Although a large number of studies have focused on various aspects of politeness,very little is known about how politeness intention is activated cognitively during verbal communication.The present study aims to explo...Although a large number of studies have focused on various aspects of politeness,very little is known about how politeness intention is activated cognitively during verbal communication.The present study aims to explore the cognitive mechanism of politeness intention processing,and how it is related to pragmatic failure during cross-cultural communication.Using 30 Chinese EFL university students who were instructed to finish a probe word judgment task with 96 virtual scenarios,the results indicate that within both mono-and cross-cultural contexts,the response time in the experimental scenarios was significantly slower than that of the filler scenarios.This suggests that politeness intention was activated while understanding the surface meaning of the conversation;however,the EFL learners could not completely avoid the negative transfer of their native politeness conventions when they were comprehending the conversational intention of the target language.Furthermore,no significant differences in response time were found between the groups with high and low English pragmatic competence,illustrating that transferring the pragmatic rules and principles into cross-cultural communication skills was more cognitively demanding.Overall,this study adds to the literature on politeness research and provides some implications for foreign language pragmatic instructions.展开更多
Cognitive context is the cognitionalized context of language, situation and context of culture by the individual which is stored and stimulated in individual＇s mind when meaning is processed. The focus of this articl...Cognitive context is the cognitionalized context of language, situation and context of culture by the individual which is stored and stimulated in individual＇s mind when meaning is processed. The focus of this article is on context of culture cognitionalized by individuals. Cognitive context based on culture is the inner force of the processing of associative meaning. Cognitive context reflects the similarities and differences of the understanding of different cultural communities towards the world around them.展开更多
Translation is cross-cultural activity existing between two different language signs. In the process of translating, translators can not get out of the influence of cultural elements. From the angle of cross-cultural ...Translation is cross-cultural activity existing between two different language signs. In the process of translating, translators can not get out of the influence of cultural elements. From the angle of cross-cultural pragmatic contrasting, the author makes analysis of the problems of difference existing between the volume of information borne or transmitted between two different language signs in the process of translating under the influence of cultural elements, and points out that to study these problems, translators must consider a series of problems about cross-cultural cognitive context. This article also makes cross-cultural pragmatic contrastive analysis in world view difference, register difference, imaginative difference and metaphor difference. The author introduces the method of cross-cultural pragmatic contrastive analysis and suggests taking a series of measures to improve translation education.展开更多
Concept-based instruction(C-BI)has proven to be effective in improving students’command of grammar items used out of context by offering the students revision lessons,but its effect in teaching newly-introduced gramm...Concept-based instruction(C-BI)has proven to be effective in improving students’command of grammar items used out of context by offering the students revision lessons,but its effect in teaching newly-introduced grammar items in a complex context of a specific genre remains unclear.To probe C-BI’s effect on students’use of the past simple and present perfect tenses out of context and in the context of a narrative by its description of the grammar concept in its materialization,that is,the Schemas of a Complete Orienting Basis of an Action(SCOBAs),we taught the two tenses to 40 eighth-graders in a Chinese middle school in our three-week teaching experiment.The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results shows that i)in both out-ofcontext use and in-context use,accuracy of using the target tenses is higher after C-BI intervention;ii)by improving their conceptual knowledge through C-BI,the students are helped to pin down reference time and are hence more certain in using the target tenses.Moreover,they are encouraged to use the newly-introduced tenses in the complex context of the narrative genre;iii)both in simple contexts or complex contexts,the SCOBAs are effective in helping students navigate the learning task and determine their intended meaning by establishing temporal reference in the context.展开更多
Based on the cognitive view of metonymy and taking some ＂head＂ expressions in English and Chinese as corpora, this paper makes a qualitative analysis and tries to find out the causes for the similarities and discrep...Based on the cognitive view of metonymy and taking some ＂head＂ expressions in English and Chinese as corpora, this paper makes a qualitative analysis and tries to find out the causes for the similarities and discrepancies between these ＂head＂ metonymies.展开更多
We live in an age of changes. And these changes in science, technology, economy, political systems, and immigration patterns, especially the emergence of Internet, have created a world in which we increasingly interac...We live in an age of changes. And these changes in science, technology, economy, political systems, and immigration patterns, especially the emergence of Internet, have created a world in which we increasingly interact with people from different cultures. The levels of students＇ cultural awareness toward the target language （English） have a profound influence on the foreign language teaching （English） practice and performance. Obviously linguistic knowledge alone is not enough to secure successful interactions with native speakers in cross cultural communications. Cultural mistakes are worse than linguistic ones because they tend to cause misjudgments, or ill feelings between native and foreign speakers. Therefore, this paper mainly discusses the relationship between culture and language, explaining cultural awareness, providing some principles of cultural knowledge teaching and some techniques to develop students＇ cultural awareness through foreign language （English） teaching in high schools.展开更多
