Oxford University Press's Blog, page 145

English “brand” and the etymology of “sword”: the denouement

With this post behind me, I’ll finally be able to beat my sword into a workable plowshare. Today, the immediate theme is the history of the word brand and its cognates, but it is also a springboard to an important conclusion. This is what we find in our texts about the first noun in the title. Old Engl. brand, also spelled as brond (a ~ o is a typical variation before n), meant “fire, flame” and “sword, weapon.” The sense “sword” was rare, but the Beowulf poet knew it (in the poem, brond is a synonym of beado-mēce “war sword” (mēce will be familiar to those who have read the post for May 27, 2020). Therefore, no compelling reason exists to believe that we are dealing with a borrowing of Old Norse brandr. In Old Norse, brandr meant “brand, a charred piece of wood; hearth” and “sword.” There was one more sense, to which we’ll return later. In modern English poetry, brand “sword” occurs too, but there it is a deliberate archaism.

The origin of brand “fire” (the word’s basic sense) is transparent. The Old Germanic form of burn was brennan. It meant “to burn,” as in wood burns (here burn is intransitive). For the transitive meaning, as in to burn wood, a related verb existed. As time went on, the two verbs began to sound so similar that eventually they merged. The same process happened in German (brennen). In brennan, r precedes the vowel, whereas in burn, it follows it (the spelling with u is late). This change, a kind of phonetic leapfrog called metathesis, is common, especially when r is involved. The old form can be guessed from the noun brent–goose, that is, “burnt goose”; the name probably refers to the bird’s variegated plumage.

A branta, a bird with a burning etymology. Image: Kaww by Michael. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.

The verb brennan was strong, that is, it changed its root vowel by ablaut, the way rise ~ rose, bind ~ bound, speak ~ spoke, run ~ ran, shake ~ shook, and many others do today. Its past singular form was bran-. From the same root the noun bran-d was formed with the help of the suffix d (or, to cite its archaic shape, ð, which denotes the sound as in Modern Engl. the).

What substances burn? Wood does, and bones do: consider bonfire, from bone-fire. But English also has burn “stream, brook” (hence the family name Burns), and water quells fire! A homonym? Opinions differ. German Brunnen ~ Born “a well” has the same root, and so does German Brunst “rut, heat” (said about animals). Heat is certainly connected with burning, and I see nothing wrong in the old idea that words like Brunnen and Engl. burn “stream” initially referred to a spring, source, or fountain, where water springs with great force. Especially typical is German Brandung “surf, breakers”; it has the same root. Water and fire may form strange, seemingly unnatural alliances. The form from which Engl. seethe developed meant “to boil,” and today we still seethe in anger, but the related Old Engl. noun sēaþ meant “lake, pond” (þ had the value of th in Modern Engl. three). The old past participle of seethe can still be detected in sodden, but it means “saturated with liquid”! A raging fire and a violent torrent arouse similar associations: they are violent, they ravage and, metaphorically speaking, burn.

Gushing water quells fire. Image by Mark Cross. CC by 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Where does brand(r) “sword” come in? The regular readers of this blog will remember that I often refer to Jacob Grimm’s principle: “While dealing with old languages, homonyms should be, wherever possible, reduced to the same etymon.” What follows is not my idea, but I am happy to embrace it. Brand(r) “sword” must have received its name from the way it flashed in wielding (not just in the light), swinging, brandishing. Brandish has been used above not for the sake of a pun. Though the verb reached English from French, the Romance root must be of Germanic origin. It is not for nothing that swords in Germanic poetry are constantly described as shining, blazing, and flashing, and there must be good reason the motif of a flaming sword occurs in the oral tradition of almost the whole world. We remember the flaming sword that was placed at the gate of Paradise after the banishment of Adam and Eve and the sword of the Old Scandinavian giant Surtr, who in the last battle (Ragnarök) burned the whole world. The distance between the concepts of gleaming (flashing) and burning is easy to cross.

But there is one more brandr! It denotes beautifully painted planks on the Viking ship’s prow or over the door of a living house. The only attempt to connect it with the other nouns, examined above (allegedly, from the sense “a burning stock” or simply “stock”), does not carry conviction, but it is not silly. Do boards (planks) have anything to do with swords? They do! Reread the post for May 27, referred to above. Do you remember Dutch zwaard “sword” and (!) “leeboard of a ship” and Hans Sperber’s much ridiculed idea that the original sword had the form of a smooth board? The proximity of Latin sorbus “service tree” led him astray, and he suggested that some of the ancient swords had been made of wood. I wrote that archaeology does not confirm this idea, and indeed, wood neither flashes nor gleams, but, in anticipation of this post, I defended Sperber’s reference to smoothness and equated smoothness with shining. In light of Dutch zwaard, the reference to “board, plank” can be easily reconciled with the reference to “sword.” Last time, I forgot to mention Frisian swurd “sword; lee board.” Whether the Frisian sense is a borrowing from Dutch or the other way around is immaterial. The influence on both from Old Norse is highly improbable, for in Old Icelandic, only brandr, but not sverð, had both meanings.

A violent stream suggests the idea of passion and burning. Public domain via Public Domain Pictures.This is one of many flaming swords. Giant with the Flaming Sword by John Charles Dollman. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Latin ferrum “sword” got its name from the material of which it was made (iron). Another “prompt” was, evidently, smoothness, sheen, polished (gleaming) surface. With brandr as part in the charade, everything falls into place. Swer-ð and bran-d (r is an ending) have the same structure: a root and a well-known suffix, which, for example, also occurs in wor-d (the root is related to verb-um). Both acquired their meaning for the same reason. But there is a difference. The meaning of the root of brand– is known, but what is swer-? Viktor Levitsky, also mentioned two weeks ago, compared sword ~ sward, and German Schwert ~ Schwarte. Schwarte means “bacon rind, crust.” The etymological identity of Engl. sward and German Schwarte is obvious, but Levitsky ascribed the meaning “rough” to its root and traced it to the idea of cutting; hence, he concluded, sword had once meant “a cutting weapon.” His parallels (from “cut” to “rough”) are fine, but the main thing about the sword’s surface, as discussed here, is its smoothness, the only common distinctive feature of a blade and any polished or even surface, such as a sward, among many others.

