Abstracts of Major Papers in This Issue

PropertyDualismandPoeticImagery, by CHEN Daliang, p.7

Property dualism widely accepted by scholars is very influential in philosophy of mind.This paper, a tentative research on poetic imagery from this perspective, is intended to explore the feasible interface between two distinctive academic fields.The author argues that property dualism is closely related to the constituents of poetic imagery, image schemas can account for its generative mechanism and the intentionality theory can possess interpretative power in examining the meaning of poetic imagery.The research findings show that an poetic image consists of dual properties with one substance, the generative mechanism is the outcome of interaction of mind and body by means of various image schemas, and the meaning of poetic imagery is directed to the language reality through the intentionality.

OnCyber-languageStylefromPhilosophyofMind:TakingTaobaoStyleasanExample, by HE Aijing, p.12

Intentionality, being an important theory in philosophy of mind, has been comprehensively discussed over the centuries.In recent years, many language studies within the framework of philosophy of mind provide a possible explanation for the language mechanism, that is, the production of language is always firstly led by intentional attitude and the subsequent optimal language form is aiming at a certain intentional content.Based on these studies and takingTaobaostyle as an example, this paper investigates the mental factors influencing the occurrence and popularization of cyber-language styles.The research shows both of them are with the influence of intentionality, even if the former is personal, the latter collective.The collective intentionality, influence exerts on either the online shoppers as the ontology ofTaobaostyle or cross-industry members as a kind of language variation.Further, an analysis on the intentional basis ofTaobaostyle with Searle’s network-background theory is made.

Synesthesia:APerspectiveofPhilosophyofMind, by LI Shujing, p.17

Synesthesia is a figure of speech by which one sense modality is characterized in terms of another.The property expressed by the synesthesia modifier, in view of philosophy of mind, is one of those mental properties of the object itself.That is to say, synesthesia, as an emergent product, results from the choice of mental properties on the basis of the physical properties of an object.The production of synesthesia is constrained by the fact that mental properties supervenes physical ones.The synesthetic modifier is constrained by the modified, which provides the standing point for the realization of the speaker’s intention.In a nutshell, the interaction of mental and physical properties serve as the motive, mental-body supervenience the realization means of synesthetic expressions and eventually emergence helps achieve their semantic and pragmatic effects.

AHypothesisoftheEmergenceofVerbalClassifiersinChinese:AnInterdisciplinaryStudybetweenPhilosophyofMindandCognitiveLinguistics, by ZHANG Yuan, p.21

Verbal Classifier (VCl) in Mandarin Chinese, as a linguistic phenomenon, reflects people’s mind activities.Their emergence process in the mind may be divided into three levels: pre-linguistic thinking level, linguistic thinking level I and linguistic thinking level II.The philosophy of mind and cognitive linguistics provide rationality for this process.The cognitive study on the emergence process of VCls not only reflects the interaction between linguistic universality and individuality, but also is an attempt at the interdisciplinary approach.

AnInterpretationofFISfromthePerspectiveofIntentionality:ACaseStudyofTheGoldenNotebook, by LIU Qian, p.26

Free indirect speech (FIS) is a kind of indirect speech without the participation of characteristic symbols like “he said/asked” which can indicate the speaker’s speech act.It seems free because there is no transformation of person or time which is required in the course of using indirect speech.The usage of FIS is a kind of intentional explanation of characters in substance.TheGoldenNotebookcan be regarded as a novel which includes distinguishable FIS with skillful techniques, and after analyzing FIS in this novel, the features of intentional explanation to FIS can be clearly displayed: the reason why the author uses FIS is because of her intentionality with the feature of self-interests; the linguistic function and expressional effect brought by FIS come from the intentional attitude the author owns; the sub-category of the intentional attitude can give a detailed explanation to the function of FIS.

MotivationalTeachingStrategies,StudentMotivationtoLearnEnglish,andIn-classBehaviour, by XU Zhixin & FENG Xinhua, p.32

The teacher’s use of motivational teaching strategies is generally believed to enhance student motivation, yet there is hardly any empirical evidence to support this claim.This study investigated the impact of the motivational teaching strategies on non-English-major undergraduates’ motivation and in-class behaviour.The results indicated that the language teachers’ use of motivational teaching strategies is linked to increased levels of both the students’ motivation and their in-class behaviour.Path analysis indicated that (1) the integrativeness, attitude towards the learning situation and instrumental orientation predicted the students’ motivation to learn English; (2) attitudes towards the learning situation and motivation were positive predictors of students’ in-class behaviour; and (3) language anxiety was a negative predictor of in-class behaviour.

