Critical Reading Module 2015 Fix 23 Februari

BAHAN AJAR CRITICAL READING
(BAE-207)
Compiled by
Arum Budiastuti
English Department
Faculty of Humanities
Universitas Airlangga
2015
0
KONTRAK PERKULIAHAN
Nama Mata Kuliah
Kode Mata Kuliah
Bobot
Dosen Pembina
Semester
Hari/Jam
Masa Perkuliahan
: CRITICAL READING
: BAE-207
: 2 SKS
: David Segoh, MA (A), Arum Budiastuti, MCS (B), Diah
Arimbi, PhD/Nur Wulan, PhD (C), Yulia Indarti, MA (D),
Lastiko Endi, M.Hum (E).
: IV (empat)
: Senin (I & IV), Selasa (III), Rabu (VI), Kamis (IV)
: 23 Feb 14 Juni 2015
1.
DESKRIPSI MATA KULIAH

Mata kuliah ini mengajarkan cara membaca, menelaah dan mengkritisi artikel popular dan jurnal
ilmiah dengan topik-topik yang sesuai dengan dua bidang minat dalam program studi S1 Sastra
Inggris yaitu literature/ cultural studies dan linguistics.
2.
TUJUAN MATA KULIAH

Setelah mengikuti perkuliahan, mahasiswa semester IV mampu membaca jurnal ilmiah dan/atau
buku serta mampu membuat review artikel jurnal ilmiah/buku sesuai minat yang ada dalam
Departemen Sastra Inggris.
3.
BAHAN AJAR
Di dalam perkuliahan ini, mahasiswa akan diberikan hand-out yang telah disiapkan oleh dosen
pembina mata kuliah (PJMK). Hand-out disusun dari beragam sumber terkini.
4.
SYARAT SYARAT UMUM PERKULIAHAN

1. Datang tepat waktu. Keterlambatan lebih dari 15 menit tidak akan ditoleransi (sesuai
kesepakatan dengan dosen pengampu masing-masing).
2. Membawa peralatan tulis, catatan dan buku/materi kuliah.
3. Mengambil tempat terdepan jika belum terisi.
4. Menyimak materi dengan sungguh-sungguh dan aktif berpartisipasi dalam kelas.
5. Selama perkuliahan berlangsung, mahasiswa tidak diperkenankan menyalakan/menggunakan
telepon genggam/seluler.
5.
ORGANISASI MATERI DAN KOMPETENSI

Mahasiswa mampu menulis review artikel jurnal ilmiah sesuai minat yang ada
dalam Departemen Sastra Inggris.
Mahasiswa mampu
menulis review article
jurnal ilmiah bidang
Linguistics
6.
Mahasiswa mampu
Literature
Mahasiswa mampu menjelaskan

definisi article reviewdan elemenelemen yang ada di dalamnya.
KRITERIA PENILAIAN
Mahasiswa mampu
Cultural Studies
Mahasiswa mampu memahami

konten jurnal ilmiah dan menjelaskan
bagian-bagian jurnal ilmiah
1
Analytical Reading
Dalam menentukan nilai akhir akan digunakan pembobotan sebagai berikut

Rerata hasil tugas (on-going)
: 30 %
Ujian Tengah Semester
: 25 %
Ujian Akhir Semester
: 35 %
Soft skill (terintergrasi)
: 10 %
Atribut soft skill yang dinilai adalah:
- disiplin (Mentaati tata tertib/aturan yang berlaku, datang tepat waktu, jumlah kehadiran)
- kejujuran (Tidak membuat kepalsuan tanda tangan, tidak menyontek saat quiz/ujian)
- kerjasama kelompok (mengerjakan tugas yang diberikan kelompok)
- komunikatif (menyampaikan pendapat/respon terhadap masalah/tanyaan yang diberikan)
- kritis (mengidentifikasi kelemahan dan kekuatan materi bacaan/argumen penulis artikel)
Penilaian keberhasilan belajar mahasiswa dilakukan dengan kriteria sebagai berikut
Nilai Akhir
Point
Interval
A
4,0
75 100
AB
3,5
70 74,9
B
3,0
65 69.9
BC
2,5
60 64,9
C
2,0
55 59,9
D
1,0
40 54,9
E
0
0 39,9
Apabila mahasiswa mengumpulkan tugas setelah tanggal dan waktu jatuh tempo yang telah
ditentukan akan mengakibatkan penalti sebagai berikut:
terlambat 1 hari: minus 5 skor (skala 1-100)
Jika Anda menyerahkan tugas Anda setelah hari ke-3, pekerjaan Anda tidak akan diperiksa dan
dianggap gagal (F). Jika Anda mengalami kesulitan selama studi Anda, silakan menemui dosen
pembina dan / atau dosen wali Anda untuk mencari solusi.
Rubrik Penilaian untuk Penelaahan Artikel Jurnal
Penilaian
Excellent (A)
85 and up
Very Good (A)

75 - 85
Deskripsi Kualitas Telaah

Excellent analysis of article content that is discerning, in-depth and
supported by both academic and personal knowledge. There is a high
quality of reflection as can be seen in the ability to relate to ones
values, beliefs and experiences to the content of the article. The
reviewer is able to suggest how the information and knowledge could
be adopted or adapted innovatively to enhance or improve learning in
the field. Personal insights and views that are expressed show that the
reviewer has thought critically and reflectively about the article.
Almost no grammar errors.
The review is clear, well organized with logical sequencing and
elaboration of key points. All key points are adequately detailed and
there is in-depth analysis of some of the points. Insights and
discoveries made show a good understanding of the article content

and that that the reviewer has made good effort to reflect on his/her
values, beliefs and experiences. Minimal grammar errors.
Satisfactory (C - BC)
55-64
There is adequate analysis of the article content but with some points
detailed more than others. The reviewer was able to suggest how the
information and knowledge could be applied to improve or enhance
current practices. Overall, the review is satisfactory in that it shows an
overall understanding of the content and the ability to reflect on the
content. Yet there are some or notable grammar errors.
The review is lacking in focus and clarity of expression. Key points not
elaborated upon and details are minimal. Little analysis of content.
Minimal reflection and insights given.
Unsatisfactory (D - E)
Below 55
Unacceptable levels of paraphrasing; irrelevance of content; polemical

assertion without evidence or analysis; presentation, grammar or
structure so poor it cannot be understood; proven as plagiarism.
Good (B-AB)
65-74
Adapted from: The University of Sydney Course Policy (2010)
7.
Rincian Tugas dan Ujian

i. Komponen Tugas (in pair/group/individual) meliputi tugas sebelum dan sesudah UTS.
Sebelum UTS:
berupa tugas take-home membaca artikel jurnal yang telah disediakan dosen dan
membuat review artikel bersama dengan reading group-nya sesuai dengan panduan yang telah
diberikan. Pada beberapa pertemuan, dosen akan memandu diskusi artikel dengan
menggunakan strategi literature circle (dijelaskan pada pertemuan pertama).
Pada saat membaca artikel, pastikan setiap anggota kelompok berusaha memahami isi
artikel tersebut. Pada saat di kelas, dosen akan memfasilitasi diskusi untuk membahas artikel
jurnal tersebut. Dosen mungkin akan menunjuk secara acak setiap mahasiswa di kelas untuk
mempresentasikan isi artikel per paragraf/bagian untuk mengecek dan menilai pemahaman
mahasiswa. Mahasiswa akan membaca dan me-review 3 artikel populer dan 3 (tiga) artikel
jurnal selama paruh semester pertama. Panduan dan contoh-contoh akan diberikan pada
pertemuan pertama.
Sesudah UTS:
Mahasiswa (individual) diminta untuk memilih topik dan mencari lima artikel jurnal di
database perpustakaan (Sage, Elsevier, Springer, dll)) yang berkaitan dengan topik tersebut.
Mahasiswa diminta untuk memilih salah satu artikel dan membuat article review sebagai takehome assignment. Pada pertemuan ke 10 13, mahasiswa (dipilih secara acak) diberi waktu
maks. 10 menit untuk mempresentasikan hasil review artikelnya di depan kelas dan diberikan
feedback langsung oleh dosen/peer.
ii. Ujian Tengah Semester/UTS (individual) berupa ujian sit-in di kelas. Mahasiswa akan diminta
membaca satu artikel jurnal pendek (+/- 2000 kata) on the spot dan membuat abstrak artikel
tersebut (about 150 words) dan menjawab beberapa pertanyaan dalam waktu 90 menit. Dalam
membuat abstrak, mahasiswa tidak diperkenankan menggunakan kalimat yang sama persis
dengan yang ada di dalam artikel, kecuali istilah-istilah tertentu, atau jika tidak, bisa jadi
dianggap sebagai plagiat (cara mem-parafrase dibahas intensif di kelas Academic Writing pada
pertemuan sebelum UTS). Pada saat ujian, mahasiswa tidak diperkenankan membawa dan
menggunakan alat komunikasi/gawai.
iii. Ujian Akhir Semester/UAS) berupa ujian sit-in yang akan dilaksanakan sesuai dengan jadwal
akademik. Mahasiswa akan diminta membaca satu artikel jurnal pendek on the spot dan
membuat reading review (about 200 words) secara individual dalam waktu 90 menit (seperti
yang telah dilatihkan di kelas selama satu semester). Mahasiswa yang tidak hadir dalam
perkuliahan lebih dari 25% (3x) tidak diperkenankan mengikuti UAS.
iv. Mahasiswa yang melakukan kecurangan (plagiat/nyontek/kerjasama atau ngerpek) saat ujian
(UTS dan UAS) maupun dalam mengerjakan tugas akan dikenai sanksi pembatalan hasil ujian
(mendapatkan nilai E/FAIL).
8. Ketidakjujuran Akademik
Departemen Sastra Inggris berkomitmen terhadap prinsip-prinsip kejujuran akademik
sebagaimana diatur dalam kebijakan Universitas Airlangga. Mahasiswa memiliki tanggung
jawab untuk membiasakan diri dengan prinsip-prinsip ini.
Sesuai dengan kebijakan universitas, definisi tentang ketidakjujuran akademik termasuk
namun tidak terbatas pada:
plagiarisme: untuk rincian lengkap lihat di bawah;
fabrikasi data;
keterlibatan orang lain di tempat ujian atau di tempat lain untuk menyelesaikan suatu
tugas yang dinilai, baik dengan kompensasi finansial atau tidak.
komunikasi, baik dengan berbicara atau beberapa cara lain, dengan mahassiwa lain selama
ujian;
membawa ke tempat ujian dan menyembunyikan bahan terlarang seperti buku teks,
catatan, kalkulator atau komputer;
mencoba untuk membaca karya mahasiswa lainnya selama ujian, dan / atau
Dalam kasus dugaan ketidakjujuran akademik, mahasiswa akan diberi peringatan dan dapat
diberi nilai E.
Plagiat
Plagiarisme adalah pencurian kekayaan intelektual. Departemen Bahasa Inggris
menentang dan tidak akan mentolerir plagiarisme.
Sesuai dengan kebijakan Universitas, Departemen mendefinisikan plagiarisme sebagai:
mempresentasikan karya orang lain (ide, temuan atau bahan tertulis dan / atau dipublikasikan)
sebagaimana sendiri dengan menyajikan, menyalin atau mereproduksi pekerjaan tanpa
mencantumkan sumber. Bentuk umum dari plagiarisme termasuk tetapi tidak terbatas pada:
mempresentasikan karya tulis yang berisi kalimat, paragraf atau ekstrak lagi dari karya
yang diterbitkan tanpa atribusi dari sumber;
mempresentasikan karya tertulis yang mereproduksi bagian signifikan dari karya siswa
lain, dan / atau
menggunakan struktur argumen orang lain, bahkan jika kata-kata tersebut berubah.
Kerjasama yang sah antara mahasiswa diperbolehkan tetapi mahasiswa harus menyadari
perbedaan antara kerjasama dan kolusi. Pembahasan tema umum dan konsep
diperbolehkan tetapi para siswa tidak diizinkan untuk membaca karya masing-masing
sebelum diajukan sehingga terjadi kesamaan ide dan struktur. Apabila terjadi
plagiarisme, Departemen akan menindak tegas dan dalam kasus terburuk, tulisan
mahasiswa yang bersangkutan tidak akan dinilai dan dianggap gagal (nilai E).
9.
JADWAL KULIAH
No
Date
Topic
1. 23/24/25/26 Feb
2.
2/3/4/5 Mar
-
9/10/11/12 Mar
4. 16/17/18/19 Mar
5. 23/24/25/26 Mar
3.
6. 30-31 Mar/1-2 Apr
7.
6/7/8/9 Apr
8.
27/28/29/30 Apr
9.
4/5/6/7 May
Material
Introduction and Course Outline

Forming reading pair/group
Defining literature circle (recommended)
Critical Thinking and Critical Reading (Finding stance
in articles, etc.)
Article review: What and How to
Identifying parts of a scholarly article (more
discussion on abstract)
Article review (in class, prompt feedback)
Critical Thinking and Critical Reading
(Finding stance in articles, etc.)
Article review
Identifying parts of a scholarly article (more
discussion on Introduction and Discussion)
Article review (in class, prompt feedback)
Critical Thinking and Critical Reading

(Finding stance in articles, etc.)
- Article review
- Identifying parts of a scholarly article (more
discussion on conclusion)
- Article review (in class, prompt feedback)
MID-TERM EXAM (Sit in)
- Feedback for Mid-Term Exam (Lecturer)
- Assignment: each student chooses ONE topic of any
major s/he is interested in and search min. 5
articles in librarys database. Students write the
short summaries of the articles to be submitted and
discussed in class in the following week.
Group discussion about the articles
10. 11/12/13/14 May Presentation: review article (individual)

11. 18/19/20/21 May Presentation: review article (individual)
12.
13.
Lilla Musyahda, Dra., M.Pd

NIP 196612102007012001
Appendix
Popular reading:
perfume
-Class module
- a journal article on
perfume (CS)
- popular reading:
Martin Luther Kings
speech
-Class module
Martin Luther Kings
speech (Ling)
- popular reading:
(Dis)satisfaction
-Class module
Dissatisfaction (Lit)
25/26/27/28 May Presentation: review article (individual)

Presentation: review article (individual)
1/2/3/4 June
Recap and evaluation
FINAL TERM EXAM (Sit in/writing article review)
Mengetahui,
Ketua Departmen Sastra Inggris,
-Kontrak Perkuliahan
-Class module
Surabaya, 2 Februari 2015

Dosen PJMK,
Arum Budiastuti, S.S., M.C.S.

NIP. 198001272010122001
What Are Literature Circles? (TLCRC 2004)

In literature circles, small groups of students gather together to discuss a piece of literature in depth. The
discussion is guided by students' response to what they have read. You may hear talk about events and
characters in the book, the author's craft, or personal experiences related to the story. Literature circles
provide a way for students to engage in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond
to books. Specifically, each student is given a unique role in the discussion process. Collaboration is at
the heart of this approach. Students reshape and add onto their understanding as they construct
meaning with other readers. Finally, literature circles guide students to deeper understanding of what
they read through structured discussion and extended written and artistic response.
The literature circle technique has been demonstrated to be an effective way to enhance reading
comprehension with students from first grade through college, including those of varying abilities and
those with identified disabilities.
How to do Literature circle? (Fayne and Weiss 2007)
1. Participants are divided into groups of six, seven, or more.
2. A common reading is assigned.
3. After reading the selection, participants are given roles and respond to the piece according to their
assigned roles.
4. If groups are assigned different selections, a group member may present key or essential
understandings to their peers.
Roles:
Each person draws a card to determine his or her role in the discussion circle, or the teacher
may assign roles. Multiple people can play the same role.
Discussion Director
Illuminator
Vocabulary Enhancer
Illustrator
Connector
Reporter
Facilitator
begins the discussion by asking probing questions. For example, the director
might ask, "How did you feel while you were reading this article?" or "What do
you think the most important parts were?" Laina Jones tells her students to
remember that a discussion director should ask "open-ended" rather than
simple "yes/no" questions.
finds the passage (or passages) that illuminate or spot light an important point
and reads the passage out loud to the group, explaining why that particular
passage was chosen.
introduces new words, unfamiliar words, or key words found in the text and
defines them for the group.
draws a picture, creates a graph or chart, produces a Venn diagram, or, in
some other visual way, represents concepts or ideas in a pictorial manner.
brings meaning to the selection by connecting it to other books, media, or
personal experiences.
takes notes on the proceedings and reports to the larger group.
times each persons presentation (if a discrete amount of time is allotted) and
keeps the group on task.
Advantages of Using Literature Circles (Fayne & Weiss 2007):
All students have an important role in the discussion.

Small groups allow everyone to be heard.
Difficult points are presented from many perspectives.
Students of differing abilities can be in one group and benefit from one another.
Roles can be rotated to allow students to experience different perspectives.
Books/long articles can be broken into manageable pieces.
Different learning strengths and styles are tapped.
Comprehension and vocabulary are significantly enhanced.
Students take responsibility for their own learning.
More(Curtis 2015)
In literature circles, every student can participate in conversation. They are often less intimidated
than they might be in a class discussion. The students are also actively constructing their own
meanings of a text, rather than waiting for a teacher to "give" them an official meaning.
By practicing the analytic strategies of each group role, students become cannier, more resourceful
readers.
The different roles in a literature circle show students that historical texts may embrace multiple
perspectives, depending on who is telling the story of history. As the students bring these
perspectives to the entire group, everyone benefits and learns from one another.
As students try out various roles and learn ways to talk about a text, they begin to internalize these
habits and perspectives; eventually, they can discuss literature productively while guiding the
conversation themselves.
Assessment of Literature Circles (Curtis 2015)
As the students discuss the reading selection in the literature circle, the teacher listens, takes notes, and
monitors the students' abilities to contribute to the discussion through their assigned roles. After all the
literature circles have completed their discussions, the students can present their insights and questions
to the rest of the class. The teacher can also lead the class in an assessment of the literature circles by
asking the following questions:
Based on our literature circles, what are the most important ideas you learned about your reading
selection today?
How well did each member of your literature circle contribute in his or her assigned role?
What went well in your literature circle?
What would you do to improve our literature circles?

