Dannon Case Study Essay

Danone, Dannon’s parent company, was one of the largest health-focused food companies in the world. Danone traced its heritage back to 1919 in Barcelona, Spain, when Isaac Carasso wanted to create yogurt with inherent health benefits. Through the years and different lines of succession, Danone continued to grow, but never lost its core vision of providing better health to people through their products. When this case was written, Danone’s global business focus was on fresh dairy (Activia yogurt), bottled water (Evian), medical nutrition, and baby nutrition. Danone viewed the United States as an emerging market for yogurt, thus Dannon’s marketing efforts needed to focus on growing U. S. yogurt consumption and expanding the category, while also growing its brand. (Marquis, p. 1) Dannon entered the US market in 1941 and by 2010 was poised to become the leader in America’s domestic yogurt sector. This was a major accomplishment for the simple fact that America’s yogurt market was practically non-existent at the time! A new product, called â€Å"Fruit at the Bottom† changed that and became an instant success. In 2007, even though Dannon had success, U. S. yogurt consumption was only 11. 8 lbs versus 62. 4 lbs in Switzerland and 42 lbs in France (Marquis, Exhibit 2) The implication of the latter statistics to Dannon was the U. S. was a high potential market for the next 5 to 10 years. (Marquis, p. 5) Dannon had maintained a strong commitment to CSR and was integrated into the company’s overall mission of â€Å"bringing health through food to as many people as possible. † Their CSR mission, however, was very internally focused and few customers knew about its activities. (Marquis, p. 1) Dannon’s CSR activities fell under the Regulatory and Corporate Affairs Department and focused around three key themes: nutrition and health, nature, and people. The case identified notable accomplishments in each of these areas, to include the U. S. Dannon Institute (nonprofit foundation dedicated to promoting excellence in the field of nutrition) with its many noteworthy educational programs. The question behind this case, as proposed by its senior director of public relations, was how Dannon’s long-standing, deeply ingrained corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts could play a role in achieving Danone’s and Dannon’s overall marketing strategy. Discussion with Key Dannon Leaders brought out the following pro’s and con’s concerning the proposed idea of communicating Dannon’s CSR efforts to its consumers: Pro Con Possible increase in marketing of Dannon’s social mission Hard to measure ROI and benefits would be mostly intangible Possible increase in marketing individual products Limited, short-term sales impact Consumption of products might increase Impact of consumption might not be immediate Potential tax incentive or government assistance to promote health programs Competitors could take advantage of hallo effect Opportunity to communicate what Dannon stands for at the product level Change in overall budget priorities and expenditures for new program Opportunity to use Danone global brand Critics could say CSR efforts were only for publicity Brand campaign would have halo effects down to Dannon’s individual products Customers could perceive effort as disingenuous. Dannon employees would feel better about the company they worked for People don’t buy products just because they like the company’s CSR stance Would help build social interests May not support business interests Message might be too complex (Pro and Con information taken from case study, pages 9 -14) To Communicate or Not to Communicate? Dannon seems to be very focused on its Return on Investment (ROI) for marketing and communication dollars spent. While the question of whether or not to communicate its CSR seems very simple, research shows this important undertaking is very complex and there is no easy cookie-cutter answer for Dannon executives. What consumers feel does not always translate to what they buy. According to a 2010 survey, more than 75 percent of consumers surveyed say that social responsibility remains important to them despite the recession. In addition, 38 percent of these respondents indicated that they would spend the same or more on products or services from socially responsible companies compared to 2009. Yet, according to the very same survey, these sentiments do not have a significant impact on favorability and purchase intent — only 13 percent of folks actually proactively seek out CSR friendly brands and purchase them. (Lester, 2010) The latter finding seems to agree with other academic research. According to another survey, CSR impacts a very small group of people, namely the affluent. This report went on to state in its conclusion, â€Å"consumers with strong social preferences (and high income) buy CSR products and consumers with weak social preferences (or low income) buy non-CSR products. (Etile & Tyessier, 2011) General â€Å"assumptions† about CSR and consumer purchases may not be telling the whole story, though. Further research indicates consumers attach more CSR importance to certain industries. For example, the food and healthcare industries had an 88 percent importance rating for CSR initiatives – two of the top three in the entire survey (the other was energy). â€Å"Drilling down† even further shows the sector where CSR is both important to the consumer and CSR communications has performed extremely well is in the food industry. (Lester, 2010) One of the most telling findings in the 2010 CSR branding survey was the importance of tying social responsibility to a product. Its conclusion was consumers are more likely to select the product with an added social benefit hen given a choice between similar products. (Lester, 2010) Research shows a consumer’s loyalty to specific products also has an impact on a company’s overall brand. In an online article of The Economist, the author writes about the importance of brand in the context of specific product purchase. Once customers trust a certain product, they tend to look for the brand associated with it when selecting dissimilar products or services. (Case for Brands, 2001) This all being said, the flip side of the power and influence of a brand is its growing vulnerability – a single failed advertising campaign or hint of scandal can send customers fleeing. According to another article, â€Å"brands—and the multinationals that are increasingly identified with them—are not more powerful, but more vulnerable. Consumers will tolerate a lousy product for far longer than they will tolerate a lousy lifestyle. † (Who’s wearing the trousers, 2001) Pulling all of these points together lead me to the following conclusion: If Dannon intends to tie CSR into its product marketing, it should do so at the individual product level, and If Dannon intends to include CSR as part of its marketing and communications strategy, it needs to be sustained and intentional to have an affect (i. e. measurable ROI). My recommendation is Dannon follows my two suggestions above! Dannon has a distinct advantage in being a well-known name in both the health and wellness sectors as well as the food sector. Customers surveyed tend to research a provider’s reputation more stringently in these areas, as such, a combined external CSR and CR campaign would be, in my opinion, advisable. Dannon’s current CSR strategy, which is mostly internal, is good for its culture and employee retention. However, it does not maximize profitability and overall goodwill. Therefore, an external strategy must be added for full ROI maximization. Impact of a Corporate Parent Dannon is a wholly owned subsidiary of Danone and has a significant fiduciary responsibility to them. According to our case, Dannon is obligated to meet annual targets for profitability, operating free cash flow, manufacturing safety, and environmental sustainability. Dannon’s decision to change its marketing strategy, either as a branding exercise or for a specific product, would absolutely impact several of these obligations. (Marquis, p. 1) Obligation Potential Positive Impact Potential Negative Impact profitability a successively executed plan will increase customer sales and loyalty, both having a long term impact to the parent company’s bottom line. If customers feel the CSR communications are disingenuous, they will discontinue buying Dannon products, thus losing market share and reducing overall profits. operating free cash flow Increased profitability should increase overall free cash flow. Sustained marketing costs a lot of money and will reduce the company’s cash flow; assuming a long-term commitment, this will become a drag on profits if not successful. manufacturing safety No impact If cash flow is reduced, new equipment of safety training may not be purchased, thus allowing for accidents to happen. environmental sustainability No impact When cash flow is reduced, local operators might look for ways to cut expenses. One way to do that is to cut corners, especially in the ways waste is disposed of. customer loyalty A good campaign will increase the number of Americans buying Dannon products as well as the amount being consumed. Market share will increase and provide opportunities for new Dannon products to be distributed. All the reverse of the positive outcomes. Looking at our case, I think the impact to Danone is very minimal. It seems that Danone’s culture is to trust the country-based units and train its leadership to think globally. From my perspective, if Dannon executes a successful CSR campaign for a single product, the likelihood of success is extremely high. The Communication Strategy As indicated in the â€Å"To Communicate or Not to Communicate? † section of this paper, Dannon should take advantage of being in the market sectors where CSR impact is very high (health/wellness and food) and select a single product to use as a CSR marketing and communications platform. Because of its market penetration and dominance, I would use its top proactive health product, Activia, as the product. Danone and Dannon’s sustainable development model focuses around Nutrition and Health, People, and Nature. These three areas and how they relate to Activia would be my focus, with the specific bottom line result being how Activia contributes to a customer’s â€Å"personal health and nutrition naturally. † Once this is done, I would test my new outreach models in focus groups, specifically those that are already purchasing Activia (existing clients) and those that aren’t (potential clients). All successful marketing plan needs to keep both groups in mind; if no new clients are drawn to this approach, then go back to the drawing board. This strategy falls in line with Dannon’s desire to focus on growing the yogurt industry and proving its relevance to Americans. (Marquis, p. 5) When both groups trended positively toward the new marketing strategy, I would roll out a multi-faceted plan that includes print, web, television, internet, and social media. I would also tie this new communication in with the community grant programs that Dannon is already known for. This plan would need to be executed for 90 or 120 days and then measured for tangible ROI, specifically on the Activia product and secondarily on increases in other brand sales. Conclusion In conclusion, I believe that Danone was created with a definite CSR culture as part of their overall operating strategy. As such, all facets of their global organization reflect these core values, to include Dannon. I think this bodes well for an expanded, external CSR communications strategy because: Dannon risks very little in detractors saying they are simply communicating their CSR accomplishments as a profit motive – their legacy as a company, both locally and globally, state otherwise. Dannon is fortunate enough to be in the right sectors where CSR and CR are highly regarded. As such, they can leverage this fact to impact their product marketing even more. Dannon’s consumers, especially the health conscious, tend to have more disposable income and be more drawn to sustainable products and brands. Dannon has a single product, Activia, that is very high in market penetration and fits into both health/wellness and food categories. Again, this can be leveraged. Dannon can test the impact of communicating their CSR philosophy with a single product before exposing their entire brand. If Dannon’s product-based approach works well, then they have set a positive template to add new products, both within the United States and beyond. If it does not, then Dannon can quietly drop their marketing campaign without tainting all their products or the overall Danone brand. In the final analysis, I think Dannon is an ideal company to further communicate their CSR values. As a global company, they can impact and influence other organizations within the food industry. References Etile, F. & Tyessier, S. (2011). Corporate Social Responsibility and the Economics of Consumer Social Responsibility. Paris School of Economics. August 2011. Retrieved May 18, 2013 from http://ageconsearch. umn. edu/bitstream/120399/2/Etile_Fabrice_359. pdf Lester, B. (2010). Corporate social responsibility branding survey. Penn Schoen Berland. Retrieved May 18, 2013 from http://www. psbresearch. com/files/CSR%20Branding%20Survey%202010%20EXTERNAL%20FINAL. pdf Marquis, C. , Shah, P. , Tolleson, A. , & Thomason, B. (2011). The dannon company: marketing and corporate social responsibility (A). The Harvard Business School. Revised September 28, 2011. File number 9-410-121 The Economist. (2001, September 6). The case for brands. Economist. com. Retrieved May 18, 2013 from http://www. economist. com/node/771049 The Economist. (2001, September 6). Who’s wearing the trousers? Economist. com. Retrieved May 18, 2013 from http://www. economist. com/node/770992