TheMetacognitionKnowledgeRequiredforDevelopingCriticalThinkingSkillsinReading, by WANG Jun, p.37

One of the missions of College English is to enable students to develop the ability to think critically.The development of ability, as is revealed by psychological research, is inseparable from the medium of concrete activities.Reading is such a medium.A vital task in developing critical thinking skills is to build the metacognition knowledge concerned.Specifically, it includes the knowledge about critical orientation, about relevant strategies and about the learner’s own schema.Firstly, students should not only read for information or language but also conduct critical reading.Secondly, there is a need to clarify critical reading strategies, including top-down reading mode and sorting through different views.Finally, students should be made aware their knowledge structure may affect the depth or width of critical thinking.

ApproachestoCriticalReadingTeaching:ACaseStudyofObama’sSpeechatCopenhagenSummitonClimateChange, by LIU Xiaoli & LI Juyuan, p.41

Reading is a process of active communication and deep thinking.However, EFL learners in China nowadays lack deep understanding in reading, that is, they lack the ability to find out the hidden meanings or ideologies in the use of language.Therefore, it is important to explore critical reading teaching to cultivate students’ critical language awareness and improve their critical reading ability.Theoretically, this paper explains the concept of critical reading and its analytical tools, and then puts forwards three steps of critical reading teaching: explanation of analytical tools, collection of language features and analysis of ideological meanings.Practically, it provides a concrete analysis of Obama’s Speech at Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change to exemplify how to implement critical reading teaching.In conclusion, the paper puts forward several enlightenments for critical reading teaching, aiming to provide a new perspective in reading teaching.

AQuantitativeStudyonLexicalCohesiveDevicesintheTextsbyEnglishMajors, by LI Jianbo & SU Lichang, p.46

This study explores how English majors make use of lexical cohesive devices and possible difficulties they would meet.A quantitative analysis was conducted on 125 texts written by 65 first-year graduates and 60 sophomores in terms of the frequency of repetition, synonym, superordinate and general words.It was found that (1) a low textual quality, marked by redundancy and sloppy discourse, was caused by an overuse of repetition and EFL learners would meet some difficulties in using cohesive devices; and (2) EFL learners’ acquisition of lexical cohesive devices may lag behind their overall English proficiency.This study carries considerable implications for intermediate or advanced EFL learners’ acquisition and instruction of lexical cohesion.

AnInvestigationintotheConstructValidityofanIn-HousePlacementTest:ACaseStudyofQDAUEnglishPlacementTest, by ZOU Shaoyan, p.51

Based on a review of the theories and investigations concerning construct validity in language testing, this paper investigated the construct validity of an in-house English placement test by the adoption of quantitative and qualitative methods.The result showed that the internal consistency of the test paper was not perfect enough.The test was mainly represented with two constructs, which was basically consistent with the test syllabus, but the construct specified by the syllabus was not fully represented.Although a great majority of the test takers held a positive attitude towards the face validity of the whole test, a negative attitude was held towards the validity of certain tasks, and the test takers’ responses to the questions of the questionnaire demonstrated their awareness of the importance of developing communicative language ability.This paper then suggested that the test construct should be specified by taking the test takers’ real language needs and the practicality of the test into consideration and highlighted the necessity of conducting validation research in order to ensure the reliability of the test score.

OntheCharacteristicsofTranslationalValue, by GAO Lei, p.62

The study of translational value is a study of truth, which is also a category of relations implying practical relationship and cognitive relationship.Essentially, the translational value represents social norms.The current study of translational value has broadened people’s academic horizon on translation studies, and enriched the theories of translation studies, but the understanding of the values and characteristics of translation is somewhat one-sided, which has caused confusions in academic logic and impedes the further study of translational value.Hence, on the basis of the nature of translational value, the paper probes into such relations in terms of the characteristics of translational value as objectivity versus subjectivity, sociality versus historicity, relativity versus absoluteness, and diversity versus unicity, whose importance is finally demonstrated in the construction of other meta-theories about translational value.

Translator’sSubjectivityfromtheValue’sHorizonintheMeaningsofaSourceText:ReflectiononYanFu’sTranslationTheory, by LI Guangrong, p.66

Yan Fu’s translations rely on the value demand as a fundamental horizon.Originating from translators’ historicity and sociality, this paper analyses diverse text meaning, such as literal meaning, subjective intention and text meaning, and then points out translators’ practice on which those meanings converge at.Historical basis for Yan Fu’s value demand, without his translation practice targeted at texts in various disciplines, could not be discovered, which involves historical basis constructed by cultural context, logical premise composed of the translator’s subject consciousness and demands and realistic foundation set up by the translator’s practice.This paper ends with Yan Fu’s subjectivity reflected by his value reason in such three dimensions as the other’s reason, purpose reason and critical reason.