References
Fayne H & Weiss A (2007) Literature Circles. Available at
http://ohiorc.org/orc_documents/orc/AdLIT/prodevelopment/documents/lfl_0207/lfl_nfayne_literature
circle_4.pdf [accessed 21 Feb 2015]
Curtis CP (2015) Historical and Cultural Context. Available at
http://www.learner.org/workshops/tml/workshop5/teaching3.html [accessed 21 Feb 2015]
The Literature Circles Resource Centers. 2004. Overview of Literature Circles. Available at
http://www.litcircles.org/Overview/overview.html [accessed 21 Feb 2015]
Appendix
What Are Literature Circles? (TLCRC 2004)
In literature circles, small groups of students gather together to discuss a piece of literature in depth. The
discussion is guided by students' response to what they have read. You may hear talk about events and
characters in the book, the author's craft, or personal experiences related to the story. Literature circles
provide a way for students to engage in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond
to books. Specifically, each student is given a unique role in the discussion process. Collaboration is at
the heart of this approach. Students reshape and add onto their understanding as they construct
meaning with other readers. Finally, literature circles guide students to deeper understanding of what
they read through structured discussion and extended written and artistic response.
The literature circle technique has been demonstrated to be an effective way to enhance reading
comprehension with students from first grade through college, including those of varying abilities and
those with identified disabilities.
How to do Literature circle? (Fayne and Weiss 2007)
1. Participants are divided into groups of six, seven, or more.
2. A common reading is assigned.
3. After reading the selection, participants are given roles and respond to the piece according to their
assigned roles.
4. If groups are assigned different selections, a group member may present key or essential
understandings to their peers.
Roles:
Each person draws a card to determine his or her role in the discussion circle, or the teacher
may assign roles. Multiple people can play the same role.
Discussion Director
Illuminator
Vocabulary Enhancer
Illustrator
Connector
Reporter
Facilitator
begins the discussion by asking probing questions. For example, the director
might ask, "How did you feel while you were reading this article?" or "What do
you think the most important parts were?" Laina Jones tells her students to
remember that a discussion director should ask "open-ended" rather than
simple "yes/no" questions.
finds the passage (or passages) that illuminate or spot light an important point
and reads the passage out loud to the group, explaining why that particular
passage was chosen.
introduces new words, unfamiliar words, or key words found in the text and
defines them for the group.
draws a picture, creates a graph or chart, produces a Venn diagram, or, in
some other visual way, represents concepts or ideas in a pictorial manner.
brings meaning to the selection by connecting it to other books, media, or
personal experiences.
takes notes on the proceedings and reports to the larger group.
times each persons presentation (if a discrete amount of time is allotted) and
keeps the group on task.
Advantages of Using Literature Circles (Fayne & Weiss 2007):
All students have an important role in the discussion.

Small groups allow everyone to be heard.
Difficult points are presented from many perspectives.
Students of differing abilities can be in one group and benefit from one another.
Roles can be rotated to allow students to experience different perspectives.
Books/long articles can be broken into manageable pieces.
Different learning strengths and styles are tapped.
Comprehension and vocabulary are significantly enhanced.
Students take responsibility for their own learning.
More(Curtis 2015)
In literature circles, every student can participate in conversation. They are often less intimidated
than they might be in a class discussion. The students are also actively constructing their own
meanings of a text, rather than waiting for a teacher to "give" them an official meaning.
By practicing the analytic strategies of each group role, students become cannier, more resourceful
readers.
The different roles in a literature circle show students that historical texts may embrace multiple
perspectives, depending on who is telling the story of history. As the students bring these
perspectives to the entire group, everyone benefits and learns from one another.
As students try out various roles and learn ways to talk about a text, they begin to internalize these
habits and perspectives; eventually, they can discuss literature productively while guiding the
conversation themselves.
Assessment of Literature Circles (Curtis 2015)
As the students discuss the reading selection in the literature circle, the teacher listens, takes notes, and
monitors the students' abilities to contribute to the discussion through their assigned roles. After all the
literature circles have completed their discussions, the students can present their insights and questions
to the rest of the class. The teacher can also lead the class in an assessment of the literature circles by
asking the following questions:
Based on our literature circles, what are the most important ideas you learned about your reading
selection today?
How well did each member of your literature circle contribute in his or her assigned role?
What went well in your literature circle?
What would you do to improve our literature circles?

References
Fayne H & Weiss A (2007) Literature Circles. Available at
http://ohiorc.org/orc_documents/orc/AdLIT/prodevelopment/documents/lfl_0207/lfl_nfayne_literature
circle_4.pdf [accessed 21 Feb 2015]
Curtis CP (2015) Historical and Cultural Context. Available at
http://www.learner.org/workshops/tml/workshop5/teaching3.html [accessed 21 Feb 2015]
The Literature Circles Resource Centers. 2004. Overview of Literature Circles. Available at
http://www.litcircles.org/Overview/overview.html [accessed 21 Feb 2015]
CRITICAL THINKING AND CRITICAL READING

(Taken and adapted from Learning Centre, The University of Sydney and UNSW,
Australia)
Available at http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/learning_centre/help/analysing/analysing.shtml and
https://student.unsw.edu.au/writing-critical-review
Outline of Lecture
what is critical thinking?
demonstrating critical thinking
strategies for critical reading and writing
1.
Defining critical thinking
Critical thinking has been defined in many different ways. Very broad definitions include
thinking which has a purpose or reflective judgement. However, these definitions are
often too general to be useful to students.
Lets begin by reflecting on some approaches that critical thinkers may or may not take
to problems and issues.
Exercise 1
Read through the following statements and tick those that you think may come from
critical thinkers.
I hate talk shows where people just state their opinions but never give any reasons at
all
No matter how complex a problem, you can bet there will be a simple solution
Just because information is in a textbook, doesnt necessarily mean it can be trusted
My views are probably shaped by the social and economic groups I belong to
I hate it when teachers discuss problems instead of just giving the information
Selling an idea is like selling cars, you say whatever works
I like to think about whether someones views reflects the experience of all groups of
people
I question the authority of evidence before I accept it
A useful definition of the type of critical thinking you need to develop at university level
is
The kind of thinking which seeks to explore questions about existing knowledge for
issues which are not clearly defined and for which there are no clear-cut answers.
In order to display critical thinking, students need to develop skills in
interpreting: understanding the significance of data and to clarify its meaning
analysing: breaking information down and recombining it in different ways
1
reasoning: creating an argument through logical steps

evaluating: judging the worth, credibility or strength of accounts.
Why is critical thinking important at university?

In general, students who develop critical thinking skills are more able to
achieve better marks
become less dependent on teachers and textbooks
create knowledge
evaluate, challenge and change the structures in society
2.
Displaying critical thinking in reading and writing
READING
Three important purposes of reading critically are
to provide evidence to back up or challenge a point of view
to evaluate the validity and importance of a text/ position
to develop reflective thought and a tolerance for ambiguity
WRITING
Written assignments may call for Critical thinking either explicitly or implicitly.
Implicit types of critical writing
At undergraduate level, critical writing typically refers to the genre of the persuasive
essay in which a logical argument [ to a stated position/ issue ] is developed and
presented. The cognitive process of critical thinking brings to light and questions
accepted views and assumptions and can offer alternative perspectives
What is meant by critical?
At university, to be critical does not mean to criticise in a negative manner. Rather it
requires you to question the information and opinions in a text and present your
evaluation or judgement of the text. To do this well, you should attempt to understand
the topic from different perspectives (i.e. read related texts) and in relation to the
theories, approaches and frameworks in your course.
What is meant by evaluation or judgement?
Here you decide the strengths and weaknesses of a text. This is usually based on specific
criteria. Evaluating requires an understanding of not just the content of the text, but
also an understanding of a texts purpose, the intended audience and why it is
structured the way it is.
What is meant by analysis?
Analysing requires separating the content and concepts of a text into their main
components and then understanding how these interrelate, connect and possibly
influence each other.
Critical thinking is a process that challenges an individual to use
reflective, reasonable, rational thinking to gather, interpret and evaluate
information in order to derive a judgment.
General Strategies for critical writing
Read critically (e.g. check validity of references used in source text)
Be fair. Take into account accepted standards of judgement used in the particular
discipline or field. Comment (if possible from both a positive and negative
perspective) on the section
Draw on other sources to back up your comments. Use evidence taken from sources
which are considered authoritative in the field
Consider viewpoints from a range of perspectives (e.g. male and female, different
socioeconomic and ethnic groups)
Come to a conclusion on the overall worth/ validity etc of the original text
Use inclusive language (e.g. non-gender specific, non-absolute terms such as often
and could rather than always and is)
GUIDANCE FOR WRITING ARTICLE REVIEWS

First of all, an article review is a writing giving your opinion on certain thing. It
could be a product, a service, a movie, a book or even an article. Writing an article could
be a little bit challenging for some people, but does not have to be hard.
Purpose of a Critical Review
The critical review is a writing task that asks you to summarise and evaluate a text. The
critical review can be of a book, a chapter, or a journal article. Writing the critical review
usually requires you to read the selected text in detail and to also read other related
texts so that you can present a fair and reasonable evaluation of the selected text.
Structure of a Critical Review

Critical reviews, both short (one page) and long (four pages), usually have a similar
structure. Headings are usually optional for longer reviews and can be helpful for the
reader.
Introduction
The length of an introduction is usually one paragraph for a journal article review and
two or three paragraphs for a longer book review. Include a few opening sentences that
announce the author(s) and the title, and briefly explain the topic of the text. Present
the aim of the text and summarise the main finding or key argument. Conclude the
introduction with a brief statement of your evaluation of the text. This can be a positive
or negative evaluation or, as is usually the case, a mixed response.
Summary
Present a summary of the key points along with a limited number of examples. You can
also briefly explain the authors purpose/intentions throughout the text and you may
briefly describe how the text is organised. The summary should only make up about a
third of the critical review.
Critique
The critique should be a balanced discussion and evaluation of the strengths, weakness
and notable features of the text. Remember to base your discussion on specific criteria.
Good reviews also include other sources to support your evaluation (remember to
reference).
You can choose how to sequence your critique. Here are some examples to get you
started:
Most important to least important conclusions you make about the text.
If your critique is more positive than negative, then present the negative points first
and the positive last.
If your critique is more negative than positive, then present the positive points first
and the negative last.
If there are both strengths and weakness for each criterion you use, you need to
decide overall what your judgement is. For example, you may want to comment on
a key idea in the text and have both positive and negative comments. You could
begin by stating what is good about the idea and then concede and explain how it is
limited in some way. While this example shows a mixed evaluation, overall you are
probably being more negative than positive.
In long reviews, you can address each criteria you choose in a paragraph, including
both negative and positive points. For very short critical reviews (one page or less)
where your comments will be briefer, include a paragraph of positive aspects and
another of negative.
You can also include recommendations for how the text can be improved in terms
of ideas, research approach; theories or frameworks used can also be included in
the critique section.
Conclusion
This is usually a very short paragraph.
Restate your overall opinion of the text.
Briefly present recommendations.
If necessary some further qualification or explanation of your judgement can be
included. This can help your critique sound fair and reasonable.
References
If you have used other sources in you review you should also include a list of references
at the end of the review.
Summarising and paraphrasing for the critical review
Summarising and paraphrasing are essential skills for academic writing and in particular,
the critical review. To summarise means to reduce a text to its main points and its most
important ideas. The length of your summary for a critical review should only be about
one quarter to one third of the whole critical review. The best way to summarise is to:
1. Scan the text. Look for information that can be deduced from the introduction,
conclusion and the title and headings. What do these tell you about the main points
of the article?
2. Locate the topic sentences and highlight the main points as you read.
3. Reread the text and make separate notes of the main points. Examples and
evidence do not need to be included at this stage. Usually they are used selectively
in your critique.
Paraphrasing means putting it into your own words. Paraphrasing offers an alternative
to using direct quotations in your summary (and the critique) and can be an efficient
way to integrate your summary notes. The best way to paraphrase is to:
1. Review your summary notes
2. Rewrite them in your own words and in complete sentences
3. Use reporting verbs and phrases (eg; The author describes, Smith argues that ).
4. If you include unique or specialist phrases from the text, use quotation marks.
Some General Criteria for Evaluating Texts
The following list of criteria and focus questions may be useful for reading the text and
for preparing the critical review. The template for making an article review is given in the
last part of this handout.
Criteria
Possible focus questions
Significance and contribution to
the field
What is the authors aim?

To what extent has this aim been achieved?
What does this text add to the body of
knowledge? (This could be in terms of theory,
data and/or practical application)
What relationship does it bear to other works
in the field?
What is missing/not stated?
Is this a problem?
6
Methodology or approach
Argument and use of evidence
Writing style and text structure
What approach was used for the research?

(eg; quantitative or qualitative, analysis/review
of theory or current practice, comparative,
case study, personal reflection etc)
How objective/biased is the approach?
Are the results valid and reliable?
What analytical framework is used to discuss
the results?
Is there a clear problem, statement or
hypothesis?
What claims are made?
Is the argument consistent?
What kinds of evidence does the text rely on?
What is the nature of each piece of supporting
evidence? For example, is it based on empirical
research, ethical consideration, common
knowledge, anecdote?
How valid and reliable is the evidence?
How effective is the evidence in supporting the
argument?
What conclusions are drawn?
Are these conclusions justified?
Was it difficult to read and understand? If so,
why? If not, why not?
Does the writing style suit the intended
audience? (eg; expert/non-expert,
academic/non- academic)
Did the structure of sentences and paragraphs
and the overall organization guide you and help
you follow the author's intent?
What is the organising principle of the text?
Could it be better organised?
In the following pages, you will find two sample article reviews with annotated
comments.
They are authentic examples of student writing. Therefore you should not view this as a
model while it contains many attributes of a successful article review, it is not a
perfect piece of writing. The comments on the right handside draw your attention to
both strengths and weaknesses in the review, but are not comprehensive and as such
you should not assume that sections of the article review which do not have comments
are without problems. Please not that the language in this article review is not without
grammatical errors.
#Sample 1
Template for Journal Article Review

Article Title :
Author(s) :
Authors Brief background : expertise and affiliation
Journal name:
Date:
Pages :
Volume :
Issue :
URL (if any) :
Keywords: These should be keywords that define the major topics of the article.
I.e., if someone were searching a database of these articles, then they would
search these keywords much as you searched library databases. Examples:
gender equity, cooperative learning, spatial sense, etc. Keywords are usually
found in the article abstract.
Reviewers: The names of the people in your group writing this article review
REVIEW
Introduction: The topic/problem being investigated and the thesis
statement/the aim of the writing.
Analysis and Synthesis: Here is where you actually "review" the article. What
are the most important conclusions of the article or the most important aspects
from your perspective? How, specifically, does this inform your group and your
project? What did you learn from the article? Are there points in the article with
which you agree or disagree? Why? Pull it all together--what conclusions or
implications do you feel are the most important? Again, don't feel that you need
to write a long document. A few well-crafted paragraphs that are succinct and
directly to the point with sound arguments supporting your position are all that
are needed Refer to review points in page 6-7 of this module
Conclusion : What new insights/discoveries have I made in relation to my belief
and values? How will I make use of this new knowledge in future?
WEEK 2
Reading 1
ou have to, I think, start out understanding that there is no

such thing as a "masculine" or "feminine" fragrance.
Luca Turin once said to me that masculine perfumery is (very
unfortunately for it) defined negatively, which is to say by
what you "can't" put in it, flowers, bright notes, etc. And the
marketers straightjacket feminine fragrances, simply in the
opposite direction. Don't listen to them. Luca has always worn
whatever he's liked, as have I. So the following list of the ten
fragrances I love most (in no particular order, I should add)
has a mix of masculines and feminines, and feel free to wear
any or all of them whenever you like.
~
On doit, je pense, commencer par comprendre que le parfum
"masculin" et "fminin" n'existe pas. Luca Turin m'a dit un
jour que la parfumerie masculine est (malheureusement pour
elle) definie par le ngatif, c'est a dire: "Voici tout ce vous ne
pouvez pas mettre dans un masculin" (des fleurs, des notes
claires, etc). Et les marketers mettent les mme contraints sur
les parfums fminins, simplement dans l'autre sens. Ne les
coutez pas. Luca a toujours port tout ce qu'il a voulu
porter, et moi aussi, et donc la liste suivante de mes 10
parfums prfrs (l'ordre n'a pas vraiment d'importance) est
une mixture de masculins et de fminins, et vous devez vous
sentir absolument libre de les porter tous, comme et quand
vous voulez.
_________
1) Angel by Thierry Mugler
Marketed as a feminine, in reality as unique as a person, this
utterly marvelous scent is, to quote Luca, "brilliant, at once
edible (chocolate) and refreshingly toxic (caspirene,
coumarin). Created by the legendary perfumeur Yves de

