Based on the conceptual structure(CS) and spatial representation (SR), this article mainly analyzes spatial language, spatial cognition, and the syntax and semantics of deictic expressions. It expounds the fact that both the decompositional and hierarchical 3D model and conceptual structure not just constitute the central interface representations of the computational mind but also the general representations of processing cognition, language and actions. Propositional conceptual structure can accommodate information from transmodal spatial representation. Particularly these two representational levels/systems can form integration in object identification, conceptualization and categorization, and establish linkage in formal semantics, spatial concepts and understanding. This paper aims to further clarify the coding mechanism and derivational constraints for conceptual/spatial representations expressing spatial relations. And it also intends to explore a motivated computational mind approach to linguistic-spatial interface.

The study of language aging serves as an important perspective to investigate the human language development and cognitive change, which is also socially and clinically significant to today’s reaction to global population aging. Over the last decade, many Western countries with large elderly populations have initiated many research projects in various aspects of language aging, including cognitive change and language understanding, language production and social interaction, language aging of dementia patients, etc. With the adoption of both linguistic and interdisciplinary methods, these abundant research outputs suggest that the fundamental causes of human language aging include cognitive and physiological aging, neurodegenerative diseases and other health declines. New research projects initiated in China are suggested to foster and build up interdisciplinary research teams, adopt the multimodal corpus approach and collect rich longitudinal data. Additionally, more attention should be paid to the Chinese elders with dementia or other diseases.

This paper first analyses the impact of information technology on interpreting, and reviews the previous researches on interpreting competence which emphasize on interpreters’ language, logic thinking, psychological factors and so on, yet pays little attention to interpreters’ technical competence. It puts forward for the first time the term of “Interpreters’ Technical Competence” and attempts to construct a basic technical competence model based on the PACTE model and expounds further on the “Interpreters’ Technical Competence”. The paper argues that modern interpreters as well as interpreting educators need to adapt to the changes of the technology-driven age and attach great importance to interpreting technology research and application, which is of vital significance to both translation education and translation studies.

Besides indicating colors, the color terms in Shakespeare’s plays are used to describe abstract things, which are endowed with some metaphorical meanings; thus becoming a problem for the translation of Shakespeare’s plays. Taking metaphorical color terms in Shakespeare’s plays as research objects, color terms in Shakespeare’s four tragedies and four comedies are collected and analyzed; researching from the source domain and target domain of the metaphorical mapping and the conditions of mapping formation, this paper explores the translation strategies from the perspective of metaphorical cognition. It is concluded that two strategies can be adopted in translating the metaphorical color terms: one is “ideal mapping equivalence translation”, the other is “zigzag mapping equivalent translation”; cognitive metaphor can be used as a guiding theory for translation.

John Updike has been criticized for being morally dubious in his highly controversial novel, Couples, so this thesis intends to fight for it and display the historic importance of its depicting personal affairs by adopting Kierkegaard’s theory, Spheres of Existence. In the light of Spheres of Existence, it can be found that people in Couples indulge themselves in aesthetic sphere, the endless extramarital sex, and endeavor to establish an erotic utopia out of passion to pursue freedom, but this utopia is deconstructed for their failure in ethical and religious spheres. Its vulnerability demonstrates the author’s ethical position, acts as an irony of Kennedy’s era and gives a lesson to the contemporary people.

Middlesex is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Novel written by Jeffrey Eugenides. The idea of hybridity penetrates throughout the whole novel, especially in the respects of culture, race and gender. This paper aims to analyze the cultural hybridity of Hebraism and Hellenism, racial hybridity brought by immigration and globalization and the gender hybridity of male and female in protagonist Cal. Eugenides shatters the binary oppositions in culture, race and gender and creates a third space for the marginalized to live and develop freely through the cultural, racial and gender hybridity.

From the perspective of literary ethics, this paper discusses through close reading the paradox of Stevens’ ethical identity in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. Stevens’ paradoxical ethical identity stems from his singular, formulaic understanding of identity. The bias towards identity entraps Stevens into ethical conflicts and contributes to his life tragedy. The exploration of Stevens’ paradoxical identity and its cause in this paper aims at revealing the internal paradox of a singularized identity and appreciating Ishiguro’s disapproval of Thatcherism in the British society in the 1980s and his pursuit of open, inclusive, multi-faceted identities.

The paper intends to analyze how the three main characters in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey correspond to three “I”s of Wilde and reflect his aestheticism. The authoress firstly concludes the personalities of three characters, and points out that through three characters Wilde synthesizes his aesthetic morality: on one hand, he advocates amorality in aestheticism, insisting on the individuality of art, and opposes Victorian morality; on the other hand, as a Catholic, he is deeply influenced by Catholic conventional morality.

Through the statistics of nearly 100 sentence fragments in English writing with respect to their information structure types (the relation between fragments and other information), semantic distribution and their proportion, the paper makes a qualitative study about the characteristics and distribution of sentence fragments appearing in the writing of Chinese college students. Then the paper, via questionnaire and interview, tries to find the answers to these two questions. (1) Is sentence fragment rhetorically motivated or a linguistic error? (2) Are students aware of this linguistic error? The discoveries are surprising: Almost all fragments are linguistic errors rather than rhetorical deviation; 90% of the students are not aware of their own mistakes. Then give attribution analysis can help Chinese students to find out the reasons why such mistakes happen and make the right judgment in their English writing and they can Consciously use various rhetorical means to achieve the rhetoric purpose.

Knowledge of English collocations plays an important role in promoting learners’ language ability in the business context. Little attention is paid to collocations in Business English instruction, making collocations one of the most problematic areas for learners. This article aims to address the issue through a corpus-based cognitive analysis of the collocational features of some lexical items from the domain of Business English. On the basis of the analysis, the article argues for an effective corpus-based approach to business English collocations that involves teaching certain types of collocations by considering the cognitive factors which influence the collocational process.