The ultimate etymology of sword remains undiscovered, but at least we know how that Germanic weapon got its name. It gleamed, it shone, because the steel was smooth, and so did brand. As often in etymology, what looks like an insoluble riddle in some word can be solved with the help of a more transparent synonym. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet compared the semantic history of brand– and swerð-, so that comments will be especially welcome.

Feature image credit: Thanksgiving Bonfire by Bart Everson. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.

The post English “brand” and the etymology of “sword”: the denouement appeared first on OUPblog.

Black studies for everyone

It is a sad commentary on the state of education in this society that educators hesitate to include a subject in the curriculum because students want to learn about it.

—Armstead Robinson

In 1968, Yale University hosted the Black Studies in the University symposium. A product of the student activism of Yale’s Black Student Alliance, the symposium would be important for the foundation of what is now Yale’s Department of African American Studies. One of the symposium’s 16 participants was Armstead Robinson, a founding student member of the Black Student Alliance and co-editor of the book, Black Studies in the University: A Symposium. In the midst of the uprisings throughout the United States (civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, the women’s movement, etc.), Robinson’s goal was to place the university in the service of black liberation, which for him meant a university concerned with the needs of the black community. For Robinson, universities like Yale shrouded themselves in a cloak of “professionalism,” which often equated to white & Western knowledge frames. But Robinson argued that, like society, the system of higher education was on trial, and one thing was certain: “Trouble in schools will continue and increase” if black Studies was left off the agenda. Robinson would go on shape the legacy of Black Studies at the University of Virginia, founding the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies in 1981.

We are over 50 years away from Robinson’s statement, but the “liberation” that he associated with Black Studies remains as important today as ever. The racial violence that prematurely ended the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many more shows the necessity of bringing together critical knowledge & liberatory political practice, that which Robinson called Black Studies. And like Robinson, I suggest that we draw inspiration from the uprisings of the current moment to call for black liberation at the university level; building off the works of Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, along with the abolitionist university studies work, we should demand more from academic institutions. Put more bluntly, like the protests in the past, today’s protests can inspire us toward a trans/national establishment of Black Studies at all universities. By establishment, I do not mean adding another line to the list of diversity programs that many schools are promoting. I mean the material and epistemological backing (departmentalization, center-formation, and programization) of Black Studies to the point that it becomes as commonplace as our Mathematics Departments.

In 2000, Black Studies and cultural studies scholar bell hooks released Feminism is for Everybody. In it, she argued that the project of feminism was often popularly perceived by men as a project solely by and for “man-hating” women. But hooks counters: the institutionality of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia ensured that people of all backgrounds could enact oppression, and feminism was one mode of introducing alternative politics for all. As such, she produced a book that was designed to show us how sexism harmed all of us, and to liberate some people would necessarily liberate all. For hooks, this was a project that included and exceeded the university.

What hooks suggested 20 years ago was that liberation struck at the heart of epistemology, both within and outside the university. Likewise, Black Studies should be a leading mission of universities going forward, even as it exceeds the university, as we see on our streets right now. To some extent, the protests are not about Black Studies in the university, as universities have traditionally negated calls for any form of change with the conservative goal of equilibrium.

Yet, the protests are about Black Studies because they materialize a central critique made in Black Studies: scholars like Sylvia Wynter,Hortense Spillers, and C.L.R. Jameshave all noted that blackness is a movement against the grain of modern, Western ontoepistemological investments in the replication of one pure being—so often overrepresented as white, male, heterosexual, cis-gender, able-bodied, and wealthy.  In other words, Black Studies is not the study of race, per se (or rather, only race); it is the study of the ways that, despite the colonial and slavery frameworks that have pronounced some of us as dead on arrival, black people have expressed life not easily categorizable by the frameworks of Western humanness. In many ways, then, Black Studies exceeds black people, to consider the overlapping and contradicting ways in which people of all races have scratched out some semblance of life (and created solidarities) within/against/between Western neocolonial-capitalistic projects. Black Studies provides one framework to think the uprisings we now see worldwide. Indeed, Black Studies is for and about everybody.

On the streets of Richmond, Virginia, the heart of the former Confederate States of America, I see the continued importance of Robinson’s liberation. Here, Black Study/ies exceeds the university, calling for a transformation of knowledge and power. As per Robin Kelley’s definition, Black Study is happening on Monument Avenue in Richmond right now, with or without degrees in hand. Such study, between protesters, between pedestrians who stop and talk to those protesters, between those driving by protesters to pass out food and to honk support from their vehicles in the midst of a global pandemic, is why the formalization and support of Black Studies throughout higher education should not be controversial.

If universities and colleges throughout the country can release statements in support of the protesters, they also should be materially invested in the continuance (in some cases, the establishment) of Black Studies on their campuses. To do so is not to focus on one race of people, but to provide a necessary rethinking of the project of Western knowledge itself—what Ronald Judy called (dis)forming the canon. The point, then, is that Black Studies is for everybody. The question is: how long will it take for higher education to catch up to such a realization?

Featured Image Credit: by Archives Foundation via Flickr

The post Black studies for everyone appeared first on OUPblog.

What literature can teach us about living with illness

The recent interest in the epidemics of the last century coincides with growing media attention to the emotional ramifications of living with mass death and disease. COVID-19 has wrought an extended encounter with acute powerlessness and human frailty—a confrontation with mortality that is perhaps especially unmooring for those of us who live privileged lives. We have reached to early twentieth-century literature for insights on coping with this existential trauma—to works by Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann. But even writing that does not dwell on illness also has something to teach us.

