“The Action Plan for Building World-Class Universities and Disciplines” is a significant plan in the development of China higher education, and it offers opportunities and challenges for the discipline of foreign language and literature. By means of literature review, this paper discusses the connotation of world-class university and discipline, and the connotation and development strategies of world-class foreign language and literature discipline, so as to give some enlightenment to the building of world-class universities and disciplines, and the development of foreign language and literature discipline. On the basis of reviewing relevant research both at home and abroad, this study first points out that world-class university involves world-class students, teachers and researchers, academic research, university management and social services, among which students, faculty, and research are the core components. Second, this study claims that world-class discipline is mainly embodied in the quality of talents, research, faculty and services, while first-echelon discipline management provides the support of system and resources concerned. Third, the building of foreign language and literature discipline is essentially the production, spread and application of knowledge, discipline management runs through the process of talents cultivation and the development of academic research, faculty and social services. Finally, this study probes into the development strategies of world-class foreign language and literature discipline from the above-mentioned aspects.

This paper, particularly focusing on the pitch of prosodic words, has conducted a contrastive study on the structure of prosodic words in English and Mandarin . This paper reports a Mandarin monologue speech corpus-study, an experimental phonetic attempt to conduct a study on the pitch of trisyllabic prosodic words in Mandarin monologue. In addition, taking the characteristics of English prosodic words into consideration, the paper makes a contrastive analysis of prosodic words in English and Mandarin. This study finds that the pitch of trisyllabic prosodic words in Mandarin is inevitably affected by structural factors. As far as the left syllable is concerned, the grammatical category, prosodic hierarchical boundary and the position of the intonational phrase where the syllable is located, the mid syllable and the right syllable may have influences on the pitch contour of the left syllable. As to the mid syllable, the grammatical category, the left syllable, the right syllable and the position of the intonational phrase where the syllable is located may have influences on the pitch contour of the mid syllable. As for the right syllable, the prosodic hierarchical boundary where the syllable is located and the mid syllable may have effects on the pitch contour of the right syllable. Different from the previous findings of the study on read corpus, this study shows that the mid syllable not only has dissimilatory effects but also has assimilatory effects on the pitch of its preceding syllable. The left syllable has anticipatory effects on the onset pitch of the mid syllable and the right syllable has coarticulation effects on the offset pitch of the mid syllable.

Rhetorical criticism enjoys a long history of studies, and the research in this field upsurged at the end of 20th century and the beginning of 21st century. In the article, the author aims to investigate the developmental trends in this filed at home and abroad by a literature review of the studies in the past two decades. It has been proved in the research that domestic studies can be classified into four types—introducing theories of western rhetorical criticism in the U.S., building new models of western rhetorical criticism, comparing theories of Chinese and Western rhetorical criticism, and applying western rhetorical criticism into domestic use; while studies abroad in this field, especially in the U. S., keep deepening and upgrading its theories on the basis of its profundity, and enlarging its research scope. A literature review of western rhetorical criticism in the past two decades can provide some academic nutrition to domestic research and deliver certain implicational meaning to it. In the future, more studies should be carried out to systematize the theory of western rhetorical criticism and to incorporate the updated theory into the analysis of rhetorical practice in our country, thus expressing the strong interpretative power of western rhetorical criticism.

Language is a special social phenomenon and is always on the changing process with the development of society. During the evolving process of language, new language varieties will continuously emerge due to the changes of some social and cultural factors. Cyber language is universally accepted as one type of the social language varieties. Basically, cyber language can be treated as a complex adaptive system which is influenced by the interaction between users’ cognition, social culture and the surrounding environments. Thus it is safe to say that cyber language is always undergoing a dynamic evolving process. With the usage-based language model as the theoretical foundation, this paper proposes a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) approach to analyze the expression of Appreciation to explore the complex, dynamic and nonlinear development of cyber language from the angle of meaning construction, grammaticalization and functional adaption respectively. It is found that the expression of Appreciation is experiencing adaptively a semantic connotations development and a process of grammatical functions expansion as well. This paper suggests that the emergence and development of cyber language is a novel and trendy social language phenomenon. Network language can achieve its process and evolution under the huge impact of social changes and social promotions. When faced with the changing surroundings, cyber language itself enjoys a timely adaption and responsive development to keep up with the new environments, which reflects the basic principle of language development, namely, language changes with the development of society.

