Volume 13, Issue 2

One of the difficulties in legal English translation lies in how translators understand and convey legal terminology. For one thing, it requires functional equivalence in language; for another, legal functional equivalence is also needed. According to the Equivalence Theory of Sarcevic, and considering the different levels of language and legal functional equivalence in the corresponding words from the source language to the target language, the following measures can be taken in legal terminology translation: using the exact words when concepts are equivalent; using functionally equivalent words when concepts are nearly or partly equivalent; using paraphrase, neutral, borrowed, or neologisms when concepts are totally different.

This paper clarifies the definition of English emotion formulaic sequences in a brand-new way. It identifies the two language processing mechanisms in the human brain that function simultaneously and divide usage depending on the requirements of the language materials and communication situations. Based on the approach of Becker’s hierarchy of classification, this paper categorizes English emotion formulaic sequences from three aspects: structure, meaning, and usage. It may be possible to identify and push the boundaries of English emotion formulaic sequences both for language learners and linguistics researchers.

This paper addresses the scarcely scrutinized topic in the consumer culture literature regarding how a social actor consumes himself through speech acts. More specifically, by introducing a new type of speech act, viz. the taboo speech act, and by effectively differentiating it from expletives, slang, and swearing words and expressions, I outline how subjectivity appropriates and individuates its systemic underpinning as other or linguistic system (Saussure) and wall of language (Lacan) in linguistic acts of transgression. Taboo speech acts do not merely express emotions, such as anger and frustration. They also seek to contain a linguistic system as an ideational totality of acts of parole in a primus affectivus that is incumbent on the inverse sublimation of epithets and cultural symbols standing synecdochically in a pars pro toto relationship for the limits of what is culturally/linguistically sanctioned. The subject consumes/annihilates and institutes itself at the same time in taboo speech acts whose mission may not be fully accounted for through conversational pragmatics, insofar as they perform at a more foundational level a social ontological function. The offered analysis aims at contributing to the extant literature in consumer cultural theory, applied linguistics, and social theory.

Laureate play “Red,” by John Logan, is a dramatic representation of biographical facts about and intellectual positions of the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903–1970). With the tool of semiotic methodology named “Dramatology” it is possible to appreciate both text and staging – which go beyond a theatrical experience. “Red” leads the reader/spectator to question current human pragmatism and environmental insensitivity. Its main character wants to change the usual perspective of seeing and understanding pictures in order to achieve a more emotional and enriching art experience. The staging embraces certain tasks such as the construction of a large-format frame and the application of red paint on a canvas to stimulate the audience’s senses, breaking theatrical illusion. Ecocriticism allows us to describe the dramatic strategies of “Red” that raise audience awareness.

As the products of Apple Inc. have become increasingly prevalent around the world, more and more potential purchasers are starting to pay attention to the advertisements issued by Apple. The advertising slogan as one of the main components in an advertisement can deliver a great deal of information to its targets, for it is the only linguistic message in the advertisement, which constitutes a great part of the communication. The semiotic matrix theory put forward by Greimas can to a large extent assist in better understanding the true intention of the linguistic information expressed in an advertising slogan. The semiotic matrix can demonstrate a clear internal structure of a linguistic message, so it is an appropriate theory to apply to analyzing the real meaning of advertising slogans. Therefore, consumers can become much more aware when they choose the products advocated in certain advertisements. At the same time, advertising designers can create more slogans with stronger pertinence.

From an anthroposemiotic perspective, this article discusses the presence of trade names written in a language other than Spanish in Venezuela. The notion of identity formulated by García Gavidia and by Andacht is used, as well as notions of violence and symbolic efficacy by Bourdieu and the semiotics of culture by Lotman. An approach was made from the rationalist-deductive epistemological perspective, using the hypothetico-deductive method to analyze a corpus representing foreign trade names observed in Venezuela, which, however, merely served as an empirical control mechanism of deduction. Results reveal that such names are an expression of identity/otherness conflict; at the same time, they can be considered as a cultural text that bursts violently into another established text, by acting within the scope of a semiosphere that transform them into a device with cultural memory expressing an ideological hegemony.