For literary critic I. A. Richards and novelists Willa Cather, Jessie Fauset, and Edith Wharton, the difficulty of abiding with the ailing body is the point. These authors express a self-conscious skepticism about what we learn from being sick and highlight how readily we embrace the advantages of wellness, even when we judge ourselves harshly for doing so.

These renderings of mixed feelings exemplify modern sentimentalism, a critical, often ironic, relation to one’s own enduring sentimentality. Typically associated with nineteenth-century white women writers, sentimentalism emphasizes feeling as a primary source of knowledge, meaning, and interpersonal connection. Twentieth-century female novelists like Cather, Fauset, and Wharton reinvent sentimentalism in keeping with evolving models of femininity. Together, these writers’ snapshots of illness capture the ambivalence inspired by physical vulnerability  and offer some lessons in how psychic strategies for confronting disease at once protect and restrict our senses of self.

The first lesson is that illness is the rule that proves our vulnerability, though we might wish it was the exception. It’s hard to imagine Richards sobbing over a novel in his sickbed, but that’s his prime example of emotional susceptibility in Practical Criticism. “I reluctantly recall that the last time I had influenza a very stupid novel filled my eyes with tears again and again until I could not see the pages. Influenza is thought by many to be a disorder of the autonomic nervous system, and if this be so, there would be nothing surprising in this effect.” This anecdote is a rare personal disclosure in a volume that aspires to rigorous empiricism. Even at the level of the sentence, Richards shifts from impassioned subjectivity (“very stupid novel”) to impersonal clinicism (“disorder of the autonomic nervous system”). Richards’s “reluctance” to claim the “sentimental . . . effects of illness” engenders a doubly-distanced interpretation: The tears are a symptom of biological infirmity, not of psychological weakness. As if the first meaning was somehow more reassuring than the second!

The second lesson is that illness can be instructive, even in its self-alienation and disorientation. Cather’s The Song of the Lark opens with the young, white female protagonist in the throes of pneumonia. “Thea had been moaning with every breath since the doctor came back, but she did not know it. She did not realize that she was suffering pain. When she was conscious at all, she seemed to be separated from her body; to be perched on top of the piano, or on the hanging lamp, watching the doctor sew her up. It was perplexing and unsatisfactory, like dreaming. She wished she could waken up and see what was going on.” Cather here rejects sentimental tropes of illness as enabling sympathetic identification (e.g., Little Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin). Instead, she underscores how difficult it is to identify with one’s own experience of illness. Yet Thea’s enigmatic distance from everyone, including herself, persists long after her feverish dissociation abates – and has valuable consequences . Her capacity for detached self-witness fuels her creative development and enables her success as an international opera star.

The third modern sentimental lesson is that it’s hard to stay alive to others’ pain. En route to Chicago to launch her music career, Thea crosses paths with a sick young woman “a little older than her,” travelling West “for her lungs.” Thea sits down near the young woman to avoid “hurting her feelings,” but the artist’s thoughts quickly return to her own circumstances. Feeling “the full, powerful pulsation” in her chest, she “smiled—though she was ashamed of it—with the natural contempt of strength for weakness.” Thea doesn’t look great, but she’s human. Cather’s point, I think, is that we have a tendency to deny our own mortality. This defense mechanism allows us to keep moving through the world, even as it can undermine intimate connection.

The fourth lesson is that psychological suffering can be more isolating than physical illness. These painful realities uniquely affect people from marginalized communities. In Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun: A Novel Without A Moral, the black-passing-as-white protagonist contrasts her childhood experience of getting the mumps to the psychic anguish wrought by American racism. Angela’s memory of the “inglorious disease” involves profound care and community, despite the financial impossibility of hiring a doctor. “She was the object of anxious solicitude for the whole house.” But now, looked after by a white neighbor, Angela fears that care would not extend across the color-line. The “agony” and “anguish” of a black woman, the “sickness of the soul” caused by US racism, is not “understood” or “shared” outside of her community. She envies “people possessed of a blind religious faith” and contemplates suicide. Eventually, however, she decides to get on with life, “not because she felt like it,” but because she recognizes that staying in bed won’t help matters.

The fifth lesson is that we shouldn’t be afraid of pain. In Edith Wharton’s The Gods Arrive , a grandmotherly character imparts deathbed wisdom: “Maybe we haven’t made enough of pain—been too afraid of it. Don’t be afraid of it.” This line encapsulates Wharton’s career-long interest in modernity’s problematic attempts to obviate human suffering. From drugs and dancing to science and self-care, Wharton suggests that cultural innovations are often driven by the short-sighted desire to find a panacea for the human condition. To the extent that more promising, sustainable results exist in Wharton’s novels, these alternatives arise from more realistic efforts, underwritten by worldly acceptance.

The final lesson is that melancholic uncertainty can reflect psychic wisdom, even psychic health. In Wharton’s Twilight Sleep, Nona Wyant is at once the novel’s most grounded, most thoughtful, most melancholic, and most consciously uncertain person. Her mother flies from rest cure to spiritual healer. Her sister-in-law undergoes the novel’s titular childbirth anesthetic so “that nothing should ‘hurt’ her.” Her father descends into alcoholism. And so forth. Nona, meanwhile, finds “the business of living … a tortured tangle.” When she ends up shot in the arm, as the first responder to a family crisis, the young insomniac finds her father’s physical proximity her only fleeting “comfort, … as if the living warmth he imparted were something they shared indissolubly.”

We might wish for more comprehensive solutions, particularly in our contexts of physical distancing and social isolation. As early twentieth-century writers remind us, the struggles of a century ago are also our own.