An Education and History Boys Comparative Film Essay Essay

Through the analysis of where an education originates, The History Boys and An Education have two vastly contradictory viewpoints. The History Boys demonstrates both academic education and an education on life gained within school grounds. An Education, however, illustrates a young Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan) as she gains her education far from her school environment – despite much attempted intervention. In both The History Boys and An Education the teachers play an integral role in shaping the educational path for our protagonists. Hector (Richard Griffiths) bases his teachings on the principle of educating the boys in regard to life and not purely academic learning. When the viewers are first introduced to Hector, they are made aware of the high regard with which the boys view him. During the scene when the boys celebrate their final marks, they bow down to Hector as if they are not worthy. If the manner in which Hector teaches the boys is considered, it becomes evident that he understands the idea of literature perhaps having an impact on his students later in life – â€Å"all knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human purpose†. He seems to be concerned with how the boys utilise their learning within everyday life; how they apply ideas and philosophies concealed in knowledge at a standard worthy of Oxford and Cambridge. Within Hector’s classroom, there are many literary references present on the walls – more than once the viewer’s eyes are drawn to a photograph of W H Auden – who can be considered similar to Hector in that both had homosexual inclinations. During the boys’ outing to an old monastery, Hector advises the boys on knowledge, and the transfer thereof, with the words, â€Å"pass it on†. In this, he is able to teach the boys a lesson more important than any taught in the classroom. In An Education, Miss Stubbs as well as the Headmistress (Emma Thompson) allude to an education coming from within a school and being purely academically centred. The Headmistress reminds Jenny that neither herself nor Miss Stubbs would be where they are if it were not for their decent school and university education. Miss Stubbs admits to Jenny that she attended Cambridge – only to be offended by Jenny, who could no longer see the benefit of an academic education. Within Miss Stubbs’s classroom, we are  able to see that the walls are fairly empty and her desk uncluttered. This stands in contrast with the Hector’s vibrant classroom. In the opening scene of An Education the camera tracks the movement of the overlays into Miss Stubbs’s classroom and to a group of girls who look stricken with boredom and later on read with that same unenthusiastic demeanour. Continually throughout the movie, we are reminded of the popular 1960s belief that education meant almost everything if one was to attend a prestigious university and find a job that provided a salary, but that was not necessarily fulfilling. The History Boys proves to the viewers that life lessons can be and are taught within school parameters. Although much of the focus is centred on the Ox-Bridge examinations, Hector and Irwin, specifically, are able to teach the boys life lessons over and above the syllabus. Hector teaches the boys the importance of knowledge, even if it has no obvious use. To Hector, language, literature and music are to be considered in high regard with the intent of creating a cultured being rather than one only able to regurgitate useless ‘gobbets’, as referred to by Irwin. The question, â€Å"how does History happen?† is asked more than once throughout the film’s duration. As the film progresses, the answer emerges – history is merely one thing after another. When the boys are confronted with Hector’s death, they are able to realise how fleeting life is. Death calls for introspection and a deeper consideration of what it is in life that is truly important. Hector is able to teach the boys that education is indispensable in whichever form and from whichever source it comes, which, as well as the idea that one must pass knowledge along, is a most crucial aspect to the film. In An Education, it is clear that Jenny receives her education outside of school parameters – despite the objections posed by Miss Stubbs and the Headmistress. Although Jenny is a dedicated student, who in the beginning tries to gain her education within school and from her teachers, she inevitably gains it from her relationship with David (Peter Sarsgaard). During the opening scene, the students dancing with books on their head appeals to the formal environment they attended school in. David was able to show Jenny the other side of this spectrum – he introduced her to art,  music, wine and lavish restaurants. David travelled to Oxford and Paris with Jenny, where everything was tinted with a blue haze and made to seem flawless. He provided her with a life where she could speak French and surround herself with art and culture; the life she had so longed for. However, when Jenny discovered that David was a married man, she was also able to learn that a lifestyle such as the one David and his friends led often hid many secrets. He was a dishonest man – and it taught Jenny that trust should not just be given, but rather earned. When she visits Miss Stubbs, her words, â€Å"I feel old, but not so wise† prove that when one is young, they can so easily be deceived by materialism and the idea of love – a lesson no school would be able to teach. Both The History Boys and An Education demonstrate how education has no set definition. It can be defined as learning fact, or as learning about life. Both also prove to us that education does not have to come from an educational institute and its employees. Life can sometimes prove more educational than the classroom.

