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Journeys Towards Intercultural Capability in Language Classrooms: Voices from Students, Teachers and Researchers (Intercultural Communication and Language Education)
by Martin East Constanza Tolosa Jocelyn Howard Christine Biebricher Adèle ScottThis open access book presents an account of five teacher educators who, over a two-year period, undertook a research project with five teachers of languages other than English in pre-secondary schools in New Zealand. Their collaborative aim was to develop students’ intercultural capability in the context of learning a new language. The school participants were typical of many in New Zealand’s pre-secondary sector; the teachers had limited language-teaching experience and limited prior knowledge of how to develop the intercultural dimension in their language classrooms, and the students were largely at the beginning stages of learning a new language. The book discusses the findings obtained using a range of data collection methods, including classroom observations, reflective interviews with teachers, and focus groups with students. It documents instances of breakthrough and growth for teachers and students and reveals the problems and tensions. Lastly, it reflects on the lessons learned in the course of this project and speculates on the roles that teacher education needs to play if the goal of intercultural capability is to be better achieved in language classrooms, both in New Zealand and internationally. Of interest to a wide range of stakeholders in the area of education, the book allows readers to gain an understanding of the opportunities of working with teachers through an action–research model, alongside the challenges that this brings and ways in which intercultural capability may be strengthened.
Medio-translatology: Concepts and Applications (New Frontiers in Translation Studies)
by Feng Cui Defeng LiThis book introduces the theory of Medio-translatology. Proposed by Professor Tianzhen Xie, Medio-translatology combines comparative literature with translation studies. It has been influential in Chinese Translation Studies since its emergence in the 1990s and has since generated a myriad of heated discussions and productive applications of the theory in the analysis of translation both as an activity and a product. With ten chapters authored by leading scholars in this area, this book explicates the development and the main theoretical tenets of Medio-translatology in the first part and demonstrates the application of the theory with a number of case analysis of translations by different translators in the second part. As the first and only edited book on Medio-translatology written in English, this volume will also provide a useful window on contemporary translation studies in China.
Pandemics and Epidemics in Cultural Representation
by Sathyaraj Venkatesan Antara Chatterjee A. David Lewis Brian CallenderThis edited book analyses how artists, authors, and cultural practitioners have responded to and represented episodes of epidemics/pandemics through history. Covering a broad range of notable epidemics/pandemics (black death, cholera, Influenza, AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19), the chapters examine the cultural representations of epidemics and pandemics in different contexts, periods, languages, media, and genres. Interdisciplinary in nature and drawing on perspectives from medicine, literature, medical anthropology, philosophy of medicine, and cultural theory, the book investigates and emphasizes the urgent need to reflect on past catastrophes caused by such outbreaks. By delving into cultural history, it re-examines how societies and communities have responded in the past to species-threatening epidemics/pandemics. Sure to be of interest to lay readers as well as students and researchers, this work situates epidemics and pandemics outbreaks within the contexts of culture and narrative, and their complex and layered representation, commenting on intersections of contagion, culture, and community. It offers a cross-cultural, global, and comparative analysis of the trajectories, histories and responses to various epidemics/pandemics that impacted people worldwide.
Feminist Literary and Cultural Criticism: An Analytical Approach to Space
by Java SinghFeminist Literary and Cultural Criticism explores inter-disciplinary connections across Cultural Anthropology, Geography, Psychology, and feminist literary criticism to develop a theoretical framework for spatial criticism. Using the spatial gynocritics framework developed in the book, it analyzes selected texts from five different genres–short-story, novel, film, cartoons, and OTT series, created by women. The creators discussed in the book constitute a transnational collectivity of women that shares common concerns about gender, environment, technology, and social hierarchies. They comprise a geographically and linguistically diverse group from India, Uruguay, Spain, Argentina, and the USA. The book offers immense potential for a comparative study on numerous aspects, among which the present work concentrates on the treatment of Space, demonstrating that spatial logic and grammar are essential elements of the feminist praxis. The book reveals the unexamined potential in the women creators’ praxis of destabilizing, decentring, and destroying the ascribed centres around which social arrangements are structured. Moreover, the book offers valuable analytic tools that add to scholarship in literary theory, comparative cultural studies, comparative literature, gender studies, feminist criticism, and interdisciplinary humanities. It is an indispensable aid to students and faculty in these areas of study, enabling them to critique texts from a fresh perspective.
