Volume 35, Issue 1 -

This paper examines the mediatization of Asian masculinity in representative Hollywood martial arts films to expose the essentialism on which such films rely. Asian martial arts films are able to tap into viewers’ familiarity with idealized images of Asian masculinity; such familiarity is an essential part of the pleasure provided by these films and hence of their economic success. This study focuses on non-Asian (that is, western) protagonists’ appropriation of Asian masculinity because it succinctly encapsulates precisely how western hegemonies co-opt and commodify Asian-ness for their own purposes. Such appropriation is a use of intertextuality that not only allows western viewers to easily access a simplified model of Asian masculinity, but also allows them to reference earlier works to further facilitate the mediation and mediatization of Asian masculinity. This is a process which continues to Other and exoticizes Asian identities, even as it ostensibly carves out a niche for Asian bodies and identities in the institution of the film industry.

Recently there has been an increased focus on narratives produced within or about the workplace. A number of different analytical approaches to narrative exist and there has been quite a vigorous debate between researchers interested in life stories (or so-called big stories) and those researchers proposing an increased focus on small stories. This paper will use small story analysis (SSA) to examine workplace identity in discourses on organizational processes in one workplace in South Africa. The data for this study were collected by conducting interviews and focus group discussions with 19 members of a large South African retail company. We find that participants often introduce small stories which offer discourses that contradict or contest “official” company discourses (or the so-called sanctioned grand narrative stories). We argue that small stories can be a valuable resource to investigate organizational discourses, as participants often introduce questions of identity which do not necessarily fit the dominant organizational discourses through small stories. Small story analysis seems to be an ideal tool to investigate contradictions and inconsistencies which occur in all discourses but are typical of contexts of diversity and transformation such as the South African workplace.

This paper compares high-graded essays to low-graded essays written by undergraduate students in Australia. The comparison is made in an attempt to identify the extent to which the use of the evaluative language termed “ appraisal” contributes to their academic success. The appraisal theory has emerged from a further refinement of interpersonal meaning within a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) framework. The category applied is one of the appraisal systems which is Attitude . A particular focus of the category is on Appreciation , a subsystem of Attitude . The Appreciation is concerned with evaluating things, entities, a text, products, or processes. Therefore, Appreciation is the most dominant Attitude expressed in academic discourse. Its expressions are very field specific. In the process of applying the Appreciation categories in academic discourse, some extensions and reworking of the categories were required. One extension is in Valuation categories which is a subsystem of Appreciation . This fine-tuning of aspects of the theory has enabled subtle but important differences to emerge in the kinds of evaluations expressed. Theoretical contributions and pedagogical implications for teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course will be discussed.

This study investigates pragmatic force modifiers (PFMs) (Nikula 1996; Lin 2010) in English-medium university lectures given by Mandarin Chinese speakers and compares the distribution and functions of the markers with those of their native English counterparts. The quantitative results reveal a narrower repertoire of PFMs, especially the intensifying and colloquial modifiers used by Chinese-speaking lecturers, who seem to prefer particular softeners with Chinese equivalents, a phenomenon possibly ascribable to first language interference. The distinct patterning between the two groups implies a higher degree of personal involvement, interactivity, and informality in lectures delivered by native speakers of English. Several important functions of PFMs associated with lectures are shared; functional homogeneity can be attributed to the generic properties that seem to transcend academic contexts and exhibit certain uniformity across languages. However, noteworthy functional discrepancies suggest that Chinese-speaking lecturers draw strategically on the same linguistic devices for different pragmatic purposes in an attempt to overcome language-related insecurity and achieve communicative effectiveness in the situated context in which English is used as an academic lingua franca.

Research has described the importance of orality at work and in everyday life but little agreement currently exists on how to theorize modern orality. This study explores how young adult literacy learners thought about and employed their textual (print) literacy within the oral contexts of their lives. We interviewed 88 mainly unemployed young persons undertaking literacy training to assess how their literacy fitted within their everyday lives, exploring their learning, employment, motivation, persistence, barriers to learning, and power dynamics. Respondents saw their textual literacy as situated within a matrix of everyday interpersonal communication more than as stand-alone functional skills, describing how literacy integrates with oral-experiential lifeworlds such as at work. Empirical evidence was provided to support the recent work of scholars who are building theory in the text–orality nexus. This study provides insights into the oral world of people with liminal (threshold) textual literacy; since such individuals are necessarily more oral than literate in their everyday life experience, they provide unique insights into how their orality intersects with use of textual information.