As a new research field, multimodal discourse analysis is facing a lot of challenges. On the one hand, the status of multimodality in traditional linguistics is questioned. Many linguists argue that nonlinguistic signs such as gestures and visual images are out of the scope of linguistics. On the other hand, the theories and methods of multimodal discourse analysis are still at an early stage of development and have many limitations. Moreover, many researchers have misunderstandings of the field. In view of these, this article provides a brief explanation of the basic questions of multimodal discourse analysis, including why we analyze multimodal discourse, whether linguistic theories are applicable to nonlinguistic signs such as visual images and gesture, what is the scope of multimodal research, what are the main theories and methods, and what are the limitations and misunderstandings. It further points out that researchers need to have the awareness of making their research interdisciplinary, empirical, and application-oriented. It argues that multimodal research should be based on theoretical and methodological innovation, and should aim at solving real communication problems in the multimedia age. The accurate understanding of these questions is crucial for developing multimodal discourse analysis into a new discipline with strong theoretical and methodological support.

Live speech acts in situated discourse are performed by live “whole persons” who interact with the environment in a multimodal way. In this sense, speech acts are suggested to be studied in the perspective of human behavior and in the framework of social situation. With the help of Corpus Linguistics and multimodal approach to language study, researchers are able to further investigate pragmatic issues to develop a better understanding on human interaction and refine traditional pragmatic theories or concepts. Adopting the method of Multimodal Corpus Linguistics and the basic thought of Simulative Modeling, the pilot study in this paper shows that the live illocutionary act is rooted in the whole multimodal interaction of speakers, thus the illocutionary force is multimodal in nature. Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices range in its scope from language structures, prosodic features to non-verbal gestures, etc. All these resources, which are impacted by speakers’ occurrent emotions and other factors, work in a collaborative way to help speakers to perform illocutionary acts. These findings are in compliance with Austin’s observation on the accompaniments of the utterance when a speaker performs an illocutionary act. The findings extend the inquiry of Speech Act Theory and develop the concept of Illocutionary Force Indicating Device by using the novel method and new linguistic data. This paper provides a reference for further study of pragmatic issues based on multimodal corpus, multimodal approach to pragmatic study, or even Multimodal (Corpus) Pragmatics, therefore, should receive due attention.

Conversation analysts treat conversation as social action; this sociological orientation of CA has an implication that it does not exclude non-verbal actions from CA’s remit since its foundation. This article discusses the theoretical and methodological succession from ethnomethodology, through CA to CA-based multimodal interaction research and their interrelationships, focusing on strengths and issues in applying sequential analysis to multimodal interaction research. On the positive side, as a fundamental procedure and method in CA, sequential analysis provides a way of identifying the participants’ treatment and understanding of each other’s actions, a proof procedure intrinsic to the data. It thus enables in-depth, fine-grained investigations into the miscroscopic interactional processes between co-present participants on a moment-by-moment basis. Besides, this article reviews the ways CA-based multimodal interaction analysts deal with their data, using Christian Heath’s transcription scheme as a typical example. Following CA’s strict and clearly-articulated transciption tradition, CA-based multimodal transcription practice inherits every bit of these merits. One problem associated with sequential analysis in multimodal interaction research, especially during data transcription, is that it sometimes poses a challenge to analysts in terms of how to identify clear-cut actions within multimodal sequences, due to the complexities arising from simultaneity in multimodal interactions. Some solutions such as Charles Goodwin’s conceptualization on embodied participation framework or suggestions such as Sigrid Norris’ notions of modal density, etc., have been mentioned as a way out or possible solutions for further research.

This paper applies Fairclough’s intertextuality theory in the narrow sense to analyze the intertextuality in the novel of Moment in Peking and studies its reflection in its Chinese translation. Intertextuality in Moment in Peking is more complex since the novel was written in English about Chinese culture, that is, the novel is Chinese-themed foreign language writing. Such complexity is manifested in two respects which are the particularity of the original text and the particularity of the translated Chinese version. The intertextualtiy of the works of foreign language writing should be completely reflected when these works returned to the native language of the cultural elements they contain considering the original text of foreign language writing has much common ground with the literary and cultural traditions of the target culture. This paper tailors the division of manifest intertextuality and constitutive intertextuality by Fairclough to better analyze this case study. Through analysis, this paper considers that no matter what translation strategies a translator takes, he/she should have a strong sense of conversion of readers consciousness. Considering the target text readership, translators can apply various translation strategies in the translation process to maintain, strengthen, weaken and even omit intertextuality in the original text so as to achieve a good reading effect on the whole.

Qian Zhongshu’s translation idea and deconstructionist translation theory are respectively regarded as one of those important developments in Chinese and Western translation theory. As deconstructionism got increasingly popular in China around the turn of 21st century, some scholars in translation studies tried to associate Qian Zhongshu’s translation idea with it. Whether the two are identical thus became an issue causing long-term debate. This paper believes that this debate was actually based on insufficient understanding of some basic but critical terms like “uncertainty of meaning”, “hua” and “e”. “Uncertainty of meaning” in Qian’s theoretical framework is quite different from that term in deconstructionists’ which indicates a contrary idea in meaning conception. In addition, Qian’s illustration of “hua” and “e” in translation indicates the dominance of the original work over the translation. His advocation of smooth translation further betrays a kind of translation violence which deconstructionists work to break up. An improper association of the two will lead to misunderstanding of deconstructionist tranlstion theory as well as of the development of Chinese translation theory. This paper is expected to help in putting the two translation ideas in their right position and this long-term debate to an end.