Chiris (his perfumeur great, great-grandfather was a character
in Patrick Susskind's novel "Perfume"), Angel doesn't even
bother to pretend to pay lip service to categories. Don't let its
initial personality startle you; wearing it is like having a
conversation, because this thing will talk to you for hours on
various subjects, sometimes chocolate/ cinnamon, sometimes
fresh ginger and spices in cream, and sometimes the heady,
symphonic interior of the Greenwich Village flower shop
(irises, lilies, roses, their cut stems and leaves) where Meryl
Streep bought bouquets in "The Hours" mixed in with the
scent of the concrete and car exhaust of the New York street
that enters with every customer. I have dined in fine
restaurants with Angel on, and it was the most delicious thing
the entire evening. Wear it and see.
2) Bigarade created by the perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena
and En Passant, by Olivia Giacobetti for Frdric Malle/
Editions de Parfums
I only put these two together because they were both created
for Frdric Malle's uniquely strange and impossible-to-find
perfume outfit, which produces fragrances made like no
others, rather expensive, and appallingly good. Malle got an
idea in his head, went to individual great perfumers, and
offered a deal: Make me a perfume. Your ideal perfume. Put
whatever the hell you want in it, the most expensive, fabulous
stuff around. Create it exactly as you think it should be. And
I'll bottle and sell it. In the little Malle boutique at Barneys
which is the only place in New York City you can smell these
things, they make a big deal out of their central metaphor, that
these perfumes are written by individual authors given full
authorial integrity and simply published by Malle, who may
edit a bit here and there but basically just puts out the work.
(It's why it's called "Editions de Parfums," which is also the
web site: www.editionsdeparfums.com; a "maison d'edition"
in French is a publishing house.)
Weird concept. The result is stupendous. All eleven
fragrances in the current lineup range from very good to truly
superb; two strike me as outrageously superb. Luca once
called something chic, and I asked him why, or rather what
"chic" was exactly. He sighed and said despairingly, "Chic is
the most impossible thing to define." He thought about it.
"Luxury is a humorless thing, largely. Chic is all about
humor. Which means chic is about intelligence. And there has
to be oddness most luxury is conformist, and chic cannot

be. Chic must be polite, but within that it can be as weird as it
wants." Both Bigarade and En Passant, it seems to me,
incarnate chic, though they are utterly different. The best way
to describe Bigarade is to say, first, that it is a vast smell. And
second, that it smells like a human being in the summer in a
complex weather system; whoever this person is, we can
smell them, they're showered but they have a smell all the
same, and the lovely, intricate smells of summer are all
around and clinging to their skin, and also it seems to have
just rained because there's the scent of rainwater on pavement
and perhaps a bit of ozone, plus some flower petals and grass
that got washed into the puddle they're stepping in. As for En
Passant, I'm told by Malle's people that it was born in the
instant that Giacobetti somewhere on a street in her native
Italy passed a bakery and a florist and got pastry, flowers, and
street all at once. I'm willing to believe that, because the scent
is so fascinating, but what this woman has crafted isn't just a
smell; the damn thing transports you with loveliness. I would
say that it's magic, but I know it's simply molecules. Still,
your retinas shrink from the pure pleasure of this scent. Both
are so unusual you don't know how to respond at first. You've
never smelled anything like them.
3) Vera Wang by Vera Wang
There are some fragrances that are good in any circumstances
and some that lend themselves to certain times and places.
Wearing anything Guerlain to play tennis would be weird
(while wearing Tommy Girl to play tennis would be perfect).
It depends on what the perfume evokes and how you want to
use it. Vera Wang has created a fragrance that is simply
elegance in a bottle. Smelling it is like watching a beautiful
woman in an evening gown walk leisurely past and give you a
radiant smile. Since this is a self-assured quite American
elegance, it's relaxed, and you could use it at the office if you
wanted. But I'd hold it in reserve for evening. You smell this,
you stand up a little straighter, your eyes a little brighter in the
smooth air, the jazz combo sound flowing a little richer.
Gorgeous.
4) Quartz by Molyneux
When I was seventeen, I used to make pocket money by
selling perfumes at a little French perfumery in Georgetown,
in Washington DC where I grew up. One of the scents I loved
was Quartz, which I bought (and still buy) for my mom. This
is not grandiose perfumery;Quartz is a fragrance of simple
loveliness and grace marked by a quality of absolute clarity. If
you like those things, you will like Quartz. Its heart is orange
blossom (I'm told), Molyneux markets it as a feminine, and it
is a classic female fragrance. And I can tell you that a football
player jock high school roommate of mine sprayed some on
one morning as a joke (this was at boarding school) and that
afternoon hunted me down and, gripping my arm, said, "Hey,
where can I get this shit?" In our AP English class alone he'd
had five girls murmur into his ear as they leaned in to smell
his muscular neck. Quartz.
5) Hanae Mori for Men by Hanae Mori
What amazes about Hanae Mori's creation is that it manages
to be at once elegant, enticing, understated, and (crucially)
just ever so slightly odd (the citrus, which you only get
sometimes). This is not a showy fragrance. It is calm and
classic and subtle, a scent that both bathes you in most
soothing of limes and cloaks you in the most tasteful charcoal
suit you've ever worn. Hanae Mori for Men will always be
correct. It will always "work." It's arguably a perfect
fragrance. I would say that it is also arguably much better on
women than on men, but I don't believe that; it's for anyone
who appreciates its superb qualities.
6) Paris by Yves Saint Laurent
Someone once said to me that of all the perfumes they know,
the perfume brief in which YSL described to the perfumer
what they hoped to get out of Paris must have been the
shortest brief ever written: "Make us the most gorgeous rose
perfume in the world, over and out." In my view, they've done
it. Paris is a gigantically wonderful rose. In fact, what I like
about it is that it is not anything else. It pretty much dispenses
with top notes and bottom notes. It simply explodes onto the
scene and envelopes you, you say "Whoa!", and it just starts
radiating unabashed luxury. It has, to my mind, the most class
in the YSL lineup. And it stakes out another position too:
Contrast Paris to, for example, YSL's Baby Doll; almost
strange that YSL would decide to market a perfume that is
essentially a millimeter away from Fiorucci's super-sweet
olfactory joke (and I like Baby Doll, but it is, in part, with it's
super-pinkness, meant to make you laugh). Clearly the YSL
people simply wanted to give us two terrific characters
playing two utterly different roles.Baby Doll defines its

delightful Betty Boop territory. And Paris reigns over the
perfume terrain of powerful, bold, glorious, heady, rosy
grandeur.
7) The Dreamer by Versace
After all those goddamn, tired out, hairy chested, clich
macho, standardized masculine fragrances from Giorgio
Armani, you have to wonder: Who the hell at Versace was the
genius who came up with The Dreamer? First, this is so not
your father's aftershave that it smells like it fell to earth from
the strange, powdery stellar globulous pictured on its box.
Like Angel, The Dreamer startles you. Smell Eau Sauvage,
and you think, "Oh, men's cologne." (Ho hum.) You smell
this thing, and not only do you not think men's cologne
(because you can't possibly), you think "What the hell is it?!"
"It" is, first, absolutely mouthwatering. It is walking through a
French pastry shop next to a spice market in southern
Thailand. Then there's ice cream, gun powder, fruit candy, hot
cocoa, marshmallows, blood orange peel, and probably some
DDT. It is the most mesmeric fragrance I know.
8) Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel
I offended a perfumer in Paris by describing Coco
Mademoiselle. What I said was that Chanel had clearly
decided to create a perfume that American teenage girls
would immediately want. His eyebrows arched; "Well, it's a
bit more than that," he said. Yes, I agree. It was an entirely
forehand compliment: As with Ralph by Ralph Lauren, which
was obviously created for the same purpose, Coco
Mademoiselle is both an entry level Chanel fragrance and a
very smart marketing decision, and there's nothing wrong
with either, at all. God knowsNos 19 and 22 can be tough to
appreciate immediately. If you like nice scents, you like this
perfume, instantly. Period, end of discussion. It is lovely,
flowery, a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old in a summer dress,
of excellent quality so the fragrance lasts, and, behind the
seeming sweet simplicity, something much more compelling
than might at first appear. That something is simply that when
you come across someone wearing it, you want to lean closer
to them.
9) Happy for Men by Clinique

A rare example of the marketing and creative people working
together, Happy for Men is exactly what it says it is. This is
(let's be clear) a feminine fragrance being sold to men, and
every man, and lots of women, should own it. Brush your
teeth Happy, work Happy, go to the barbeque Happy; a guy
who smells like this is sunshine and cool, summer beach and
intelligence, snowboarding and sexiness. I'd describe the
scent, but nah, track it down and try it. Damn this stuff is nice.
10) Chanel No 5 by Chanel
Chanel No 5 hits you like a bank of white-hot searchlights
washing the powdered stars at a movie premier in Cannes on
a dry summer night. If you haven't smelled it in a while, do so
again. It's great to bathe in that light. (I will admit that I don't
wear it; it's the only feminine fragrance I don't wear, and only
because it is just too well known. But sometimes I sneak
some on a forearm.)
Photo credit: Curtis Kelley
Source: https://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0303/burr/essay.html
The Perfume of Love
WEEK 2
Reading 2
Seeta Sistla - Providence, Rhode Island

As heard on the This I Believe Podcast, December 8, 2014
As a teenager, Seeta Sistla dabbled with perfume but found the floral scents to be overpowering for her.
But, after watching her father lovingly care for her ill mother, she has come to see that the perfume he
anoints his wife with is a powerful statement of his love.
****************00
I believe in the power of perfume. Perfume is meant to cover our natural scent, to hide whispers of sweat
and the living body in subtle floral overtones.
At fourteen, my desire to be sexy conflicted with my poor understanding of the powerful amber liquid in my
mothers bottle. I quickly came to prefer my own scent to the overpowering fragrance of my misguided
dabbling.
I did not understand the beauty of perfume until several years later. Having returned home from college for
break, I saw a new bottle perched on my parents bathroom shelf. This gift from my father to my mother
continues to stand as a beacon of glory among mundane toiletries and unnerving hospital supplies. The
growing collection of latex gloves, tubes, and medicines packed in sterile plastic reflect the increasingly
losing battle that my mother is fighting with multiple sclerosis.
In more than 25 years of immunological revolt, her active mind and endless humor are increasingly trapped
within a body that refuses to cooperate. The disease has steadily spread from trembling feet when I was
young to complete paralysis around the time that the bottle appeared.
My parents cannot embrace each other, nor dance together. My father must go alone to Macys to get the
perfume my mother loves but does not ask for. He purchases the bottle despite the knowledge that they will
not be going out this eveningor any evening. My father is a thoughtful man not given to expressive
statements of emotion, regardless of the impossible circumstances that life has presented. One could say
that the odds were against them from the startan unusual pairing of a vivacious Russian Jew and a quiet
South Indianimmigrants whose circuitous life paths have led them independently to meet in upstate New
York.
In recent years I have come to better comprehend the intense understanding of each other that has united
my parents from their early courtship through these many years. When he helps my mother at the toilet
each morning, cleaning and dressing her, my father remembers the perfume. But this fragrance is not
intended to hide her odor. It is an acknowledgment of their past and a reminder of their present captured in
a scent. By dabbing the perfume on her neck, he tells her that she is more than her body; she is a woman,
his wife, stubborn and sexy. It is his statement of love.
Walking with my father in a department store last Christmas, I paused for a moment at the perfume
advertisements. They are messages of models draped in beautiful clothingalluring creatures proudly
bearing the scent of J. Lo or Chanel. I have learned to believe in the power of perfume, but I am not
swayed by these ads. I have my own.
**************
Seeta Sistla is an ecosystem ecologist whose research has taken her to far flung corners of the world,
ranging from the Alaskan Arctic to rural Nicaragua. Seeta's parents spurred her dream to explore by
recounting the lives they had lived abroad and encouraging her predilection for collecting all manner of
rocks, plants, and shells. She will soon be heading to the Berkshires with her husband to begin a
professorship at Hampshire College.
Recorded by WRNI in Providence, Rhode Island, and produced for This I Believe by Dan Gediman
Source: http://thisibelieve.org/essay/10619/
WEEK 3
Perfume Packaging, Seduction and Gender

By Magdalena Petersson McIntyre
Abstract
This article examines gender and cultural sense-making in relation to perfumes
and their packaging. Gendered meanings of seduction, choice, consumption and
taste are brought to the fore with the use of go-along interviews with consumers in
perfume stores. Meeting luxury packages in this feminized environment made the
interviewed women speak of bottles as objects to fall in love with and they described packages as the active part in an act of seduction where they were expecting packages to persuade them into consumption. The interviewed men on the
other hand portrayed themselves as active choice-makers and stressed that they
were always in control and not seduced by packaging. However, while their ways
of explaining their relationship with packaging on the surface seems to confirm
cultural generalizations in relation to gender and seduction, the article argues that
letting oneself be seduced is no less active than seducing. Based on a combination
of actor network theories and theories of gender performativity the article points
to the agency of packaging for constructions of gender and understands the interviewees as equally animated by the flows of passion which guide their actions.
Keywords: Consumption, perfume, seduction, packaging, gender, shop-along,
agency.
Petersson McIntyre, Magdalena: Perfume Packaging, Seduction and Gender,

Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013: 291311. Hosted by Linkping University Electronic Press:
http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se
Introduction
We have created a collection that will disrupt gender roles and give the carrier an
opportunity to explore new sides of themselves For a generation who demands the
freedom to choose Multiple personalities have never looked so sexy!
Dolce and Gabbana
Gender is made everywhere, even with the small and inconspicuous everyday
goods such as the packages with which we carry consumables home from the
store. Packages are often perceived as an unnecessary source of waste, but based
on Cochoy (2004, 2007) this article builds on a view of packages as an extension
of the contents which has agency. Packages make aspects of the contents visible
to us that we cannot perceive by looking, touching, tasting or smelling the product
itself, such as nutrients and calories. Perfume packaging, the subject on which the
article deliberates, tells us about scent notes, alcohol content and preservatives.
With words and pictures which convey luxury and desire they also produce glamorous and sensual meanings. Placed on a store shelf, accompanied with images of
attractive men and women and suggestive lighting, bottles and cartons create a
luxurious atmosphere which says that it is important to spend money on beautifying oneself and that the consumption of luxury will make you into a desirable and
attractive person. Promising love and glamour, packages try to attract our attention in a split second, to convince us that it is this particular fragrance which best
represents the person we want to be, and not the competitors perhaps equal product.
Packaging helps us to choose. By guiding and preceding our choices, packages
assist us, and we are given a variety of references that makes us select in the
right way (Cochoy 2004, 2007). For Cochoy, building on actor network theory,
pointing to the actions packages perform works as a way to illustrate the active
role that objects have and to emphasize that agency is not only a human trait.
Packages do however not only ask us to choose between different products in
terms of contents. With the use of visual and textual language perfume packaging
invites us to become that stylish Parisian, or that preppy, natural beauty, or that
generator of raw sexuality who meet us in advertisements. But there is more than
that. By telling us whether the contents are for her, for him, perhaps unisex or
with no gender at all packages do gender and by that not only give scripts for
practices of consumption, but, as I will show, take active part in the performativity
of gender.
As pointed out by Hine (1997) packaging speaks to the intellect but even more
so to the emotions. Package design has, ever since the 1930s, been understood in
two distinct ways. On one hand it has been the subject of psychological market
research where shopping has been conceptualized as an irrational process and
packages as effective mainly as long as they speak to the subconscious. On the
other hand, there has been a counter-movement that has called for packaging to
enlighten consumers regarding the usefulness and effectiveness of the products
[292]
Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013
and information about, for example, possible allergic reactions (Hine 1997). The
design of perfume packaging is mainly about the former process, to seduce consumers by subconsciously playing on moods and thereby convince them to buy.
Content declarations are however mandatory and can even reinforce a gender
coded message by listing ingredients like musk or rose. Thus, the two movements
are not in clear opposition to each other. Furthermore, both movements are gendered in particular ways. Psychological market research has taken a gender relation between a female consumer (seduced) and a male marketer/shop owner (seducer) for granted. The consumer movements which have resulted in legislation
and policies for package design have at large consisted of women activists.
Making Sense of Packages

Analyses of the meaning-making of perfumes have mostly been based on visual or
textual interpretations of advertisements (cf. Schoeder 2002; Kjellmer 2009;
Hemme 2010; Freeman 2011) or of the role of perfume in literature (Solander
2010). Based on ethnographic interviews in shops, this article studies how consumers interpret and understand the gendered meanings of perfumes and their
packaging, particularly with regard to seduction. Thus, the article argues that design objects do not have any definite meanings in themselves, but must be related
to the power relations, methods and processes through which they are made sense
(Partington 1996). Marketing language is performative; it shapes the way we think
about ourselves by presenting, expecting and normalizing choices that we may not
have thought of or known, such as choices between the claimed characteristics of
the goods as well as what they are supposed to say about or do for the user (cf.
Cronin 2000). Consumption practices are nevertheless far from direct echoes of
what appears in advertisements, movies, in shops and in media. Meaning is not
created either by consumers, marketers or packages but should be viewed as a
network that emerges in negotiations between these different actors (Cochoy
2004).
Gender Performativity
In the theories of gender performativity by Judith Butler (1990, 1993), gender is
seen not as an expression of an inner identity, expressive, but as performative; an
effect of gender performance. Woman cannot, according to Butler, be understood outside the way it is staged or performed. Gender is not an attribute or essential property of subjects but a kind of becoming or activity an incessant and
repeated action of some sort (Butler 1990: 112). Gender identity is not the result
of physical differences, but of the complex discursive practices in which gender,
sexuality and desire is co-produced. Building on speech act theory, Butler sees
gender as performative citational practices. These practices reproduce discourse,
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but can also work subversively. Gender both enables and disciplines subjects and
their performances.
With this, gender is understood as a process, a doing, and through that process
we are created and recreated. These doings are repeated over time and become
conventions. There are conventions for gestures, movements and styles that make
us into men and women, from the clothes we wear, the way we move, the goods
we consume or the way we talk about ourselves as he or she. Through these repetitions, we become the men and women that we have learned to orchestrate. These
styles do not express a stable identity, they are not cultural expression of identities
determined by the body; they are formed by the stylization of the body itself (Butler 1990; Loxley 2007).
It is however not only humans that perform gender and it is not only the human
body that is performative. Objects do it too. Re-connecting to the initially presented theories of material agency in actor network theory, consumer goods and their
packaging are from this perspective not to be regarded as passive, but as performative. Whereas gender is generally under theorized in actor network theory, I
have found it fruitful to combine these ideas with the butlerian theories of gender
performativity (see also Barad 2007).
Design conventions for imagery, shapes, cuts, colours, fonts, texts and words
make some scents masculine (spicy and musky), others feminine (sweet flowery)
and others still unisex (fresh citrusy). Packaging enhances such cultural perceptions of smell, it also constructs them, by combining imagery, text and ingredients, and it can break with them in order to stand out on the market. The ways we
understand these designs are also part of the performativity of gender, the interpretations, or cultural meaning-making, of objects in gender terms. The marketing
of perfumes and the design of packaging relies on specific conventions for gender
by which we are performatively addressed as men and women.
Gender Diversity and Luxury

During the last century the perfume industry has mainly targeted women. Perfume
has become a feminized good and the industry has built its meaning-making
around seduction and irrational and uncontrollable desires (cf. Kjellmer 2009). In
the last decades the market for mens beauty and perfume has however grown
immensely. Because of the gendered associations of femininity and seduction the
perfume industry has struggled to find ways of marketing fragrance to men. Many
attempts to package masculine consumption have been made, some of which have
focused on the eroticization of the male body. It has been a trick of the trade to try
to package scents for him in ways which commodify masculinity without feminizing the user (cf. Breazeale 2000; Scanlon 2000). Men are often depicted in
cleansing rituals, in the shower or getting ready to go out and seduce partners. As
pointed out by Classen, Synnott and Howes (1994) perfume adverts often show
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how fragrance will increase the masculinity of the carrier and make him irresistible to women, as in for example television commercials for Axe deodorant. Mens
consumption is associated with rationality and needs; and perfume will make men
into more powerful seducers.
Womens perfume marketing on the other hand often shows a sexual relationship between goods and consumers, or the bottle and a woman. During the 1980s
womens fragrances began to be advertised with images of women holding and
embracing an enlarged bottle (Classen, Synnott & Howes 1994). Today, women
are often depicted in bed with a bottle filling in for an absent lover, such as in
Flash by Jimmy Choo. The relationship between women and their fragrances is
represented as one of passion. Names such as Desire me by Escada, Dance with
Givenchy and JAdore by Dior allude to this relationship. Perfume packaging is
hence particularly suitable for discussing aspects of seduction and the ways in
which seduction builds on specific gendered ideas of activity and passivity.
For Him or for Her