A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson Essay Example for Free

A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson Essay Poetry (1289) , The Tempest (71) , Prospero (66) , Caliban (36) , Jean Rhys (6) ? Exile in the Works of Jean Rhys and Una Marson. In Jonathan Miller’s 1970 production of Shakespeare’s â€Å"The Tempest† the character of Caliban was cast as black, therefore reigniting the link between the Prospero/Caliban paradigm as the colonizer/colonized. It was not a new idea, indeed Shakespeare himself envisaged the play set on an island in the Antilles and the play would have had great appeal at the time when new territories were being discovered, conquered, plundered and providing seemingly inexhaustible revenue for the colonisers. What is particularly interesting, however, is how powerful the play later becomes for discourse on colonialism. This trope of Caliban is used by George Lamming in â€Å"The Pleasures of Exile† where he likens Prospero in his relationship with Caliban, to the first slave-traders who used physical force and then their culture to subjugate the African and the Carib, overcoming any rebellion with a self righteous determinism. In â€Å"The Pleasures of Exile† Lamming sees Caliban as: â€Å"Man and other than man. Caliban is his convert, colonized by language, and excluded by language. It is precisely this gift of language, this attempt at transformation which has brought about the pleasure and the paradox of Caliban’s exile. Exiled from his gods, exiled from his nature, exiled from his own name! Yet Prospero is afraid of Caliban. He is afraid because he knows that his encounter with Caliban is, largely, his encounter with himself.† 1 The Prospero/Caliban paradigm is a very relevant symbol for the colonizer/colonized situation of the West Indies but it nevertheless remains a paternalistic position. Where does that leave women of the Caribbean? It could be argued that the Caribbean woman has been even further marginalized. That in making Caliban the model of the Caribbean man it is therefore providing him with a voice. Yet nowhere in the Tempest is there a female counterpart, rendering the Caribbean woman invisible as well as silent and ignoring an essential part of their historical culture. Another issue raised here, is that Caribbean literature has for many years been male dominated. Just as the colonizer sought to ignore and marginalize their savage ‘Other’ so the Caribbean male has ignored their female counterpart. Opal Palmer Adisa, in exploring this issue, believes that it is â€Å"out of this patriarchal structure, designed to make her an object, part of the landscape to be used and discarded as seen fit by the colonizer, that the Caribbean woman has emerged.†2 It was out of such a ‘patriarchal structure’ that Jean Rhys and Una Marson emerged. The writing of both women revise and expand theme and personae, subverting a colonial and patriarchal culture. Both women â€Å"may exist in different ethnological and ontological realms but they both exist in worlds which have, at one time or another, attempted to censure, silence or ignore the ideals and interests of women†3 Like many of their male Caribbean counterparts to succeed them, their writing was greatly influenced by voyaging into the colonial metropolis and living in exile. In this essay I will discuss the importance of that journey in seeking to find a voice, an identity, and even a language to challenge established notions of Self, gender and race within the colonial structure. But essential to their experience is their struggle. Naipaul recognised, in Rhys, the themes of â€Å"isolation, an absence of society or community, the sense of things falling apart, depende nce, loss†.4 This could also be said of Marson. Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams on 24th August 1890, in Roseau, Dominica to a Creole mother of Scottish descent and a Welsh father who was a doctor. Rhys left Dominica in 1907, aged sixteen and continued her education in a Cambridge girls’ school and then at the Academy of Dramatic Art which she left after two terms. Rhys experienced feelings of alienation and isolation at both these institutions and these feelings were to stay with her for much of her life. Upon pursuing a career as a chorus girl under a variety of names Rhys embarked on an affair with a man twenty years older than herself and which lasted two years. It is broadly accepted that this early period of her London life formed the structure for Voyage In The Dark, and like all of Rhys’s novels, explores homelessness, dislocation, the marginal and the migrant. The character of Anna, like most of her female protagonists exists in the demimonde of city life, living on the wrong side of respecta bility. What Rhys does effectively in this novel is to centralize the marginalized, those subjects â€Å"who belong nowhere, between cultures, between histories.†5 Una Marson was born in rural Jamaica in 1905. Her father was a well respected Baptist minister and as a result of his standing within the community Marson had the opportunity to be educated on a scholarship at Hampton High School, a boarding school for mainly white, middle class girls. After finding employment as a stenographer, Marson went on to edit the ‘Jamaican Critic’, an established literary publication, and from 1928-1921, her own magazine ‘The Cosmopolitan’. Having established herself as a poet, playwright and women’s activist Marson made the decision to travel to Britain. Her achievements in London were impressive; a social activist within the League of Coloured Peoples which led to her taking a post as secretary to the deposed Emperor Haile Selassie and later she was appointed as a BBC commentator. In reality, however, Marson, like Rhys found the voyage into the Metropolis very difficult. Facing blatant racial discrimination like ‘so many West Indian women migrants of the 1950s, Una found herself blocked at every turn. She complained and cried; she felt lonely and humiliated,’. 6 In spite of many literary and social connections she remained an isolated and marginal figure. Her poetry displays the uncertainty of cultural belonging where her language ties her to colonialism yet also provides her with a powerful tool with which to challenge it. In placing Rhys alongside Marson as pioneering female writers, it is important to explore the notion of nationality, of being Caribbean and to question the grounds upon which such ideas are constructed. Both women were writing at the same time, having been born and educated in the British colonies. Both these writers, whose lives span the twentieth century, are situated at the crossroads of the colonial and post-colonial, the modern and post modern, where the threat of fascism and war result in anti colonial struggles and eventual decolonisation across the world. Their voyages from the colonies into the metropolitan centre generate similar experiences. What is clear with both is that by journeying into the metropolis, as women, they occupy a double marginal position within an already marginalized community. Their journey can be seen as an exploration of displacement where, according to Edward W. Said, the intellectual exile exists ‘in a median state, neither completely at one with the new setting nor fully disencumbered of the old, beset with half involvements and half attachments, nostalgic and sentimental at one level, an adept mimic or a secret outcast on the other.’7 Rhys and Marson, having left the Caribbean are asking us to consider what it means to write from the margins. Within their work, both women challenge notions of women’s place within society and women’s place as a colonized subject in the metropolitan centre. The protagonist, Anna Morgan, in Voyage in the Dark, reflects Rhys’s own multi indeterminate, multi conflicted identity. Anna, like Rhys is a white descendent of British colonists and slave traders who occupy a precarious position of being â€Å"inbetween†. Hated by the Blacks for their part in oppressing the slaves and continuing to cling on to that superior social position, they are also regarded by the ‘mother country’ as the last vestiges of a degenerate part of their own history best forgotten. Moreover, 1930s England, still under the shadow of Victorian moral dicta, continued to judge harshly a young woman without wealth, family, social position and with an odd accent. Throughout the novel Anna is identified with characters who are â€Å"usually objectified and silenced in canonical works: the chorus girl, the mannequin, the demimondaine.†8 Much has been made of her reading of Zola’s Nana and indeed there are many parallels between the two characters. Anna, like Nana becomes a prostitute and in the first version of Voyage in the Dark Anna like Nana dies very young. There is of course the obvious anagram of her name but, as Elaine Savory highlights, some interesting revisions by Rhys. Whereas Zola, in Nana, creates a character who brings about the downfall of upper class men not through power but â€Å"with only the unsophisticated currency of youth and raw female sexuality†9 Rhys, in Anna, creates a character who is herself destroyed by men. â€Å"In Rhys’s version the men who use her youth and beauty are for the most part evidently cowardly or downright disreputable: Anna herself begins as naively trusting, passes through a stage of self destructive hopelessness and passivity and ends, in Rhys’s preferred, unpublished version, by dying from a botched abortion.†10 If we are to see Walter Jeffries as the original European, existing in a world viewed certainly by himself as principally ordered and reasonable then Rhys is, through this character, highlighting the degenerate aspect of using power to commodify and even destroy, thereby subverting the colonizer’s position in relation to the colonized. Through the character of Anna, Rhys explores those oppositions of â€Å"Self† and â€Å"Other†, male and female, black and white. Even though she outwardly resembles the white European, enabling her, unlike Marson, to blend visually within London, her association with the Caribbean sets her apart as between black and white cultures and as an exotic â€Å"Other†. This ambiguity of Anna’s position results in â€Å"slippage†. Anna and her family would have been regarded in the West Indies as the white colonizers. In England and in her relationship with Jeffries she becomes the colonized â€Å"Other†. In being read as the colonized subject Anna is continually having to adapt her world view and sense of identity to the perspective being imposed on her. A good example of this is the chorus girls’s renaming her as the â€Å"Hottentot† aligning her more with the black African and demonstrating the homogenizing of the colonized peoples b y the colonizers. This is similar to Spivak’s belief that ‘so intimate a thing as personal and human identity might be determined by the politics of imperialism.’11 Interestingly, â€Å"Hottentot† is the former name for the Nama, a nomadic tribe of Southern Africa. A somewhat apt comparison which reflects Anna’s own nomadic existence as she moves from town to town as a chorus girl and from one bed sit to another. The term â€Å"Hottentot† developed into a derogatory term during the Victorian era and became synonymous firstly with wide hipped, big bottomed African women with oversized genitals and then with the sexuality of a prostitute. Jeffries is fully aware of the implications of the name â€Å"Hottentot†. In response to hearing Anna’s renaming he says, â€Å"I hope you call them something worse back.†12 Elaine Savory makes a strong connection between Anna’s renaming and her relationship with Jeffries, her eventual seducer. Whilst â€Å"not looking at Anna’s body in an obvious way, eventually the transaction between them is understood fully on his side to be a promise of sexual excitement from a white woman whom he perceives as having an extra thrill presumably from association with racist constructions of black females in his culture.†13 Franz Fanon, in his book Black Skin, White Masks perceives these complex colonial relations as being in a state of flux rather than fixed or static. In his introduction to Fanon’s text, Homi Bhabha highlights this point, stating that the ‘familiar alignment of colonial subjects†¦Black/White, Self/Other†¦is disturbed†¦and the traditional grounds of racial identity are dispersed.’14 So it is in the relationship between Jeffries and Anna. In transposing the colonizer’s stereotypical images of a black woman onto Anna he is disrupting and dispersing those ‘traditional grounds of racial identity’. Moreover, Anna is subconsciously enacting a mediated performance, aware of her impact upon him and the implications of her actions, in an attempt to adhere to his preconceptions of her. The relationship cannot be sustained on these fundamentally unstable preconceptions. Anna, both as a female and racial â€Å"Other† is penetrated by Jeffries and with the exchange of money is commodified. Without independent means Anna becomes that purchasable girl who is at the mercy of and eventually becomes dependent upon the upper middle class Jeffries. The relationship between these two characters reflects Rhys’s own location in the world where the West Indies was at the time still a commodity of the British Empire. In another analysis of the colonial stereotype, Homi Bhabha challenges the ‘limiting and traditional reliance of the stereotype as offering, at any one time, a secure point of identification on the part of the individual,’15 in this case Jeffries and Hester. Bhabha does not argue that the colonizer’s stereotyping of the colonized ‘Other’ is as a result of his security in his own identity or conception of himself but more to do with the colonizer’s own identity and authority which is in fact destabilized by contradictory responses to the Other. In order to maintain a powerful position it is important, according to Bhabha, for the colonizer to identify the colonized with the image he has already fixed in his mind. This image can be ambiguous as the colonized subject can be simultaneously familiar under the penetrable gaze of the all seeing, all powerful colonial gaze and be incomprehensible like the ‘inscrutable Oriental’. The coloni zed can be â€Å"both savage†¦and yet the most obedient and dignified of servants†¦; he is the embodiment of rampant sexuality and yet innocent as a child; he is mystical, primitive, simpleminded and yet the most worldly and accomplished liar , and the manipulator of social forces.