Featured image from the cover of Modern Sentimentalism by Lisa Mendelman.

The post What literature can teach us about living with illness appeared first on OUPblog.

Eat your oats

Old Fashioned, quick, instant and steel cut are all examples of oat varieties. Is one type of oat more nutritious than the other? No. All varieties of oats provide similar amounts of nutrients, calories, and fiber; a nutrient that is chronically underconsumed in the United States. Oats are an example of a whole-grain and full of key nutrients required in our diets daily, such as thiamin, phosphorous, magnesium and a soluble fiber called beta-glucan.

A half cup serving of old-fashioned oats provides about four grams of fiber and including just one serving of oats into your diet daily, can help close the fiber gap while providing important health benefits.  To provide a reference point, adult women under the age of 50, require 25 grams of fiber daily, whereas men under the age of 50 require 38 grams of fiber daily.

Oats are also naturally gluten-free and maybe suitable for those who suffer from gastrointestinal conditions such as celiac disease.  However, it is important to consider where oats are manufactured since they may come in cross-contact with other gluten-containing grains. In this case, check the nutrition label and product packaging and look for key phrases such as gluten-free. Several brands now exist on the market that ensure their product is gluten-free.

Clients often ask why oats should be included in their diet. Besides being a versatile food that can be used beyond breakfast, the health benefits of oats are well documented throughout scientific literature. One of the first established health benefits of oats is for heart health. Scientific evidence supports the role of oats in lowering cholesterol, a known risk factor for heart disease. This benefit of oats is due to beta-glucan.  Beta-glucan helps to bind a cholesterol containing substance called bile and then gets rid of it before it reaches the bloodstream.

Studies also report that oatmeal may help to promote satiety; the feeling of fullness after a meal, which prevents eating in between meals. This is a useful technique for weight management and obesity in general.  Finally, emerging science continues to investigate other benefits of oats for blood pressure, blood glucose management, optimal release of energy and digestive health.  For example, beta-glucan is a prebiotic dietary fiber that can have a range of benefits for digestive health.

Finally the essential nutrients that oats contain are unique in their composition due to compounds that contain antioxidant activity and have been shown to provide additional protection against heart disease, skin inflammation, and colon cancer . 

Image: Oats, CC0 via Unsplash

The post Eat your oats appeared first on OUPblog.

Six French comedies you should see

Many of the top box office hits in France are little known in the United States and most have been comedies. While some of these have been remade by Hollywood (think of The Birdcage in 1996, Dinner for Schmucks in 2010, or The Upside in 2017), rarely are the remakes as good as the originals. Nor do the English-language versions capture the unique flavors of “la douce France.”

Watching a French comedy allows us to immerse ourselves in the cultural landscapes of a people who have lived through centuries of European history and thought. It gives us a chance to appreciate what makes gallic humor so French and to understand why much of it is universal. Whether or not we need subtitles to savor the subtleties of dialogue, watching a French comedy brings us closer to the people on the screen and in the audience. We forget divisive borders and laugh together.

The following six titles typify the French tradition of filmed humor. They offer some of the most celebrated moments –and the funniest—in the comic repertoire. Being French, they also illustrate how the national esprit finds philosophy and politics in visual gags and verbal wit alike.

1. The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1885)

Take a quick look at The Sprinkler Sprinkled (L’arroseur arrosé), arguably the first comedy in film history. Made by the Lumière brothers at the dawn of cinema, it shows a mustached gardener watering his plants while a mischievous boy sneaks up from behind and steps on the hose. When the flow stops and the gardener inspects the nozzle, the boy raises his foot and the poor man gets a face full of water. The scene ends with the perpetrator captured and duly sprinkled in return. The whole gag takes less than a minute, shot with a continuous run of the camera: a succinct lesson in how to tell a joke on film. No translation required.

2. Freedom for Us (1931)

As silent films grew longer and matured, René Clair became the genre’s leading pioneer. Clair filmed a number of popular stage farces before venturing into sound, but his most creative work remained more visual than verbal. You can see this in his masterpiece, Freedom for Us (À nous la liberté). Although primarily a comedy, a musical comedy at that, Clair’s film offers an acerbic critique of mechanized labor. One scene shows workers filing into a factory like automatons. They punch in at enormous time clocks and take their places on a long assembly line, each worker adding a screw or a bolt to the conveyor belt of products. The depressing silence of this scene turns into hilarious confusion when a lady’s handkerchief upsets the regimen. Preoccupied with the handkerchief, one worker misses a step, another follows suit, and the whole line tumbles into chaos like a stack of dominos. Anyone who has seen Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) will notice parallels to Freedom for Us, not only in the way both directors represent modernity as a conveyor belt, but also in the way their visual gags convey their themes. Comedy is an antidote to exploitation, a way to liberate the human spirit from oppression.

3. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

The most well-known heir to this tradition of French luddite humor is Jacques Tati, who carried the visual humor of silent films well into the 1970s. Tati’s comedies are satires, but lighter in tone than Clair’s. They’re filled with moments of slapstick that seem impromptu but are meticulously timed. In Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot), Tati plays the title character, an amiable if awkward Frenchman who follows the holiday crowd to a seaside resort. At the railroad station, a loud speaker announces the arrival of the next train. The disembodied voice is unintelligible, even to a Frenchman, but it sends the crowd rushing from one platform to another–only to miss the train’s arrival on the track that they just left. A second announcement sends them all scurrying to yet another track, where they fall over their luggage and each other trying to board. It’s another sendup of modern life and its habit of turning humans into machines. No wonder that French intellectuals turned to Henri Bergson for his theories of laughter. Bergson believed that we laugh when people behave like mindless objects, falling on banana peels or acting like robots during the daily commute. At the core of this comedy is an anxiety about free will, determinism, and the need to adapt to a changing world. Tati continued his experiments in metaphysical slapstick with films like My Uncle (Mon oncle, 1958), Play Time (1967), and Traffic (Trafic, 1971), setting his satires in department stores, glass cities, and the modern highway.