In the mainstream, mass-market for perfume, there are two distinct genders, for
her and for him (or pour homme and pour femme). Most shops have distinct
sections, where they keep the products aimed for men and women respectively
separate and mark for him as a separate department or shop-in-shop. Nonetheless, women and femininity are represented in many and often contradictory
ways. Sexy, romantic, elegant, mysterious, sporty, girly, cosmopolitan, masculine,
oriental, these are only some of the many ways of portraying feminine beauty.
Men and masculinity also appear in many different versions, even if the variation
is far greater for women. When it comes to packaging, a dark bottle performs
masculinity, but there are also black, square bottles with fragrances for her.
Round bottles mostly perform femininity, but not always. Elves, pink and glitter
package womens scents, but fragrances for her can also be sporty and subtly
simplistic, such as the bottle for Chanel No 5 which was originally inspired by a
medicine bottle. Words and names which allude to pleasure and temptation mostly
appear on womens fragrances, but then again they sometimes show on fragrances
aimed at men, and become part of performing masculinity. Most stores are strictly
divided into gender, but it is not so everywhere. At observations in duty free and
perfume shops, I noticed several stores where it was difficult to see whether the
fragrances were aimed to men or women or to all.
Unisex both transgresses and reassures this (if at times blurry) two-sex-model.
Although unisex is sometimes presented as a product which is beyond gender, it is
simultaneously described as something for both men and women, thereby working
with those categories rather than disrupting them. Even though unisex is not so
common, there are some best sellers and unisex has the advantage of being placed
in double locations in stores. Sometimes unisex is brought forth as a sales argument in itself for customers who define themselves in terms of lifestyle rather than
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in terms of gender, as in CK One (cf. Schroeder 2002) and sometimes understated

as in so called craft perfumes, such as Byredo or Acqua di Parma, where the absence of gender segmentation helps giving value to the brand or scent by emphasizing the craft of perfumery rather than the image-making. Often, then, the word
unisex is avoided.
Brands consciously invest images and goods with ambiguous meanings
(Schroeder and Borgerson 2003). Imagery taken from gay visual culture is a
common feature in perfume advertising, where brands such as Dolce and Gabbana
and Jean-Paul Gaultier have associated their products with gay iconography, art
and culture, sometimes bordering on the pornographic (Church Gibson 2004).
Other brands work on ambiguity, such as Thierry Mugler, who with their scent
Angel made a fragrance for women without floral ingredients; which usually indicates a masculine scent, and packaged it in a star-shaped blue bottle; which associates to sailors. The meaning making of perfume builds on a double logic in this
sense of both asserting for her and for him and simultaneously refusing these
categories by constantly challenging them and building desire around ambiguity
(Partington 1996). This obsession with gender, sexuality and desire which the
perfume world presents also needs to be related to its particular market. First,
since perfume has no function in itself its meanings are, as mentioned, built
around image-making. This image-making is largely structured around gender,
sexuality and desire. Second, perfume is a luxury commodity. Luxury gains its
value though excess and of having the most, the best and the most beautiful
of a particular good or service (Lipovetsky 1994; Twitchell 2002). In the case of
perfume the overflow of gender and sexualities signifies not only ambiguity, but
also luxury. Important to keep in mind is also that though feminine design features
are sometimes applied on mens scents it is far more common that designs and
scent notes which associate to masculinity are applied on womens scents. Thus,
there is also the logic of giving femininity a higher value by associating its visual
expressions with masculinity at stake in these processes.
Still, the world of perfume signals, perhaps more than anything else, diversity,
ambiguity and uncertainty with regard to gender and sexuality. Feminine, as well
as masculine identities are presented as something that we consumers can select
and deselect. As the initial quote which presents the line of fragrances Anthology
by Dolce and Gabbana says, contemporary consumers are constructed as competent choice makers who pick identities based on their mood of the day. Consequently, perfume packages do not so much say that femininity is represented in
one particular way, as with pink flowers, as it says that femininity is represented
in many different ways and that the ways in which individuals choose to perform
their gender identity varies. Not only is there the, within marketing, well-used
strategy to approach customers as types, such as the romantic, the classy
woman, the seductress, the sporty woman and the sexy, mysterious woman or even the unisex woman or the masculine woman, consumers are in[296]
creasingly asked to cultivate such personality types within themselves and refine
them differently on different occasions. Types are now presented as personality
traits which reside in each one of us and which can be brought out on occasion
with the use of a particular fragrance. And these types sometimes transgress gender segments to further enhance the call to choice.
Partington (1996) analyses the many different representations of women and
men that perfume packaging and advertising present as an expression of the inherent instability of gender constructions. Drawing on Judith Butlers theories on
gender (1990), Partington sees the diversity of gender in perfume packaging as an
illustration of gender as plural, as something that cannot be fixed. The lack of coherency in representations is an expression of a lack of coherency in cultural genders and a sign that gender is performative, she argues. Though my article draws
on Partington and is indebted to her analysis, I find it not only positions itself too
close to the marketing messages where masculine and feminine are colours on a
palette, open for anyone to pick and choose from, it by this misses out on the
normative dimensions of gender representation in perfume packaging. Partington
also misses the performativity of choice. The variety of representations of men
and women in the perfume world represents a vision of identity as something optional; of the consumer as an individual who chooses goods to express his or her
identity. This vision is itself performative. Rather than emphasizing the diversity
of gender in the world of perfume I want to stress the inherent contradiction that
this diversity builds on. On one hand masculinity and femininity (or unisex) are
presented as options for individuals to engage in free-willingly, unattached to by
structural constraints. On the other, these options are presented with gender-coded
messages, on different shelves, with different sign-posts, shop spaces and with
different meanings. In short, men and women are offered to choose the same, but
in different locations well, at least sometimes.
Regarding the ambiguity and diversity of gender representation I have found it
fruitful to, instead of interpreting the plurality of gender representations in perfume packaging as an indication of the plurality of cultural genders, to interpret
plurality as an example of slippage which is a key concept in Butlers theories.
Each repetition of gender offers an opportunity for transformation of meaning.
Repetitive performances are not just an exact copy. There is slippage which has to
be taken seriously. Each time that gender is performed, it is enacted for the very
first time. Each time gender is performed on a package there is slippage of meaning which gives space for change. Perfume packaging both uses and distances
itself from a simple two-sex-model. As my article will show gaps also exist between the ways packages perform gender and consumers interpretations of the
same. Therefore, the perfume world's commitment to gender and sexuality must
not only be understood as merely repeating conventions on gender, but that it also
actively changes them. In constantly creating new representations of gender, the
meanings of what gender is and how it is presented transform.
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Shop Along in the Perfume Store

Thus, the mass market of perfume on one hand displays two clear genders, and on
the other presents identities as unstable and under constant transformation. These
meanings do however not say anything about how consumers understand perfume
packaging in relation to gender. Whether a package says for him, for her,
unisex or nothing at all does not automatically mean that consumers interpret
them in that way or imply that consumption of perfume follows a simple heterosexual logic. Consumers may use perfumes in order to define, perform or play
with sexual identities. Further, messages of genderlessness or ambiguity may not
be understood in those ways or be consistent with acts of consumption. Cultural
meaning-making does not work as a message from a sender (package) to a receiver (consumer). As mentioned, with reference to Butler, parts of the performativity
of gender are processes of language mediated interpretation. This article hence
aims at discussing the performativity of packaging with the use of go-along interviews. The purpose is to examine what meanings the representations of gender on
packages have for the ways that gender is interpreted by some men and women in
Sweden. What do they think that the packages say, and what does it mean to
them? What effects do constructions of gender that we meet in the perfume world
have?
Methodologically, the article builds on ethnographic go-along (Kusenbach
2003, see also Miller 1998; Bcher & Urry 2009; Arvastsson & Ehn 2009). The
fieldwork was part of a larger study where 13 men and women were interviewed
about packaging. I asked them to meet me at a place of their choice and ten of
them chose a supermarket in a central location. With these ten informants I first
walked around the supermarket with a voice recorder in my hand and discussed
packaging, and afterwards walked to a perfume or beauty store to continue discussing packaging and after that sat down at a caf to discuss further what we had
seen. This article builds on the interviews from the perfume stores and the supermarket interviews have at large been left out of it, even though they are at times
used as a point of reference in the observations and the analysis.
The informants were all between 18 and 65 years old and most of them with
jobs that required some form of academic education. One was still a student; one
was between jobs, another was part time homemaker, part time working in her
own business and one had a job within industrial production; another had a secretarial occupation. On the whole there was a slight overrepresentation of people
with long academic education but with low incomes. The interviews were recorded and transcribed in detail.
Walking with informants is a way of not just observing what they do, but to
experience an environment and see things together sometimes for the first time
(Bckman 2009). Thus, we analyzed the meanings of packaging together and performed a visual analysis there and then. I was, as the researcher, not the only one
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who analyzed. Visiting the shop environments for the purpose of discussing packaging made it necessary to think about packages in more general ways; reflect
upon the packages that were there, how they were placed, made to look appealing
and intended to attract consumers. During the sit down interview afterwards, the
discussions were often even more general and included packages that we did not
see there and then.
Some of the informants guided me through the shops and showed me packages
that they found interesting, while during some interviews I took more of the role
as guide, asked them what they would normally buy and then to comment on what
we saw. Some did their regular purchases in the shops that we went to; others
chose the particular sites because of their location. While the supermarket was a
familiar place to them all, the beauty store was only for some. Many of the men,
especially, seemed lost in the perfume store and did not have so much to say,
while some of the women (though not all) really enjoyed going around the store,
looking at and touching the products and planning future purchases. The fact that I
was a woman doing the interviewing also meant that some of the women could
talk to me like a friend on a shopping trip while the men were in general more
hesitant and unsure of what to say. At least two thirds and in some cases probably
up to 90 percent of the goods on display in beauty stores have a woman as intended buyer. All the sales assistants are, with very few exceptions, women. So are the
other customers. The design of the stores is worked out with a woman as intended
user. Products for men often, though not always, stand out in difference. Given
this, entering a store in the company of a male or female interviewee is not the
same thing. It is an environment with a particular gender coding which affects the
interactions. Depending upon the feminization of the field of beauty and perfume,
the interviewed women were in general also more knowledgeable and experienced
of this field than the men were. To beautify ones body is in many respects to
make it feminine which implies that the workings of this market were in no way
unfamiliar to the women, contrary they knew it all too well.
None of the participants were explicitly interested in packaging. Neither had
they given any particular amount of thought to packaging in advance. I presented
my study by explaining that I wanted to gain insights on cultural meanings of
packages and how these matter in everyday life. I also said that I wanted to hear
and learn about their own experiences and thoughts on the subject. The informants
were often, not surprisingly, more interested in the contents than the packages and
I sometimes (quite forcefully) pushed the discussions towards packages.
During the interviews, I asked the interviewees to describe what, in their opinions, characterizes feminine, masculine and unisex packaging respectively. I was
not so interested in hearing truths about packaging and marketing, but rather
how this made sense to them, in order to analyze the cultural interpretations and
meanings of packaging. An interview situation is performative in this sense; we
analyzed, but also made gender through the way we presented ourselves to each
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other as well as to how we related ourselves to the gender segments of masculine

and feminine packaging that we met in the stores. By talking about packages in
terms of gender we also performed gender. The packages, along with the shop
environment that they were placed in worked, as a form of trigger for gendered
meaning-making. The packages and the atmosphere moved the informants (and
me); had agency for how they (we) made sense of the situation.
Gender and the Art of Seduction Mikael and Katarina

When I and Mikael, a man in his early forties, enter the perfume store he crunches
his nose and says that he cannot understand how anyone can stand that smell.
They try to drug you, he says, to make you buy. Mikaels metaphor is telling.
To drug someone is to remove their active choice, take away their rationally informed decision and affect the chain of events with the use of chemical substances. In the context of consumption it relates to seduction.
The beauty chain store which we go to has the section for fragrances for him
directly as you get into the shop; a display technique aimed at promoting and
normalizing this growing market segment. Fragrances for her are the last stop
along the aisle and in between there are a range of different cosmetic and skincare
products. Mikael continues a discussion that we have had in the supermarket earlier about gendered products. He finds it ridiculous how anyone really can fall for
these simple marketing techniques, think that men and women need different
shower creams and that some men would not buy a white package, such as
Doves, only grey ones which say for him. Packages have no significance for
Mikael at all and he could not care less whether there is a picture of a man or a
woman on the cover. Mikael exemplifies with different gender stereotypes that he
has seen through; such as the mother doing laundry; the active boy and the passive
girl; or the associations with men and technology, all common stereotypes on
packaging.
Mikael does not particularly like perfume himself, not since he got into his
mid-twenties, but still likes a particular fragrance from Yves Saint Laurent and
explains that it has been around forever. As we walk around in the store he
points to other bottles that he says his dad used to buy. Even though Mikael does
not care about packages he does have clear taste preferences. He likes square bottles, classic design, and not jokey ones and not gold. He is particularly hesitant
to the more expressive and youthful bottles, such as 1 Million by Paco Rabanne,
Le Male by Jean-Paul Gaultier or Fuel for Life by Diesel.
When it comes to fragrances Mikael seems less inclined to dismissing gendered marketing messages and does not remark particularly on gender stereotypes.
Buying fragrances for her for himself does not seem to have occurred to him.
Mikael is not very interested in perfumes, hardly ever buys it, and choosing from
the womens side would probably either require an experienced consumer with a
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strong interest in the scents themselves and/ or one with the deliberate intent to
cross over gender segments. Shower cream and washing powder are after all
products that he buys on a regular basis. Also the perfume market has worked its
meanings to build on mystery, magic and chemistry where the composition of
fragrance magically awakens sexual desire in others. Such imagery is perhaps
more difficult to see through for someone who is not an experienced perfume consumer.
Entering a department store beauty courtyard and adjacent fragrance room with
Katarina, a woman in her mid-forties, is a very different story. Katarina instantly
bursts out oh I love this. Make-up is so much fun even though I know that it
doesnt show on me. She is enthused by all the packages and products and, like
Mikael, shows me things that she used to have when she was younger. These days
I mostly by Lancme, she says. She doesnt know why but has to stick to one
brand. Katarina gets obsessive with lipstick, she says. She has bought lots of
them over the years; either the ones she likes go out of stock or she happens to
buy the wrong nuance. Oh look, she says, I have bought lots of these lipsticks
because they look like ice-creams. Fruity, gorgeous colours. I could buy one right
now. I really go on how they look, she continues. I think that is really important. I want it to feel luxurious. Oh look at these, they look gorgeous together.
Suddenly she turns:
Katarina: It also makes me feel awful.
Magdalena: Why is that?
Katarina: Because it is so expensive.
Magdalena: You give in to a desire and regret it afterwards?
Katarina: Earlier I was really bad at When my son was younger I never bought
things for myself. Everything I bought I converted into what I could have bought for
him. I could have bought so and so many sweaters. I did that with everything. But
now I can spend on myself again.
Katarina feels ambivalent to shopping, she tells me. She thinks that she is smarter than this and should not be satisfied by giving in to such temptations. She
should know better than to think that consumption makes you happy:
Katarina: I think it has to do with the way you were brought up too. My mum, she
never did this. If she knew that I spend money on this she would really think that I
am a complete idiot. She would. You really should see through the myth that consumption makes you happy but sometimes I say that sure you can buy happiness. Sometimes you can. I do feel happy when I bring something home When
we are finished I think I have to go on a shopping spree.
Packages thus awoke memories in both Katarina and Mikael. Katarina could hear
the voice of her mum telling her not to waste/be shallow. Mikael got a glimpse of
memory: dad had this. While Mikaels dad became a reference to mens consumption as something which is stable over time, as not-fashion, Katarinas mum had a
message of restraint and moderation.
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Mikael explained packages as unimportant, as objects whose appeal he did not

want to listen too, and most certainly was not seduced by. He wanted to make
active choices. He did not like being drugged. He could see through gender stereotypes. To be able to see through gender stereotypes, for Mikael, worked as a
way to enact rationality. Stereotype images were, for him, not rational. He saw
stereotype images as a translation of the manipulative forces of commerce, which
the contents do not correspond with.
Katarina who initially related beauty products to herself and to the improvement of her own body, contrary explained packages as objects which she wanted
to guide her. She wanted the products to sell, to convince her to buy them with
the use of techniques of seduction. She described her consumption as out of control. She said that she buys obsessively without knowing why and ends up with
the wrong goods which in turn make her buy more. In Katarinas telling, agency
was with the packages, products, ad campaigns and desires or passions. She however also thought that temptation should not be given into too easily.
Shopping for Passion: Peter and Anne