†16 In short, for Bhabha, the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies which, when imposed upon the colonized ‘Other’, cause a crisis of identity. So it is with Anna. Jeffries upon first meeting with the very young Anna can see that she is as ‘innocent as a child’ and is ‘most obedient’ sexually, but by her association with the Caribbean and the Hottentot as I have previously explored, she is subsequently attributed with being ‘the embodiment of rampant sexuality’ resulting in his taking of her virginity, abandoning her to prostitution but also leading to as Veronica Clegg observes ‘a loss of temporal referents’17 Anna’s stepmother, Hester, also attempts to impose an identity upon Anna which not only conflicts with Anna’s own sense of identity but is also based around stereotypical perceptions. . Hester, whose ‘voice represents a repressive English colonial law’18 believes that Anna’s father’s troubles resulted from his having lost ‘touch with everybody in England’19 and that these severing of ties with the Imperial motherland is a signal to her that ‘he was failing’,20 losing his identity, reduced to the level of the black inhabitants of the island. This idea of contamination and racial reduction is explored by Paul B. Rich who explains that there was a belief in the early twentieth century that white people in the tropics risked ‘in the absence of continual cultural contacts with their temperate northern culture, being reduced to the level of those black races with whom they had made their â€Å"unnatural home†Ã¢ €˜.21 In Hester’s eyes this apparent loss of identity is also experienced by Anna. She continually criticizes her speech, her relationship with Francine the black servant, and also insinuates degenerative behaviour on the part of her family, particularly Uncle Bo. Hester’s views reflect the growing disapproval in England at that time, of relationships between white people and the black population in the West Indies. Inter-racial relationships were discouraged for fear of contamination of the white ‘Self’. In voicing her disapproval of Anna’s friendship with Francine along with her continual use of the racist and derogatory term â€Å"nigger†, Hester is alluding to the fact that, in her opinion, Anna, especially through her speech, has indeed been contaminated and reduced racially and that Anna’s association with Francine thwarts her attempts to reconnect her with the colonizer’s ‘cultural contacts’. Hester rails that she finds it ‘impossible to get you [Anna] away from the servants. That awful sing-song voice you had! Exactly like a nigger you talked†¦and still do. Exactly like that dreadful girl Francine. When you were jabbering away together in the pantry I never could tell which of you was speaking.’22 Hester’s constant criticism only serves to undermine Anna’s real identity and dislocate her further from the Caribbean world she once inhabited and the alienating London world she is now experiencing. Her accent sets her apart, drifting between two worlds. Anna’s difficulties in negotiating these two worlds is a result of the ‘return of the diasporic’ to the metropolitan centre where ‘the perplexity of the living is most acutely experienced.’23 This can certainly be seen in her response to the weather which, according to Bhabha, invokes ‘the most changeable and imminent signs of national difference’24 The novel opens with; â€Å"It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known. It was almost like being born again. The colours were different, the smells different, the feeling things gave you right down inside yourself was different. Not just the difference between heat and cold; light, darkness; purple, grey. But a difference in the way I was frightened and the way I was happy. I didn’t like London at first. I couldn’t get used to the cold.†25 And later upon arriving in England with Hester she describes it as being ‘divided into squares like pocket-handkerchiefs; a small tidy look it had, everywhere fenced off from everywhere else’ 26and then in London where the ‘dark houses all alike frowning down one after another’27 Throughout the novel Anna continually experiences feelings of being enclosed. Many of the bedsits are restricting and box-like. On one occasion she remarks that ‘this damned room’s getting smaller and smaller†¦And about the rows of houses outside gimcrack, rotten-looking and all exactly alike’.28 The many small rooms between which Anna moves emphasize her disempowerment through enclosed spaces. These spaces, in turn, serve as metaphors for the consequences in voyaging into the metropolitan centre. She is at once shut inside these small monotonous rooms and shut out from that world which has sought to colonize her. It is perhaps ironic that the further she mo ves into the centre of the city, ending up as she does on Bird Street, just off Oxford Street , the more she is shut out and marginalized by that imperialist society. Her memories of the West Indies are in sharp contrast to her impressions of England. The images of home are always warm, vivid and exotic, ‘Thinking of the walls of the Old Estate House, still standing, with moss on them. That was the garden. One ruined room for roses, one for orchids, one for ferns. And the honeysuckle all along the steep flight of steps’.29 When comparing the two worlds she remarks to herself that ‘the colours are red, purple, blue , gold, all shades of green. The colours here are black, grey, dim-green, pale blue, the white of people’s faces – like woodlice’. 30 Her memory of home is experienced sensuously as she recalls the sights and smells: â€Å"Market Street smelt of the wind but the narrow street smelt of niggers and wood smoke and salt fishcakes fried in lard’ and the sound of the black women as they call out, â€Å"salt fishcakes, all sweet an’ charmin’, all sweet an’ charmin’.'†31 Anna attempts to convey this richness to Jeffries. His failure to appreciate the beauty she describes merely underlines the differences between the two. He expresses a preference for cold places remarking that ‘The tropics would be altogether too lush’.32 Jeffries’s reaction to the West Indies in fact reflects the colonizer’s view that the ‘ruined room for roses’ and ‘orchids’ portray a disorder, a garden of Eden complete with its implications of moral decay and as Bhabha states, a ‘tropical chaos that was deemed despotic and ungovernable and therefore worthy of the civilizing mission.’33 Anna’s association with this world sets her up, in Walter’s eyes, as a figure representing a secret depravity promising forbidden desires. Anna, like the West Indies is something to be overpowered, enslaved and colonized, where the colonizer seeks to strip their identity and impose their own beliefs and desires. It is significant, therefore, that following this scene Anna loses her virginity to Jeffries and recalls the memory of the mulatto slave girl, Maillotte Boyd, aged 18, whose record Anna once found on ‘an old slave list at Constance’.34 Like Maillotte Boyd, Anna is now merely a commodity and Jeffries has no intention of ever seeing her as an equal. Her purity, in his eyes isn’t worth preserving as he already considers her the contaminated ‘Other’. By his actions he succeeds in maintaining that patriarchal imperialism which relies on institutional forms of racial and national separateness. Anna, as a twentieth century white Creole, is no freer than the nineteenth century mulatto slave. Just as Maillotte Boyd is, as racially mixed, suspended between two races, so Anna as a white Creole is suspended between two cultures, leaving her dislocated. Anna’s voyage into the imperialist metropolis leads to boundaries and codes of behaviour, language and dress being constantly imposed upon her. She is aware for example of the importance of clothes as a means of controlling her social standing and also her standing as a woman. Through her dress Anna almost becomes that elegant white lady, mimicking London’s female high society. For Jeffries, Anna represents the ‘menace of mimicry’, which , according to Bhabha is ‘a difference which is almost nothing but not quite’ and which turns ‘to menace- a difference that is total but not quite.’35 This mimicry serves to empower Anna as it ultimately destabilises the essentialism of colonialist ideology, resulting in Jeffries imposing upon Anna the identity of the West Indian ‘Other’ This in turn leads to feelings of loss, alienation and dislocation, a rejection of being white and a desire to be black. ‘I always wanted to be black. I was happy because Francine was there†¦.Being black is warm and gay, being white is cold and sad.’36 Anna’s association with Hester meant that she ‘hated being white. Being white and getting like Hester, †¦old and sad and everything.’37 Yet the warmth she expresses in her memories of Francine are always tempered by her realisation that Francine disliked her ‘because I [Anna] was white.’38 Her feelings of being between cultures and feeling dislocated are never fully resolved. Anna’s voyage in the dark, reflects Rhys’s own sense of exile and marginality as a white West Indian woman. Teresa O’Connor remarks that ‘Rhys, herself caught between places, cultures, classes and races, never able to identify clearly with one or the other, gives the same marginality to her heroines, so that they reflect the unique experience of dislocation of the white Creole woman.’39 The language used to express feelings of exile and loneliness, destitution and dislocation is both sparse and economic. It is neither decorative nor contrived, devoid of sentiment or without seeking sympathy. In commenting upon an essay written by Rhys discussing gender politics, Gregg writes that ‘It is important to note her [Rhys’s] belief that writing has a subversive potential. Resistance†¦can be carried out through writing that exposes and opposes the political and social arrangements.’40 Helen Carr, in her exploration of Rhys’s language believes that: â€Å"Rhys in her fictions unpicks and mocks the language by which the powerful keep control, while at the same time shifting, bending, re-inventing ways of using language to open up fresh possibilities of being.†41 Una Marson, another Caribbean to voyage into the metropolis, also experienced loneliness, isolation and a struggle with the complexity of identity. Like Rhys, Marson fought with these feelings throughout her life, resulting in long periods of depression. Her belief in women’s need for pride in their cultural heritage established Marson as ‘the earliest female poet of significance to emerge in West Indian literature’.42 She not only ‘challenged received notions of women’s place in society’ but also raised questions about ‘the relationship of the colonized subject to â€Å"the mother country†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢43 There was a considerable amount of poetry emerging out of the West Indies around this time but most of it was dismissed as being ‘not truly West Indian’,44 the reason for this being partly because many of the writers were English but also because many of the styles used by these writers mimicked colonial forms. Many of Marson’s early poetry reflects this mimicry showing a reliance upon the Romantics of the English poetic tradition, particularly Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron. The poem Spring in England reveals this indebtedness to the Romantics, including as it does a stanza where, having observed the arrival of Spring in London, the poet asks: Daffodils that Wordsworth praised?’ Wait for the Spring,’ the birds replied. I waited for Spring, and lo they came, Clearly there are echoes of Wordsworth’s Daffodils throughout the stanza, reflecting the drive by colonialism through education to eradicate the West Indian selfhood. Yet for Marson this harnessing of English culture not only posed few problems but indeed was, I would argue, a necessary step in her voyage of self discovery. As seen with Rhys, mimicry was a subversive threat to colonial ideology, especially through language. Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry seeks to explore those ambivalences of such destabilizing colonial and post-colonial exchanges. â€Å"The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority. †¦The ambivalence of colonial authority repeatedly turns from mimicry – a difference which is almost nothing but not quite – to menace – a difference that is almost total but not quite. And in that other scene of colonial power, where history turns to farce and presence to a ‘part’ can be seen the twin figures of narcissism and paranoia that repeat furiously, uncontrollably.†46 Bhabha’s essay in recognising the power, the play and the dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized offers an alternative to the pessimistic view held by V.S. Naipaul who believed that West Indian culture was doomed to mimicry, unable to create anything ‘original’. Marson’s mimicry of the Romantics could be seen as a preparation to enter the colonizer’s metropolis, and to attempt to assimilate into the colonizer’s world. In making that voyage to the metropolis, Una Marson succeeds in taking that step from ‘the copy’ to the ‘original’. By remaining in Jamaica Marson risked remaining in an environment too rigidly ingrained by colonial prescriptions. Una Marson’s voyage into ‘the heart of the Empire’, however, resulted in intense disappointment. For the first time, Marson experienced open racism and according to Jarrett-McCauley ‘The truth was that Una dreaded going out because people stared at her, men were curious but their gaze insulted her, even small children with short dimpled legs called her â€Å"Nigger†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦She was a black foreigner seen only as strange and unwanted. This was the ‘Fact of Blackness’ which Fanon was to analyse in Black Skins, White Masks(1952), that inescapable, heightening level of consciousness which comes from â€Å"being dissected by white eyes†.’ 47 Unlike Rhys, Marson was finding it impossible to blend visually within London. Consciousness of her colour made Marson conscious of her marginality. This consciousness led her seriously to question the values of the ‘mother country’. Marson’s work moved from mimicry to anti-patriarchal discourse, seen in her poem Politeness where she responds to the William Blake poem Little Black Boy with: The poem demonstrates Marson’s growing resentment at being alienated by the colonial power. There is an uncertainty in her desire to both belong and to challenge, echoing Rhys in her sense of cultural unbelonging. Those anti-patriarchal feelings are present once more in her poem Nigger where she communicates the anger she feels at being abused and marginalized as the racial ‘Other’. She retorts to this abuse furiously with: My people’s flesh and now you still Add fierce insult to vilest injury.48 In its repetition of the shocking term ‘Nigger’, Marson is confronting the white colonialist’s use of the word to exert power over and oppress the colonized. The violence of its use reflects the violence of their shared history where ‘Of those who drove the Negroes / To their death in days of slavery,’ regard ‘Coloured folk as†¦low and base.’49 In highlighting this history of violence, oppression and slavery, Marson is attempting to invert this oppression and dislodge the notion of white supremacy, whilst attempting to negotiate a position from West Indian to African and in doing so, fashion an identity. By writing the poem in the first person singular and moving from ‘They’ to ‘You’ when addressing the white colonizers, Marson succeeds in centralizing herself and reversing the binary system of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’. Nigger marks Marson’s sharpened perspective on issues such as racism and identity. Her voyage into the metropolitan centre triggers those ’emergent identifications and new social movements†¦[being]†¦played out’.50 It was a time in Marson’s life where she was made to feel inadequate, lonely and humiliated but it also roused her to ‘resist the corrosive force of her oppressive world.’51 Nigger reveals this sense of belonging and not belonging felt by Marson, of being part of the empire but never part of the Motherland, yet it simultaneously challenges the very essentialism in which the colonial Self is rooted. Moreover, the hostility she experiences in many ways acknowledges the success of Marson’s performance as a hybrid. Marson’s frustration and anger was compounded by the fact that in being middle class and educated she possibly saw herself as ‘a notch above the poor, black working class women from the old communities in Cardiff, Liverpool and London’52 Marson explores this question of how middle class West Indians negotiate being educated and yet marginalized and even considered inferior in her play London Calling. The play, based on the experiences of colonial students in London charts the story of a group of expatriates who, upon being invited to the house of an aristocratic English family, dress up in outlandish native costume and speak in ‘broken’ English. The play, a comedy, takes a light hearted look at the stereotypical images held by the British, at the same time countering the myth of black inferiority. There is, in the play, a curious twist as the students from Novoko are presented as black versions of the British in their dress and behaviour, ‘mimic men’ and yet they themselves attempt to ‘mimic’ their own folk culture. They are eventually discovered by one of the family, Larkspur, who then proposes marriage to Rita, one of the Novokans. The play ends with Rita declining Larkspur’s proposal in favour of Alton, another Novokan. This rejection of Larkspur places Rita in a powerful position. Rita is no longer the undesirable ‘Other’, she has resisted the oppressive world of the colonialists and placed herself as the centralised ‘Self’. Rita is Marson’s fantasy where the black woman is recognised as beautiful and an equal. Marson’s activities in the League of Coloured Nations gave her purpose, direction and the opportunity to advance her political education whilst introducing her to the Pan – African movement ‘a sort of