In the history of Russian literature, the character type of “superfluous man” originates in A. Pushkin’s verse novel Yevgeniy Onegin. The westernized figures in F. Dostoevsky’s five key ideological novels, such as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, Ippolit in The Idiot, Stavrogin in The Demons, Versilov in The Youth and Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov,can be regarded as descendants or variants of “superfluous man”. This kind of “superfluous man” appears in Dostoevsky’s novels mainly as the radical westernizers. They inherit their spiritual father—Onegin’s typical characteristics, such as longing for truth and action at first, falling into confusion and existential boredom without a way out in the prime of life, and even jeopardizing the native people and homeland in the end. Besides these exterior features, Dostoevsky also reveals the immanent cause of their spiritual commonness. In Dostoevsky’s view, the father-and-sons of “superfluous man” as the elites of Russian intelligentsia are attracted by European civilizations and entirely enticed by the western rationalism, which are quite alien to traditional Russian culture, especially to the Russian Orthodoxy. Trusting in those foreign ideas leads to the radical westernizers’ alienation from the native people and traditions. They become spiritual wanderers in their hometown and even do harm to the cultural traditions of Russia. Dostoevsky’s idea of pochvennichestvo is clearly reflected in his complicated feelings of love and hate towards these westernizers as “superfluous man” in his five ideological novels.

In the novel Tonio Kröger, Thomas Mann shows the development of an artist mainly through the experiences of the protagonist and his reflection on the art. For a further understanding of problems concerning the artist in this novel, the artist’s yearning for life and his reflection on bourgeoisie values in the novel are discussed and interpreted in this paper, based on a close reading and with support from other works of Thomas Mann, especially Buddenbrooks and Tristan. Growing up as the son and heir of an old business family, Tonio Kröger has internalized the bourgeois values although he is considered an outsider in the bourgeois world for his artistic orientation. The bourgeois values influence his writing and life even after he has become an artist and eventually it causes his scepticism towards “art for art’s sake”. While Tonio Kröger has been praised and recognized in the art world, he is not content with his art because it affects only a small number of readers and experts. He is also of the opinion that the life of an artist is unnatural if he devotes his whole life to art and thus isolates himself from the real life. As an artist with a bourgeois origin, he instinctively hopes that his art can influence the bourgeois world. All the reflection results in a rethink about the relationship between art and life, which leads him back to his bourgeois origin. In a re-examination and a new identification of the bourgeois values, he is determined to come closer to life and to combine art with life, the bourgeois values with the artistic genius. With the combination of artistic genius and bourgeoisie values, Thomas Mann demonstrates a possibility of further developments for artists in pursuit of “art for art’s sake” and for himself.

From 1918 to 1921, James Joyce’s representative work Ulysses was serialized in The Little Review, a modernist magazine in the United States. Up to now, Critics in China have seldom paid attention to this literary event and the focus of critics abroad has been on the avant-garde views of this literary magazine about literature. Although some scholars have given a brief account of the readers of The Little Review in which Ulysses was serialized, the fact that many readers have been discredited by Margaret Anderson and other critics is ignored. Such readers include the harsh critics and the censors of this novel. They can be divided into explicit readers and implicit ones. The editors of The Little Review (Margaret Anderson and Jane Heep) and some artists in favor of Ulysses attacked the obsolete artistic view, the sole emphasis on moral function of literature and the low artistic taste of these readers. They also elaborated on their own views on art, such as the sublimation of sex through literature, the independence and the originality of literature. The conflict between The Little Review in which Ulysses was serialized and the readers illustrates the dilemma of modernist literature and modernist magazines in social reception.

Based on SIOP (The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) Model instruction theory from the United States of America, this study harnesses its instruction features in combining language contents with subject knowledge, and applies it to the curriculum design of Business English, a course for non-English-major college students, in order to explore a new teaching mode for the course. SIOP Model is theoretically supported by Stephen D. Krashen’s Hypothesis of Comprehensible Input and Lev Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Theory, featuring non-threatening environment, comprehensible input and comprehensive assessment. The researchers have conducted a balanced hierarchy experiment on 60 business English learners from experimental class and control class respectively with different teaching methods (the SIOP instruction mode and the usual instruction mode). They tested and surveyed the two classes at the beginning of the term and end of the term to collect raw data. After horizontal and vertical comparative study of the data in quantitative analysis, and the study of the recording and the manuscript of group interview in experimental class in qualitative analysis, a conclusion is reached that Business English course design and classroom application based on SIOP Model helps students to lower their English classroom anxiety, to improve their English language skills, as well as their business subject knowledge. Therefore, business English curriculum design and classroom application based on SIOP model is proved to be a new successful attempt for the current curriculum design of ESP English, and provides a fresh line of thinking for the expansion and development of foreign language teaching reform.

Taking a pedagogical approach to critical thinking in line with social constructivism, the present study has designed and implemented a Wechat-based micro-course in which information technology and instructional scaffolding combine to build nurturing educational conditions to facilitate critical thinking development. Namely, three types of scaffoldings - multimedia interpretation, teacher modeling and question guide - are incorporated with the messaging, platform and social interactive functions of Wechat. The micro - course for EAP learners is composed of 8 units, each comprising 3 modules-TED speech learning materials, online group discussion and learner reflection via Wechat public platform. Besides Wechat backstage data digging, content analysis is also conducted of triangulated data (participant observation notes, after-viewing group chat-log and focus-group-interview notes). Two findings were obtained: 1) in non-school curriculum course context, utilization rate of public online learning resources is very low with a high dropout rate and shallow learning depth; 2) the full course attendees, though low in number(only 9), succeeded to different degrees in constructing an explicit concept of critical thinking and, under “Wechat-scaffolding” dynamics, their conceptualization process manifests itself in three development phases from distorted thinking experience to reflective correction to self-reinforcement. The above findings imply that social-media-based micro-course, with enhanced interactive activities and teacher presence, may prove to be effective supportive resources for college EAP learners to develop a global concept of critical thinking.