In the process of Chinese Literature’s “Going-out” project, it is typical of the dilemma faced by the external translation and dissemination of modern Chinese literature. The Renditions Series serves as a classical case of providing an effective model of “literature’s overseas distribution”. The successful experience of its translating-cum-disseminating model can be concluded as follows: all the translators are from China and overseas with cross-cultural background; the selection of translation is stylistically far-ranging among the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and feminine literature in modern China is highly valued; translating method aims at convoying the original literary aesthetics, and disseminating channels are manifold; the foreign recipients are common and professional readers; the eminent effects can be proved by its considerable sales, library collections and acceptance in the target countries and regions. From the successful model of translation of Renditions Series, five implications can be made out for the modern Chinese literature’s “Going-global”: domestic and overseas translators cooperate well with all-round cultural identities; the selection holds onto diversification and literary character; various spreading channels should be broadened; target readers should be accurately located and continuously widened; translating and disseminating effects can be focused on and analyzed, so as to adjust and improve the corresponding sections in the model.

Shlesinger (1998) first proposed that corpus-based interpreting studies (CIS) should be regarded as an offshoot of corpus-based translation studies (CTS). In China, owing to the development and compilation of interpreting corpora, CIS has gained momentum since 2007. To review the past achievements in this regard, the present paper first summarizes four readily compiled interpreting corpora. Then, based on the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CKNI), it conducts the statistics mainly on relevant published papers in Chinese Social Science and Index (CSSCI) journals. Next, it pinpoints a bibliometric analysis on the data by taking into account three parameters, namely, H index, reference citation and their distribution. Then, it makes a detailed review and comments on the background of CIS and its paradigm, theoretical interpretation of CIS and the research areas of CIS, standards of developing interpreting corpora and solutions to difficulties in compilation of interpreting corpora, research orientations including topics and objects. At present, although CIS have attained preliminary findings and conclusions, it has mainly relied on the theoretical and analytical frameworks of Systemic Functional Grammar and its utility in CIS, given the fact that it has introduced few interdisciplinary studies. As a result, CIS do not take full advantage of the paradigm of corpus linguistics nor explore into such research topics as features of interpretation, interpreters’ identities and interpreting styles. Finally, regarding future studies, the paper proposes that CIS should foreground the relevance of improving the mechanism of interpreting corpus compilation in order to gain ground in new research methods and perspectives.

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016 has been awarded to Bob Dylan, an American rock singer and folk poet. It comes as a big surprise, even though the winner has been nominated repeatedly. The main reason for the surprise is because of Dylan's identity as a popular artist, since the Nobel Prize in Literature has long been closely associated with the so-called mainstream serious literature. As a matter of fact, Bob Dylan deserves the prize in every way in terms of his contribution to the contemporary culture, his great achievement and powerful influence. Regarding this phenomenon, this paper illustrates the positive significance of Dylan’s award from several aspects, including the origin and original features of poetry, the historical changes of literary concept, the close relationship between literature and art, the vitality of popular culture, etc. A discussion is also given to the world’s reflection on literature, or the attributes, function and mode of transmission of literature in the academic field triggered by Dylan’s award.

The Hunger Games, a current popular dystopian fiction written by American writer Suzanne Collins, reveals the social crises of the post-capitalism time. It stirs up the harsh criticism for its many violent depictions, but it is the depictions of violence that make it special. From a critical viewpoint of aesthetics of violence, this paper tries to use the theory of violence of post-Marxist Slavoj Zizek to analyze and dig out that the essential root of the crises in the novel is the capitalism system itself in the post capitalist era. The extreme desire of capitalism is to occupy extreme capital space that leads to the building up of the totalitarian governance at the base of spatial violent politics in the novel. The spatial isolation becomes the most necessary device for making biggest profits; while violence becomes the most effective security to remain the spatial isolation. The close union of multiple violence and spatial isolation becomes the strongest foundation of the totalitarianism of capitalist society. Then it becomes the impressive theme of the aesthetics of violence of the novel—how the governed can employ the violence of the other’s to break the spatial isolation and destroy the totalitarian system of the social mainstream to win back their own liberty. Therefore, the aesthetics of violence in the novel is full of power of critical aesthetics with violence against violence. Based on such critical aesthetics of violence, the forces of self-consciousness and self-activity of the disciplined others are awakening for their subjective rights on the way when violence against violence.