boomerang from the horrors of slavery and colonialism, to which Una, like many of her generation, was being steadily drawn.’53 Marson’s work around this time reflects a desire to reclaim and restore that ‘Other’ cultural tradition, a difficult task as the Caribbean was not an homogeneous agency and it was not easy to establish a pre-colonial culture. The ethnic mix was large and hybrid making the notion of ‘Caribbeanness’ less easy to define. The Pan-African movement provided links with an alternative body to European colonialism and offered Marson a platform to renegotiate and redefine her idea of ‘Caribbeaness’ and race, an option not offered to Rhys. Having established a sense of being a black person in a white imperialist centre, she now needed to make sense of being a black woman within this paternalistic centre. The poem Little Brown Girl attempts just this, constructing a dialogue of sorts between a white Londoner, whose gender is unclear, and a little brown girl. The poem begins with a series of questions put to the child: The questioning of the little brown girl’s presence in London suggests a linguistic imperialism. It may be construed as the speaker challenging her right to be in the city, establishing her as the nameless, black ‘Other’. Her feeling of difference is emphasized in the repetition of the word ‘white’ on the final line of the second stanza. The third stanza plays out an interesting reversal in notions of blackness. The speaker asks why she has left the ‘little sunlit land / where we sometimes go / to rest and get brown’54 alluding to the desire of white skinned people to tan which for the white colonialist signifies wealth, for the black ‘Other’ being inferior and uneducated. From here there is a subtle shift of speaker and London is seen through the eyes of the little brown girl. Her perception of the city is distinctly unattractive where ‘There are no laughing faces, / people frown if one really laughs’ and: If the poem began with the strangeness of the brown girl to the white gaze, here it teases out those feelings of alienation felt by the little brown girl at being in such a cold, drab place, so different from her own home. Once more Marson creates a reversal in the stereotype as she seeks to objectify white people observing that ‘the folks are all white -/ White, white, white, / And they all seem the same.’55 In homogenizing the colonizers, the hybridity of the West Indians are then celebrated in the many varied skin tones of ‘black and bronze and brown’ which are themselves homogenized by the label ‘Black’. The vibrancy, colour and friendliness of ‘back home’ where the folks are ‘Parading the city’ wearing ‘Bright attractive bandanas’ contrasts with the previous stanza of the dour images of London. The dialogue is handed back to the white speaker who attempts to establish the origins of the little black girl but succeeds in once more re-establishing the homogeneic white gaze indicated in the speaker’s inability to distinguish between many distinct nations : More than anything the poem conveys that sense of isolation felt by the little brown girl in the city. She never answers the white speaker directly and is positioned in the middle of the poem, again centralizing the colonized. In asking the question ‘Would you like to be white/Little brown girl?’ there is a sense of the colonizer attempting to manipulate and dominate the colonized, to Europeanise, ultimately leading to mimicry. Yet the questioner responds himself with ‘I don’t think you would / For you toss your head / As though you are proud / To be brown’. 56 Marson, here, signals a move away from being a ‘mimic man’ seeking to challenge that whole Eurocentric paternalistic world and centralise the black women, the most marginalized figure in society. The themes central to Little Brown Girl’s themes echo Rhys’s own negative reactions to London seen in the opening page of Voyage in the Dark. Like Rhys, Marson succeeds in capturing that colour and warmth of the West Indies contrasting greatly with the misery of London, experienced by both and which reinforce that racial and national separateness. Those differences prove for both to be irreconcilable, making it impossible for both Rhys and Marson to integrate, leaving both women dislocated from the metropolis. Little Black Girl serves as a useful reminder that many immigrants were women. This encounter between the city and a woman (in Marson’s case, a black woman) echoes Anna’s encounter in Voyage in the Dark albeit as a prostitute. Both walk the streets of the city and as women-as-walkers encounter the metropolis, negotiating its spaces. Denise deCaires Narian suggests that certainly Marson could be considered as a flaneuse.57 Neither Rhys nor Marson, however have the confident panache of the flaneuse and neither fulfil the requirements of flanerie originally set out by Baudelaire. The flaneur, he asserted, saw the ‘crowd as his domain, †¦ His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd’.58 The flaneur and therefore the flaneuse is engaged in strolling and looking but most importantly merging ‘with the crowd’. For Marson this is impossible as she is a black woman in a white city. Moreover, Baudelaire expands upon the idea of the flaneur as having ‘the ability to be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world’.59 Again this is problematic for both Marson and Rhys as their wanderings around the metropolis seek only to reinforce those feelings of ‘Otherness’, isolation and marginality. For Marson these feelings of alienation gained her the reputation of being a ‘true loner who didn’t exactly seek out company’60 leading to a ‘heightened level of bodily consciousness’ which comes from ‘being dissected by white eyes’.61 In her struggle with being marginalized as a black women always at the mercy of the white metropolitan gaze, Marson was always aware of that Europeanised sense of beauty being white. This idea of beauty was so entrenched, even within the black community that they themselves set beauty against the paleness of their own skin. The importance of popularly disseminated images is tackled in Cinema Eyes where a black mother in addressing her daughter attempts to challenge the idea that ‘Europeans still provide the aesthetic reference point’.62 The speaker urges her eighteen year old daughter to avoid the cinema fearing that it might reinforce the idea that white is beautiful causing the girl to lose sight of her own beauty: By growing up with a ‘cinema mind’ the mother has allowed herself to be at the mercy of those tools used by the colonizer to marginalize and indoctrinate, promoting their own superiority. Once again the ‘mimic man’ re-emerges when black women reject their own in seeking an ‘ideal man’. ‘No kinky haired man for me, / No black face, no black children for me.’63 This rather melodramatic narrative within the poem tells of the mother’s ‘fair’ husband shooting her first suitor whom she had initially rejected for being too dark, and then committing suicide. The shooting scene, a re enactment of a gun fight in a western, presents the cinema as a racist and degenerate institution. By the end of the poem, the speaker acknowledges her mistake in rejecting the first lover and finds a sense of self, previously denied by the saturation of cinematic images. In shaking off the colonizer’s indoctrination, which seeks to marginalize her, she addresses the question posed by Franz Fanon which is ‘to what extent authentic love will remain unattainable before one has purged oneself of that feeling of inferiority?’64 Black invisibility in the cinema results in white ideology being forced upon a black body and essentially commodifying it and it is this which Marson seeks to deconstruct. Another poem which tackles the reconstruction of female identity is Black is Fancy, where the speaker compares her reflection in the mirror with a picture ‘Of a beautiful white lady’.65 The mirror serves to reclaim the idea of black as being beautiful and a rediscovery of self: The speaker eventually removes the picture of the white woman suggesting that black worth and beauty can only really exist in the absence of white colonialism. The poem ends in a victory of sorts as she declares that John, her lover has rejected the pale skin in favour of ‘His black ivory girl’.66 Kinky Haired Blues represents Marson’s quest for a more effective and authentic poetic voice in its use of African American speech.. The poem explores the rhythms and musical influences found in Harlem and gathering momentum about this time. Kinky Haired Blues like Cinema Eyes and Black is Fancy criticizes the oppressive beauty regime of white colonialism which seeks to disfigure and marginalize the black woman. The poem opens with the speaker attempting to find a beauty shop: The speaker seeks to Europeanise her black features in an attempt to make herself more attractive. Male indifference experienced in the metropolis forces the speaker to see herself as an aberration, thrusting her onto the margins of a society which is continually projecting the idea that ‘white ‘is ‘right’. The beauty shop contains all the trappings of the colonizer’s idea of beauty, ‘ironed hair’ and ‘bleached skin’. Yet she is caught between being left to ‘die on de shelf’ 67 if she doesn’t change herself, or eradicating her ethnic features and therefore her inner self if she does. By using blues within the poetry she is able to communicate this misery felt within her, that male perceptions of beauty projected by the colonizers dictate that she must distort her own natural beauty in order to fit in and conform. The poem highlights the struggle Marson experiences in trying to preserve her selfhood against such oppressive cultural forces. Marson defiantly attempts to stand against this patriarchal order. She proudly announces that ‘I like me black face / And me kinky hair.’ Inspite of this brave stand Marson eventually succumbs and admits that she is ‘gwine press me hair / And bleach me skin.’ She, like Rhys can only resist internally to the colonialist’s ideals imposed on them. As writers voyaging into the metropolis both Rhys and Marson share in their writing a pervasive sense of isolation where, from the location of London, their particular voices and concerns are, at the time, not recognised. Both writers, from this isolated position on the periphery of the centre. explore issues of womanhood, race and identity,. Marson’s experiences bring about an acute awareness of her difference and ‘Otherness’ as a Black woman. Her work is a defiant voice against this marginalisation and isolation. She was, as Jarrett MaCauley claims ‘the first Black feminist to speak out against racism and sexism in Britain.’68 She was a pioneer in a growing literary culture which was to become the new postcolonial order. Rhys, by contrast, a white West Indian from Dominica was experiencing a declining white minority status against a growing black population, itself an isolating factor both at home and within the metropolis. Kenneth Ramchard suggests that the work of white West Indian writers is characterized by a sense of embattlement: â€Å"Adapted from Fanon we might use the phrase ‘terrified consciousness’ to suggest the White minority’s sensations of shock and disorientation as a smouldering Black population is released into an awareness of power.†69 It is this ‘terrified consciousness’ which contributes to the struggle experienced by Anna in Voyage in the Dark . Located simultaneously both inside and outside West Indian socio cultural history, her journey to the ‘mother country’ seeks only to exacerbate these feelings of ‘in-betweenness’ and to suffer feelings of dislocation and alienation. Both writers, therefore, in their voyage into the metropolis endure different kinds of anxieties in their sense of ‘unbelonging’ to either or both cultural worlds. Both use their writing to speak for the marginal, the hegemonic, the dispossessed, the colonized silenced female voice situated as they were within the cold, oppressive, hierarchical colonial metropolis attempting to impose an oppressive identity upon the exiled women. 1 George Lamming The Pleasures of Exile (London: Alison, 1960) p15 2 Palmer Adisa De Language Reflect Dem Ethos† in ‘The Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars’ ed. By Adele S. Newson and Linda Strong Leek. (New York: Peter Lang 1998 p23) 3 ‘The Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars’ ed By Adele S. Newson and Linda Strong-Leek. (New York: Peter Lang 1998 p6) 4 V.S. Naipaul New York Review of Books 1992. Quoted in Helen Carr Jean Rhys (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1996) p15 5 Helen Carr Jean Rhys (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1996) p. xiv 6 Delia Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998) p51 7 Edward W. Said Representations of the Intellectual (London: Vintage 1994) p49 8 Molly Hite The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narrative Quoted in Joy Castro ‘Jean Rhys’ in The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. 20, 2000. www.highbeam.com/library/doc.3.asp p6.Accessed 1 December 2005. 11 Gayatri Spivak ‘Three Women’s Text and a Critique of Imperialism’ in Henry Louis Jr. Gates Race, Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) p269 12Jean Rhys Voyage in the Dark (London: Penguin Books 1969) 13 Elaine Savoury Jean Rhys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998) p 95 14 Homi Bhabha ‘Remembering Fanon’, forward to Franz Fanon ‘s Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986) p ix 15 Homi Bhabha ‘The Other Question’ Location of Culture (London: Routledge 1994)p69 17 Veronica Marie Gregg Jean Rhys’s Historical Imagination: Reading and Writing the Creole (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995) p115 18 Sue Thomas The Worlding of Jean Rhys ( Westport: Greenwood Press 1999) p106 19 Jean Rhys Voyage in the Dark p53 21 Paul B. Rich Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) p19 24 Homi Bhabha â€Å"DissemInation: Time, Narrative and the margins of the Modern Nation† The Location of Culture p319 33 Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture p319 35 Homi Bhabha Location of Culture p85 39 Teresa O’Connor The Meaning of the West Indian Experience for Jean Rhys (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1985)cited in Caribbean Woman Writers; Essays from the first International Conference. p19 40 Taken from Rhys’s non fictional analysis of Gender Politics. Veronica Gregg, Jean Rhys’s Historical Imagination p47 41 Helen Carr Jean Rhys, (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 1996) p 77 42 Lloyd W. Brown, West Indian Poetry (London: Heineman, 1978) p 38 43 Denise deCaires Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry: Making style (London: Routledge, 2002) p 2 45 Una Marson The Moth and the Star, (Kingston, Jamaica: Published by the Author, 1937) p24 46 Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture, (London: Routledge, 1994) pp85-92 47 Delia Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson pp 49, 50 48 The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature ed. Alison Donnell and Sarah Lawson Welsh (London: Routledge, 1996) p140-141 50 Homi Bhabha Location of Culture p 320 51 Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson p51 54 Una Marson ‘Little Brown Girl’, The Moth and the Star. (Jamaica: The Gleaner. 1937) p11 57 deCaires Narain puts forward an interesting link between Marson and Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners highlighting external identity in her book Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry p 21 58 Baudelaire The Painter and the Modern Life cited in Keith Tester The Flaneur (New York: Routledge, 1994), p 2 62 Laurence A. Brainer An Introduction to West Indian Poetry (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), p154 63 Una Marson ‘Cinema Eyes’ The Moth and the Star. (Jamaica: The Gleaner.1937) p87 64 Franz Fanon Black Skins, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986), p4 65 Una Marson ‘Black is Fancy’ The Moth and the Star p75 67 Una Marson ‘Kinky Hair Blues’ The Moth and the Star p91 69 Kenneth Ramchard The West Indian Novel and its Background (London: Faber, 1870), p225 A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson. (2017, Oct 17).

