, para prevenir un conflicto. No encontramos casos en el corpus donde la impersonalidad se relacionara con la función reparación de la amenaza o el conflicto.
A modo de conclusión, este estudio pone de manifiesto que, por lo que respecta a las actividades de imagen y, más concretamente, a la descortesía, es preciso replantearse la equiparación que se ha hecho hasta ahora entre ‘amenaza a la imagen’ y ‘descortesía’, ya que en géneros como los juicios orales se demuestra que la relación entre estas dos actividades de imagen no es equivalente. En lo que se refiere a la atenuación, partir de un género transaccional y marcadamente argumentativo ha evidenciado la necesidad de entender la atenuación como una estrategia pragmática cuya motivación no siempre parte del cuidado de las imágenes, sino que también puede relacionarse con la voluntad de convencer o prevenir un conflicto. Finalmente, por lo que respecta a los mecanismos de atenuación, la impersonalidad se ha revelado como un recurso donde la ocultación del agente se relaciona, fundamentalmente, con la autoprotección o autoimagen.

In this article, I focus on the ways advertising language has helped precipitate the idea of corporate personhood, and how corporate 10.1353/bio.2014.0013personality has come to supplant human personality in particular aspects of U.S. culture. Corporations use advertising to create an impersonal persona to convince people they have a relationship with the things (products) they buy. Drawing on Sharon Cameron’s work regarding impersonality in a somewhat different context, I argue that the mechanisms of advertising, which simulate and manipulate human emotions and relations, are intertwined with the creation of corporate personhood and corporate biography. While noting that the concept is fluid, Cameron proposes that “representations of the impersonal suspend, eclipse and even destroy the idea of the person as such, who is not treated as a social, political or individual entity” (ix). In addition to the “nonhuman” attributes Cameron identifies with the impersonal, I would add, in the context of corporate personhood, the mechanical, generic, and parasitic: that is, impersonal systems function as simulacra of the personal and siphon personal qualities from people or imitate human processes (x). Advertising, the corporate speech I depict as impersonal and depersonalizing, provides a primary register for creating corporate “autobiographies,” which I define as the networks of representation that reify corporations as coherent and personalized entities, rather than treat them as legal fabrications. As one would expect in a zero-sum game, these issues related to advertising, language, and corporations are intimately connected—one can’t apprehend the corporate person separately from the corporate language of advertising. I argue that, though it is mediated, advertising is the most (quasi-)autobiographical utterance a corporation can make; most biographical representations of a “corporation” embody and ratify it as a coherent entity.

En una trilogía que comienza en 2007 con la publicación de Historia del llanto, continúa con Historia del pelo (2010) y culmina con Historia del dinero (2013), Alan Pauls aborda la violencia de los años setenta a partir de la configuración de una mirada que produce una inflexión destacada en los debates contemporáneos sobre la memoria de la última dictadura militar en Argentina. En lugar de focalizarse en las figuras de la víctima del poder estatal, el militante de organizaciones armadas o el agente de fuerzas de represión –posiciones ya abundantemente tematizadas por la literatura de la últimas décadas–, este ciclo de novelas se orienta a indagar los recorridos vitales de personajes anónimos que guardan una relación desviada, indirecta con la violencia setentista, vínculo mediado por las experiencias a las que se hace referencia en cada título. La presente ponencia pretende argumentar que estos textos buscan desarticular algunos de los lugares comunes de los discursos sobre el pasado reciente para examinar otras potencialidades de la memoria, otros interrogantes posibles que se dirijan no tanto a la elucidación de la naturaleza y el funcionamiento  del poder desaparecedor, sino más bien hacia las razones de la derrota de las militancias armadas, el tipo de construcción subjetiva que estas organizaciones impusieron, la incomodidad o el desajuste entre tales ideales revolucionarios y los sujetos que debían encarnarlos. Frente a una sensibilidad epocal que exigió un compromiso total de sus héroes y condenó sin atenuantes a quienes consideró traidores, las novelas de Pauls se dedican a escenificar trayectorias de sujetos errantes, signados por la no pertenencia antes que por la adhesión incondicionada a un dogma. Con un tono irreverente que recurre al absurdo y las hipérboles, Pauls construye un lenguaje para narrar la década que apunta hacia un trabajo con el material sensible a través de una expansión del instante y una atención a lo imperceptible que permiten registrar las fuerzas impersonales que recorren todo proceso de subjetivación.

