Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on May 31, 2014 22:48:11 GMT 5.5
In 2010 Julain Hanich wrote a monograph on the phenomenology of fear at the movies, Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. At the very beginning of the book’s Introduction he writes:
What do you think about this, Somak Meitei?
A note:
I’m not sure but English is Julain Hanich’s first language. The ancestors of the Haniches were among the immigrants to the island nation of England after the Norman Conquest in 1066. After the British colonialism had spread across the world, many British people including many Haniches left England to settle in British colonies, mostly in Canada and America. If Julain Hanich is not a German (he is a postdoctoral research fellow at a research center at the Free University Berlin) or a Danish (he is teaching in the Netherlands), he is most probably from one of these English speaking countries—England, United States, Canada. (Yes, a good part of Canada speaks French as first language, and the English there is not so good.) In any case, Julain’s English is graceful as any native speaker’s. There does not seem to be a probability of the Julain’s having done this by chance, as it would have been the case with many non-native writers. I do not either say that no native speakers of English speak/write wrong English at all. Of course many do, even the best authors. They have editors.
Can fear be pleasurable? In February 1949 the director Alfred Hitchcock publishes an article in which he raises this extraordinary question (Hanich, 2010).What interests me in this passage is the use of (simple) present tense, publishes and raises, when there reference is to past actions. This present for past tense is not wrong—it is correct, and is even quite common in historical writings. In fact this use is called historical present in linguistics, though this particular case is a little bit different.
What do you think about this, Somak Meitei?
A note:
I’m not sure but English is Julain Hanich’s first language. The ancestors of the Haniches were among the immigrants to the island nation of England after the Norman Conquest in 1066. After the British colonialism had spread across the world, many British people including many Haniches left England to settle in British colonies, mostly in Canada and America. If Julain Hanich is not a German (he is a postdoctoral research fellow at a research center at the Free University Berlin) or a Danish (he is teaching in the Netherlands), he is most probably from one of these English speaking countries—England, United States, Canada. (Yes, a good part of Canada speaks French as first language, and the English there is not so good.) In any case, Julain’s English is graceful as any native speaker’s. There does not seem to be a probability of the Julain’s having done this by chance, as it would have been the case with many non-native writers. I do not either say that no native speakers of English speak/write wrong English at all. Of course many do, even the best authors. They have editors.
Bibliography
Hanich, J. (2010). Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. New York, USA: Routledge.
