Abstracts of Major Papers in This Issue

On the Philosophical Basis of Polish Semantic School and Its Six Central Concepts, by LI Jiongying, p. 8

The natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach, advanced by Polish Semantic School, can be arguably regarded as a new paradigm in contemporary semantics. Its philosophical basis is universally acknowledged as rationalism. In view of the research achievements in the past three decades, we can highlight six central concepts of this approach, namely, universality, naturalness, translatability, decomposability, testability and culture-neutrality. The six central concepts together reveal the most important concept of “universal semantic metalanguage” in NSM approach.

The Philosophical Track of Grice’s Cooperative Principle, by WANG Hongjun & HE Gang, p. 12

Scholars from both home and abroad have issued the challenges against Grice’s Cooperative Principle. However, this paper argues that some viewpoints deviate from the original philosophical purpose for proposing Cooperative Principle which is a highly generalized principle constructed on the philosophical track. It is the general principle that people have to observe during communication and a principle of rationality. However, when Cooperative principle is applied to interpreting some natural utterances, the problem of vagueness may arise. Therefore, this paper puts forward the three categories/levels when interpreting the natural utterances. They are: Cooperative Principle (the principle of rationality), Social Assumption and Cultural Assumption. Guided by Cooperative Principle, the interpretation of natural utterances can be operated at the levels of Social Assumption and Cultural Assumption and the interpretation will thus be more convincing.

Exploring the Ideology behind Newspaper Editorials from the Perspective of Appraisal Theory, by SI Xianzhu & XU Tingting, p. 17

Appraisal Theory is the latest development of the study of interpersonal function in the 1990s. Consisting of three systems, i.e. Attitude, Engagement and Graduation, the Appraisal Theory explores how speakers and writers pass subjective attitudes on people generally. As appraisement has become an important aspect of discourse analysis, the Appraisal Theory is adopted as a new approach to study interpersonal meaning. Based on the three sub-systems of Affect, Judgment and Appreciation in the Attitude system, the present paper tries to reveal the subjectivity and ideology of newspaper editorials by analyzing the examples taken from New York Times on the honoring of Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, aiming to prove the operability and practicability of Attitude system in analyzing newspaper editorials and call for an objective and critical attitude among readers.

A Study of the Prototypical Effect in the Acquisition of English Long-distance Questions by Chinese EFL Learners, by MA Zhigang, p. 21

Research from Cognitive Linguistics reveals that prototypicality effect has been found in the acceptability judgment of English long-distance questions (LDQs) by adults and children alike. The accuracy rate for prototypical LDQs is greater than that for non-prototypical LDQs. This study extends the prototypicality effect to the research on adults’ second language acquisition and holds that there exists prototypical LDQs in second language grammars, and other variants are analogical extensions from the prototypical template. Results from the empirical study show that second language learners are very likely to make acceptability judgment of English LDQs by analogy: acceptability of the variants of LDQs is based on the extent of their resemblance to the prototypical template.

An Investigation into and Causal Analysis of English Learning Motivation and Needs of Engineering Doctoral Students, by MA Tiechuan, p. 27

In order to explore the appropriate pedagogical method for Ph. D. Candidates’ English learning, in light of classical social psychological theory of language learning, this research investigates English learning instrumental motivation, integrative motivation, and the needs of English using skills of the engineering doctoral students. It demonstrates that the instrumental motivation of the subjects is much bigger than their integrative motivation, and their needs for oral English communication skills and academic writing competence are more importantly evaluated. Causal analysis is then conducted and some suggestions for doctoral students’ English teaching are put forward.

Studying Parody Translation inHongloumengfrom the Perspective of the Translator’s Subjectivity, by ZHU Lijun, p. 33

As an intertextual phenomenon, parody is widely employed inHongloumeng. This paper, with the Hawkes version and the Yangs version as data, is meant to make a translational study of this phenomenon. Based on the characteristics of parody, the author classifies it into two types: assonance parody and pastiche parody. Under assonance parody, three subcategories, i.e. person name assonance parody, place name assonance parody and ordinary assonance parody, can be classified. Through examination and analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that the diversified translation of parody inHongloumengis motivated by the translator’s subjectivity. It is argued that all the elements couched in the translator’s subjectivity combine to constitute the root cause that makes all the paradoxes extant in parody translation.

Cognitive Interpretation of Transliterating Chinese Culture-loaded Words, by YANG Wenying, p. 39

Transliteration of Chinese culture-loaded words has not been adequately dealt with in translation studies, much less from the cognitive perspective despite the numerous researches on English-Chinese transliteration. In the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics, this paper discusses through exemplification the limitations of literal and liberal translation of Chinese culture-loaded words and the advantages of Chinese-English transliteration. The study reveals that literal and liberal translation of Chinese culture-loaded words may result in the misinterpretation or even deletion of the semantic frame of the source language while target language readers' preference for transliteration lies in the cognitive rationale that transliteration indicates the emergence of an alien cultural frame and leads subjective meaning construction into the new frame through its metonymic mechanism.

Existing Patterns and Functions of the Lyric Speaker, by HU Quansheng, p. 43

As “first-person expression”, a lyric can be defined as an “utterance by a single speaker, who expresses a state of mind or a process of perception, thought and feeling”, and this lyric speaker is 90 percept present as the “I” in the text. Such a high frequency of the speaker's textual overtness helps to incite the reader to submerge him- or herself in the world of the text, to attach the speaker to the poet, and to identify with the speaker and/or the poet, sharing the speaker's perception, thought and feeling.

“His Oriental Heresies” and Rochester, by KANG Yanbin, p. 52

This article argues thatJaneEyreconstitutes the occasion upon which Dickinson wrote her poem “His Oriental Heresies,” highlighting the textual correspondence between this poem and Orientalism inJaneEyre, Rochester’s licentious past, rest-seeking mentality and eventual choice of Jane Eyre, among many others. Dickinson employs the angle of “Circuit” to account for Rochester’s transformation whereas the image of Rochester reversely opens a possibility for Dickinson’s system of flower and bee metaphors.