Hedges in Chinese-English Conference Interpreting: A Corpus-based Discourse Analysis of Interpreters’ Role Deviation (SpringerBriefs in Linguistics)
by Juan HuThis book explored interpreters’ role when interpreting for Chinese government press conference and discovered the role deviation of conference interpreters in Chinese–English conference interpreting, by taking corpus-based approach to analyze hedges in interpreting discourse. So far, the discovery of role deviation for conference interpreters in this book is relevantly fresh in conceptual, empirical, and methodological aspects, against the background that conference interpreters are traditionally assumed to be invisible and passive “non-person.” Arguably, this book revisited and renewed the concept of interpreters’ role, offered a role theory-based theoretical framework in some potential issues in future studies, designed a novel empirical route by using hedges as the intervening points to gain insight into interpreters’ role, and applied Python-a new natural language processing programming in data extraction. Thus, this book is believed to contribute some new conceptual, theoretical as well as methodological significance to the future studies on interpreters’ role and performance. This book is intended to act as a useful reference for scholars, practitioners, interpreters, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and anyone who shows interest in interpreters’ role and performance, corpus-based interpreting product.
Interdisciplinary Research for Printing and Packaging (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering #896)
by Pengfei Zhao Zhuangzhi Ye Min Xu Li Yang Linghao Zhang Shu YanThis book includes original, peer-reviewed research papers from the 12th China Academic Conference on Printing and Packaging (CACPP 2021), held in Beijing, China on November 12-14, 2021. The proceedings cover the recent findings in color science and technology, image processing technology, digital media technology, mechanical and electronic engineering and numerical control, materials and detection, digital process management technology in printing and packaging, and other technologies. As such, the book is of interest to university researchers, R&D engineers and graduate students in the field of graphic arts, packaging, color science, image science, material science, computer science, digital media, network technology, and smart manufacturing technology.
Cultural Knowledge and Values in English Language Teaching Materials: (Multimodal) Representations and Stakeholders
by Tao Xiong Dezheng Feng Guangwei HuThis book provides a contextualized and balanced look into the timely topic of values in English Language Teaching (ELT) materials with a primary focus on the Chinese context. It features three distinct conceptual and methodological perspectives, namely, perceptions of stakeholders such as material writers, teachers and students, multimodal construction of values, and textual representation of values. It is a valuable resource for those interested in the social, cultural, moral, and ideological dimensions of English education in general, and in the textual and multimodal construction of values in language teaching materials in particular.
English Language Teaching: Policy and Practice across the European Union (English Language Teaching: Theory, Research and Pedagogy)
by Lee McCallumThis book provides an overview of current trends and practices in English Language Teaching (ELT) across the European Union. It offers insights into key ELT issues which are at the forefront of twenty-first-century classrooms. It discusses theoretical and empirical work based on topics such as linguistic imperialism, English as a Medium of Instruction, contrastive language analysis, and the interplay between English and the use of countries’ respective native languages. It also explores the challenges of English Language Teaching under different circumstances such as, while using different technological platforms, working with different learner groups (those with Special Educational Needs) and revising traditional practices in grammar and vocabulary teaching. Throughout the book, the link between policy, theory and practice is explicitly highlighted and exemplified. The book is of interest to ELT instructors, course designers, language teachers and teacher trainers, and students enrolled in pre-service English training courses.