It is usually assumed that agreement with numeral phrases in Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian depends on a simple grammatical rule stating that numeral phrases ≥ 5 receive grammatical (also: morphological, impersonal, default) agreement (that is, in the third person singular neuter). Based on empirical data, the paper argues that this is not always the case, but that semantic and pragmatic factors play a role in agreement resolution as well.

Resumen: En este trabajo se presenta una secuencia didáctica destinada a trabajar los mecanismos de impersonalidad en el aula de E/LE. Esta secuencia se organiza en torno a 4 sesiones de preparación más una sesión de evaluación donde se desarrolla la tarea final. Estas sesiones tienen una duración de 50 minutos.
La tarea final consiste en una breve presentación oral formal (2-3 minutos) donde los alumnos deben emplear los mecanismos de impersonalidad aprendidos adaptándolos a la situación comunicativa.
Esta secuencia didáctica ha sido diseñada para estudiantes universitarios angloparlantes de nivel B2-C1. Los principales objetivos que se pretenden alcanzar son: dar a conocer los principales mecanismos de impersonalidad, asociar su uso al registro correspondiente y reconocer los valores pragmáticos que se derivan del uso.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present a didactic sequence centered in the study of impersonality in the class of Spanish as a foreign language. This sequence contains 4 training sessions and one final session of evaluation. In this last session the final task is developed. The final task consists in a brief oral formal presentation (2-3 minutes). During the presentation, the students are supposed to use impersonality devices according to the communicative situation.
This didactic sequence has been designed for anglospeakers university students, level B2-C1. The main goals we pretend to achieve are: to introduce the main impersonality devices, to link the use of these devices to the proper register and to recognize the pragmatic values associated.

RESUMEN
La Red social Facebook se ha convertido en una herramienta de comunicación entre millones de usuarios de todo el mundo. El presente estudio se realizó para conocer cuáles son las características del discurso de los estatus, elemento de la plataforma que se utiliza para dar a conocer cuál es el sentir o pensar del usuario en un determinado momento y esto determina cómo los demás usuarios lo percibirán. Se analizó el discurso del estatus de 281 perfiles de usuarios con una edad promedio de alrededor de 20 años. Las temáticas de expresión identificadas en los estatus manifiestan una impersonalidad al contener en su mayoría ideas relacionadas con temas ajenos a situaciones, sentimientos, e ideas personales o propias de los usuarios; los estatus en general contienen frases hechas o célebres, palabras aisladas, citas de libros, canciones, y películas. A pesar de la impersonalidad detectada, la mayoría de los usuarios recibieron manifestaciones de apoyo o empatía a sus estatus, se infiere que las interacciones y el discurso en esta Red social mantienen una frecuente interacción entre los usuarios, pero de manera superficial y en cierta forma muy poco personal.

ABSTRACT
The social network Facebook has become a communication tool for millions of users worldwide, the present study was realized in order to know the characteristics of the discourse of the statuses, that element of this platform is used to present the users’ way of thinking at a given moment and this dictates how the other users will perceive each other, that this, along with the profile picture, those are the two main presentation elements. We analyzed the status discourse of 281 user profiles with an average age of 20 years. The different themes identified in these statuses manifest certain impersonality by containing in their majority ideas related with non-personal situations, feelings, and personal issues of the users; the statuses, in general, contain phrases, quotes, single words, book quotes, songs and movies. Despite the detected impersonality, most of the users received manifestations of support or empathy for their statuses, it is implied that the interaction and discourse in this social network maintains a frequent interaction between users, but superficially and in way, distant.