Select a community concern and address the problem and findings in a Essay

Select a community concern and address the problem and findings in a report - Essay Example The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed that â€Å"cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for approximately 443,000 deaths, or 1 of every 5 deaths, in the United States each year† (CDC, 2012, par. 2). Likewise, statistics revealed that more than 68% of smokers have signified intentions to stop (CDC, 2011) and that â€Å"the combination of medication and counseling is more effective for smoking cessation than either medication or counseling alone† (CDC, 2011, p. 1). Government agencies have acknowledged that a coalition between the state and local communities would assist in helping smokers control and ultimately lessen or stop smoking. Accordingly, â€Å"communities need to work toward transforming the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of users and nonusers by changing the way tobacco is promoted, sold, and used† (CDC, 2011, p. 1). The solution to stop smoking is a collaborative effort that starts with the smoker, the family members, and the local community where he or she is an active part

Introduction To History Of Technology Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Introduction To History Of Technology - Article Example The initial examples of prosthetics, as well as amputations, were identified in the ancient Egyptian territory. The ancient Egyptians believed that a person who got amputated in life carried on the amputation into afterlife status. Hence, they got buried with the missing prosthetic devices. These prosthetics got uncovered later in the 15th century. The history, however, is more about the Greeks and Romans than it is of Egypt. For instance, it was in the 484 BC, when a Persian soldier escaped the Greek prison through amputating the leg and replaced it with a wooden prosthesis. Medical technology is vivid in this context. It is stipulated that the dark ages were the periods where prosthetic technology, as well as the scientific technology, developed. However, the pace of development was relatively low. In fact, the devices that got developed with respect to the development of this technology were of insuperable sizes. The devices were heavy and large. They got made of wood, leather peg legs, and metal. Therefore, they remain similar to those of the Greek periods. The amputees were essentially used to using the early clutches which got made of wood together with leather. The blacksmiths of the time designed these knight armor devices to resemble a camouflage handicap. Hence, it did not have to look like an everyday functioning limb. In relation to the history of the limb prosthetics, diseases got cured through amputations and use of cannons. This is one of the memorable medical attempts in that particular historical age.  

Response to the three students with no more than 80 words with at Coursework

Response to the three students with no more than 80 words with at least 2 references for each response - Coursework Example Worse of all, there was no reference list and a couple of grammatical mistakes. It is said that in the comparison of leaders to show evolution of leadership, fallouts done in the comparison of the leadership attributes exhibited by the various leaders hinders the success of the whole comparison (Herman, 2000). This is because there ought to be comparison so that the real moments of evolution can be identified but this was lacking in the student’s presentation. Even more, the student presented his dates in a descending order instead of ascending order to give a clear link between the leaders. Clearly, dates do not flow in descending orders (Almah, 2008). The writer did a great job by linking the personal attributes and natures of the leaders to their leadership reign and this brought out a great sense of the leadership styles practiced by the leaders. This has always remained an important practice in the comparison of leaders for evolution of leadership (Amahe, 2011). The writer could however have widened his search of leadership database to include leaders from different backgrounds instead of two leaders from United States presidential background. Once this is done, the comparison lacks dynamism (Grey,

Woodrow Wilson & World War I Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Woodrow Wilson & World War I - Essay Example Yes the US was ready by 1917 dues to the mobilization of the military to be increased by enlisting men from the age of 18 years, getting money from businessmen to finance the war and even getting naval support. The strength however was not as great as it was by the time the war was ending. Yes it was initially when America was preparing to go into war but with the sinking of the US boat, it soon became abandoned as people decided to assist in any way they could to prepare the army go into war simply for revenge against the Germans. People were hostile towards military service and hence did not adopt the idea of being enlisted or having their kin enlisted in the military service. This came when the administration wanted to increase the military as a preparedness method to enter into war and this hostility as the reason US started with fewer soldiers. The Americans did not agree with the call for peace after the war took away over 50, 000 of their military troop. The treaty of Versailles points were emphasizing something that the Americans were not ready to accept

Competition and Competition Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Competition and Competition Policy - Essay Example As the essay discusses Blue Beer plc is an important producer of beer in Newcastle. Statistics shown that Blue Beer plc accounts for some 12% of all beer sold in the United Kingdom but that its Bluelite plc is especially successful and accounts for 40% of all non-alcoholic beer consumed in the UK. Blue Beer has been negotiating with County Beers Ltd with a view to merger. County Beers is the principal other producer of non-alcoholic beers and after merger the new company, British County Blue, will control 65% of the market in non-alcoholic bee. According to the paper findings the overall policy of the European Union of competitive practices is as follows – â€Å"In a free market, business is a competitive game. Sometimes, companies may be tempted to avoid competing with each other and try to set their own rules for the game. At times, a major player in the game may try to squeeze its competitors out of the market. The European Commission acts as the referee to ensure that all companies play by the same rules. This discussion stresses that markets started being highly competitive and this forced businesses to pursue ways and means to survive and grow. Price cutting, mergers and acquisitions, and formation of cartels began to be accepted as a way to keep away competition. Monopolies or monopolistic tendencies began to be seen in the market creating unfair competition for smaller players.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using participant Essay

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using participant observation - Essay Example Moreover, the concept of participant observation also requires maintaining a reasonable distance between the participants and the researchers so that the process of observation is not affected (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994). Participant observation is a data gathering technique used to understand and examine the thoughts, feelings and views of the participants under their normal routine life (Adler & Adler, 1994; Wiersma, 1995). They are observed in their normal or regular milieu. The method involves the observation of participants’ behavior and requires the participant observer to look closely, listen carefully and ask sensibly (Lofland, 1971). The aim of this paper is to define participant observation in detail by describing the advantages and drawbacks of this method as a researching method. Moreover the paper suggests some possible steps to overcome the weaknesses of this method. Participant observation is widely known as a technique to collect qualitative data. The idea of participant observation is similar to other qualitative techniques which are based on the assumption that there are multiple perceptions about a particular issue in the associated population. Participant observation is always carried out in a community setting. The distinct feature of participant observation is that it does not distract the participants from their normal behavior. Other research techniques include surveys, interviews, questionnaires etc. All these techniques do not ensure the normal and actual attitude of people. People may answer the way the observer wants them or there may be a diplomatic response to the questions in the surveys and interviews. An example can be taken as a slight or considerable change in a person’s natural behavior due to the presence of television camera capturing him. However, the use of Participant observation ensures the correctness of the c ollected data if the observer knows how to tact situations and keep the observations away from

Financial systems around the globe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Financial systems around the globe - Essay Example Nowadays, there is a considerable change in these methods as the concepts of transaction cost and use of full information are removed and intimidation has increased in today’s financial market. It’s difficult to bring these changes with the traditional method of financing growth. There is also a tendency in the direction of cross border merger and acquisitions among great financial service firms in diverse nations. These cross border merger and acquisitions frequently engage big universal sort of institutions that give numerous types of financial services to multiple nations. There are two basic methods, which are used nowadays, which are bank intermediation based method and market based financial system (Leyland and Pyle 1977). We know that there is a diversification of financial systems in different countries. Most of these countries have bank intermediations and market based financial systems but the importance of these systems is comparatively different from each ot her. United States has â€Å"market based financial system†. The financial market has an important role in the financial environment of the country and the banks’ intimidation is insignificant (Leviene 2002). Germany has â€Å"bank intimidation based† financial market. In such financial environment, banks control the allocation of credit and financial markets are not as important as in US. Besides this is confirmed that the financial systems vary from one another according to different countries and due to this, the financial growth rate is also different for each country according to their selection of the financial system.... financial systems because every financial system provides unique functions that are meritorious, and due to the difference in the functions the financial growth of a country also varies (Allen and Santomero 1997). Worldwide or global banking is a substituted method to a stock market to share the risk, collect information for providing the guidance to generate the information and to match corporate governance of different countries. Here, we have discussed about Germany, where the size of the stock market is small & banks carry the entire risk related to the equity, right of proxy regarding the other’s shares. On other hand, banks are working as the representatives to manage the affairs such as to borrow loan and other corporate activities. The thing, which needs to be examined is whether the bank is working as the substitute of the stock market or it has the information about the dealings of the firms, if banks are working as the substitutes of the stock market then the perfor mance of the firms should improve but if they have some kind of private information regarding the firms then they may be a part of conflicts of firms with the equity holders and with those who voted in proxy through banks. It investigates through the facts and figures that the banks influence the performance of German firms and the rest of conflicts arise because of it (Gorton and Schmid 2000). Banks and other financial intermediaries are the basis of outsourcing to the firms. Intermediaries supply more than 50 percent of outsource funds from the countries that are United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The investors primarily borrow money as a loan through the banks and they do not directly borrow the loan. Diamond gives a model of Financial Intermediation and Delegated