Peter, a man in his late forties and Anne, a woman in her early twenties were of
the interviewees the two who were the most regular perfume consumers. If Peter
enacted a form of masculinity informed by the cultural (and male) figure the
connoisseur and used facts and knowledge to make sense of his perfume consumption (cf. Belk 1995), Anne went into dialogue with products, brands and
campaigns and related them to herself as a person.
Peter had an interest in fashion in general, was careful with what he bought and
said that he was hung up on scents. He did not care for the perfume chain store
that we browsed through and did his shopping in more exclusive stores or on the
internet. When I ask about packages and bottles Peter, much like Mikael, says at
first that they have no meaning. It is 100% the contents that count. Bottles have
to be functional, he says and that he treasures simplicity and discretion. The glass
should be see through and have no visible brand names. Simplicity sends a signal
that the contents are potent, he says. It makes me curious. Potency refers to
the fragrances ability to perform, to be functional. Simplicity triggers curiosity in
Peter, the bottle works, in a way, as a market device which sets a disposition, curiosity, into movement, a disposition which can work as a trigger to buy (Cochoy
2012). Peters remarks show how conventions which convey masculinity are designed to work to persuade customers to shop. Curiosity is also made sense of in
relation to gender. Just the same, it is the bottle that is given agency. The bottle
makes Peter act in particular ways. Peter however describes himself as a subject in
control who uncovers the secrets of the fragrances; he is not at all seduced. He
shows me a bottle that he likes and explains that it was introduced in 1965. Just
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like Mikael then Peter brings up tradition as meaningful in relation to masculine

packaging. The fragrance, Eau Sauvage by Dior is manly he says:
Magdalena: Why is it manly? Facetted glass, that is not really that common on
mens scents, is it?
Peter: It is a scent that lasts [over time]. It doesnt need to be told as part of any lifestyle, if you wear it you will speak for yourself. You dont need to [tell any other
story in the marketing]. It signals quality consciousness.
Magdalena: It becomes invisible?
Peter: Well it it is subtle. It doesnt stink, thats cheap. You sense it vaguely.
For Peter, who finds packaging unimportant, it is the scent rather than the package
that is manly and he actually tries to define a masculine character in the smell and
interestingly enough he does not form his characterization in relation to scent
notes. Peters emphasis of the function of the scent and the meaninglessness of
packaging can be seen as an enactment of masculinity. The lack of lifestyle advertising, confidence in quality as well as subtlety conveys manliness for Peter and
he stresses that you never see ads for this scent; it does not need to be advertised.
Like the other interviewed men, Peter does not like being told who he is and he
explicitly connects the absence of (lifestyle) advertising to manliness. Whatever
the packages whisper, Peter does not want to say that he can hear it.
We continue along the for her section and Peter is not impressed. The hazy
pastel shimmer makes the products drown, he thinks. Everything looks the same
and if he was to buy his wife a present he would not know how to choose. The
greys and blacks for him he finds are more eye-catching which he thinks may
have to do with him being a man.
Like Peter, though reversed, Anne says that mens scents look boring. She is
hesitant to men consuming too much beauty care and she tells me that she sees
skin care products for men as something strange. When a guy stands before the
mirror and puts on more cream than the girl, that feels weird, she says. While
guys should consume less beauty products than girls to remain masculine,
they should according to Anne not go as far as to consume nothing at all. Too
much product consumption risks overthrowing gender relations, but the right
amount helps bringing out a masculine identity, she finds:
Anne: A guy who doesnt who washes himself with [unbranded] and scentless
soap and does not use any male deodorant or perfume a lot of his identify, or attitude disappears I think. It is much easier to be attracted to someone who smells
good, even if his looks maybe are not right [that is, is not physically attractive]. It
really does a lot. I really think it is important that guys wear it too.
As I and Anne continue along the counters of Clarins and Clinique she explains
that she does not like products with red packaging. Red is for older women, she
feels, and she is not drawn to it. Since she is young, she does not feel that these
packages speak to her, pull her to them. Like Katarina, Anne explains that she
really goes on packaging and she calls herself a visual person. She explains how
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JAdore by Dior became her favorite perfume. The images and ads looked so
great and the model in the pictures is beautiful, she says. When she first saw the
ad she decided to love the fragrance, and it is still her favorite. Sometimes fragrances do not smell the way they look and you get disappointed but this was not
the case with JAdore. Anne has also made the seasonal launches of Escadas
summer fragrances into a tradition. She waits for the launch of the next season
and buys it regardless of smell. She knows that it always will be good, but it is
exciting to wait for it.
Peter linked visual perception to gender. His choice of words was more distanced and did not involve him as a person. Like Mikael he did not put his interest
in scents in terms of being seduced, even though there was no difference per se to
Annes more passionate descriptions of perfume consumption. Whereas Peter
presented himself as liking to make informed decisions about perfume consumption, Anne presented her consumption as initiated by the seductive forces of
commerce. Peter enacted rationality by saying that packages make no difference.
Anne enacted the role of seduced by stressing package more than contents. When
Anne spoke of potential male partners what she said was very similar to what she
said about bottles and packages. It was someone/something to be seduced by,
not someone to seduce.
The Choice of Simplicity

But what is it like for consumers who do not care so much for fragrances? Who
are not under the influence of a passionate interest? What do they pick up on of all
the things that the bottles try to say and what guides their actions?
Fredrik, a man in his mid-twenties, and Patrik, a man in his mid-thirties, are
both hesitant and unsure about what to think and say about fragrances and their
packaging. Fredrik is however quite experienced of skincare products since he, he
tells me, has suffered from acne. He talks about the importance of trying many
different products to find what suits you. When it comes to fragrance he is boring he says. He does not use much, though he likes to have something nice for
when he is going out in the evening. His attitude towards the consumption of
scent can be described with I probably should that is he feels that he should
consume more, but is not really interested. Scenting the body with branded fragrance is given meaning by him in relation to going out; part of preparing the
body in order to participate in social acts of entertainment or of the seduction of
potential partners. He does not buy without needing a new one and does not like
to spend money on unnecessary packaging. Like for Peter and Mikael it is the
scent that matters. Compared to Anne above, he does not speak of being seduced
by women and women with womens fragrances on, or by fragrances worn by
women (or on the shelf) for that matter; he speaks of scents as means of his seduction.
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Patrik has a similar approach. Knowing what we are in the store to discuss, he
points to a bottle that he says feels masculine.
Patrik: Rectangular, square-shaped. Nearly twice as tall as wide. It feels masculine.
Magdalena: What makes it feel masculine?
Patrik: The square shape. The blue colour. The silver details that are nice and stylish.
Patrik likes what he calls simplicity in package design, something he has in

common with all the interviewed men. Some of the women also bring it up. Nina,
a woman in her late 40s, likes simplicity too and has on our previous walk through
a supermarket described herself as a critical consumer who thinks a lot about what
she buys, who is a vegetarian and tries to only buy ecological products, but also
that she is lazy and wants shopping and cooking to be easy. For her, simplicity
signifies moderation.
Although simplicity seems to be a cherished characteristic by both men and
women the meaning is a somewhat different. They all tend to treasure simplicity
in relation to the market segment they identify with. Simplicity in the sense lack
of dcor is a common way of packaging masculinity. Though simplicity is also
featured on womens scents it is one of the least visible designs. For Nina, then,
simplicity creates a distance to most of the packages which try to lure her, she
finds, to buy them, while for Patrik, simplicity puts him on the same level as the
most prominent taste ideal for mens packages.
When we enter the perfume store I ask Nina to comment on characteristics of
packages for him and for her. She points to colours and shapes but does not
seem to find the topic particularly interesting. She is critical to branding, she says
and ironizes over lifestyle marketing, so it is not only the men who bring this up.
She is not a perfume person, she continues. Perfumes give her headaches. Even
still, she says, she likes to treat herself with a nice scent or a luxurious cream every now and then, thereby repeating a frequent way of promoting womens beauty
consumption; as a treat. We look at anti-wrinkle creams together and she remarks
that there are so many strange words on the packages that you do not understand.
There are many brands and many choices; she just does not have energy to learn
about them. She does not care. Ninas refusal to choose is somewhat ironic on this
market where so much effort has been invested in presenting customers with different choices. For Nina, choice seems like work, an effort not worth spending.
Her refusal to choose can also be interpreted as a refusal to engage in the performances of femininity which are displayed on the perfume market; a refusal to listen to the packages and to engage in their game.
Femininity in Excess
Gunnel, a woman in her early sixties, also elaborates on the difficulty in choice
brought up by Nina. Like Nina, Gunnel relates choice to herself; she does not
[305]
want to invest the required energy in order to learn all you need to be able to consume these things and she is not drawn to them. By not being drawn to the
goods Gunnel seems to mean that she not only resists their plea to consumption;
she does not want to engage in identity work with the images of femininity which
the ads present. While Gunnel says that she does like to browse in stores she finds
the abundance is too much for her and makes her feel sick at times and illustrates
the contradictory predicament of consumer society brought up by many of the
interviewed women. It is fun, but it is bad. It is good, but it should not be. Not
only is it hard to choose, she find that images and products create expectations
and demands on a glamorous appearance and lifestyle that she cannot recognize
from her youth. She finds it difficult to identify with the images and with the luxurious lifestyle they promote and she does not think that she should have to. Like
Nina, she refuses to be seduced.
When we look at a glass bottle in the shape of a snow globe she is not fascinated, she says. To Gunnel luxury packages signify wasteful consumption. The
packages speak of a femininity that Gunnel cannot identify with; a femininity
which builds on glamour, surface, excess and abundance. When I ask her to characterize packages for him she says that they are more robust and more
square-shaped; simultaneously by default defining femininity as ephemeral,
excessive and round-shaped. Masculinity is not understood in terms of excess and
is not presented in that way.
Falling in Love with a Bottle

Susanne, a woman in her early fifties, likes shopping. It is fun to buy and to have
stuff such as clothes and chocolates, she says. Her finances do however not allow
her to indulge very often; again it is a woman who brings up themes such as indulgence, passions, frivolity, restrain and guilt. Only the interviewed women
spoke of their ambivalence to shopping and of the play between submission and
control. None of the men said that they bought things they did not want and need.
Susanne would shop more if she could, but at the same time she also thought that
it is bad to consume and she would like to have a shopping-free year. Just like
Katarina, she found that shopping is bad really but liked it anyway. I love this,
she says, and picks up a package. It has a figure in the lid, it is extra luxurious.
You could by these things just for the packages. You can have it in your handbag
and take it up and look at it
Susanne: I nearly feel like buying one of these, a lipstick, 265 sek. I will definitively
buy one after the interview is over. Oh this scented candle smells divine. Terribly
unnecessary, 400 sek, but so much fun! Incredible! Smells lovely and such a nice
container. You can keep it when the candle has burnt out. Oh look at this; you get a
whole bag with lots of stuff. Little things oh look.
[306]
As we walk around the store Susanne continues to be enthused by the products

and their packages and bursts out on occasion Oh Chanel, I used to buy that. Oh I
love the smell. It is so fruity or Oh I love perfume bottles. I would keep this for
a hundred years. You cant use it for anything so I dont know why. She associates to her youth, just like many of the other of the interviewees in their middle
ages; she tells me what she used to buy and lets the sight of the bottles and packages wake memories in her of how she used to feel about the fragrances.
Magdalena: You wouldnt buy it now?
Susanne: I could if I felt that I could afford it, but I wouldnt care as much about the
bottle any more. When I was young I could nearly fall in love with a bottle (laughs).
I never thought of it then. I still have some bottles that I have kept.
When we get ready to leave the store Susanne remarks that she feels a certain disappointment. At a second glance there was nothing she felt like buying. Some of
the perfume bottles looked cheap and not so luxurious. She was expecting to get
seduced by the bottles, packages and images, but this did not happen.
Susannes love for a bottle is interesting to compare with how Victor, a man in
his mid-twenties, spoke of a similar feeling. A package that many commented
upon was a bestseller, the torso-shaped Le Male by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Victor was
however one of few who said that he liked it, but unlike Susanne or Katarina who
spoke enthusiastically about the gorgeous shapes and colours of packages they
liked, Victor said that he likes Le Male because they (the company) have managed
to do their thing, that is to follow their brand strategy through. He liked it as a
marketing message. He did not speak of the bottle in terms of being seduced by it,
or falling in love with it, in fact, he did not even relate it to himself; he put a business perspective on it. Victor specifically pointed out how he resents lifestyle
marketing and hates when he gets personalized offers in the mail based on other
consumer interests that he has and which a marketer has figured out that he should
also like. Victors ways of making meaning in the realms of rational thinking,
such as pointing to the marketing principles behind a fragrance rather than relating
to himself, his emotions or his own body can be interpreted as a performance of
control and masculinity.
Passion and Gender

In this article I have used go-along interviews to explore sense-making processes
of gender and perfume packaging. By walking around in stores and looking at and
discussing packaging, cultural understandings of seduction, choice, consumption,
taste and gender were brought to the fore.
Packages do gender in many ways, they make statements about what constitutes femininity and masculinity, they make gender into a liable market segment
and they are interpreted by shoppers in gender terms. The women enacted femi-
[307]
ninity by placing themselves in a relationship to packaging where they were the

seduced part. They seemingly placed agency in the packages and enacted a role of
passive femininity, seduced by a (male?) bottle. How should this performance of a
seduced woman be understood? Where bottles were even described as objects to
fall in love with and where passive forms were used to talk about this attraction?
Womens consumption has historically been associated with irrationality and
inabilities to resist temptation and desires. Many scholars have pointed to the
great department stores of the 1800s and the contemporary discussions of these as
symbols of frivolous, excessive but also dangerous consumption of which women
were not in control, but subjected to by the forces of commerce. Seduction played
a key role in the relationship between on one hand women and on the other goods
and shop owners, as well as the emerging fields of marketing and market research,
resulting in a sexual desire for goods and objects (Abelson 1989; Felski 1996;
Radner 1995; Nava 1995; Ganetz 2005; Gundle & Castelli 2007).
Whereas there is an understanding of seduction in terms of passive (seduced
woman) active (male seducer), feminist scholars have also reworked this reasoning by pointing to alternative ways of understanding womens concern with consumption. Felski (1995) sees the expansion of consumption as a crucial feminist
issue in terms of its preoccupation with womens pleasure (64). Woman in the
1800s, herself being an object and tradable good, could only be a desiring subject
in relation to other objects, Felski argues and sees this relation as potentially subversive of heterosexual norms, which is why womens desire for goods has caused
moral controversies (see also Radner 1995).
Several of the women spoke of goods in terms of attraction and desire which
poses perfume consumption as a sphere in which it is culturally acceptable to
speak of womens desire and pleasure. Even though the women located agency in
packages and marketing, by dwelling in indulgence and luxury they still appeared
as active and desiring sexual subjects in relation to these goods and which makes
pleasure into an activity suitable for women to engage in. The pleasures associated with consumption were however often accompanied with requirements for restraint and feelings of guilt, thereby exposing cultural ambivalence to womens
desire; particularly desire generated outside of heterosexuality.
Some of the men too spoke of the attraction to goods, although this was made
with reference to the goods abilities to perform particular functions. The men
enacted masculinity by placing themselves as beings in control of the act of seduction/purchase. Enacting rationality works a way to avoid feminization in this
feminized environment. The subtle communication of store design, images and
packages acted to make the men explain packages in this way.
By understanding agency as located in the packages, the women were expecting to be seduced, thereby enacting a traditional heterosexual role of a passive
woman. Agency, the way it is generally understood, is not with the person who is
drawn to something but with the one who does the drawing, that is, in this case,
[308]
the package. The women did however not only talk about the agency of goods in
relation to themselves. Consumer goods were also understood as having agency
for the construction of masculinity in male partners.
To be seduced is generally understood as more passive than to seduce which is
active. But why? Considering the gendered relations of seduction the definition of
to seduce as active and to be seduced as passive also implies a gendered relation to agency. In forming a theory of passion and agency, Francois Cooren
(2010) defines passion as something which leads or drives someone to do what
she is doing, because of what animates or moves her. Etymologically passion is
related to suffering, emotion, affection, desire and (deep) interest, all forces
which, in the view of Cooren, have in common the idea that someone appears to
be acted upon, to undergo or be animated by something which can be considered
either positive or negative. Etymologically, passion relates to passivity as does
action to activity. Agency, according to Cooren, should not be reduced to a performance intentionally accomplished by a human being. Artifacts, predispositions,
technologies and architectural elements all do things in our daily lives. Actions
cannot, he suggests, be positioned as the ultimate origin of what is happening in a
given interaction, because participants are themselves moved or acted upon by
specific reasons. Agency is not only a property of humans but also of things and
processes such as passions, emotions, statuses, norms, rules and values among
many more. For Cooren this means that any action involves passion; our actions
are guided by flows coming from different directions and which animate us, make
us act.
Even though the women located the agency of seduction in packages it did not
mean that they took on a passive role of consumption. To let oneself be seduced
by someone else, be that a person or an object, is not, with Coorens theory, any
more passive than seducing since all actions are under the influence of other beings; human or non-human. This means that the passion for fragrances is in no
way more passive than the seemingly active approach of questioning stereotypes,
of disregarding marketing or of presenting oneself as an actor of active choices.
These actions are equally animated by the flows of passion which guide and precede them.
Perfume is a consumer good with no real function; its purpose of concealing
bodily odors has long since been replaced with soap, deodorants, shampoos and
running water. Realizing this condition, marketers and manufacturers have placed
the meanings of fragrances in the realms of seduction; senses, sensuality, emotions, gender and sexuality. However, in spite of the recognition of the potential
for expansion that including men in this market brings, manufacturers of perfume
have not quite known how to speak to men with the language of seduction.
Traditional connotations between women, perfume and pleasure have meant
that women in general have a higher understanding of the language of perfume;
the fact that they speak of being attracted and seduced by bottles shows that they
[309]
have understood this world; they are supposed to be seduced, that is what the
packages say. The women have it figured out just right; perfume is all about desire, it does not fulfill any needs. On this market it is rational to understand consumption in terms of pleasure, irrational to understand perfume in terms of needs.
What about those women who refused to be seduced? Their accounts work as
an illustration of gender constructions as ongoing and performative. Gender conventions are never exhaustive and do not fix the actions or the processes of interpretation of all human subjects. Those womens refusal also illustrates that the
actions of individual men and women are not fully determined by the meanings
communicated by the market, but created through ongoing negotiations between
people, processes and objects.
Perfume is a market that has mainly targeted women, a condition which has
changed during the past two decades and which causes disruption in the representations of seduction. Whichever way this market continues to represent seduction
and gender remains to be seen and points to, as maintained by Partington (1996),
the need for gender researchers to engage in the pleasures of consumption.
Magdalena Petersson McIntyre is Associate Professor in Ethnology and researcher at the Centre for Consumer Science, University of Gothenburg. Her research interests are within gender and work, fashion and consumption. She is currently working with three research projects; one on commercial objects designed
with a gender perspective; one on aesthetic labour in retailing and one on digital
consumption. E-mail: [email protected]
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[311]
Martin Luther King, Jr.
WEEK 4
I Have a Dream
delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. (2)]
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest
demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed
the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of
hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It
came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of
the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the
midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still
languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.
And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our
republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall
heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be
guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is
obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of
color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the
Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there
are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come
to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the
security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now.
This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of
gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to
rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now
is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering
summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating
autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And
those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have
a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest
nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds
of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice
emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold
which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must
not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking
from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high
plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into
physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical
force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to
a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their
presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And
they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?"
We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of
police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of
travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.*We
cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger
one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and
robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long
as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for
which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls
down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.
Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas
where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and
staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering.
Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to
Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to
Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow
this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is
a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of
injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of
freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not
be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor
having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day
right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little
white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall
be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made
straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With
this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful
symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray
together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together,
knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing
with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every
village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that
day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants
and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!3
* = text within asterisks absent from the above audio but verified as originally delivered
Amos 5:24 (rendered precisely in The American Standard Version of the Holy Bible)
Isaiah 40:4-5 (King James Version of the Holy Bible). Quotation marks are excluded from
part of this moment in the text because King's rendering of Isaiah 40:4 does not precisely
follow the KJV version from which he quotes (e.g., "hill" and "mountain" are reversed in the
KJV). King's rendering of Isaiah 40:5, however, is precisely quoted from the KJV.
2
3 At:
http://www.negrospirituals.com/news-song/free_at_last_from.htm
Also in this database: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Time to Break Silence
Audio Source: Linked directly to: http://www.archive.org/details/MLKDream
External Link: http://www.thekingcenter.org/
U.S. Copyright Status: Text and Audio = Restricted, seek permission. Image
= Uncertain.
Copyright inquiries and permission requests may be directed to:
Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
Intellectual Properties Management
One Freedom Plaza
449 Auburn Avenue NE
Atlanta, GA 30312
Fax: 404-526-8969
Source: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
Advances in Language and Literary Studies

