Discourse Analysis from the Perspective of Austin’s Speech Act Theory and Searle’s Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts: A Case Study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper

A focus on discourse analysis, this study presents a particular interest in the power relationship artfully constructed by Charlotte P. Gilman in three dialogue instances in her most memorable short narrative, The Yellow Wallpaper. With the awareness of gender differences in mind in terms of how men and women use language, Gilman evinces the ways in which language could be a medium of silencing the other. Consequently, this paper carefully examines the protagonists’ discourses through J. L. Austin’s speech act theory and John Searle’s taxonomy of illocutionary acts. The corpus of the study consists of the utterances of the husband/doctor and of the wife/patient, and both the quantitative and qualitative research methods have been employed for the data analysis. The results have shown that the patriarchal discourse, originally dominated by representatives (opinions, facts) and directives (commands, orders, advices, and refusals), produces utterances meant to fabricate reality (erroneous diagnosis) and generate refusals, whereas the discourse of the other consists mainly of representatives- true statements and opinions -which contradict men’s reality in the journey to achieving self-assertion and selfexpression.

Intentions of Language Learning among Macau Frontline Employees in Hospitality Industry: Application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour Model

The purpose of this study attempted to explore intentions of frontline employees on language learning in Macau hospitality industry. Without exploring learners’ intention, the successful language learning cannot be achieved. Various factors promote or hinder language learners from the implementation of behaviour, that is learning a language. As Macau is one of famous tourist destinations, diversifying single economic development on gaming industry has been enforced. Acting the platform between China and Lusophony countries has also been initiated. Developing language competence in hospitality industry becomes essential in Macau. Hence, this study is crucial for language teaching and learning contexts in hospitality industry while it is anticipated that more and more international tourists will be received in Macau soon after recovering from COVID-19. In this study, the theory of planed behaviour suggested by Ajzen (1991) [1] was applied to explore language learners’ behavioural intentions in terms of learning either English or Portuguese. After a pilot study, the main study was conducted in November 2019. The research findings showed attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control had positive and significant impacts on language learning intention. Specifically, subjective norm was the most influential factor affecting learners’ behavioural intention, followed by perceived behavioural control and then attitude. Significant others therefore played the key factor on influencing learners to take an action on learning languages in the society of Macau. This finding may result from job requirements in the labour-market. Finally, the study contributes to educational literature by demonstrating the importance of intentions on frontline employees’ language learning by applying the theory of planned behaviour. Practically, based on the aspect of social psychology to scrutinise learners’ behavioural intention, it would allow language educators adopting effective teaching and learning approach to satisfy learners’ needs.

A Study on English Learning Motivation and Vocabulary Learning Strategies of Excellent English Graduates

Vocabulary is the basic building block of language, and the acquisition of a language relies on vocabulary. In acquiring vocabulary, the adoption of vocabulary learning strategies is an important affecting factor. The relationship between vocabulary learning strategy and vocabulary knowledge has been the focus of researchers. Motivation also has a significant impact on language learning. The paper aims to explore excellent English graduates’ English learning motivation and vocabulary strategies. Two separate questionnaires are used to investigate different motivations and vocabulary learning strategies of English majors. In designing the motivation questionnaire, Gao Yihong’s questionnaire is used as a reference and in designing the vocabulary learning questionnaire, the paper mainly follows O’Malley and Chamot’s study. Through analysis, the study reveals the following findings: Firstly, with the least mean value exceeded 2.4, all kinds of vocabulary learning strategies were adopted by excellent English majors while learning vocabulary. Meta-cognitive (M=3.614035088) strategies and cognitive (M=3.633684211) strategies were preferred. Secondly, for the situation of learning motivations, situational motivations (M=3.858695652) were the highest. With the mean value of 3.432065217, instrumental motivations were the lowest motivation among the three types of motivations. Especially achievement motivation, it was the least held motivation by excellent English majors.

Error Analysis of College Students’ Spoken English

Based on the theory of Error Analysis, this thesis records the production of spoken English of first year college students of Northwestern Polytechnical University as samples. After listening to the recorder repeatedly and carefully, the author classifies and describes the errors found in the corpus, investigates the causes of these errors and provides solutions to these problems. It is found that there are errors of performance, phonological errors, lexical errors, grammatical errors and pragmatic errors in this study. Reasons for these errors can be explained from the perspectives of interlingual transfer, intralingual interference, cognitive and affective factors, and communicative strategies. Accordingly, some countermeasures could be taken to effectively decrease errors.

