Leviathan: Interdisciplinary Journal in English

Obscurantism in Academic Writing

Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen — 2023-03-23

Obscure academic writing is vague, ambiguous, jargon-filled, or otherwise difficult to interpret. Obscurantists use such writing to hide the shallowness or incoherence of their ideas. There is value in being able to see through their attempts so that one does not waste one’s time on, for example, the psychoanalytic verbiage of Jacques Lacan. Therefore, this article identifies five recognizable characteristics of obscure—and especially of obscurantist—academic writing. Specifically, obscurantists tend to (1) fail to distinguish between truistic and radical versions of their claims, (2) employ paradoxical formulations, (3) avoid giving examples of their ideas (4), overuse abstract nouns, and (5) insist on their own lucidity. The article concludes by suggesting that the deepest problem with obscure academic writing is that it insulates arguments and theories from criticism.

Cinematic Unreliability in The Father

Emma Jørgensen — 2023-03-23

How does one best portray the consequences of dementia? Dementia is a type of mental deterioration, where a person gets lost in their own mind, slowly losing grasp of time and space. In his award-winning film The Father (2020), director Florian Zeller explores this theme through his 80-year-old protagonist Anthony. With the intention of positioning the viewer in the shoes of the deeply invalidated protagonist, Zeller intentionally confuses the viewer through narrational repetition and gradually shifting settings and characters, constantly making the viewer question the progression and cohesion of the story. This video essay focuses on cinematic unreliability, analysing the film’s mise-en-scène, nonlinear plot and film techniques such as shot-size, lighting, and sound.

Video Game Aesthetics in Squid Game

Anders Jensen — 2023-03-23

The South Korean TV-show Squid Game (2021) recently became a major cultural phenomenon. In this video essay, we argue that it has been especially impactful because it draws heavily on colorful video game aesthetics and contrasts them with a bleak, hypercapitalistic South Korean reality. In that way, the show is a metaphor for modern-day escapism.

Possessor Extraction in English and Danish

Maria Dahl — 2023-03-23

Both English and Danish are Germanic languages which are said to require pied-piping of possessive phrases when they are moved, for example in questions like Whose computer do you think this is? If pied-piping is not required in such movements, an alternative way of asking the same question could be Who do you think’s computer this is? (or perhaps, for Danish readers, Hvem er dets computer? [Who is it’s computer?] might be acceptable), where the possessor who/hvem has been extracted from the possessive phrase whose computer/hvis computer, leaving the rest of the possessive DP material -’s/-s computer behind. This type of movement is called possessor extraction (PE), and Davis (2021) provides evidence for the possibility of it in colloquial English for some speakers. This article is a pilot study of Danish PE, suggesting initial generalizations and comparing these to Davis’s (2021) generalizations about English PE.

The Cherokees and the Constitution

Rebecca Lund — 2023-03-23

During the 1820s a volatile political landscape emerged in the United States, which threatened the established balance of power between the branches of the federal government. This political and constitutional unrest was exemplified in the debate regarding the Indian Removal Act (1830) and two court cases concerning the removal of the Cherokee Nation from the State of Georgia. Although the court cases were about the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation and Georgia’s jurisdiction, they revealed fundamental questions about the rights of the federal government and the individual states, and also the right of the individual branches of government. The Supreme Court’s powers were challenged by President Andrew Jackson and the Congress, but in the court rulings the Supreme Court asserted Cherokee sovereignty and its own authority as the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution by rejecting the President and Congress’ attempt to limit the Supreme Court’s power.

Musical Aptitude and the Acquisition of Pitch and Duration in L2 Vowels

Rebecca Lund — 2023-03-23

Music and language have been believed to be processed similarly in the brain. Studies have compared the processing of vowels and music, as they share spectral and temporal features such as pitch and timing. When comparing music and language skills the question arises whether music skills are inherent, measured with aptitude, or acquired, measured with experience. This article focused on musical aptitude studies. It was found that musical aptitude predicted non-native speech-sound processing better than musical experience. It is proposed that music and language skills are interconnected as greater overlaps in neural processing of music and speech were found for musicians than nonmusicians, and as individuals with no musical experience but with high L2 production skills were found to have high musical aptitude. Furthermore, spectral sensitivity was found to be the primary partial mediator of the link between musicality and non-native speech-sound processing, with temporal sensitivity having no role.

The Death of Clark Glacier

Anna Buhl — 2023-03-23

Arguably, the biggest challenge of the 21^st century is human-induced climate change. This article proposes the cultural memory of the Anthropocene as the dominant reason for our inadequate climate mitigation, whilst simultaneously arguing for the process of hoping-mourning as a possible solution. As such, this article analyzes the Anthropocene as a cultural memory, arguing for a restructuring of its milieu de mémoire to include other-than-human entities. The article finds that the hyper-separational framework of the Anthropocene limits our conceptual space on several spatiotemporal dimensions, limiting, and simplifying, our perception of time and space, excluding other-than-human entities. Furthermore, it is found that by sustaining corporeal vulnerability, mourning, and mourning rituals broaden the cultural domain, permitting other-than-human entities into our milieu de mémoire, which, through its transformative capabilities, offer new and much needed ways of imagining different futures and thus, essentially, different strategies of mitigation and adaptation.

Creaky Voice in American English: How Are American Women Who Use Creaky Voice Perceived?

Pernille Meier — 2023-03-23

Vocal fry is a voice quality that can be found in different varieties of English and is used by many different speakers. Nonetheless, it is considered an emerging female voice quality that impairs their work opportunities. The study of the perception of vocal fry has gained attention in the last few years. However, there is a lack of literature reviews comparing the speech evaluations done for vocal fry. In this article eight papers were compared and evaluated. This article not only demonstrated how important the choice of voice sample, evaluator and methodology is to the outcome of the findings but also references possible consequence the choice of an artificial vocal fry and free speech had on the perception of vocal fry in American English.

Grammatical Gender and Cognition

Otis Lilley — 2023-03-23

This study aims to answer the question "does grammatical gender have any impact or influence on thought or cognition?" by comparing results from a conducted experiment with English- and Spanish-speaking segments. The question is tied to the theory of linguistic relativity that explores the possibility of language influencing thought.