Vol. 4 No. 1; January 2013
WEEK 5
Copyright Australian International Academic Centre, Australia
Critical Discourse Analysis of Martin Luther Kings Speech

in Socio-Political Perspective
Muhammad Aslam Sipra
Assistant Professor, Department of GRC (English), JCC, King Abdulaziz University, PO Box 80283, Jeddah 21589 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
E-mail: [email protected]
Athar Rashid
Assistant Professor, Faculty of English Language, Literature & Applied Linguistics, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan
Doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.4n.1p.27
Received: 01/12/2012
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.4n.1p.27
Accepted: 04/01/2013
Abstract
The article presents the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the first part of King Martin Luthers speech When I
Have a Dream in socio-political context. The study investigates how it lies on the basis of application of Fairclough
version of CDA in the first part of the text. Moreover, it explicates the terms like social, cultural and political
inequalities in the light of text and framework.
Keywords: CDA, Socio-political Perspective, 3D Model, Racial Discrimination, Hegemony, Dominance, Social
inequalities
1. Introduction
The term discourse has several definitions. In the study of language, discourse often refers to the speech patterns and
usage of language, dialects, and acceptable statements, within a community. It is a subject of study of peoples who live
in secluded areas and share similar speech conventions. Analysis is a process of evaluating the things by breaking them
down into pieces. Discourse Analysis simply refers to the linguistic analysis of connected writing and speech. The
major focus in Discourse Analysis is the use of language in social context. This article presents a Critical Discourse
Analysis of the famous speech by Martin Luther king, Jr. I Have a Dream by applying Fairclough 3D Model.
CDA specifically considers how language works within institutional and political discourses as well as specific
discourses in order to uncover overt or more often, covert inequalities in social relationships. Language use in speech
and writing is seen as a social practice, which implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event
and the situation(s), institution(s), and social structure(s) which frame it (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 258). Thus, in
this two-way relationship, discourse is considered to be socially constitutive as well as socially shaped.
Since discourses are so influential, they can help to produce and reproduce unequal power relations between different
ethnicities, social classes, genders, ages, and professional groups. CDA of the selected speech highlights the
relationship between language and power. It points out how Martin Luther in front of Washington DC challenges
Americans. The persuasive nature of the speech is disclosed through CDA. Martin Luther motivates the audience
through language of getting freedom and makes them ready against the racial discrimination
2. Research Questions:
1.
2.
3.
How does the use of textual/stylistic strategies reflect the view of the Afro-American community in
speech?
To what extent the ideology of King Martin Luther is reflected through the linguistic choices in the
speech?
How do the stylistic features represent the broader socio-cultural and political relationship between the
white and the black community in America?
These questions are researchable as the focus is on the analysis of the language used in the speech. Researcher analyzed
the linguistic choices which are used by the speaker in order to find out the motifs. Language is considered to be the
main tool through which one can exert power and show retaliation to the powers exercised in the society by the
dominant groups. This project focuses on how speaker tried to raise voice against the hegemonic attitude of white
against the black with the help of language and how he tried to promote his ideology and motifs in the mind of the
socio-politically oppressed blacks. Researcher analyzes the stylistic devices like metaphors used by the speaker in order
to represent the perspective of the black. Power relation between the black and the white are analyzed at wider socioeconomic and political perspective that how white exert power on the black by analyzing the speech through CDA.
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28
3. Literature Review
In this section of the project, researcher has cited 20 references related to the main topic and different variables involved
in the research questions. Researcher has tried to knit a strong kind of theoretical basis in this portion to make further
grounds clear. Works of different theorists in the broad interdisciplinary field CDA have been elaborated vividly.
Vandijk (1998a) is of the view that CDA is particularly concerned with the analysis of any discourse whether written or
spoken from the perspective of discursive practices in a society like hegemony, domination, inequality of basic rights
and racial discrimination. Its focus is to examine the exertion of these practices with reference to socio-economic and
political perspective.
Fairclough (1993) says that CDA is a kind of analysis of discourse which brings forth odd relationships among different
social and ethnic groups. He focuses text and sequential events and then relates them with broader socio-cultural
perspective of the discourse of people which reveals uneven and ideology shaped power relations. He explores how
power is exercised in a society through hegemonic attitude and ideological text of the elite.
Fairclough (1992) explains three stages for the analysis of a discourse. In first stage CDA analyses the personal
experience and knowledge of the speaker by keeping in view his beliefs. Secondly, how social relations affect the
discourse and thirdly, speaker realizes about the reality and identity. He is of view that linguistic choices in a discourse
like lexical selection and syntactic patterns also reveal the social background and identity of a speaker. He argues that it
is the language which shapes discourse and different socio-political views which leads towards the exertion of power
relations. Fairclough (1992) is of the view that people belonging to a specific social setup have different relational and
expressive norms which is revealed through their speeches. This shows that there is strong tie between the social and
linguistic variables. The prime purpose of CDA is to analyze the text in the light of social theory of language
functioning of ideological and political processes.
According to Brown and Yule (1985) language is not only used for the description of things rather it is also used for
doing things as well. CDA analyses the use of the language in a real context and how language reveals their cultural,
social and ethnic backgrounds. They are of the view that choice of lexical and syntactic features of a language represent
the broad socio-cultural background of the speakers. Critical discourse analysis focuses on how their language reflects
discursive practices in the binary relations.
Hallidays (1978) view regarding this concept is same that language is considered to be a social act because people
communicate in a social setup. Language and society are dependent on each other rather directly linked in terms
communication. It is the language (text) which shapes and constructs our identities. Same is the case in our context.
People who are fluent in English are considered socially and culturally dominant because they speak the language of
socially and politically dominant people. In this case, linguistic variable seems to become the identity of that particular
class.
According to Fairclough (1995b), linguistic analysis of discourse practice in socio-cultural background is known inter
textual analysis. Here the linguistic analysis is the analysis of the text at lexical, syntactic, grammatical and vocabulary
level. Cohesion, coherence and organization of the text are also included in this analysis. This analysis focuses on the
text by keeping in view all discourse practices.
Fairclough (1992) defines intertextuality as the characteristic of any text in which the text carries the chunks of other
texts which become a part of that text. The chunk taken from other text become a complete part of the original one
whether it refutes the idea given in the original text or accepts. He divides intertextuality into two types which are
manifest intertextuality and constitutive intertextuality. The first type refers to the use of quotations in the texts in
order to validate and authenticate the argument. Certain quotes are included in the inverted comas while writing any
essay or speech. This type of inclusion of other text is considered as manifest intertextuality. The other is related to
discourse structures which lead to novel text production. Fairclough says that this kind of text can be analyzed by doing
its linguistic analysis.
Fairclough (1989) described his approach in the perspective of analysis of text as critical language study. His main
focus was to unfold the discrimination of social relations and discursive practices which exploits the rights of masses
with the help of language used in society. He is the view that language is used as a tool for exercising power and
hegemony. Text is the dress of thoughts through which people exert dominance.
Wodak and Fairclough (1995a, 1996) are of the view that language as a practice of creating hegemony, power and
dominance is being used in a society. It seems to be a complete reflection of social practices like a mirror. The types of
language used among the members of society reveal the social relations like communication of a director of a company
with a clerk or peon would clearly draw line and the linguistic choice of director would reveal his/her hegemonic
attitude. Historical perspective of discourse plays vital role in getting the meanings of the text. Every text carries certain
historical perspectives and contexts which clarify the meanings in that particular context.
Gee (1990) and Sampson (1980) put an argument that CDA systematically interprets discourses with the help of various
approaches by keeping in view socio-political and economic contexts. Here, social semiotics plays significant role in
the interpretation of discourse because the analysis would be done on the basis of social factors in that specific context.
Fowler (1996) says the perspective of CDA is to produce the knowledge of exploitation and knowing, conscious rising
of the people regarding any discourse in socio-cultural context. He is of the view that analyst should focus the
ALLS 4(1):27-33, 2013
29
representation critical orientation instead of criticism of discourses. Critique from CDA perspective would represent the
social, economical and political backgrounds of discourses.
Corson (1995) says that critical discourse analysis applies certain techniques like textual and stylistic features to find
out the social relations, identities from the linguistic perspective. Discourses whether they reveal the social issues like
dominance, hegemony are reflected through text or it is the discourses related to educational systems like schools,
official documents are dealt by the analysis of the text.
According to Blommaert(2005) and Jorgensen(2002) critical discourse analysis is considered to be wider and broader
which analyses the relation of language within a society and its impact on the discourses. They are of the view that
linguistic and social variables in CDA research are closely knitted to each other because whenever we approach any text
or discourse, we approach it from linguistic perspective and emphasize how choice of language in a particular discourse
pertaining the socio-political context tries to analyze the discursive practices.
Chilton (1996) and Lakoff (1995) argue that metaphors play a significant role in Critical discourse analysis. They are of
the view that metaphors in a discourse represent an ideology which leads to reality in that particular context according
to an individuals perception. King Martin Luther used some metaphors in his language which reflect his ideology in
that socio-political background.
Van Dijk (1991, 1993), media and politics are closely related as media propagates the thought and ideologies of elite.
He describes media discourse as an advocate of elite's policy, hegemony and exploitation. It always favours the
ideologies of the dominating class and state. Language used by them unfolds the discriminatory attitude of high towards
the low.
Ruth Wodak(2001) and Meyer (2001) interpret the term Critical in CDA as the analysis and understanding of the
language embedded in social, political and economic perspective. CDA tries to develop connections between the
powers exerted through language with a wider socio-political context. The focus seems to be on text primitively
because it reflects the ideological and identity basis which are constructed and produced through the social relations.
They are of the view that CDA not only traces out the power relations in social practices but it also provides
opportunities to challenge and criticize it.
Carroll (2004) is of the view that Critical discourse provides us several dimensions for the analysis of a text or speech as
it functions as a theoretical framework (theory) and method (how to use data for the analysis). Critical discourse
analysis brings forth both the aspects which sociological and post-modern perspective for the analysis of discourse.
Sociological feature is related to functional aspect of language in the constructions and explanation of social relations. It
focuses on the use of linguistic features in discourse and how power and hegemony influence the social relations. CDA
analyses the abuse of power and hegemonic attitude by focusing through the lens of language. The later analyses the
context and dimensions of discourse.
4. Research Methodology
Speech of King Martin Luther is analysed by applying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It Analyses whether lexical
representation, syntactic organization and coherent speech in a particular socio-cultural context having an ideology
influences the cognition of audience. Researchers contribution is the analysis of the textual/stylistic strategies and
interpretation of relational, expressive and representative values in the speech with special focus on wider sociopolitical and economic perspectives.
This research adds to the previous knowledge by focusing and analyzing the speech on the basis of linguistic choices,
discursive practices and socio-cultural perspective. It also analyzes as to how certain linguistic structures help the
speaker to propagate his/her ideologies effectively and makes others accept heartily.
The data is collected from the historical speech of King Martin Luther delivered on August 28, 1963. The title of this
spell bounding speech was When I Have Dreams which reflects the aspirations and demands of all blacks residing in
that part of the world. Researcher delimited only first part of the speech which consists of 31 sentences. Faircloughs
model has been applied in order to this part of speech. A quarter of million people, gathered in Washington DC from all
racial backgrounds to support the American blacks for the equality of rights.
Researcher selected the 3D model and framework proposed by Norman Fairclough(1992). He has introduced three
aspects in his model for the critical analysis of any discourse or text. This model consists of text, socio-cultural practices
and discursive practices in a society. Text is analyzable as socio-economic and political factors influence the discursive
practices in the society. Fairclough (1989) described the objective of this approach as a contribution to the general rising
of consciousness of exploitative social relations, through focusing upon language.
Researcher has taken Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as theoretical framework of this project. CDA analyses the
discourses critically and reveals the social practices like dominance, hegemony, exploitation victimization of the
oppressed ones. CDA is an interdisciplinary field which brings social sciences and linguistics at the same platform. Its
topics of discussion are linked with ethnicity, hegemonic attitude of high towards low, gender discrimination,
dominance, ideology, discursive practices and gender. The parameter of analysis is only language and reveals how
discourse manifests discursive practices in a social setup. The topic of this article clearly represents the issues which
CDA deals on the primary basis. The topic carries variables like social, cultural, political inequality and ideology which
are the core issues discussed by CDA. This theoretical framework provides a complete base and standing for the
analysis of above-mentioned variables in the speech of King Martin Luther.
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Ethical considerations are dealt very carefully while conducting this research. As this research is
purely qualitative in its nature, there is no interaction with human subjects. There are no
interviews in this research which could lead towards ethical issues.
Researcher has taken CDA as method for this project. The nature of the research is purely qualitative as the speech is
analyzed on the basis of Faircloughs 3D Model. CDA has also been taken as methodology at broader spectrum for the
analysis. First part of the speech I Have a Dream has been analyzed on the theoretical base which is CDA. It has been
used as tool to investigate the hegemonic attitude and discursive practices of the white against the black.
5. Discussion and Analysis
Researcher has collected data from the speech of Martin Luther King When I Have Dream. First 31 lines containing
648 words have been analyzed and interpreted by applying Faircloughs 3D model which talks about expressive,
relational and ideational values. It critically analyses the whole text on the basis of three aspects in a broader macro and
micro level; which are related to the analysis of linguistic choices (text), discourse practices in the back scene of that
particular text and socio- cultural practices keeping in view particularly social, economic and political factors.
Researcher has applied CDA as a theoretical framework of this research as it focuses the text which reveals social
inequality, racial discrimination or other discursive practices by looking at the text from socio-cultural perspective. It is
critical and explanatory in its nature. This approach of Fairclough systematically throws light on all aspects like at first
it gives the description of linguistic features used in that particular text. Secondly, it tries to interpret the relation of that
particular text with the interaction and thirdly it explains the link of interaction with the broader socio-political
variables.
Text Analysis
Text is one of the main pillars and central to the analysis on Fairclough model. Analysis of text is strongly linked with
the analysis of language used by people in real setting. This approach in the beginning was named as Critical Language
Study as the special focus was to raise consciousness of socially exploitative relation with special focus on language.
Text analysis involves the analysis of lexical choices, cohesion, coherence and different stylistic features which focuses
on the particular theme and broader socio-political perspective of the speaker. This leads to the analysis above syntactic
level.
This analysis can be divided into two sections. In the first section, there is analysis within the clauses or sentences that
highlights the Theme, Rheme, Given and New Information. In the second section, there is analysis of relationship of the
sentences or clauses with each other by focusing on the four types of thematic progression. Informative Structure is
developed through a series of Theme, Rheme, Given and New Information. This creates an organization in the
sentences of the speech. They lend cohesion and coherence to the speech. We make sentences grammatically and
thematically correct by following the informative and thematic structure. This cohesion heightens the impact of the
message and feelings by the speakers. This gives a power to the speaker to have a deep impact on the audience. It
creates a logical sequence within the sentences. The sequence of given and new information also help in making the
speech effective. They serve as a bridge between the speakers and the audience. Moreover, Mark and Unmark and
Multiple Themes function as a magnet to hold the whole discourse together. In the speech coherence is developed
through Given and New information. Audience gets from the speech only one theme through the related sentences that
show cohesion and coherence.
Thematic Progression of the speech is developed through Constant Theme Pattern. The selected part of the speech is
well knitted, well thought and well organized. It has been created with the help of chain of related ideas and appropriate
words focusing on the main idea. This technique keeps the feeling of the audience intact. It encourages to get united and
free them from the long slavery. Only Constant Theme Pattern is followed in this speech the rest of the three patterns
are not used in the speech. Constant Theme Pattern aims at maintaining the emotional impact on the audience by
focusing on the main idea or theme.
Throughout the speech, Dr. King repeats words and sentence. This is a very outstanding feature in this speech called
repetition. The term repetition is restricted to mean the case of exact copying of a certain previous unit in a text such as
a word, phrase or even a sentence (Leech, 1969). If we study the selected part of the speech more carefully, it is easy for
us to find many other examples of repetition used:
.. One hundred years later, the life of the Negros still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the
chains of discrimination. (Luther King, 1963)
One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of
material prosperity. (Luther King, 1963)
Here the phrase one hundred years later has been repeated four times, clearly indicating that there has been a long
time these African-Americans aspiring for the freedom and equal rights without any discrimination based on color and
creed.
Parallelism is another syntactic over-regularity. It refers to the exact repetition in equivalent positions but it is different
from the common repetition. To put it simply, parallelism means the balancing of sentence elements that are
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31
grammatically equal. In his speech, Martin Luther King uses parallelism to create a strong rhythm to help the audience
line up his ideas. Here are few examples:
by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination (Par.2, two parallel noun phrases)
Martin Luther King used the noun freedom 20 times in this speech which reflects that Freedom and inequality are the
major themes of the speech keeping in view socio-political background of the speech. Other pronouns like We, Ours
and You have been used 30, 17 and 08 times in speech respectively which indicate the intimacy between the speaker
and the audience. Other lexemes like nation, America and justice have also been used several times which indicate that
Kings speech conveyed the message of justice, equality and unity as one nation.
Metaphor is a stylistic device which is used to associate the abstract ideas with the concrete images. King used
metaphorical language in his speech which connects with the concrete images and here in this speech certain
contrastive concrete metaphors have been used to enhance the beauty of the speech. For example, to contrast
segregation with racial justice, King has contrasted the metaphors of dark and desolate valley (of segregation) and
sunlit path (of racial justice). Intertextuality is again one of the important features found in the speech of the king. It
refers to the text taken from some other source in order to validate ones perspective. It can be explicit as well as
implicit in its nature. The reference given by Martin Luther; Five score years ago [Paragraph 2] refers to
Lincolns famous Gettysburg Address which began Four score and seven years ago This refers to the point that
King was speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Analyzing Context
This spell bounding speech of Martin Luther King carries a complete contextual background with it. The blacks were
deprived of their rights and racial discrimination was at its peak. He fought for the rights of Afro-American people
and launched Civil Rights Movement which became the basis of this memorable speech. His struggle for the
oppressed blacks turned to be mass movement against the cruel and discriminatory attitude of the Whites. His prime
motifs were to get equal rights and to get rid of the discriminatory attitude of Whites towards the Blacks. Negroes
were considered socially, economically and politically inferior as compared to the other race living in America. He
wanted to have equality for the Negroes on all grounds so that they could work for the progress of nation ultimately.
Negroes were considered politically and socially inferior and this speech refers to exploitations of the whites. Luther
King tried to make people aware of their rights and that of discriminatory and hegemonic attitude of the whites.
Analysis of Discourse Practices and Socio-Political Aspect of Speech
According to Fairclough (1992) model these two aspects which are discourse practices and socio-political and cultural
perspective are of vital importance. Discourse practices refer to execution of social practices through discourse.
Discourse is always socially constituted and vice versa. On the other hand socio-cultural and political aspects are also
important because they provide a complete overview of the circumstances in which discourses are being constructed.
The analysis of discourse practices and socio-political aspects can be divided into three major areas which are Genre,
Discoursal analysis and style. Researcher discusses each major area with reference to speech and how they are linked
with each other in this particular speech.
Analysis of Genre refers to the analysis of text which relates to the lexical choices used in this speech with broader
socio-cultural context. It also refers to the particular identification of patterns in the speech. In the first paragraph
flames of withering injustice refers to the harsh and cruel attitude of the white. The words flame means the fire and
withering refers to the gloomy and desolate picture of the blacks. Their faces have been withered due to continuous
chain of slavery in their neck. The word vast ocean refers to the great economy and wealth of the America. Here, king
is of the view that these Negroes are deprived of being an independent individual and they are economically and
politically crippled even living in such prosperous and developed state. He used the word nation many a times which
indicate that his stance was that the blacks and the whites are one nation without any discrimination.
Style of the speaker carries importance in the critical analysis of any discourse. Expressive and relational values are
closely linked with this speech analysis. Expressive value indicates the expression of personal experiences of the
speaker. The speaker himself was a Negro and he experienced the same deprivation and indifferent attitude of the
white. His involvement and enthusiasm show that his words are expressions of all Negroes. Relational value throws
light upon the relation among the speaker and audience. He was evoking audience because he was a part of those who
were sufferer and oppressed. He used pronoun We and Ours several times in the speech which ultimately indicate
that the speaker considers himself of being a member of that group. Speaker with the help of these lexical choices gets
involve in the sentiments of the oppressed ones.
Representational value is of significant importance as it makes the worldview of the audience. It indicates the subject
matter of the discussion and particular socio-political background of the speech. Here, the question arises that why is
this speech different from others? It differs because of its social and political context as it revolves around one major
idea which is social, political and economical inequality in the rights of the blacks. King criticized the American
authorities for being not fulfilling the promise which they mentioned in the constitution. Negroes were not given
liberty, equal rights and economic equality which were being mentioned in the constitution.
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6. Conclusion and Recommendation

