The Faculty of Arts is pleased to offer the second event in its new ConneXions Seminar Series. Join us on Zoom, Friday, February 26, 2021, at 2:30 pm, when Dr. Anne Furlong will present “Adaptation as communication: a linguistic pragmatic approach to adaptation studies.”

Abstract:
Too often, we scrutinize adaptations for the slightest departures from the version we’ve carried around in our minds (and hearts), our disapproval fully primed and ready to deploy. In the early decades of adaptation studies, the emphasis was thus quite naturally on issues of “fidelity”, on the relation of the new text to the source work, as theorists attempted to account not just for the failures but for the successes. The fact that many adaptations are transmediated (text to stage, or screen, or videogame) has complicated evaluations of faithfulness, producing a sprawling and often inconsistent taxonomy of “types” or “instances” of adaptation.

Based in the linguistic-pragmatic framework of Relevance Theory, my account focuses not on issues or degrees of resemblance, but rather on the adaptation as an independent communicative act. I think about any adaptation – whether or not it is transmediated – as expressing the adaptor’s attitude towards the source work, an attitude that shapes the resulting text. An adaptation that endorses or celebrates or reveres the source will strive for a high degree of fidelity along all dimensions; one that attempts to correct errors or omissions in the source may preserve many of the external details but introduce completely new material while holding the source up to ridicule and scorn. Every adaptation can therefore be treated as we would any communicative act in a relevance theoretic framework, one that encourages or requires the audience to develop an expanded or altered context. No adaptor is bound by the intended interpretation of the source, but every adaptation makes manifest its relation, not only to the source text, but to previous versions and to the interpretation which the audience brings to it.

Zoom link: https://upei.zoom.us/j/61586078663?pwd=RGRjQ2pJTzAxZkI2ckxyU1cvRVJ1QT09

The Connexions Seminar Series aims to foster understanding of the role that the liberal arts play in knowledge and ways of knowing and in making sense of the complexities of the world around us through panel discussions; speakers and research talks; collaborative projects and presentations; symposia and workshops; and reading and discussion groups.