Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The political realm, even the democratic one that is based on the equality of free citizens, easily lapses into an exclusive space if its existence depends upon the boundaries that distinguish its own members from others. The history of democracy might be said to be the history of exclusion since the ancient Greek city-states. This paper examines the crucial insight of Arendt that lies in her idiosyncratic quotation from Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus in the end of On Revolution, which has been widely believed to be reliable evidence of her strong affection for the Greek city-state, and argues that what Arendt means by the word 'polis' is not the Athenian city-state which maintains the public realm by the strict discrimination of its members from others but the space of appearance which comes into being wherever men are together in the manner of speech and action even if they are strangers. In fact, Arendt regards Sophocles' tragic drama on the dying Oedipus as the s tory of Athenians and foreigners in exile acting together to found a new relationship between them after their chance encounter outside the walls of Athens. These arguments will clarify the meaning of 'natality', which is the key concept of Arendt's political theory, sharply distinguished from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, who draws the essence of human being as 'being toward death' out of Sophocles' Antigone, and will illuminate its great potentialities for those who grapple with the problem of freedom and exclusion in contemporary democratic societies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The nonstandard quotative be like is a robust nonstandard quotative used in English-speaking countries. To examine the diffusion of this form across geographic space, new data from an unstudied region of England is compared to other British English data as well as studies from other English-speaking countries. This feature’s grammaticalization among English varieties and its cross-linguistic polysemy indicates that be like’s geographic diffusion, rather than a case of linear-progression patterning after American media, is a result of both the linguistic tendencies of the word itself, and the social interaction which makes this linguistic tendency possible. Be like is a strong quotative because its ambiguity puts speakers in the position to make a claim without committing to pure word-for-word content.