Volume 43, Issue 1

The paper, based on the concept of FOOTING, makes a multimodal discourse analysis of the relationship between the judge’s discourse and his footing shifts in a criminal courtroom. The results show that in the interaction, multimodal resources in judges’ discourse include conversational features (prolonging keywords, interrupting, repeating, taking turns, etc.), acoustic ones (ascending F0 for pitches and dB for intensity, transition tracks between consonants and formants of vowels, duration of some keywords in important sentences, etc.), and visual ones (facing other parties, facing the materials, etc.). The multimodal resources activate different judges’ footings, including ANIMATOR, ANIMATOR + AUTHOR and ANIMATOR + AUTHOR + PRINCIPAL, and identify the judge’s footing shifts in the courtroom. The results also demonstrate that the judge’s footing shifts perform the functions of trial organizing, information confirming, fact investigating, spokesperson of the collegial panel, law educating and so on in criminal trials.

Languages and linguistic resources transport from one locality to another, adapting to the norms, customs, and regulations of a new locality. This process involves translocalization. Translocalization emphasizes the movement of linguistic resources against the backdrop of globalization and the combination or reframing of resources from different localities. This research explores the extent to which translocalization is reflected by the linguistic landscapes of three distinct commercial areas in Guangzhou, China. It goes on to discuss how translocalization works together with social rescaling to incur the movement of linguistic resources and to result in distinct linguistic landscapes of the three commercial areas. It concludes that some languages or linguistic resources, such as English, pinyin and traditional Chinese writing, are transported to local contexts for the purpose of rescaling, whereas other languages or dialects, like Cantonese, might gradually lose their function of rescaling and retain its function in indexing local identity and solidarity. This study calls for more attention to the local resources and contexts in linguistic landscape studies. It argues for the indexical function of linguistic resources in social rescaling and city planning.

This paper examines an under-researched phenomenon of mock impoliteness in Chinese online interaction, namely, the practice of hudui (lit. reciprocal jocular abuse) as a solidarity enhancing device among acquaintances. Drawing on data from Qzone interaction among Chinese university students, this study focuses on ritual features, sequential patterns and interpersonal functions of hudui through the lens of Kádár’s (2013, 2017) interpersonal ritual theory. The results show that hudui is co-constructed by the online participants with the symmetric pattern of mutual abuse, which distinguishes it from previous studies of jocular abuse (i.e., the asymmetric pattern of abuser– recipient). They also reveal that hudui accomplishes various kinds of relational work, including fostering intimacy, enhancing mutual affection-based face and creating amusement.

Teasing can be approached as a linguistic resource for examining the interpersonal issues of im/ politeness and face, or as a discursive strategy for displaying relationships or constructing social identities. However, studies have underestimated the discursive constraints of teasing in specific contexts. Meanwhile, a majority of teasing studies were based on Western cultures and did not pay sufficient attention to the variety of teasing across cultures. By collecting data from two Chinese entertainment interviews, where the interviewer employs teasing frequently for performing institutional roles, this study examined how teasing functions to assist the interviewer to complete communicative goals, and explored the discursive constraints of teasing in media context. Data analysis exemplified how teasing helped the interviewer to manage an interview event, obtain the guest’s disclosure and seek audience involvement, helping to construct the interviewer’s professionality. Implications for understanding the discursive features of teasing in the Chinese media context were addressed.

This historical study investigates the concept of learner autonomy in the national English language curricula for Chinese universities. It seeks to understand the meaning of learner autonomy in China and the intentionality of promoting this concept through the curricula from 1978 to 2007. By adopting Quentin Skinner’s intentionalist approach to analyzing the history of ideas, this study conducted a systematic document analysis of three national curricula in relation to their linguistic and practical contexts constituted of 169 Chinese academic articles in total. The study revealed that learner autonomy mainly referred to students’ motivation and ability to work hard on their own outside the classroom in the Chinese context. Importing this concept, however, caused ideological confusion and exacerbated the disempowerment of teachers within the dynamics of China’s English language education at the tertiary level. The study raises awareness for borrowing concepts across different cultural contexts and has implications for research, policymaking, teacher development, and pedagogical practice in second language education in China.

College English teaching in China has long focused on importing cultures of English countries while neglecting to enhance students’ English competence in home culture. The present research aims to investigate Chinese non-English major undergraduates’ competence in translating Chinese cultural items into English and the significant predictors of such competence. With a test and a questionnaire as research instruments, this study was conducted to assess 82 undergraduates’ ability to translate three different levels of Chinese culture-specific items into English and explored the factors which might have affected the students’ home culture translation ability. The results show that the participants did well in translating the surface layer cultural items, but their performance in sub-surface and deep layer culture translation tasks was far from being satisfactory. It was also found that students had positive attitudes towards Chinese culture and were willing to learn to express Chinese culture in English, but their English learning motivation in general was not strong enough, and they were not given much input on Chinese culture in their English class. Students’ Chinese cultural knowledge and their awareness of the importance of learning Chinese culture in English were found to be the two significant factors that can predict their performance in the translation tasks. These findings have implications for the teaching of culture and cross-cultural communications in EFL classes.