English Medium Instruction Practices in Vietnamese Universities: Institutional, Practitioner and Student Perspectives (Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects #68)
by Min Pham Jenny BarnettThis book focuses on English as a Medium of Instruction practices in higher education in Vietnam, addressing institutional, practitioner and student perspectives. It presents theoretical standpoints and empirical experiences of how institutional policies are enacted in the offering of English as a Medium of Instruction programs in universities in Vietnam, and how the disciplinary content is taught and learned through English. The book showcases the enactment of curricular and pedagogical practices in the classroom, drawing on a range of different disciplines central to university education. It also explores the roles of mother tongues in the construction of disciplinary knowledge in English as a Medium of Instruction programs and courses. This book provides guidance and practical information for university English as a Medium of Instruction policy makers, lecturers and student support teams in English for academic purposes across disciplines, as well as to the theoretical framing of the English as a Medium of Instruction field itself.
Work, Inheritance, and Deserts in Joseph Conrad’s Fiction
by Evelyn Tsz ChanThis book focuses on the complex relationships between inheritance, work, and desert in literature. It shows how, from its manifestation in the trope of material inheritance and legacy in Victorian fiction, “inheritance” gradually took on additional, more modern meanings in Joseph Conrad’s fiction on work and self-making. In effect, the emphasis on inheritance as referring to social rank and wealth acquired through birth shifted to a focus on talent, ability, and merit, often expressed through work.The book explores how Conrad’s fiction engaged with these changing modes of inheritance and work, and the resulting claims of desert they led to. Uniquely, it argues that Conrad’s fiction critiques claims of desert arising from both work and inheritance, while also vividly portraying the emotional costs and existential angst that these beliefs in desert entailed. The argument speaks to and illuminates today’s debates on moral desert arising from work and inheritance, in particular from meritocratic ideals. Its new approach to Conrad’s works will appeal to students and scholars of Conrad and literary modernism, as well as a wider audience interested in philosophical and social debates on desert deriving from inheritance and work.
Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture
by Yanbing ZengThis book conducts a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of Franz Kafka’s relation to China. Commencing with an examination of the myriad Chinese cultural influences to which Kafka was exposed, it goes on to explore the ways in which they manifest themselves in canonical stories, such as Description of A Struggle, The Great Wall of China, and An Old Manuscript. This leads the way to thought-provoking comparative studies of Kafka and major Chinese writers and philosophers, such as Zhuang Tzu, Pu Songling, Qian Zhongshu, and Lu Xun. Highlighting kindred philosophical concepts, shared aesthetic tastes, and parallel narrative strategies, these comparisons transcend mere textual analysis, to explore the profound cultural, historical, and philosophical implications of Kafka’s works. Finally, the book turns to an examination Kafka’s impact on modern life in China, including its translation studies, literature, and even its mass culture.
Affective-Discursive Practice in Online Medical Consultations in China: Emotional and Empathic Acts, Identity Positions, and Power Relations (The Humanities in Asia #11)
by Yu ZhangThis book provides readers with the latest research on the affective aspect of online interactions between doctors and e-patients in the context of China from a poststructuralist discourse analysis perspective. At the heart of this book is the presentation of four chapters which address (1) indirect negative emotional acts by e-patients and empathic acts by doctors (constituting “affective practice”), (2) the interactional discursive features involved in the affective practice, (3) discursive positions of e-patients and doctors within the affective practice context, and (4) power relations that are reflected in the positionings. This book sheds light on the importance of examining the affective facet of medical consultation, when it comes to identifying non-traditional positions and power relations in doctor-patient communication. It also provides the implication that e-healthcare platforms, especially those with an e-commercialized model for healthcare services, have potential to produce a type of neo-liberal discourse—the e-commercialized medical consultation discourse—in which patients and caregivers, who are acknowledged as the less powerful group in the traditional healthcare activities, are empowered and privileged.
