Corpus-Based Study of Swearing in Spoken British English

Swearing constitutes an important part of daily language use. However, despite several previous studies with foci on the social and cultural characteristics of swearwords, a large part of it remains to be investigated. With the abundant spoken language resources from British National Corpus(BNC), this article observes the pragmatic and collocational features of swearwords. Three social variables, namely, social class, speech domain, and gender were put under investigation to see how the use of swearwords varies with different speech social contexts. Meanwhile, the noun and adjective collocates of several frequent swearwords were separately sorted out and discussed. The data observed show that the use of swearwords is highly related to different social contexts, and there exits certain level of differentiation between different swearwords used as intensifiers which can be generalized lexicographically.

C -E Interpreting of Political Neologisms in Contemporary Chinese Political Discourse

Uniqueness of our political systems and tremendous changes brought about by reform and opening up are reflected in language use,so contem porary Chinese political discourse has its own distinctiveness,and is especially featured by increasing political neologisms,posing difficulties for interpreters and for China’s international publicity.Quality of political neologisms interpreting has a direct bearing on whether or not success of interpreting the whole discourse can be achieved.The authors believe that interpreting of contemporary Chinese political discourse,also for the purpose of com m unication can gain guidance from Bachman’s CLA Model.So the paper elaborates through exem plification on strategies for interpreting political neologisms in light of Bachm an’s Model,with a view to realizing discourse power of Chinese.

Irony and Restructuring: Greig’s Postmodern Rewrite of Macbeth

Dunsinane is a postmodern rewrite adapted from William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth by David Greig.This article mainly deals with the problem that specifically,how Dunsinane is rewritten from Macbeth.The article firstly analyzes from rhetorical perspective that irony,the frequently-used literary device in Macbeth is also a prominent rhetorical strategy of rewriting in Dunsinane.The restructuring of the characters Macbeth,Malcolm and Siward from Scottish perspectives as well as the the restructured theme behind the rewrite are also introduced.

“Song of Myself”: Song of America

Walt Whitman’s poem"Song of Myself"is one of his most representative works.It is not only a song of Whitman himself,but also a song of America.This paper will make an analysis of this poem from the angle of its theme,including American identity and American dream.

A Study of Irony in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane is a famous naturalist writer in the nineteenth Century.He creates a new method of literary writing in America.His famous novel The Red Badge of Courage is an episode of the American civil war.The novel’s rhetoric device"irony"is worthy of contemporary scholars to carry out in-depth research.Crane adopts irony in his works to enhance the performance of language tension and the profound theme of the novel.The artistic features of irony appear in the novel frequently,such as verbal irony,scene irony and structural irony,which constructs the basic framework and structure of this novel and makes it more humorous,more ironic and more meaningful.

An Analysis of American Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism has received fierce controversy and discussion upon its proposal for its complexity in definition and in practice.This research discusses the definition of multiculturalism focusing on the comparison between the term“cultural pluralism”and“multiculturalism”,its influence on American society and its distinct characteristics,which is the claims of equality and identification between different cultures.It is argued that multiculturalism is not only a cultural ideology and a cultural war between the WASP-based mainstream culture and the cultures of the disadvantaged groups,but also a political and economic movement.The research also analyzes the practice of multiculturalism in the fields of political participation,education,race,media and the practice of multiculturalism that targets the disabled people and women.Moreover,the problems arise during the proposal and practice of multiculturalism are presented in the research.It is argued that the relationship between multiculturalism and homogeneous culture is not contradictory but united.A mature,sustainable and energetic national culture needs to seek common ground while recognizing and reserving the differences.

What’ s the Context? Speech Acts Presentation in Oral English Textbooks

In this study,an evaluation of the presentation of speech acts in six oral English textbooks is conducted from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives to see how speech acts are presented and whether enough and explicit meta-pragmatic and contextual information are provided.Results show that 1)there is a paucity of speech acts and the average percentage of the six textbooks including speech acts is only 28.3%.And some speech acts like‘threatening’,‘warning’,‘declaring’,‘welcoming’are not presented at all.2)Meta-pragmatic and contextual information is too general and far from enough.Among all the six textbooks,from Book 1 to Book 5,contextual information is deduced by learners through reading conversations.Only in Book 6,a contextual description is provided before the conversation begins.Contextual information such as the age,gender and social status of Speaker and Hearer is never presented.Contextual information like the relationship between Speaker and Hearer and the place where the conversation happens is inferred from reading the conversations.Meta-pragmatic information like the degree of formality,politeness strategy,indirect speech act strategy,and social norms are not at all involved.Only in Book 1,a cultural tip is provided.Since oral English textbooks are one of the main sources for Chinese EFL learners to enhance their pragmatic competence,it is much expected that they should present a wide variety of popularly-used speech acts with rich contextual information as appropriate language input.

Affordance Derivation Facilitates the Semantic Access in Comprehending Chinese Puns

The study employed ERP technique to explore whether the affordance derivation can facilitate semantic access in comprehending Chinese puns. ERPs were measured while participants read the pun sentences containing dual meanings and made a judgement about the following probes and statements. The results showed that highly related probes in pun sentences elicited a smaller N400 and a larger LPC than moderately related probes in pun sentences. As for the comparison of sentence types, both highly and moderately related probes in pun sentences produce a smaller N400 and a larger LPC than those in control sentences. These results indicate that in the early stage of pun comprehension, semantic access to the literal meaning is easier through affordance derivation because of meaning dominance and frequency. In the late stage of integration, however,the intended meaning of puns can be facilitated and accessed through its privilege of affordance derivation activated by pun words in a pun context because of the priming context and its underlying intention. The study has discovered empirically that it is the affordance derivation,which connects the context and the dual meanings indicated by the pun words, that contributes to the different time courses and dynamic underlying neurocognitive mechanisms in comprehending puns in Chinese.

Formal or Informal? The Dispute Settlement Mechanisms of China's Free Trade Agreements

The dispute settlement mechanism(DSM) has long been the focus of attention because of its significant role in the institutional construction of China's free trade agreements(FTAs). Thus, this paper is to make an analysis of the DSMs of China's established FTAs from a legal perspective of international regime study, which leads to the finding of a co-existence mode of formal and informal DSMs in China's FTAs. This paper also discusses the motivation and significance of such a choice.

Learner Identity in Chinese as a Foreign/Second Language Education:A Critical Review

This paper reports the results of a review of 33 journal articles chosen from 87 empirical studies on learner identity in Chinese as a foreign/second language(CFL/CSL)education,published during the years 2005-2019.By analyzing the co-occurrence of keywords in these Social Science Citation Index(SSCI)journal articles,this review identifies the theoretical perspectives and topical trends of CFL/CSL education research on learner identity.The review shows that while such post-structuralist theories and notions as capital,identity and investment model have continued to play a predominant role in CFL/CSL identity research,interdisciplinary perspectives seem to also demonstrate their theoretical value and interpretive power.Furthermore,the review found that researchers explored a wide array of topical issues in relation to learner identity involved in the complex linguistic and social ecology of Chinese language learning.The review concludes with suggestions for future projects to consider that expand the thematic and theoretical scope by exploring intersections between different social categories and learner identities in societal contexts.