4. The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1973)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwhyS...

Not all French comedies are philosophical, of course. The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (Les aventures de Rabbi Jacob) is one long, ludicrous chase scene. Director Gérard Oury sends his protagonist, a shameless bigot named Pivert, through a series of madcap episodes that include a bubble gum factory and a Jewish wedding. Pursued by Arab terrorists and the French police, Pivert escapes only by impersonating a rabbi. He becomes an anti-Semite in Hasidic clothing. Oury, who was Jewish, underplays the moral in favor of laughs. The Jewish dance scene is simply uproarious.

5. The Visitors 1993

Sometimes the chase spans centuries as well as kilometers. Jean-Marie Poiré’s The Visitors (Les visiteurs) is a time-travel comedy that transports a medieval knight and his servant to modern day France. The comic collision of old and new begins when the medieval visitors encounter a yellow postal service truck, mistaking its dark-skinned driver for a Saracen. They draw their weapons and attack the van as if it were the devil’s chariot. Later, introduced to a contemporary bathroom, they mistake the toilet for a magic fountain and pour their host’s entire supply of Channel No. 5 perfume into the bathtub, which they enter fully clothed. While Poiré’s comedy is often silly and derivative—a galloping romp through the clichés of slapstick, burlesque, and one-liners—it is firmly rooted in national history and culture. Some viewers drew parallels between 12th-century Saracens and 21st-century Muslims as the supposed enemies of France. Others viewed the relationship between nobleman and servant as a comment on class distinctions in France.

6. Welcome to the Sticks (2008)

The Visitors set records at the box office and was followed by two sequels, yet Dany Boon’s Welcome to the Sticks (Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis) became an even greater hit. The trailer highlights the film’s comic premise: the reputation of France’s northern region as a place of freezing weather, economic decline, and boorish citizens who drink too much, eat strange foods, and speak a version of the language unintelligible to outsiders. When Phillipe is transferred to Nord-Pas-de-Calais, all these stereotypes are confirmed. As soon as Phillipe arrives, dressed for the arctic, it starts to pour. The first man he meets speaks French like a drowned duck. His first meal is a frightening concoction of chicory-laced coffee, spicy sausage, and smelly cheese. What makes this medley of regional clichés funny, rather than offensive, is the way Boon turns the table on his own premise.

Some theorists see this kind of comic incongruity as the fulcrum of most humor. The joke sets up one set of expectations and undercuts them with a series of reversals. Boon’s good citizens of Bergues, through their acts of outrageous caricature, hold the stereotypes perpetuated by outsiders up to ridicule. It’s a lesson we can learn from almost any comedy.

Some might say that turning tables is the essence of most humor. A typical joke sets up an expectation, then undercuts it with a surprising reversal. This comic incongruity abounds in all six films. A sprinkler gets sprinkled. An anti-Semite ends up dancing like a Rabbi. A medieval servant learns that his descendants have become lords of the manor. The good citizens of northern France, through their acts of outrageous self-caricature, hold the stereotypes perpetuated by outsiders up to ridicule. It’s a lesson we can learn from almost any comedy.

Featured image by Paul Dufour via  Unsplash

The post Six French comedies you should see appeared first on OUPblog.

The emotional toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on teenagers

A growing body of evidence supports my clinical experience that younger people, high schoolers especially, are having more psychological problems during the pandemic than adults. There are many reasons for this. Adolescents are in the developmental stage of forming a new social world away from their parents. Social needs tend to dominate their lives and yet currently this growth has come to a bit of a standstill. In addition, teenagers are not fully cognitively developed; their moods still dominate compared to the planning and attention that are controlled by the prefrontal cortex, which doesn’t fully develop until about age 25. We all need to create a new and different worldview, but adults have more history and neurological development to take the long view.

We can help support our teens in many ways. Here are some recommendations for how to communicate and foster mental health during this difficult time; many of them will benefit the entire family.

Listen.  Remember that no matter how much teens might protest, they are still dependent on their parents; the family is still the go-to support system. We need to show our teens that they can still count on us; that are we are emotionally there for them. I don’t mean a rose-colored glasses approach, but a realistic and strong view. Listen rather than trying to solve problems and try to check in often. It may be painful to hear teens’ worries because in the current situation, we are all struggling with a variety of anxieties. Communicate that although this is an extremely challenging situation, we can get through it together.

Communicate what you know as well as uncertainty. We’re are all under enormous stress. Our children can see it in us. Rather than try to avoid the sadness, it is better to communicate what you can. For example, if you know that if you get sick a relative or family friend is ready to step in, that will reassure your teens. On the other hand, if your teen wants to know when they will be able to go out in groups, you can reply that you don’t know but are monitoring the guidelines. Clarify that all this hardship is about keeping us as safe as possible.

Remember coping skills and resilience. Although teens are still developing psychologically, they may be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Under this enormous stress, however, they may overlook how they have coped during hard times in the past. You can remind them how, for example, when there was illness in the family, they read certain types of books, baked, or wrote in a journal. Many of us, in the hopes of protecting our children from pain, do not help them learn distress tolerance. Even though we are in the midst of a worldwide trauma, building on a teen’s existing strengths can help increase distress tolerance.

Pay attention.  Most of us are struggling with some level of anxiety or sadness. This is a natural response to a surreal situation. Clinical anxiety or depression is something different. If you observe panic attacks, extreme worry, or avoidance, those are some symptoms of an anxiety disorder.  Similarly, some symptoms of a major depressive episode include feeling sad or empty, feeling hopeless, experiencing changes in appetite or sleep, expressing guilt, and having suicidal thoughts. Remember, too, that in adolescents, irritability may be a more prominent symptom than sadness. Even now, you can contact your pediatrician for a referral to a mental health professional. Getting in touch with a previous psychotherapist or psychiatrist can be in enormously helpful, even if just for a “check in.” Most psychotherapists are now comfortable using teleconferencing or telephone sessions.