Yeats’ realistic poetry is often imprinted with the mark of its era. By means of the poetic language, Yeats expressed his profound reflection on the historic events of the time. In so doing, a dialogue has comes into existence between literature and history. This paper attempts to consider in detail how the dialogue between literature and history operates in Yeats’ realistic poem “Easter, 1916,” as a case study, under the scrutiny of the new historicist approach. Through the textual analysis of this poetic work, this paper discusses the dialogic relationship of the poem and history by elaborating on how this poetic work becomes historicized and how this historic event becomes textualized. Within this dialogue, the reciprocal relation of this poem and the contemporary society is brought under further examination. This paper argues that this poem harbors subversive force which can be articulated by the poetic text in this dialogue between literature and history. However, this subversive force will be eventually contained by the British power structure that has pervaded and dominated the Irish society. By the uprising and revolution of the Irish people, Ireland would attain to the goal of political de-Anglicization by becoming a sovereign state and with the advent of this political independence Irish literature could also achieve an independent status. However, this paper concludes that Yeats has realized the suppressed beauty of this independence because Irish literature would still have to be composed in the English language which, however, remains to be the product of the British power structure.

As the exponent of the aesthetic movement, Oscar Wilde has paid almost excessive attention to the aestheticization of indoor spaces. For him, the humanly-decorated house offers a sense of order and reason, which has, to a large extent, assisted the formation of man’s ego and identity, while the outside world, filled with horror, confusion and anxiety, is always associated with the loss of subjectivity and individuality. This topophilia of his is well manifested in some of his more renowned works, while its fullest expression can no doubt be found in The Decay of Lying, where he would complain in Vivian’s voice how “one becomes abstract and impersonal” out of doors. In his one-act tragedy Salomé, however, the event which was traditionally believed to take place within Herod’s palace was deliberately set outside the doors. To a certain degree, this arrangement has set the tone for the whole tragedy. Through the employment of the outdoor spaces and the deliberate confusion of the Inside with the Outside, Oscar Wilde has successfully created an atmosphere of madness, absurdity and horror that has haunted Salomé from the very beginning: the outdoor spaces, in facilitating the identification of Salome with the image of Maenad, give the play a touch of madness; Salome’s deliberate attempts at confusing the Inside with the Outside, principally motivated by the male gaze that permeates the indoor spaces and costs Salome her subjectivity, was plagued with futility and fruitlessness, from whence came the horror of homelessness that has consummated her tragedy.

The types of teachers’ written feedback and their effects have been the focuses of researches on feedback in EFL writing. This paper aims at providing some references and suggestions on the effective feedback types in EFL writing in China through reviewing the recent ten-year researches on teachers’ written feedback in EFL writing in China from the perspectives of feedback source, content, types and comments, and exploring the future development of the researches from research design, feedback types, and research perspectives and so on.Literature research shows that the answers remain controversial on which kind of feedback source, feedback content, feedback type, and feedback comments are the best to students in EFL writing. However, the supplementary roles of peer feedback and electronic feedback are well recognized; form-focused feedback combined with content-focused feedback is popular with the students; the demand for the degree of feedback directness and feedback comments varies with the level of students. Compared to the past, recent domestic researches on teachers’ feedback are more various in research methods, more diversified in research perspectives and extended more in research content. Future domestic research on teachers’ feedback needs to make efforts on designing the experiment, expanding the feedback content, combining different feedback types and broadening research perspectives in order to further verify the effectiveness of teachers’ written feedback.