Current Issues in Descriptive Linguistics and Digital Humanities: A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Eno-Abasi Essien Urua
by Moses Effiong Ekpenyong Imelda Icheji UdohThis book is a convergence of heterogeneous insights (from languages and literature, history, music, media and communications, computer science and information studies) which previously went their separate ways; now unified under a single framework for the purpose of preserving a unique heritage, the language. In a growing society like ours, description and documentation of human and scientific evidence/resources are improving. However, these resources have enjoyed cost-effective solutions for Western languages but are yet to flourish for African tone languages. By situating discussions around a universe of discourse, sufficient to engender cross-border interactions within the African context, this book shall break a dichotomy of challenges on adaptive processes required to unify resources to assist the development of modern solutions for the African domain.
Philosophical Semiotics: The Coming into Being of the World of Meaning
by Yiheng ZhaoThis book attempts to solve the question whether semiotics is a methodology as is generally held and if the studies of meaning and the mind can shed light on a series of metaphysical issues, so that the edifice of semiotics could be erected on a philosophical ground. It proposes that a philosophical semiotics is, by necessity, a semiotic phenomenology about the construction of the “world of meaning” by signs, and any discussion about semiotics has to proceed around two core issues: meaning and the mind.This book particularly exemplifies the semiotic connections in various schools of traditional Chinese philosophies. In the “Pre-Imperial Age” (before BC 300), there emerged an abundance of semiotic thinking in China, from Yijing the first sign system that aims to explain everything in the world, to the Namists’s subtle argument about the form of meaning, from the Yin-Yang/five elements of the Han, to the “Things are non-existent while mind is non-non-existent” principle of the Vijñāptimātratāsiddhi School of Buddhism in the Tang, and from the Sudden Revelation of Chan Buddhism to the “Nothing outside the mind” endorsed by the Mindist Confucianism in the Ming. The mighty trend of philosophical heritage provides rich food to our understanding of the form of meaning.
Academic Publishing: Processes and Practices for Aspiring Researchers (SpringerBriefs in Education)
by David Coniam Peter FalveyThis book focuses on the topic of academic publishing. It discusses the mounting, serious problems that researchers, particularly new researchers, encounter when trying to publish their research. The book addresses the issues of publishing as well as the salient factors militating against academic publication and the mitigating factors encouraging academic publication. It provides potential solutions, suggestions, and strategies for overcoming some of these problems. Growing research output from Southeast Asia including Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and China reveals the struggles that many authors have to confront when attempting to publish their work in reputable journals. In both South Africa and other parts of Africa, academic researchers are beginning to show strong evidence of credible academic output. These researchers all need valid outlets for their work and the security that authentic peer review brings to the reviewing process. In the fields of education, social sciences, and professional practices, e.g., architecture and law, recent years have seen the emergence of new outlets for practitioners’ research outputs in areas such as one’s own practice, self-reflection, and narrative inquiry. These outlets are discussed in this book. The book also discusses the malign influence of predatory publications in detail. This book will be beneficial to university academics, postgraduate students, Ph.D. supervisors, and new researchers.
Eighty Years of Archaeology at Liangzhu (Liangzhu Civilization)
by Yefei ZhuThis book summary introduces the key research findings, exploration and excavation works carried out during the 80 years of archaeological endeavours entirely devoted to Liangzhu historical sites. Xingeng SHI first discovered of neolithic remains in 1936, followed along with designation of official name which was given by Nai XIA in 1959. Another perspective also indicates finding of several pieces of black pottery at the Qipanfen historical site in the year 1936 till the latest over 1200 pieces of jades unearthed in Fanshan cemetery in the year 1986. A brief timeline history as listed above has been demonstrated that the great efforts and sacrifices had made by earlier generations of archaeologist in Liangzhu as witness to explore the origin of the 5000 years of Chinese civilization. The public is more familiar with Fanshan cemetery and Liangzhu ancient city as well as precious cultural relics such as jade Cong and jade Yue. Through the 80 years of archaeological ruins of Liangzhu field works that performed, in fact, there are existing historical monuments for example as places of Zhucundou and Wujiabu and ordinary objects include pottery and stoneware, they remain unknown to the general public. This book offers the readers a unique perspective, is the first research to focus on the Liangzhu Archaeological Team members’ viewpoint of exploring the perceived value of an extraordinary experience and compare it with an ordinary experience behind the 80 years of archaeology of the Liangzhu site.