10 Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty Essay Example for Free

10 Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty Essay Innocence and the Death Penalty The wrongful execution of an innocent person is an injustice that can never be rectified. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 139 men and women have been released from death row nationally. The High Cost of the Death Penalty It costs far more to execute a person than to keep him or her in prison for life. Death Penalty Can Prolong Suffering for Victims Families Many family members who have lost love ones to murder feel that the death penalty will not heal their wounds nor will it end their pain; the extended legal process prior to executions can prolong the agony experienced by the victims families. International Views on the Death Penalty The vast majority of countries in Western Europe, North America and South America more than 139 nations worldwide have abandoned capital punishment in law or in practice. Inadequate Legal Representation Perhaps the most important factor in determining whether a defendant will receive the death penalty is the quality of the representation he or she is provided. Deterrence Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime anymore than long prison sentences. Arbitrariness in the Application of the Death Penalty Politics, quality of legal counsel and the jurisdiction where a crime is committed are more often the determining factors in a death penalty case than the facts of the crime itself. Religious Perspectives on the Death Penalty Although isolated passages of religious scripture have been quoted in support of the death penalty, almost all religious groups in the United States regard executions as immoral. Racial Disparities The race of the victim and the race of the defendant in capital cases are major factors in determining who is sentenced to die in this country. In 1990 a report from the General Accounting Office concluded that in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e. those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks. Alternatives to the Death Penalty In every state that retains the death penalty, jurors have the option of sentencing convicted capital murderers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The sentence is cheaper to tax-payers and keeps violent offenders off the streets for good.