Haunted Across the Political Spectrum: The Specter of Communism in Two Midcentury American Organizations

Organizations operating in midcentury America experienced a period of relative economic prosperity and global power. While political tensions existed between the United States and the Soviet Union since the culmination of the World War II, when the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test in 1949 and then successfully launched Sputnik 1 in 1957, these political tensions became more pressing concerns to American organizations. In fact, the perceived existential threat posed by communism became an observable rhetorical justification for organization and action within the United States. Through the use of corpus linguistics techniques, a comparative analysis was conducted on the foundational documents of the rightwing, John Birch Society and the leftwing, Students for a Democratic Society. Relative word frequencies, collocations, concordancing and statistical analyses were conducted around the use and context of the keyword communism. The results suggest that while these radical and reactionary groups perceived a common threat, multifinality exists in terms of organizational response. This insight is useful to those engaged in strategy development and rhetoric for political and business organizations.

An Analysis of Interpersonal Meaning of Modal Verbs in Abstracts from Scientific Papers: Case Study of Progress in Aerospace Sciences

The aims of this study are to explore the distribution features of modal verbs in abstracts from scientific papers, analyze the reasons for those features and figure out the role modal verbs play in achieving interpersonal meaning. The study has selected 60 abstracts randomly from Progress in Aerospace Sciences from 2015 to 2019 as research samples. It combines Halliday’s value of modality with Biber et al.’s two classifications to process modal verbs. The instruments adopted in this research are AntConc 3.2.4, manual sorting and SPSS Statistics 21. Based on the results, the study finds that: firstly, the overall occurrence of modal verbs in 60 abstracts is 59 times, among which low-value modal verbs are the most frequently distributed (74.6%), median-value modal verbs the second (22.0%) and high-value modal verbs the least (3.4%); secondly, the achievement of interpersonal meaning relies on value of modality, and when the value of modality is lower, a better degree of interpersonal meaning can be achieved; thirdly, high-value modal verbs achieve tough interpersonal meaning, median-value modal verbs achieve comfortable interpersonal meaning, and low-value modal verbs achieve harmonious interpersonal meaning.

A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Incognegro (2008)

This study attempts to conduct a multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) of Incognegro (2008), a graphic novel by Mat Johnson and arts by Warren Pleece, by applying Michael Halliday’s theory of the Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) (1994) for the written texts, i.e. the captions found on the images, and Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design (GVD), or what has been recently called Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) (1996) for the images themselves. The study employs, as well, Teun A. van Dijk’s modal of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (2004), in which power, racism, segregation, oppression, ethnicity, inequality, discrimination, identity, superiority, inferiority, dominant groups, and dominated groups are being analyzed. The study aims at showing the inequality, the oppression, the racial discrimination, and the exercised power Negroes previously suffered (1930s) in America, the land of freedom, and how this suffering is depicted through graphic novels for historical documentation. The study shows that the Whites considered themselves the dominant group, whereas the Negroes were treated as slaves, not even equal to human beings, and hence are recognized to be the oppressed and the dominated group.

The Relationship between Source and Target Language’s Register in Interpreting

In recent years, interpreting has becoming increasingly important due to the expanded cooperation and globalization between different countries. Interpretation applies register and varies with it. Thus, the author intends to explore the relationship between source and target language’s register in interpreting and compares different interpretations into the target language according to the changes of register. The author reclassifies three categories of interpreting cases and analyzes them case by case, which show different relationships between source and target language’s register. Thus, the relationship between register in the source and target language should be analyzed from the overall style of the interpretation case and the three parameters: field, tenor and mode.

The Changes in the Name of Variety Shows that Introduced into China from South Korea: From a Linguistics Perspective

By comparing the names of South Korean programs introduced in mainland China from 2015 to 2020 on the four mainstream platforms with the original programs, the linguistic characteristics are summarized in the article: the phonetics tend to be four-syllables and five-syllables; The range of vocabulary is relatively small; the proportion of Chinese programs using sentences as names is higher, but the two countries’ programs still tend to use words as program names.

The Relationship between Source and Target Language’s Register in Interpreting

In recent years, interpreting has becoming increasingly important due to the expanded cooperation and globalization between different countries. Interpretation applies register and varies with it. Thus, the author intends to explore the relationship between source and target language’s register in interpreting and compares different interpretations into the target language according to the changes of register. The author reclassifies three categories of interpreting cases and analyzes them case by case, which show different relationships between source and target language’s register. Thus, the relationship between register in the source and target language should be analyzed from the overall style of the interpretation case and the three parameters: field, tenor and mode.