Intersections of Diversity, Literacy, and Learner Difficulties: Conversations between Teacher, Students and Researchers
by Theresa Abodeeb-Gentile Dennis A. ConradThis book invites readers to challenge, corroborate, and add to the discourse on more inclusive pedagogical practice. Presenting theoretically and empirically informed research, it highlights potential considerations regarding the intersections of diversity, literacy, and learner difficulties. These three areas provide a stage where opposing paradigms often pose challenges for educators and create unnecessary barriers to providing the best education for all learners. These barriers might reveal how students are positioned through a deficit lens rather than one that recognizes individual differences and how these learner differences sometimes result in labels or put students at increased risk of encountering difficulties. The contributing authors’ goals are to start and sustain a conversation that examines these perspectives and to offer counter-narratives to the deficit lens by recognizing that individual difference does not need to be a barrier to educational access. By examining opportunities for more inclusive educational success, this book encourages discourse among key stakeholders; further, it goes beyond problematizing to offer new avenues for optimal learning and inclusive pedagogy across multiple contexts.
New Directions in Linguistic Geography: Exploring Articulations of Space
by Greg NiedtThis collection brings together contributions from a new wave of research into language, space, and place, at the intersection of various disciplines, from geography to sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. The authors investigate the myriad ways that people conceive of—and thereby describe—the world around them, studying the impact these ideas have on their identities, and highlighting the tension between conflicting ontologies of space.It is a timely and invaluable new resource for researchers and students in linguistics, geography, anthropology and communication.
Liangzhu in the Eyes of an Archaeological Journalist: One Dig for Five Millennia (Liangzhu Civilization)
by Li MaThis book traces archaeological exploration and discoveries as early as 2012 and reveals Liangzhu culture by reviewing seven years of archaeological findings at the Liangzhu historical site, developments in archaeology history, the psychological journeys of archaeologists, as well as the collision of schools of thought. It also contains in-depth interviews with archaeological experts and other specialists, building a bridge between popular interest and academic interest, and showcases Liangzhu civilization and archaeology for professionals and the general public alike.
English Produced by Japanese L2 Users: A Preliminary Analysis of Grammatical Forms
by Toshiko YamaguchiThis book discusses eight grammatical items, with main focus on prepositions and plural nouns, to illustrate the structure of Japanese English or the English spoken by 32 Japanese nationals who are the L2 users of English. Adopting an inductive, theory-neutral, analysis of empirical data collected from recordings of presentational talks, the author demonstrates how standard and nonstandard grammatical forms are distributed, and categorizes these based largely on functional factors. The book describes grammatical forms as a fundamental aspect of linguistic study and adopts a corpus-driven approach to qualify structural features characterizing usage data. This formalization of language usage patterns also facilitates the development of ‘locally’ relevant norms and thus presents alternatives to the normative varieties traditionally adopted. It examines the effects of multicompetence and unpacks the grammar of Japanese English. The book is of interest to researchers, educators, and students concerned with issues related to World Englishes, English as a lingua franca, English language teaching, and multilingualism, this text is vital to studies in global English language use.
A Systemic Functional Grammar of Chinese Nominal Groups: A Text-Based Approach (The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series)
by Jing FangThis book describes the grammar of Chinese nominal groups for the purpose of text analysis, drawing upon Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model. Exploring the metafunctional grammatical resources in nominal groups, the book provides a new perspective on conducting text analysis by focusing on the metafunctions performed by various elements in the nominal group. The observations on nominal groups presented here are based on both a working corpus of 180 texts of various types and a large referential corpus of over 16 billion tokens. With clear descriptions of the terminology used, the book presents a case study at the end of each major chapter, which demonstrates how the grammatical resources discussed can be applied to the delicate analysis of authentic texts. This monograph is more than a grammar book, for it offers a new way to engage with a text microscopically and enables readers to approach and analyse a text by focusing on grammatical units below the clause level. The book provides an accessible and valuable resource for readers who are interested in SFL-based typological description, text analysis, translation studies between English and Chinese, English–Chinese comparative linguistic studies, and Chinese language teaching and learning.