Cultural models are culturally-formed cognitive templates, which stem from and determine human understanding, reasoning and related activities of a given social group. The study of cultural models has been justified t...Cultural models are culturally-formed cognitive templates, which stem from and determine human understanding, reasoning and related activities of a given social group. The study of cultural models has been justified to be an effective cognitive approach to cultivating cultural awareness in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). This paper investigates the process of promoting cultural awareness in TEFL by the representations of cultural models on lexical level with a corpus-based contrastive case study in English and Chinese, and explores the further implications of this study in TEFL, especially in teaching polysemous words and translation.展开更多
文摘Although a large number of studies have focused on various aspects of politeness,very little is known about how politeness intention is activated cognitively during verbal communication.The present study aims to explore the cognitive mechanism of politeness intention processing,and how it is related to pragmatic failure during cross-cultural communication.Using 30 Chinese EFL university students who were instructed to finish a probe word judgment task with 96 virtual scenarios,the results indicate that within both mono-and cross-cultural contexts,the response time in the experimental scenarios was significantly slower than that of the filler scenarios.This suggests that politeness intention was activated while understanding the surface meaning of the conversation;however,the EFL learners could not completely avoid the negative transfer of their native politeness conventions when they were comprehending the conversational intention of the target language.Furthermore,no significant differences in response time were found between the groups with high and low English pragmatic competence,illustrating that transferring the pragmatic rules and principles into cross-cultural communication skills was more cognitively demanding.Overall,this study adds to the literature on politeness research and provides some implications for foreign language pragmatic instructions.
文摘Cognitive context is the cognitionalized context of language, situation and context of culture by the individual which is stored and stimulated in individual＇s mind when meaning is processed. The focus of this article is on context of culture cognitionalized by individuals. Cognitive context based on culture is the inner force of the processing of associative meaning. Cognitive context reflects the similarities and differences of the understanding of different cultural communities towards the world around them.
文摘Translation is cross-cultural activity existing between two different language signs. In the process of translating, translators can not get out of the influence of cultural elements. From the angle of cross-cultural pragmatic contrasting, the author makes analysis of the problems of difference existing between the volume of information borne or transmitted between two different language signs in the process of translating under the influence of cultural elements, and points out that to study these problems, translators must consider a series of problems about cross-cultural cognitive context. This article also makes cross-cultural pragmatic contrastive analysis in world view difference, register difference, imaginative difference and metaphor difference. The author introduces the method of cross-cultural pragmatic contrastive analysis and suggests taking a series of measures to improve translation education.
文摘Concept-based instruction(C-BI)has proven to be effective in improving students’command of grammar items used out of context by offering the students revision lessons,but its effect in teaching newly-introduced grammar items in a complex context of a specific genre remains unclear.To probe C-BI’s effect on students’use of the past simple and present perfect tenses out of context and in the context of a narrative by its description of the grammar concept in its materialization,that is,the Schemas of a Complete Orienting Basis of an Action(SCOBAs),we taught the two tenses to 40 eighth-graders in a Chinese middle school in our three-week teaching experiment.The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results shows that i)in both out-ofcontext use and in-context use,accuracy of using the target tenses is higher after C-BI intervention;ii)by improving their conceptual knowledge through C-BI,the students are helped to pin down reference time and are hence more certain in using the target tenses.Moreover,they are encouraged to use the newly-introduced tenses in the complex context of the narrative genre;iii)both in simple contexts or complex contexts,the SCOBAs are effective in helping students navigate the learning task and determine their intended meaning by establishing temporal reference in the context.
文摘Based on the cognitive view of metonymy and taking some ＂head＂ expressions in English and Chinese as corpora, this paper makes a qualitative analysis and tries to find out the causes for the similarities and discrepancies between these ＂head＂ metonymies.
文摘We live in an age of changes. And these changes in science, technology, economy, political systems, and immigration patterns, especially the emergence of Internet, have created a world in which we increasingly interact with people from different cultures. The levels of students＇ cultural awareness toward the target language （English） have a profound influence on the foreign language teaching （English） practice and performance. Obviously linguistic knowledge alone is not enough to secure successful interactions with native speakers in cross cultural communications. Cultural mistakes are worse than linguistic ones because they tend to cause misjudgments, or ill feelings between native and foreign speakers. Therefore, this paper mainly discusses the relationship between culture and language, explaining cultural awareness, providing some principles of cultural knowledge teaching and some techniques to develop students＇ cultural awareness through foreign language （English） teaching in high schools.
文摘Cultural models are culturally-formed cognitive templates, which stem from and determine human understanding, reasoning and related activities of a given social group. The study of cultural models has been justified to be an effective cognitive approach to cultivating cultural awareness in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). This paper investigates the process of promoting cultural awareness in TEFL by the representations of cultural models on lexical level with a corpus-based contrastive case study in English and Chinese, and explores the further implications of this study in TEFL, especially in teaching polysemous words and translation.