The limitations of the study are linked with the data for the analysis on the interpretative paradigms of the research.
Only first part of the just one speech is analyzed as it becomes very difficult to handle the whole speech rather all
speeches of King Luther. The analysis of the chunk of the speech could not be perfectly analyzed and interpreted.
It can be concluded that in this speech certain textual and stylistic devices have been used very frequently in order to
achieve some specific purpose. It carries all those prerequisites which a speech must have to propagate the ideology in
a sophisticated manner. It seems to be syntactically well-organized with frequent repetitions emphasizing the main
theme which is inequality of socio-cultural rights and racial discrimination on the basis of color and creed. The choice
of the lexemes is not well ordered according to situation but also recapitulating background and indicating the
relational and expressive values of the speaker. Luther king very impressively and successfully with the help of
metaphors and other devices identifies the relationship between the powerful and oppressed. He very persuasively
succeeds in achieving the strength and support of the powerless without creating any conflict with the powerful. His
speech very peacefully sheds light on the institutionalized social inequalities.
There are certain other factors like social cognition in this speech which can be pointed out in further research. There
are other approaches in CDA which can be applied on this speech by keeping in view same patterns. The models
proposed by VanDijk and Wodak can also be applied to carry out qualitative nature of research.
References
Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse. A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Brown, G. and Yule, G. (1985). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Carroll, W. (2004). Critical Strategies/or Social Research. Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.
Chilton, P. (1996). Security metaphors: Cold war discourse from containment to common house. New York: Peter Lang.
Corson, D. (1995). Discourse and Power in Educational Organizations, Creskill: Hampton Press, N.J.
Fairclough, Norman (1989). Language and Power. London: Longman.
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press
Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and social change. London: Polity Press
Fairclough, Norman (1995a). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman.
Fairclough, Norman (1995b). Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.
Fowler, R. (1996). On Critical Linguistics 1: in Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. and Coulthard, M.
(eds.) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Routledge.
Gee, J. P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: The Falmer Press
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language and Social Semiotics. London: Edward Arnold
Jorgensen, Marianne & Phillips, Louise (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. London: Sage Publications
Meyer, M. (2001). Between theory, method, and politics: Positioning of the approaches to CDA. In R. Wodak & M.
Meyer (Ed.), Methods o/Critical Discourse Analysis
Sampson, G. (1980) School of Linguistics: Competition and Evaluation. London: Longman
Van Dijk, T.A. (1991). Racism and the press. London: Routledge
Van Dijk, TA. (1993). Elite discourse and racism. London: Sage Publications. pp.(242-282)
Van Dijk, T.A. (1998a). Critical discourse analysis. Available:
http://www.hum.uva.nl/teun/cda.htm. (1/25/2000)
Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about - a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R.
Wodak & M. Meyer (Ed.). Methods of critical discourse analysis. London - Thousand Oaks - New Delhi: Sage
Publications.
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Appendix
Martin Luther King's Speech: 'I Have a Dream' - The Full Text
By The Rev. MARTIN LUTHER KING Jr.
Aug. 28, 1963
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the
history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the
flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life
of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years
later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred
years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.
So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the
magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to
which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back
marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there
are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check
that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed
spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take
the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the
sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to
lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the
Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn
of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to
blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will
be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will
continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of
justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy
our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of

WEEK 6
Happiness
Reading 1
Andrew Sullivan - Provincetown, Massachusetts
As heard on NPRs Morning Edition, July 4, 2005
Photo by Nubar Alexanian
Although born and raised in England, writer Andrew Sullivan turns to Americas Declaration of Independence
to find his beliefs rooted in the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
***********
I believe in life. I believe in treasuring it as a mystery that will never be fully understood, as a
sanctity that should never be destroyed, as an invitation to experience now what can only be
remembered tomorrow. I believe in its indivisibility, in the intimate connection between the newest
bud of spring and the flicker in the eye of a patient near death, between the athlete in his prime and
the quadriplegic vet, between the fetus in the womb and the mother who bears another life in her
own body.
I believe in liberty. I believe that within every soul lies the capacity to reach for its own good, that
within every physical body there endures an unalienable right to be free from coercion. I believe in
a system of government that places that liberty at the center of its concerns, that enforces the law
solely to protect that freedom, that sides with the individual against the claims of family and tribe
and church and nation, that sees innocence before guilt and dignity before stigma. I believe in the
right to own property, to maintain it against the benign suffocation of a government that would tax
more and more of it away. I believe in freedom of speech and of contract, the right to offend and
blaspheme, as well as the right to convert and bear witness. I believe that these freedoms are
connected the freedom of the fundamentalist and the atheist, the female and the male, the black
and the Asian, the gay and the straight.
I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I
believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions
rather than any single answer. I believe in the struggle to remake ourselves and challenge each
other in the spirit of eternal forgiveness, in the awareness that none of us knows for sure what
happiness truly is, but each of us knows the imperative to keep searching. I believe in the possibility
of surprising joy, of serenity through pain, of homecoming through exile.
And I believe in a country that enshrines each of these three things, a country that promises nothing
but the promise of being more fully human, and never guarantees its success. In that constant
failure to arrive implied at the very beginning lies the possibility of a permanently fresh start,
an old newness, a way of revitalizing ourselves and our civilization in ways few foresaw and one
day many will forget. But the point is now. And the place is America.
Andrew Sullivan was born in England and educated at Oxford and Harvard. At age 27, he became editor of
The New Republic, a position he held for five years. As a writer, commentator and blogger, Sullivan
addresses political and social issues, and advocates for gay rights.
Independently produced for NPR by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick. Edited
by Ellen Silva.
Creating Our Own Happiness

Wayne Coyne - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
As heard on NPRs Morning Edition, February 26, 2007
WEEK 6
Reading 2
Wayne Coyne is singer and guitarist for The Flaming Lips, an indie-rock band he founded. Coyne believes
happiness isnt a cosmic coincidence, but something we have the power to make within ourselves.
*************
I was sitting in my car at a stoplight intersection listening to the radio. I was, I guess, lost in the
moment, thinking how happy I was to be inside my nice warm car. It was cold and windy outside,
and I thought, Life is good.
Now this was a long light. As I waited, I noticed two people huddled together at the bus stop. To my
eyes, they looked uncomfortable; they looked cold and they looked poor. Their coats looked like
they came from a thrift store. They werent wearing stuff from The Gap. I knew it because Id been
there.
This couple seemed to be doing their best to keep warm. They were huddled together and I thought
to myself, Oh, those poor people in that punishing wind.
But then I saw their faces. Yes, they were huddling, but they were also laughing. They looked to be
sharing a good joke, and, suddenly, instead of pitying them, I envied them. I thought, Huh, whats so
funny? They didnt seem to notice the wind. They werent worried about their clothes. They
werent looking at my car thinking, I wish I had that.
You know how a single moment can feel like an hour? Well, in that moment, I realized I had
assumed this couple needed my pity, but they didnt. I assumed things were all bad for them, but
they werent and I understood we all have the power to make moments of happiness happen.
Now maybe thats easy for me to say. I feel lucky to have fans around the world, a house with a roof,
and a wife who puts up with me. But I must say I felt this way even when I was working at Long
John Silvers. I worked there for eleven years as a fry cook. When you work at a place that long, you
see teenagers coming in on their first dates; then theyre married; then theyre bringing in their
kids. You witness whole sections of peoples lives.
In the beginning it seemed like a dead-end job. But at least I had a job. And frankly, it was easy. After
two weeks, I knew all I needed to know, and it freed my mind. The job allowed me to dream about
what my life could become. The first year I worked there, we got robbed. I lay on the floor; I thought
I was going to die. I didnt think I stood a chance. But everything turned out all right. A lot of people
look at life as a series of miserable tasks but after that, I didnt.
I believe this is something all of us can do: Try to be happy within the context of the life were
actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for, or a convergence of lucky
happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves. This I believe.
Wayne Coyne is singer and guitarist for the Grammy Award-winning rock band, The Flaming Lips. He wrote
and directed Christmas on Mars," a science-fiction film featuring the group. Coyne and his wife, Michelle, a
photographer, live in Oklahoma City.
Independently produced for NPR by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with Emily Botein, John Gregory and Viki
Merrick. Photo by Michelle Martin-Coyne.
Advances in Language and Literary Studies

ISSN: 2203-4714
Vol. 5 No. 1; February 2014
WEEK 7
Copyright Australian International Academic Centre, Australia
The Profound Sense of Dissatisfaction: A Comparative Study