Don’t forget to take care of yourself. It is an axiom in mental health that if a parent is feeling psychologically healthy, so will a child.  This is an upsetting time and parenting is one of life’s most challenging (also rewarding) experiences. Try to include some time for yourself for restoration, fun or a conversation with a close friend. Reach out to family, friends, or close co-workers for specific assistance. Some of the tips suggested may not be easy or even possible for you given your economic or social situation. You may be a single parent. You may be a member of a minority group or frontline healthcare professional. If so family, religious groups, neighborhood networks, or community agencies can also provide the support that you need. Please don’t hesitate to get help; we can get through this if we all work together.

Featured Image Credit: Image by rawpixel.com via Freepik

The post The emotional toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on teenagers appeared first on OUPblog.

Why politics is so polarized, even though Americans agree on most key issues

In 1971, Jerry B. Harvey created “The Abilene Paradox” to describe a pernicious failure: mismanagement of agreement. The late professor and management consultant posited that “the inability to cope with agreement, rather than the inability to cope with conflict, is the single most pressing issue of modern organizations.”

“Getting on the bus to Abilene,” as Harvey later called it, is taking a trip with fellow passengers who willingly get on a bus headed off to somewhere none of them want to go.

The paradox occurs when people in a group each agree on an issue or action they think the others want, when in fact none actually want it. You may have experienced this when a group of friends winds up at a restaurant or bar they think the others wanted to go to when, in fact, none did. The Abilene Paradox is different from what’s known as Groupthink; in Groupthink everyone gets talked or pressured into adopting a preference. In the Abilene Paradox the common view was never a preference at all…for anyone!

For the last few decades, too many Americans have climbed aboard one of two buses headed to Abilene: a red bus and a blue bus. And, unfortunately, both buses are taking this nation to a place few passengers want to travel yet cannot find it in themselves to avoid. The coronavirus pandemic and the renewed crisis over police brutality are raising the speed limit.

Most Americans agree on most of the basic tenets of what it is to be American and disagree with the extreme views of political party bases. Liberals, or those on the blue bus, typically don’t want unrestricted abortion, full gun control, or high taxes. Conservatives, the red bus passengers, typically don’t want to endanger moms over problematic pregnancies or full, open carry of every type of weapon, or no taxes whatsoever.

However, their common middle-of-the-road preferences have been silenced as Americans have allowed themselves to board one of two buses to Abilene. The Democratic and Republican parties are composed of diverse constituencies. However, the passengers on the red bus are inclined to stereotype the blue bus as their most feared liberal boogeyman (tax-and-spend, socialists, anti-family, elitists).

Alternatively, those on the blue bus might look out their windows and see only hard-right fundamentalists, greedy capitalists, gun-toting Second Amendment advocates, or chauvinists of many stripes.

Lifting the veil of mistaken stereotyping, might it be that most of the people on those two buses agree on what matters most to their respective parties and even with those on either bus?

Progressives don’t all think we need to wear masks everywhere or deprive ourselves of making a living, and they do not all see law enforcement as an enemy. Conservatives don’t all think we need to throw all caution to the wind and go back to the good-old days of pre-COVID-19 or return to the days of Jim Crow. We suspect all Americans would agree that livelihoods must be protected, that preventing the spread of a deadly virus is a good thing, that the vast majority of law enforcement officers perform an exemplary job under difficult circumstances, and that too many African Americans are dying at the hands of authorities. Americans want a government that will find creative solutions to our problems.

Harvey noted that the road to Abilene is fueled by dark fantasies, fear, blame and recrimination. The metaphorical Abilene to which we refer is a country and government so polarized that the normal functions of government are gridlocked and where Americans who share so much mistakenly self-sort into factions that seem bent on destroying one another. And today it is a country where people are beating each other over wearing a cloth mask and some are burning their cities in rage. This is not the America our founders wanted.

The irony of the Abilene Paradox is that most Americans agree on most things, they are just too afraid or intimidated to admit it.

According to Harvey, the best way to get off the bus to Abilene is peaceful but effective confrontation in a group setting – someone needs to have the courage to say the emperor has no clothes before everyone can admit it. Most importantly, we need to talk openly about our agreements as Americans.

This takes leadership, someone with a voice and the fortitude to articulate the problem and embrace solutions that bring us together rather than continue to divide. This is a role for party leadership and the candidates in the upcoming presidential and congressional campaigns who can focus both on Americans’ shared concerns about the pandemic and peoples’ livelihoods. Otherwise, despite our political stripes, we are all on the same road to Abilene, and COVID-19 and racial politics put the pedal to the metal.

We simply need to relearn how to manage our agreements and get off the bus. We need to be the United States of America once again.

Feature image by Thomas Kelley via Unsplash.

The post Why politics is so polarized, even though Americans agree on most key issues appeared first on OUPblog.

Why research needs to be published in new and accessible formats

Technological advancements, accessibility needs, and study practices have and will continue to develop at a rapid pace. We find, use, and publish research completely differently than we did 25 years ago.

But Oxford University Press has been publishing Very Short Introductions throughout this period.  Launched in 1995, these publications offer concise introductions to a diverse range of subjects, written by experts to make challenging topics highly readable. As the series turned 25 this year, we spoke to the series’ senior commissioning editor, Latha Menon, to see how it has stood the test of time.

Here, Menon discusses the importance of condensing complicated information and important research into new, accessible, and digestible formats in order to reach a wide and diverse audience. Plus, we examine the processes behind subject selection, author working practices, and ever-developing research habits that are at the heart of the series and other important publications.