World Englishes, Global Classrooms: The Future of English Literary and Linguistic Studies
by Kirsten Hemmy Chandrika BalasubramanianThis book provides a critical overview of contemporary world issues in Language and Literary Studies. It offers specific ideas as to how to move away from the traditional literary canon, on the one hand, and traditional native-speaker norms in English language teaching, on the other. It delivers a global perspective of both the growth and the challenges in ELT studies around the world. Following the introduction, the first section of the book contains chapters from international scholars on recognizing and diversifying Englishes in today’s language and translation classrooms. Specifically, the chapters focus on issues such as the cultural hegemony of a monolithic English, English and university pedagogy, English as a gatekeeper, and the role of a reconceived English education in promoting cross-cultural understanding. The second section focuses on the interaction of literature and culture, with specific chapters focusing on decolonizing the traditional literary canon, defining a global text, representing cultural interactions in literary texts, and emerging genres in contemporary English literature. Both sections of the book question the existing boundaries in a post-2020 world, specifically in a non-western world. It is an indispensable resource for scholars in cultural studies, linguistics, and literary studies.
A Student’s Guide to the Language of Finance: Essential Expressions for Business, Finance, and Banking Students
by Steve HartThis book focuses on improving reading comprehension by targeting the jargon, idiomatic language and academic expressions used in the business world. A Student’s Guide to the Language of Finance is a reference textbook designed to unlock the jargon of the business and finance world for international students, improving the reading comprehension and writing skill of English language learners by targeting the jargon, idiomatic language, and academic expressions employed in the business, finance, and banking fields. Covering terms not always captured in business dictionaries or workbooks, the resource also contains sections on spoken business English, key academic terms found in textbooks and journals and useful expressions to employ when writing an academic paper. It is specifically targeted at students whose first language is not English.
Discursive Mediation in Translation: Living History and its Chinese Translations
by Hui WangThis book explores the actual process of mediation operation in the translation process and the interaction between mediation and social structure. It defines mediation in translation in a parameterized manner, characterizing the linguistic properties of mediation for ease of mediation identification. On this basis, it puts forward an integrated systematic approach to map out mediation operation at the text level and discuss the interactive relationship between mediation and social structure, with a view to unveiling how the source text is altered for the purpose of power balance in the translation process. It is a key read for those interested in better understanding of how translators mediate in the translation process so as to maneuver a text to achieve a certain purpose, thereby increasing mediation efficiency and avoiding potential pitfalls in mediation operation. It will be of interest to students and scholars in translation studies, professional translators, as well as those working in language and culture, intercultural communication, and cultural studies.
English Bilingual Project: Exploring the Pedagogical Function of Mentalese
by Mathew VargheseToday, English is the global lingua franca and competent English communication skills should be one of the rights of all educated individuals irrespective of any socio-cultural limits. By introducing a new method, this book focuses on helping any learner to get sufficient communication skills in English as much as in the native language. This method helps one to avoid translating from mother tongue to English. And by using the method of thinking in English, one could acquire the required English bilingual skills naturally. The method is founded on the philosophical idea of mentalese—mind language as the base language of thinking available for humans for constructing thoughts. The proposed English Bilingual Project (EBP) helps one to transfer thoughts from a structureless mentalese to the grammatical structure of any language English/Japanese/Chinese. The method described in this book works in two ways: one it helps one to intuitively understand the working of mentalese; the other is by practicing think in English with the mentalese, one could generate the bilingual brain. The main procedure for transferring thoughts from the mentalese to English is through writing one’s thoughts. This helps one to think effectively in English like one’s own mother tongue. This method works as a prime requirement model for one to generate multilingual skills. The book resourced the idea of mentalese from the classical philosophy, reflects it with the modern generative theories, links it with the studies in neuro-linguistic studies on bilingualism and the bilingual brain.