Many critics see Billy Budd's concluding ballad, "Billy in the Darbies," as a rebuttal of the novel's penultimate chapter, a naval chronicle that depicts Billy as a criminal. Such readings reinforce the view that Melville's works valorize democratic collectives over top-down tyranny. This essay argues that the poem mirrors the chronicle's counterrevolutionary function, implying a more nuanced understanding, on Melville's part, of the risks of popular sovereignty. First, the essay takes up Sharon Cameron's claim that the poem is a "radical" dramatization of Billy's "impersonality" to demonstrate instead that this putative radicalism echoes the conservatism of "testament of acceptance" readings of the story, which justify Captain Vere's authority by obscuring the all-too-personal details of Billy's hanging. Next, the essay turns to a discussion of Thomas Hobbes and his notion that a condemned man has a right to resist his executioners. Even in the Hobbesian world of the Navy's benevolent autocracy, Billy's execution would raise the specter of legitimate revolt—a threat dispelled in the ballad by Billy's acquiescence to his fate. By obscuring the role of death in politics, the ballad effects the death of politics, neutralizing the crew's revolutionary potential and preventing critics from facing up to Melville's account of democracy's inescapable contingency.

This essay demonstrates the centrality of impersonal intimacy to Virginia Woolf's modernist poetics. Unlike the major forms of intimacy—marriage, friendship, and family—"minor" intimacies that Woolf attends to generate a sense of significant relation with a proximate other without the backing of intersubjectivity or of established social form. This article engages with minor intimacy as an alternative to intimacy's—and realism's—given forms, in The Voyage Out (1915), "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown," and "An Unwritten Novel." Drawing on contemporary critiques of intimacy by Lauren Berlant and Leo Bersani, I argue that sociality in Woolf's writing is an unhealed scar, a problem of subject-world relation that doesn't go away, but which stimulates her formal inventiveness. By registering impersonal affective transmission through innovative literary form, Woolf frees her narratives to propose alternative modes of relation.

This paper aims to expose the relevance of an impersonal element in the philosophical works of Georges Canguilhem before The Normal and the
Pathological. In The Normal and Pathological and in other major writings, the impersonal element is given by the “normativity” of living beings. In the works from the 1920s and 1930s we can find the origins of this “impersonal element” and the political meaning Canguilhem has given to it. In particular this paper analyses some relevant texts from the young work of Canguilhem, concerning the theory of values, the theory of justice and the opposition between mechanicistic and organicistic visions
of society and a particular relevance will be given to the 1935s pamphlet titled Le fascisme et les paysans. These selected writings will provide a new account about the development from a philosophy of values to the philosophy of normativity and will give us a new awareness about the role of the political experience of the young Author.

Reviewed: http://www.losguardo.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/2017-23-Recensione-Molinar-Min-Piatti.pdf

This paper aims at investigating Virginia Woolf's stance on impersonality in literature in relation to the famous " continual extinction of personality " expressed by T. S. Eliot in " Tradition and the Individual Talent. " His reaction against the romantic stereotype of the hypertrophic self was not an entire novelty: the need for an eclipse of the authorial agency on the literary text had already been voiced by Gustave Flaubert, and, perhaps more paradoxically, by John Keats. Woolf's position in this literary dispute is significant, since she rather openly refused to endorse Eliot's authorial ostracism, proposing an alternative which followed the principle of " saturation, " implying a bulimic inclusion, rather than a careful selection. This paper shows that it was in her nonfiction that Woolf first articulated a critical reaction to impersonality, developing the concept of " presence, " which lies at the core of her essayistic ideal, in " The Modern Essay. " In addition to that, the statement of a much needed authorial aura in the literary text underlies Woolf's overwhelming urge for life writing, both in fiction and nonfiction. The genesis of this idea, rooted in ancient Greek literature and most importantly in Montaigne's essayistic self-portraiture, firmly positions Woolf among the Western expressivist cultural tradition.