Charlotte Crouch: How has the dissemination of academic research changed over the past 25 years?

Latha Menon: The past quarter century has seen a revolution in the way research is done and how it is disseminated, driven primarily by the internet. The ease of communication and growth of powerful search engines has led to an explosion in research in many fields, with far greater and rapid international cooperation, and the dissemination of all this research increasingly through electronic journals and other online resources such as research encyclopedias, alongside traditional monographs.

These changes have also had an impact on teaching in universities and high schools. Where once courses stuck to a series of standard textbooks with little change over years, now students are increasingly given a taste of cutting-edge developments, for example by being encouraged to discuss recent articles and research papers. At the same time, there remains a little-changing core of fundamental body of knowledge, concepts, and approaches at the heart of all subjects with which all newcomers to a field need to become familiar.

CC: Why is it important to condense complicated information into shorter, digestible formats?

LM: To make sense of rapidly changing fields, or introduce an area of study by distilling out the key concepts, concise, digestible formats have become vital. With the emergence of new and often highly interdisciplinary fields, especially in science (for instance earth system science, soft matter, bioinformatics), involving disparate teams, researchers from one specialism also often find they require a rapid introduction to a less familiar field.

CC: How do you decide what will make a good topic? Could any research area be suited to this format?

LM: We have a panel that selects topics carefully. We seek to cover major areas which are subjects widely taught at university level, and also major concepts that feed into a variety of fields. Not all research topics are suitable for a full book. Many are too narrow, or little studied; while some are too diffused to work.

CC: What are some of the behind-the-scenes processes that come with publishing these books (online and print) that wouldn’t come with publishing a monograph, or journal article?

LM: To reach a wide readership, including not only students and researchers new to a field but also a substantial number of intellectually curious readers among the general public who would like a thoughtful introduction. To reach such people – intelligent, educated, but without specialist knowledge in the field – with a clear, accessible, and engaging as well as informative essay requires different skills and writing style from the often rigid and formulaic structures employed in research writing. Therefore, in addition to external peer review to assess academic rigour, these publication  scripts are subject to considerable editorial assessment and input. They have to have a good structure, a clear and fluent narrative, and the right level and tone to suit the series. So authors can expect the proverbial red ink as needed, and strict editorial control on acceptance, based on writing quality as well as academic standard. It’s a rather different experience to writing a journal article or monograph!

CC: Are there any difficulties that come with covering a topic within a short extent?

LM: Navigating what is usually a vast topic within an extended essay of some 35,000 words that is at once fresh, interesting, and authoritative is the biggest challenge. That is why we select authors with a deep and wide understanding of the shape, scope, and frontiers of a subject, and able to articulate this knowledge in a concise and clear way. And that is also why we pay particular attention to the content outline in a proposal. Is the shape right? Is it pitched at the right level? Does it look to capture interest and take the reader through? Get the outline right and you are a significant way towards a good first draft that comes in at about the right length. It doesn’t work so well if you plan to write everything you want and then try to cut it down. You need to think in terms of the size of your space from the start. It’s the skill used by researchers in writing an abstract – but combined with the skills of a journalist.

CC: And finally, why write these over another kind of book?

LM: Writing a Very Short Introduction book is very different from writing a textbook or primer, and also different from writing a popular book. This is often the first step for those wishing to explore a subject and requires some literary and journalistic skills as well as deep knowledge of the subject. While they are generally broadly balanced treatments, there is an element of authorial voice. The series has considerable academic prestige, and selection of authors and scripts is rigorous, but writing a one of these books provides a powerful opportunity to present the shape and scope of a topic to a wide readership in an inspiring way, through print, eBook, and online formats. And unlike standalone popular books, with these books we publish new editions to maintain the content up to date.

Featured Image Credit: Oxford University Press

The post Why research needs to be published in new and accessible formats appeared first on OUPblog.

Seven ways to talk to terminal patients

Before COVID-19 arrived in our lives, chronic illness was considered the next worldwide pandemic. But COVID-19 did arrive and life as we knew it has radically changed. Healthcare workers, particularly nurses and physicians, are now having frequent palliative care (the area of end-of-life care that focuses on patient comfort) conversations although most are not trained as palliative care specialists.

The prolific use of telehealth has also placed a demand on all healthcare providers to rely on communication exchanges which can be facilitated with tools and resources from the COMFORT model.  Originally introduced in 2012 for nurses, the model is not a linear guide, an algorithm, a protocol, or a rubric for sequential implementation by only nurses; rather, it is a set of holistic principles that can be practiced by all healthcare providers during patient/family care across the entire illness journey, not just at the point of terminal care. COMFORT consists of seven basic communication principles: C—Connect, O—Options, M—Making Meaning, F—Family Caregivers, O—Openings, R—Relating, and T—Team. During the last five years, the COMFORT model has been taught to healthcare providers nationwide who integrated the curriculum and concepts into their own institutions and, through a train-the-trainer approach, delivered components of the model to more than 10,000 healthcare providers across the United States.

We share selected highlights from the COMFORT model to support palliative care communication for nurses and for all providers that are navigating acute and terminal care with patients, families, and team members during this challenging pandemic.