of Franz Kafkas A Hunger Artist and Maulana Jalalu-d'-Din
Muhammad i Rumis A Man of Baghdad
Noorbakhsh Hooti
Razi University, Faculty of Arts, English Department, Kermanshah, Iran
Mohammad Reza Moradi Borna
Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran
Doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.5n.1p.53
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.5n.1p.53
Received: 02/01/2014
Accepted: 26/02/2014
Abstract
This study delves into investigating Kafkas A Hunger Artist and Rumis A Man of Baghdad, in which they have
dramatized sense of dissatisfaction, its causes and consequences in a symbolic manner. In fact, it has utilized the story
of Rumi that its main character is in a condition similar to the main character in Kafkas story. In both stories the main
characters somehow are imprisoned in their ideals, and what distinguishes between these two stories is the different
viewpoints that they adopt in confronting their ideals. Actually, the limited view of human beings and being detached
from reality, and actually being detached from themselves, has been considered the main cause of dissatisfaction. So,
the flagrant relationship among human ideals, enjoyment, and suffering is resulted from their intangible borders.
Therefore, the purpose of this article is to reveal the human choices in searching for happiness, escaping from the sense
of dissatisfaction, and manifold encounters with reality, and ultimately attaching to the ideals that are embedded in the
themes of the both stories.
Keywords: Kafka, Rumi, Dissatisfaction, Limited View
1. Introduction
Dissatisfaction can be viewed as a feeling, which may indicate you lack the satisfying mental solace, and what you have
gained is not that you deserve, or the circumstances in which you are placed, are not as perfect it ought to be to make
you satisfied. In fact, some events must occur in the future, and some changes must take place in the world so that you
can reach the sense of perfection. Krishnamurti states: Your consciousness, with which you have identified yourself as
your individual consciousness, is an illusion. It is the consciousness of the rest of mankind.(1984, p.68). As a matter
of fact, it can be stated that displeasure is the product of conflicts, conflicts which start growing in human minds and
generally as human life goes on, its conflicts become more tangible, and these conflicts can cause more dissatisfaction;
the conflicts that are resulted from the different ways that are situated in front of the individual and he must choose.
Since he does not have an accurate criterion for his choices, he somehow rambles between the different ways. So, he
finds the best way to escape from the dilemma, resorting to ideals. So, he deprives himself of thinking about other ways;
in fact, he deprives himself of thinking about life.
2. An outline of A Hunger Artist
A Hunger Artist is about an artist, who by showing his ability in bearing hunger for a long time in a cage, tries to attract
peoples attention. He is honest in what he does, and he extremely wants people to trust him, and peoples suspicion
towards his ability irritates him and makes him dissatisfied. After some time, people lose their interest in watching his
shows and nobody comes to watch him. So, he goes to a circus and there, in a cage close to other animals performs his
show hoping to be seen, but again there, people rarely come to watch him and mostly prefer to watch the passionate
animals. Finally the supervisor of the circus orders to take him off the cage and put a young panther in his place, when
people see the panther, they get excited and a mass of crowd come to watch the young panther.
3. An outline of A Man of Baghdad
The present story dramatizes a man from Baghdad, who is in great distress and in his dream, he sees the place of a
treasure in Egypt. So, he travels to Egypt to find the treasure. When he arrives there, a guard who thinks he is a thief
arrests him and starts beating him. The man from Baghdad explains his reasons for coming there, and the guard believes
what he says. The guard tells him that he has seen a treasure in his dreams several times likewise, but the guard calls the
man a foolish person, because of coming there to find the treasure. The treasure that the guard used to see in his dreams
ALLS 5(1):53-57, 2014
54
is in Baghdad and indeed, in the house of the man from Baghdad. So, the man from Baghdad returns to Baghdad and
finds the treasure.
4. Internal Sense of Dissatisfaction
In human mind, there is a gap between what is and what ought to be. When it is not pleasant, some ideals start shaping
in human mind, and man loathes reality. It causes the man to look at far beyond and try to find happiness somewhere
else. Making and having ideals are the easiest job to escape from reality. Heidegger believes:
The last man must move in a realm of ideas which blink at everything and can do nothing else but blink, in
consequence of an unearthly fate that forbids modern man to look beyond himself and his type of ideas.(1968,
p.83).
So, the more ideals expand, the more human being goes farther from the reality and himself, as far as he cannot
recognize the difference between reality and fantasy. In fact, he reaches a point that he only can live by ideals and
dissatisfaction with the status quo. In the modern world which is full of motley and glamorous ideals, most people live
in a cage of ideals, a cage that from their point of view is so beautiful, and there is no desire to leave the autistic cell.
From an analytic point, the inner richness makes human accept the realities of life, but the bedridden cultures that assign
more possessing and soliciting, basic terms for being blissful and successful, put human being in a dilemma where he
must choose between wanting and struggling for more or having a natural life along with serenity and satisfaction, but
generally human gets in line with the medium culture. So, he struggles much more than what is necessary for a happy
and healthy life and exclude himself from the beauties of life. Tolle opines: Most people in their restless search for
something significant to happen to them, continuously miss the insignificant, which may not be insignificant at
all.(2005, p.142). So the predominant sense which he mostly feels is nothing except discontent and insecurity. So with
these qualities the human commits to his demands, a tremendous commitment, which will overshadow his life. He
inevitably builds a wall around himself to keep himself from the minatory factors that can challenge his future and
ideals. So, many aspects of life become pointless to him and he transforms into a one-dimensional person, who has lost
the sense of creativity in his actions. His relationship with others will be based on personal interests and desires, and
also loses the ability of enjoying life and its simplicities. Eventually, he may become a person who lives in seclusion,
where his soul is not satisfied with this state, but he is extremely faithful to his demands and is stranded on an island
which is surrounded by discontent. Throughout human history, a great number of utopias have been offered to human
being by the various schools of thought. In other words, human beings have been offered a place free from suffering
where everything is desirable, and each one of them has shown a different way to achieve perfection. Every human
being, based on his experiences and mental backgrounds, has a specific definition of happiness in his mind, and this can
be besides the ideals that differ in different intellectual schools. Every man has some ideals in his mind and tries to
achieve his personal ideals. This study describes each individuals personal ideals that determine his path of life,
character, and even his social status. In other words, every human being can be defined by his ideals; the ideals that can
be true or false or can be hidden in his subconscious mind, in a way that he may not be aware of. Human ideals portend
prosperity and happiness, and make him try to get himself closer to them. On the other hand, the ideals limit human
minds and set a specific thing as the only way to achieve happiness. So, as much as human ideals are great and
respectful, he is still a limited and one-dimensional person that is incapable of understanding the totality of life. In truth,
our argument is not concerned with the evil or normative ideals, but the matter is the sense of contention that cannot be
grasped merely by regarding one dimension of life. So, all aspects of life are interconnected and have influence on each
other. If a person only looks at a separate part of life, but ignores the rest, cannot have a genuine cognition of himself
and as well as the life, even if he has a wide range of ideals in his mind. Indeed, because of his lack of understanding of
the other factors, which impact on his life, everything he achieves can be affected and changed by the other effective
factors, although may not be what he has desired. So, he would not reach satisfaction. Therefore, life has pleasant and
unpleasant aspects that both must be considered in selecting targets. If human being just desires to be satisfied and looks
at the world with a limited view, there will be lots of factors that can dissatisfy him.
5. The Failure of Idealistic Satisfaction
Kafkas story introduces the main character as a hunger artist who by bearing hunger for a long time tries to draw the
audiences admiration. Here again, there can be a symbolic contradiction that is dramatized by showing needlessness to
physical food, at the same time the need for attracting people to see him or somehow gain a mental nourishment. In fact
hunger and suffering that he imposes on himself can be the symbols of agonies that human being catches in society. In
this story in a hyperbolic manner, it has been tried to portray the agonies that human soul suffers from; that is the
excruciated soul that has brought objectivity to itself in a physically thin and weak body inside a cage, and a man who
has chosen being in a cage and actually cares about other peoples judgment. He enjoys being seen and observed by the
others as if he would feel safe by doing this; he is a character, who is afraid of being free, but struggles to seem
extraordinary. So, he makes an attempt to attract the positive judgments of the others by torturing himself in the cage to
fill the gap that is in his existence. Others suspicion to his ability extremely excruciates him; the following extract
shows this matter:
for the initiates knew well enough that during his fast the artist would never in any circumstances, not even
under forcible compulsion, swallow the smallest morsel of food; the honor of his profession forbade it. Not
every watcher, of course, was capable of understanding this, there were often groups of night watchers who
ALLS 5(1):53-57, 2014
55
were very lax in carrying out their duties and deliberately huddled together in a retired corner to play cards
with great absorption, obviously intending to give the hunger artist the chance of a little refreshment, which
they supposed he could draw from some private hoard. Nothing annoyed the artist more than such watchers;
they made him miserable; they made his fast seem unendurable; sometimes he mastered his feebleness
sufficiently to sing during their watch for as long as he could keep going, to show them how unjust their
suspicions were. But that was of little use; they only wondered at his cleverness in being able to fill his mouth
even while singing.(Kafka, 1971, pp.301-302).
As the title of the story presents this story shows, an artist and somehow implicitly refers to hunger. In fact, the artists
attempt to attract the audience can pretend his mental hunger that he suffers from, the immense need for being seen.
Here, an artist has been dramatized, who in a passive way is trying to prove his abilities, and actually by imposing
hunger on himself seeks something, which is so important to him. On the other side, in Rumis story the Baghdadi man,
in a different manner and actively travels to a far place. The hunger artist and the Baghdadi man seek something, and
actually, they go to fulfill their desires alike. The common point in two stories can be that both characters in these
stories by following an ideal try to fulfill their desideration. In A Hunger Artist, Kafka somehow has sympathized with
the hunger artist and his torment, but he does not consider anybody blameworthy, and what he has dramatized,
encounters different thoughts and desires. The short story also challenges the social ethics and scrutinizes a person, who
tries to be a moral and an honest person as the people wish, but nobody believes him; ethics that seem to be baseless
and nobody cares about them, except the hunger artist. It seems that he has been suffering from the other peoples
negligence towards his honesty in his work, and in a symbolic manner, this can dramatize the negligence of the people
to ethics in the modern time in which nobody expects honesty and truthfulness from the others, and this negligence
extremely irritates him. The following extract of the short story can show the same:
For he alone knew, what no other initiate knew, how easy it was to fast. It was the easiest thing in the world.
He made no secret of this, yet people did not believe him, at the best they set him down as modest, most of
them, however, thought he was out for publicity or else was some kind of cheat who found it easy to fast
because he had discovered a way of making it easy, and then had the impudence to admit the fact, more or
less.(Kafka, 1971, pp.302-303).
The hunger artist, in the cage has separated himself from the other people, and without communicating with people,
attempts to prove himself to the other people. So, this matter can be because of his fear from facing the reality whatever
he cares about; actually, an ideal that maybe for the other people is just such a trivial thing that people consider it mere
entertainment. Hence, he cannot have a genuine understanding of peoples opinions, and mutually the people cannot
properly understand his intentions. In Rumis story, when the Baghdadi man faces the guard, while the guard assumes
that he is a thief, starts beating him. He talks to the guard and explains the reason of his coming to that city. So, at the
end, the guard believes in what he says. Therefore, here the Baghdadi man entails himself in communicating with the
others, and actually, involves himself in the flow of life. Through his all power, he tries to reveal the reality of his
intentions. Both the Baghdadi man and the hunger artist are honest in what they do, but the only difference between
them is their approach in encountering other people, so this difference can have led to absolutely different results. To be
honest, the limited view of human being towards life is one of the most important causes of dissatisfaction and
suffering. Life gives the human being lots of opportunities, but when he just looks at one single part of its innumerable
aspects and when he cannot be successful in that part he will be full of sense of dissatisfaction. Here, Kafka concisely
shows the hunger artists limited view: for adopting another profession, he was not only too old for that but too
fanatically devoted to fasting.(Kafka, 1971, 306). Actually, when the hunger artist loses his spectators, he does not
desist following his ideal and by feeling a deep sense of dissatisfaction again sought satisfaction. In Rumis story, the
Baghdadi man, who is in great distress, follows a new ideal, and in order to gain that travels to a far place. Actually, he
was not attached to a special aspect of life and tried to examine the different ways; however, it cannot be said that the
Baghdadi man chose the right way. Here, what is important is that he was not sure of the correctness of his ideal, and
simply by venturing tried to examine its correctness.
Therefore, the man who is honest in his job and thinks he is a righteous person, at the same time is strongly dissatisfied.
Here, he considers himself a righteous person and in return expects to be admired by the others, as if he were a
businessman and dealing with honesty and ethics. Hooti and Mahmoudi (2013) implicitly aver that mankind has lost his
genuine self. Actually when his shows were not charming for people anymore, the tiredness of human beings from fake
ethics can be inferred. Then, the hunger artist goes to a circus in a cage close to the other animals hoping to be seen by
the people and continues his show, but when the people reluctantly watch him and prefer to pay visit to the other
animals, it can be stated that, this is a kind of human reference to his natural ego and spontaneity and avoiding exposing
the inflexible ethics. This extract shows this matter:
it was exhilarating to watch the crowds come streaming his way, until only too soon --not even the most
obstinate self-deception, clung to almost consciously, could hold out against the fact -- the conviction was
borne in upon him that these people, most of them, to judge from their actions, again and again, without
exception, were all on their way to the menagerie.(Kafka, 1971, p.307).
ALLS 5(1):53-57, 2014
56
Here, the hunger artist clearly knows the truth, and he sees the collapsing of his ideals in front of his eyes. Even though
he realizes that accomplishing his ideals is almost impossible; he again somehow enjoys thinking about them, as if he
could not accept that the way he had chosen, was far from the reality. In Rumis story when the guard said to Baghdadi
man:
You must be a fool to journey all this distance merely on the faith of a dream. I myself have many times
dreamt of a treasure lying hid in a certain spot in Baghdad, but was never foolish enough to go there.(Rumi,
1887, p.322).
As if the Baghdadi man faced the reality, and because he was not trying to accomplish what was impossible contrary to
the hunger artist, he changed his way, and his actions were based on what appeared to be the reality.
Krishnamurti implies: unfortunately, while we are so occupied with outward activitylike the ants that are
everlastingly busywe do not see that, inwardly, we are slowly dying.(1993, p.21). In his last words the hunger artist
properly reveals his conflict and profound dissatisfaction. The following words indicate the same:
I always wanted you to admire my fasting," said the hunger artist. "We do admire it," said the overseer,
affably. "But you shouldn't admire it," said the hunger artist. "Well then we don't admire it," said the overseer,
"but why shouldn't we admire it?" "Because I have to fast, I can't help it," said the hunger artist. "What a
fellow you are," said the overseer, "and why can't you help it?" "Because," said the hunger artist, lifting his
head a little and speaking, with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer's ear, so that no syllable
might be lost, "because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no
fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.(Kafka, 1971, p.309).
Here, he does not know what he exactly desires; on the other hand, he only searches the sense of satisfaction in bearing
and showing hunger. He does not bring his ideals under suspicion and does not think about their degree of correctness.
In fact, the events that occur to him do not change his approach. So, in A Hunger Artist, maybe, the people desired to be
admired by the others, but for being admired, they did not limit their lives in a limited aspect of life. In the anecdote, the
guard told the Baghdadi man that he had seen several times a treasure in his dreams. Here, the place of treasure that the
guard used to see in his dreams was exactly in Baghdadi mans house. So, it can symbolically refer to the ideal that the
Baghdadi man used to follow is something that the other people also have in their minds, but just a few people like the
Baghdadi man go to examine them. They finally reach this point that they cannot find happiness anywhere except in
their own houses and actually inside themselves. The short story, A Hunger Artist shows somebody, who is staying in a
cage as if he were awaiting his death, and because he cannot find his desirable food, he eats nothing. This sentence can
be the symbol of an exalted will or ideal that dramatizes a man who has focused on a prominent ideal and being busy
with that ideal, has forced himself to ignore the rest of things in presence. So, it can refer that he is lost or he has lost
something. From an analytic vision, the panther in the last sentences of the story can refer to that missing thing, which
he could not find by bearing hunger for many years. He was in the cage by his own choice, but they had put the panther
in the same cage against its will. What the panther had, was the sense of freedom and great interest for living, but that
artist was imprisoned by his own thoughts and judges. In fact, the panther was harmonized with the flowing of life and
was like a roaring river, which that cage was only like a flagstone in its way. So, he did not remain behind the flagstone
fixed, but changed its way and continued to be flowing and being alive with its full strength. This extract shows this
matter:
Into the cage they put a young panther. Even the most insensitive felt it refreshing to see this wild creature
leaping around the cage that had so long been dreary. The panther was all right. The food he liked was brought
him without hesitation by the attendants; he seemed not even to miss his freedom; his noble body, furnished
almost to the bursting point with all that it needed, seemed to carry freedom around with it too; somewhere in
his jaws it seemed to lurk; and the joy of life streamed with such ardent passion from his throat that for the
onlookers it was not easy to stand the shock of it. But they braced themselves, crowded around the cage, and
did not want ever to move away.(Kafka, 1971, pp.309-310) .
Desires make human move and he can have limitless desires, as well. However, there is no guaranty for human
desires to be fulfilled. Giddens believes: How can we constantly keep in forefront of our minds dangers which are
enormously threatening, yet so remote from individual control? The answer is that most of us cannot.(1990, pp.131132). In A Hunger Artist, the main character can be the symbol of an individual, whose main desire has not been
fulfilled. His frail, thin, motionless and glum body and feature, and as well as his dissatisfaction are the symbol of a
human soul that hopelessly insists on fulfilling his desire. In fact, he has a little power to continue. Rumis story shows
a man, who hopefully follows a dream in a far distant place, and this story also can be the symbol of a human being
who follows an ideal as it has been dramatized in A Man of Baghdad, Therefore, this article strives to swell the
coextensive interconnectedness that seems to be embodied in the both stories. Man always feels a missing spirituality in
his existence as if one part of his soul cries and invites him towards itself and promises him the eternal blessing and
affluence. On the other hand, he tries to gain lots of things to reach the satisfaction, which like a shadow escapes from
him. There are always signs in life to show man the right way, but actually most of the time his limited thinking
prevents him from changing his way. Animals instinctively find their path of life, but man sees various ways in front of
himself to choose, and there are lots of factors such as culture, family, and the way he has grown up and lots of other
things, which are responsible for the nature of his selection. He ordinarily looks at life from a specific point of view
ALLS 5(1):53-57, 2014
57
with a peculiar thinking format, and based on that specific format, chooses his life path; a safe path that lots of people
have covered, so the possibility of gaining what he has in his mind can be overly high. Otteson explored:
As people find ways that allow them to successfully negotiate interactions with others, their successes, as well
as their failures, are precedents that they will follow in future similar cases. Their success will also be imitated
by others who observe them and also want to succeed in similar circumstances. It is in this way that social
practices are born, become habits, and sometimes coalesce into principles and rules.(2006, p.323).
Meanwhile, there are few people who are against others and take step in an unsafe path and listen to their inner
voices when the existing ways do not please them. These people mostly do not know what they want, they just know
what they wish is beyond the typical results that others constantly talk about them, and throughout reaching these results
they may consider themselves prosperous people. To be honest, man lives with his thoughts and interpretations, so what
is real for someone may have another meaning for someone else. Everybody has a meaning for happiness and when one
finds out that attaining his criteria of happiness is somehow impossible, he may act in two different ways, first like the
Baghdadi man, who gets paranoid to his criteria and finds his thoughts false and changes his way, or he may act like the
hunger artist who, hopelessly continues his way, and relates the reason of his dissatisfaction to the low and wrong
comprehension of the other people. Hooti and Mahmoudi(2013) imply that human being has been encaged in the
resilient unconsciousness. Baghdadi mans travel to Egypt can symbolically dramatize that, to find happiness how one
gets far from itself, and how he gets alienated from his own self. So, like the hunger artist who, could have the sense of
freedom and satisfaction in the cage but groped around for it in the others judgments and admirations; he became far
from himself as much that he went to a circus but people preferred to watch passionate animals rather than him.
Realistically, his work was finished with no sense of satisfaction.
6. Conclusion
This study tried to show that man feels safe by having ideals that somehow give him pleasure, and at the same time
make him feel dissatisfied. So considering excessive ideals may lead man to be negligent towards the other parts of life.
An ideal by itself is not valuable for man, but hoping to get a veritable sense of satisfaction that can be resulted from
them, makes man follow them. Indeed, the study strove to reveal this probable sense that was in the themes of the both
stories.
Life is not predictable and is full of events that man is not prepared to confront with, so he imprisons himself in a cage
which its bars are built from his thoughts and prejudgments and actually looks at the outside world through this cage,
because it is much safer. Hence, most of the human beings have their own cage and through that cage interpret life. So
behind every interpretation of life and its events there is a limited view and some fear of confronting what is called life.
References
Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Oxford: Polity Press & Blackwell.
Heidegger, M. (1968). What Is Called Thinking?, Glenn Gray (Trans.). New York: Harper & Row.
Hooti, N.& Mahmoudi, Y. (2013). Black Veil of Ignorantism under the Unconscious Conscience of Human Soul in
Shirley Jacksons Lottery. International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 5(10), 1245-1251.
Hooti, N., & Mahmoudi, Y. (2013). Identity Discordianism Under the Trepidation and Duplicity of Human Essence: A
trenchant investigation on Luigi PirandelloWar. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(7), 1209-1213.
Kafka, F. (1971). A Hunger Artist, Willa and Muir (Trans.) and N.Glatzer (Edt.). New York: Schocken Books.
Krishnamurti, J.(1993). A Timeless Spring. New York: Krishnamurti Foundation of America & Krishnamurti
Foundation Trust Ltd.
Krishnamurti, J.(1984). The Flame of Attention. New York: Harper & Row.
Otteson, R.J.(2006). Actual Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rumi, J.M. (1887). Masnavi i Manavi: The Spiritual Couplets, Whinfield (Trans.). London: Trbner and Company.
Tolle, E.(2005). A New Earth: Awakening to your lifes purpose. Retrieved 11/9/2013 from
http://res.allpdftools.com/allpdftools/pdf-download-respurces/A New Earth.pdf

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Unacceptable levels of paraphrasing; irrelevance of content; polemical

Adapted from: The University of Sydney Course Policy (2010)

Rincian Tugas dan Ujian

6. 30-31 Mar/1-2 Apr

Introduction and Course Outline

Critical Thinking and Critical Reading

10. 11/12/13/14 May Presentation: review article (individual)

Lilla Musyahda, Dra., M.Pd

25/26/27/28 May Presentation: review article (individual)

Surabaya, 2 Februari 2015

Arum Budiastuti, S.S., M.C.S.

What Are Literature Circles? (TLCRC 2004)

Advantages of Using Literature Circles (Fayne & Weiss 2007):

All students have an important role in the discussion.

What went well in your literature circle?

What would you do to improve our literature circles?

Advantages of Using Literature Circles (Fayne & Weiss 2007):

All students have an important role in the discussion.

What went well in your literature circle?

What would you do to improve our literature circles?

CRITICAL THINKING AND CRITICAL READING

Defining critical thinking

reasoning: creating an argument through logical steps

Why is critical thinking important at university?

Displaying critical thinking in reading and writing

GUIDANCE FOR WRITING ARTICLE REVIEWS

Structure of a Critical Review

What is the authors aim?

Argument and use of evidence

Writing style and text structure

What approach was used for the research?

Template for Journal Article Review

ou have to, I think, start out understanding that there is no

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to be oddness most luxury is conformist, and chic cannot

playing two utterly different roles.Baby Doll defines its

9) Happy for Men by Clinique

Photo credit: Curtis Kelley

The Perfume of Love

Seeta Sistla - Providence, Rhode Island

Perfume Packaging, Seduction and Gender

Petersson McIntyre, Magdalena: Perfume Packaging, Seduction and Gender,

Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013

Making Sense of Packages

Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013

Gender Diversity and Luxury

Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013

For Him or for Her