Communication Styles Essay Example for Free

Communication Styles Essay In this current context, the study investigates language and communication issues from the perspectives of two categories: (1) EAL professionals who are employed in their field and (2) managers in companies that employ them. Questions of language and communication need to be unpacked so that language educators, settlement services, employers, EAL immigrants and policy makers can understand language needs in more depth than a numerical proficiency level can provide. Investigating employers’ and EAL employees’ perspectives on communication experiences in the workplace can add to our understanding of these issues. The study aims to capture participants’ hindsight and reflections on their own employment experiences, as managers or employees. It attempts to build on findings of the existing research and also opens up issues for further questioning. It presents insights but also uncovers contradictions, and identifies directions for further research and policy adjustment. The study reported here comprises the interview phase of a two-part project; the second part, an observational case study of immigrant professionals in the workplace, is currently underway. Interviews of employers of EAL immigrant professionals and tertiary-educated EAL employees offer a focus on language and communication experiences in the workplace. Interviewees thus have the additional benefit of reflection and hindsight and the open-ended interview format allowed them to construct their own perspectives. While the study size and interpretive approach mean that the research findings are not generalizable, they present insights into issues that have been identified but not widely analyzed. The current system of pre-immigration testing to determine the level of language readiness for the workplace does not adequately reflect the breadth and depth of communicative needs in particular workplace contexts. For example, engineers who need to communicate with construction site workers, as well as clients on the telephone and colleagues in meetings need a range of English language competencies well beyond test taking skills. Nevertheless, it might be expected that highly-qualified, experienced EAL immigrants would feel confident that once they pass the language test requirements, their English would be adequate to perform their work. One drawback for both employers and employees is that communicative language development takes time. If newly-hired employees need to work immediately with customers and clients, employers may be disappointed in their communication skills. Likewise, if employees are in a workplace with little regular interpersonal contact, including informal contact where they can talk without job performance stress, their language development is disadvantaged. For example, the importance of asking questions and checking understanding can be emphasized, discussed and compared across cultures in language and work orientation programs. But employers can also adopt non-threatening strategies for checking comprehension, as well as giving feedback. Moreover, it is important to remember that miscommunication is a function of various situations and does not always arise from problems of English language ability. They tended to see their job as particular tasks and responsibilities for which they were well-qualified and experienced. Employers, on the other hand, considered interaction at work to be essential to smooth functioning of the workplace and to the establishment and maintenance of workplace relationships. They faulted EAL employees’ general lack of engagement in workplace interaction. This project has taken a step in investigating issues of language and communication in the workplace. The findings can be assessed against others’ knowledge and experience of employers and EAL immigrant professionals COMMUNICATION ACCOMODATION THEORY (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_accommodation_theory) Communication accommodation theory (CAT) is a theory of communication developed by Howard Giles. It argues that â€Å"when people interact they adjust their speech, their vocal patterns and their gestures, to accommodate to others†[1]. It explores the various reasons why individuals emphasize or minimize the social differences between themselves and their interlocutors through verbal and nonverbal communication. This theory is concerned with the links between â€Å"language, context and identity†.[2] It focuses on both the intergroup and interpersonal factors that lead to accommodation as well as the ways in which power, macro and micro-context concerns affect communication behaviors. [2] There are two main accommodation processes described by this theory. Convergence refers to the strategies through which individuals adapt to each other’s communicative behaviors, in order to reduce these social differences.[3] Meanwhile, Divergence refers to the instances in which individuals accentuate the speech and non-verbal differences between themselves and their interlocutors.[3] Sometimes when individuals try to engage in convergence they can also end up over-accommodating, and despite their good intentions their convergence can be seen as condescending. Background Speech accommodation theory The communication accommodation theory was developed by Howard Giles, professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It evolved from the speech accommodation theory (SAT), but can be traced back to Giles’ accent mobility model of 1973. The speech accommodation theory was developed in order to demonstrate the value of social psychological concepts to understanding the dynamics of speech. It sought to explain â€Å"the motivations underlying certain shifts in people’s speech styles during social encounters and some of the social consequences arising from them†. Particularly, it focused on the cognitive and affective processes underlying individuals’ convergence and divergence through speech. The communication accommodation theory has broadened this theory to include not only speech but also the â€Å"non-verbal and discursive dimensions of social interaction†. Thus, it now encompasses other aspects of communication. In addition CAT has moved in a more interdisciplinary direction than the previous speech accommodation theory. It now also covers a wider range of phenomena. Social psychology and social identity theory Like speech accommodation theory, communication accommodation theory continues to draw from social psychology, particularly from four main socio-psychology theories: similarity-attraction, social exchange, causal distribution and intergroup distinctiveness. These theories help to explain why speakers seek to converge or diverge from the language, dialect, accent and behavior of their interlocutors. CAT also relies heavily in social identity theory. This later theory argues that a person’s self-concept comprises a personal identity and a social identity, and that this social identity is based in comparisons people make between in-groups (groups to which they belong) and out-groups (groups to which they don’t belong). According to social identity theory, people strive to maintain a positive social identity by either joining groups where they feel more comfortable or making a more positive experience of belonging to the groups to which they already belong. Since speech is a way to express group membership, people adopt convergence or divergence in communication in order to â€Å"signal a salient group distinctiveness, so as to reinforce a social identity†. Communication accommodation thus, becomes a tool to emphasize group distinctiveness in a positive way, and strengthen the individual’s social identity. Four main socio-psychologies Similarity-attraction The similarity-attraction theory posits that â€Å"the more similar our attitudes and beliefs are to those of others, the more likely it is for them to be attracted to us. Convergence through verbal and non-verbal communication is one of the mechanisms that we can use to become more similar to others, increasing their attraction towards us. For this reason, it can be said that one of the factors which leads individuals to use convergence is a desire to obtain social approval from his or her interlocutor. It could hence be concluded that â€Å"the greater one’s need for social approval, the greater will be one’s tendency to converge.† Natalà © (1975), for instance, has found that speakers with high needs for approval converge more to another’s vocal intensity and pause length than those with low needs for approval†. An individual on the receiving end of high level of accommodation is likely to develop a greater sense of self-esteem and satisfaction than being a receiver of low accommodation. Social exchange process The social exchange process theory â€Å"states that prior to acting, we attempt to assess the rewards and costs of alternate courses of action†, and that we tend to choose whatever course of action will bring greater rewards and less costs. Although most often convergence can bring forth rewards, there are some occasions when it can also bring forth costs such as â€Å"increased effort to converge, a loss of perceived integrity and personal (and sometimes group) identity†. Hence when choosing whether or not to use convergence people assess these costs and rewards. Causal attribution process The causal attribution theory â€Å"Suggests that we interpret other people’s behavior, and evaluate the individual themselves, in terms of the motivations and intentions that we attribute as the cause of their behavior† It applies to convergence in that convergence might be viewed positively or negatively depending on the causes we attribute to it: â€Å"Although interpersonal convergence is generally favorably received, and non-convergence generally unfavorably received, the extent to which this holds true will undoubtedly be influenced by the listeners attributions of the speaker’s intent†. Giles and Smith provide the example of an experiment that they conducted amongst French and English speaking Canadians, in order to illustrate this. In this experiment, when individuals believed that the person from the different group used language convergence in order to reduce cultural barriers it was more positively evaluated than when they attributed convergence to the pressures of the situation, which forced them converge. â€Å"When French Canadian listeners attributed an English Canadian’s convergence to French as due to his desire to break down cultural barriers, the shift was viewed favorably. However, when this same behavior was attributed to pressures in the situation forcing the other to converge, positive feelings were not so strongly evoked†. Intergroup distinctiveness The process of intergroup distinctiveness, as theorized by Tajfel argues â€Å"that when members of different groups are in contact, they compare themselves on dimensions which are important to them, such as personal attributes, abilities, material possessions and so forth†. In these â€Å"intergroup social comparisons† individuals seek to find ways in which they can make themselves positively distinct from the out-group in order to enhance their social identity.[5] Because speech style and language is an important factor in defining social groups, divergence in speech style or language is often employed in order to maintain intergroup distinctiveness and differentiate from the out-group, especially when group membership is a salient issue or the individual’s identity and group membership is being threatened.[6] Assumptions Many of the principles and concepts from social identity theory are also applicable to communication accommodation theory. Under the influence of social psychology, especially social identity theory, communication accommodation theory are guided by mainly four assumptions. * There are speech and behavioral similarities and dissimilarities in all conversations. * The way in which we perceive the speech and behaviors of another will determine our evaluation of the conversation. * Language and behaviors have the ability to communicate social status and group belonging between people in a conversation. * Norms guide the accommodation process which varies in its degree of appropriateness. The first assumption indicates that people bring their past experience to conversations. Therefore, communication is not only influenced by situational conditions and initial reactions but the social-historical context in which the interaction is embedded†. People’s attitudes and beliefs, derived from those factors, determine the extent to which they are willing to accommodate in a conversation. The more similarities they share with each other, the more likely for them to accommodate. The second assumption is concerned with how people perceive and evaluate a conversation. Perception is the process of attending to and interpreting a message and evaluation is the process of judging a conversation.[1] When someone enters a conversation, usually he first observes what takes place and then decides whether he should make adjustment to fit in. However, the decision about accommodation is not always necessary. Imagine the encounter of two strangers, they may have a random small talk and simply say goodbye. In this case, neither of them is likely to evaluate the conversation since they have little possibility to meet again. The importance of language and behaviors is illustrated in the third assumption since they are indicators of social status and group belongings. When two people who speak different languages try to have a conversation, the language they agree to communicate with is more likely to be the one used by the higher status person. This idea of â€Å"salient social membership negotiation is well illustrated in the situation of an interview as the interviewee usually makes all efforts to identify with the interviewer by accommodating the way he speaks and behaves so that he can have more chance to secure the job. The last assumption puts emphasis on social appropriateness and norms. Here norms are defined as â€Å"expectations of behaviors that individuals feel should or should not occur in a conversation†. Those expectations give guidance to people’s behaviors, helping them to figure out the appropriate way to accommodate. Most of the time, the accommodation made according to those norms are perceived socially appropriate. For instance, when a young person talks to the seniors in his family, he should avoid using jargons among his generation to show respect and communicate more smoothly. Convergence, over-accomodation, and divergence Convergence Convergence refers to the process through which an individual shifts his speech patterns in interaction so that they more closely resemble the speech patterns of his interlocutor(s). People can converge through many features of communication such as their use of language, their â€Å"pronunciation, pause and utterance lengths, vocal intensities, nonverbal behaviors, and intimacy of self-disclosures†(Giles and Smith, 1979, 46), but they do not necessarily have to converge simultaneously at all of these levels. In fact people can both converge at some levels and diverge through others at the same time. People use convergence based on their perceptions of others, as well as what they are able to infer about them and their backgrounds. Attraction (likability, charisma, credibility), also triggers convergence. As Turner and West note, â€Å"when communicators are attracted to others they will converge in their conversations†. On the other hand, as the similarity attraction theory highlights, when people have similar beliefs, personality and behaviors they tend to be more attracted towards each other. Thus when an individual shifts his speech and non-verbal behaviors in order to assimilate to the other it can result in a more favorable appraisal of him that is: when convergence is perceived positively it is likely to enhance both the conversation and the attraction between the listener and the speaker. For this reason it could be said that convergence reflects â€Å"an individual’s desire for social approval† from his interlocutor, and that the greater the individual’s need for social approval, the more likely he or she is to converge. Besides attraction, other factors which â€Å"influence the intensity of this â€Å"need of approval and hence the level of convergence â€Å"includes the probability of future interactions, the social status of the addressee, and interpersonal variability for need of social approval†. Other factors that determine whether and to what extent individuals converge in interaction are their relational history, social norms and power variables. Because individuals are more likely to converge to the individual with the higher status it is likely that the speech in a conversation will reflect the speech of the individual with the higher status. Converging also increases the effectiveness of communication, which in turn lowers uncertainty, interpersonal anxiety, and increases mutual understanding. This is another factor that motivates people to converge. Over accommodation However, although people usually have good intentions when they attempt to use convergence in conversation, some interlocutors can perceive convergence as patronizing and demeaning and hence just as it can enhance conversation it can also detract from the processes of communication. Over accommodation can exist in three forms: Sensory over accommodation, dependency over accommodation, and intergroup over accommodation. Sensory over accommodation is when an individual thinks that he is being accommodative to someone’s linguistic or physical disability but overdoes it, so that the other person perceives his behavior as patronizing. Dependency over accommodation refers to the situations â€Å"when the speaker places the listener in a lower-status role so that the listener is made to appear dependent on the speaker and he or she understands that the speaker is the primary speaker in the conversation in order to communicate a higher status. And finally, intergroup over accommodation involves manipulating people based on a general stereotype and not as individuals with an individual persona. The socially categorized stereotypes that people hold of others result in these cognitively linked forms of over-accommodation. Over-accommodation takes place in all types of circumstances. For example, it is not uncommon for nurses or caretakers to speak to their elderly patients in baby talk. While the nurses may have the purest of intentions to care and to relate to them, the patients actually end up feeling degraded and underestimated. In this particular case, it also can cause difficulty in adapting to an institution and a dysfunctional environment. Divergence Divergence is a linguistic strategy whereby a member of a speech community accentuates the linguistic differences between his or herself and his interlocutor. In the most part it reflects a desire to emphasize group distinctiveness in a positive manner and it usually takes places when an individual perceives interaction as an intergroup process rather than an individual one. â€Å"Given that communication features are often core dimensions of what it is to be a member of a group, divergence can be regarded as a very important tactic of displaying a valued distinctiveness from the other., This helps to sustain a positive image of one’s in-group and hence to strengthen one’s social identity. Divergence can thus be a way for members of different groups to maintain their cultural identity, a mean to contrast self-images when the other person is considered a member of an undesirable group, and a way to indicate power or status differences, as when one individual wishes to render another one less powerful. Components of CAT Further research conducted by Gallois et al. in 1995 has expanded the theory to include 17 propositions that influence these processes of convergence and divergence. They are categorized into four main components: the sociohistorical context, the communicators’ accommodative orientation, the immediate situation and evaluation and future intentions.These components are essential to Communication accommodation Theory and affect the course and outcome of intercultural conversations. Sociohistorical context The sociohistorical context refers to way in which past interactions between the groups to which the communicators belong influence the communication behaviors of the communicators. It includes the relations between the groups having contact and the social norms regarding contact[4]. These relations between the different groups to which the communicators belong, influence the communicators’ behavior. Amongst these socio-historical factors which influence communicators are: political or historical relations between nations, the different religious or ideological views between possessed by the two groups participating in the conversation, amongst others. Accommodative orientation Accommodative orientation refers to the communicators tendencies to perceive encounters without group members in interpersonal terms, intergroup terms, or a combination of the two. There are three factors that are crucial to accommodative orientations: (1) â€Å"intrapersonal factors† (e.g. personality of the speakers), (2) â€Å"intergroup factors† (e.g. communicators’ feelings toward out-groups), and (3) â€Å"initial orientations† (e.g. perceived potential for conflict). The issues which influence this last factor include: collectivistic culture context or whether the culture is collectivistic or individualistic; distressing history of interaction, the possible tensions that exist between groups due to past interactions; stereotypes; norms for treatment of groups; and high group solidarity/ high group dependence, how dependent the persons self-worth is in the group. Immediate situation The immediate situation refers to the moment in which the actual communication takes place. It is shaped by five aspects which are interrelated: (1) â€Å"sociopsychological states†, (2) â€Å"goals and addressee focus† (e.g. motivations and goals for the encounter), (3) â€Å"sociolinguistic strategies† (e.g. convergence or divergence), (4) â€Å"behavior and tactics† (e.g. topic, accent) and (5) â€Å"labeling and attributions†. Evaluation and future intentions This aspect deals with how communicators perceive their conversational partners’ behavior and its effects on future encounters between the two groups. Positively rated conversations will most likely lead to further communication between the interlocutors and other members of their respective groups. Communication Accommodation Theory in Action In 1991, Giles, Coupland, and Coupland expressed the belief that a â€Å"more qualitative perspective† would be necessary in order to obtain more diverse and clarifying explanations of the behaviors presented within varying contexts. They referred to this as â€Å"the applied perspective† that showed accommodation theory as a vital part of day-to-day activity as opposed to solely being a theoretical construct. They sought to â€Å"demonstrate how the core concepts and relationships invoked by accommodation theory are available for addressing altogether pragmatic concerns†[3]. For Giles, Coupland, and Coupland, these â€Å"pragmatic concerns† were extremely varied in nature. One of these â€Å"pragmatic concerns† included understanding the relational issues that present themselves in the medical and clinical fields, such as the relational â€Å"alternatives, development, difficulties, and outcomes,† which affected the patients’ contentment with their medical interactions and whether or not, through these interactions, they agreed with and implemented said health care regimens. Another of these situations involved the potential options in a legal arena. The way that the judges, plaintiffs, and defendants accommodated themselves to both the situation and the jury could manipulate the jury’s acceptance or rejection of the defendant, and could, thus, control the outcome of the case. Communication accommodation theory was also found to have a place in media. In regards to radio broadcasting, the alliance of the audience with the broadcaster played an important part in both the ratings that the shows would receive and whether the show progressed or was cancelled. In the area of jobs and employment, accommodation theory was believed to influence the satisfaction one has with his or her job and the productivity that that person possesses in said job through convergence with or divergence from the co-workers and their work environment. Accommodation theory also possessed practical applications in the development of learning a second language. This was seen when the student’s education of and proficiency in said language was either assisted or hindered by accommodative measures. Giles, Coupland, and Coupland (1991) also addressed the part that accommodation theory plays in a situation they called â€Å"language switching†, when bilingual individuals must decide which language they should speak when they are in an organizational environment with other bilingual individuals. This can be an incredibly important choice to make, especially in a business setting, because an incorrect judgment in this area of communication could unwittingly promote negative reactions between the two or more parties involved. In addition, accommodation theory was strongly intertwined with the way an immigrant accepts and is accepted by their host country. An instance of over-accommodation from the immigrating individual can unintentionally damage that person’s sense of individuality while a strong divergence from the immigrating individual from their host culture can prompt the natives of the host country to react negatively to them because of the immigrating individual’s use of divergence. The final area of practical application, as presented by Giles, Coupland, and Coupland (1991), was that of accommodation theory’s effect on the lives of people with disabilities. Accommodation theory was thought to either aid them by promoting them to â€Å"fulfill their communicative and life potentials,† or by hindering them from reaching their full potential by focusing on the disability that made them different rather than the other characteristics that made them similar to their peers. Despite the fact that communication accommodation theory is theoretical, it has shown itself to be viable by its numerous practical applications. Communication Accommodation Theory in Action among Diverse Cultural Groups Intergenerational communications Researchers of communication accommodation theory have been interested in conversations between the elderly and the young; actively apply this theory to analyze intergenerational communication situations. Since aging of population is growing to become a serious issue in current society, communication difficulties of older adults and issues like ageism should be addressed. According to mainstream sociolinguistic studies, age is regarded as a variable only to the extent that it may show patterns of dialectal variation within speech communities across time. However, â€Å"the existence of potentially important generational differences relating to beliefs about talk, situational perceptions, interactional goals, and various language devices between the young and the elderly as empirical questions in their own right â€Å"are all taken into account when using communication accommodation theory to explore intergenerational communication problems and improve effectiveness. Previous research have also developed models such as the communication predicament model of ageing and the communication enhancement model of ageing to point out numerous consequences brought by both negative and positive attitudes towards aging.