Connect to the patient/family story. 
Nurses have an essential role in the delivery of difficult news. Listening to patient and family concerns and capturing important information about what they value builds trust. Encouraging storytelling is one way to connect and share messages.Share options.
Patients and their caregivers are unique and doctors and nurses shouldn’t assume preferences based on patients’ appearance, ethnicity, or origin. Nurses should recognize that simply providing information does not always equal understanding. Patient and caregiver health literacy is created from interaction between providers, systems, and communities.Make meaning of suffering.
Patients, families, and colleagues can endure great suffering if they can find meaning in that suffering. Patients and families relate serious illness and end-of-life to ways in which this will affect their relationships and day-to-day living. Healing and compassionate presence involves deep listening to share emotions and respond with compassion.Recognize that family caregivers are partners.
A key role of nurses is to be adaptable and flexible to the diverse decision-making structures that exist within families. Nurses become like family when family cannot be there.Open conversations about feelings and fears and goals.
Intimate conversations that facilitate openings can profoundly and positively impact patient suffering and fear. Patients may fear discrimination and feel threatened because of their marginalized status in the U.S. (e.g., African Americans distrust the medical system because of their history of being underserved.) or due to their cultural, religious or linguistic practices and values.Relate to the uncertainty of this shared experience.
The nurse cannot know the reaction or perspective of the patient/family without first receiving and listening to it. Accept that not all patient’s or family members will be able to process news or make decisions. Truly relating to a patient and their family creates the opportunity to learn about fears associated with uncertainty.Team up with colleagues. 
Compromising and adapting are the only ways to plan in the midst of COVID-19. Being flexible with roles and responsibilities in the team environment demonstrates trust and respect for professional colleagues. It’s important for healthcare providers to let team members know what is working for them and share their feelings about the experiences with other team members. It’s also very important to share thoughts about other team member’s strengths.

Nurses must be agile to meet the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 and the effect it has upon the lives of patients and their families. Nurses find themselves having unplanned, sudden and difficult communication disclosures with patients and families and may not always feel prepared.

Adapting several of the suggested strategies from the COMFORT model can assist nurses and healthcare providers when providing comprehensive care for patients and their families.

Practicing person-centered holistic principles will support physical, spiritual, and psychological comfort that is beneficial to all during unprecedented and challenging times.

Featured Image Credit: by sabinevanerp via Pixabay 

The post Seven ways to talk to terminal patients appeared first on OUPblog.

How to foster national resilience during a crisis

Resilience means overcoming adversity by successfully adapting to negative life events, trauma, stress, or risk. At the individual level, people who are resilient draw on their own internal resources and aptitudes, and on external supports such as mutual aid networks.

Community resilience refers to cultural strengths that insulate members from external attacks. Such attacks might come in the form of natural disasters, severe economic losses, or social oppression. Researchers who are studying resilience within a socially oppressive environment are really studying not the impact of one traumatic event but the impact of a whole constellation of events. And their focus is apt to be on entire communities in their ability to bounce back from the shattering experience.

The adversity or hardship has to end for there to be resilience In a people who have lived through long-term adversity. Psychological and social qualities alone are not sufficient to lead a people into a state of well-being. The oppressive environment must change so that people can achieve their potential.

At the national level, resilience following a jolting event is characterized by more than just bouncing back to a previous state of existence. It also involves overcoming any dysfunctions in the system and working to make people less vulnerable in the future. Regarding the coronavirus pandemic, resilience would entail prevailing over the challenges and emerging out of the crisis with new laws and social policies designed to correct the flaws in the system.  Social welfare history shows us that building a resilient society generally takes a crisis of major proportions.

Crises can be exploited, however, by powerful elites for their own ends. For example, many people furthered the promotion of privatization after Hurricane Katrina. We should be wary also of the tendency to shift blame in times of major upheavals. History tells us that the Black Death of 1348 led to attacks on Jews, who were forced to flee western Europe. Following the turmoil of World War I and the Great Depression some countries in central Europe turned to fascism. Parallels today are in attacks on people of Asian descent who some blame for spread of the coronavirus. In China, people of African origin have been scapegoated.

Instead of shifting blame for a disaster, resilient nations direct their attention to painful truths that they overlooked in the past and consider ways to build a better and more protective society. Policymakers often look to precedents from history for insights. With job losses today at a level not seen since the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal can serve as a reference point.

Because of the urgency of the Great Depression, the government was able to pass legislation that moved the nation in new directions. The New Deal ushered in the passage of the Social Security Act, banking regulations, home loans, expansion of the National Park Service, and the Works Progress Administration. In so doing, it left a legacy and social welfare policies that continue to be important  today.

Given the public health and economic crises of 2020, citizens will ask questions about how to better protect people during disasters. A major concern is job loss and with it, loss of health care protections.  Some commentators are looking to Europe to see what kind of social supports governments can provide.

Counties in Western European provide comprehensive economic safety nets that include family allowances, free preschool, care for the frail elderly, lengthy vacation time, labor rights, and income for unemployed workers. And in Europe, as in most economically advanced countries, health care is viewed as a human right.

The United States, in contrast, relies on privatized insurance plans for those who can afford them and help for the poor through means-tested programs that are inadequate and highly stigmatized. When the pandemic struck, therefore, and people were in quarantine and out of work, Congress had to rush to pass emergency legislation to send stimulus payments and unemployment relief to people.

Racial, ethnic, and class inequities in American society were exacerbated in the crisis. The job loss in minority communities was disproportionately high as was the death toll. The large number of all Americans living paycheck to paycheck were in urgent need of help when they lost their jobs and had to pay themselves for medical care. The staggering death toll in nursing homes exposed the shoddy treatment provided to older people in those facilities. Similarly, the high death tolls in jails, prisons, and meatpacking plants have exposed unhealthy conditions in these places. Many have found out the hard way that the institutions they could count on for care in a crisis were faulty. The good news is that now with extensive media coverage of problems in the system, the American public has become critical of the status quo and ready for change. The Green New Deal movement, which advocates progressive social welfare and environmental protections, has gained in strength in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Sadly, it has taken the scale of a horrific pandemic to expose weaknesses in the social structure that should have been seen and addressed all along. As we emerge from the COVID-19 health crisis, and the economy begins to rebound, hopefully, the impetus for change will persist. Then we can embark on a path of the kind of economic changes that lead to resilience

Featured Image Credit: by Stanislav Kondratiev on Unsplash 

The post How to foster national resilience during a crisis appeared first on OUPblog.