The present article analyzes and discusses the issue of system construction for cultivating the innovative foreign language talents from the perspective of reconstructing the development model of China. The important task and the glorious mission of foreign language education in China is to cultivate the internationalized innovative foreign language talents who have the the powerful basic foreign language skills, perfect structure of knowledge, innovative thinking ability, strong capability of analysing and solving the problems, broad international perspectives, insightful understanding of operation rules of international affairs, ability to participate international exchanges and competition, skillful capacity to do cross-cultural communications. In accordance with the theory of complex dynamics system, cultivating the innovative foreign language talents is a complex systematic project which requires innovativeness and creativeness and shall be explored promoted via practice. For the cultivation of innovative foreign language talents, the system construction is the most important enterprise which lies in its consistency, continuity and compulsion and poses the rigid constraints as the top-level design. The systems, such as small-class teaching, flexible enrollment system, credit system, cross-subject system, international student exchange, reward regulations for innovation, should be established and run in the foreign language education practice, in order to ensure the training of innovative foreign language talents.

This interview with Dr. Yu Hongbing, the associate editor of Semiotica, the managing editor of Chinese Semiotic Studies, the associate editor of International Journal of Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric, discusses the current trends and perspectives of semiotic studies published on international journals. In the discussion of the internationalization of Chinese semiotics, this interview emphasizes that the semiotic research with Chinese characteristics is not equal to the revival of ancient Chinese tradition. In the discussion of the so-called “semiotic crisis”, “semiotics of pervasiveness”, Dr. Yu Hongbing pointed out, “this is not a crisis in a strict sense, but rather the embodiment of semiotics advantage. Semiotics can be regarded as a unique methodological tool, which can equip us with a unique cross-cutting perspective, linking to a wide range of areas, such as language, social convention, religion, literature and other seemingly loosely unrelated human behaviors.” In addition, this interview also reviews the semiotic research methods and Sebeok views on semiotics. It is expected to inform Chinese academia of the theoretical and methodological scholarship of international semiotic studies for a better academic conversation.

Based on the Appraisal Theory framework of Martin andWhite, this study compares the application of appraisal resources in the human rights reports released by the State Council of China and the U.S. State Department from 2010 to 2016. It is revealed that the State Department of the U.S. has used significantly more appraisal resources, being especially adept at the application of “disclaim” and “attribution” words. A strategic combination of “propriety” and “disclaim” resources is also identified in the American reports, together with a heavy reliance on “intensification” resources. A false picture of serious human rights conditions in China is therefore painted, which indicates an apparent hegemonic discourse feature. A conspicuous lack of consideration in failing to cite the majority of the “attribution” sources is also identified in the study. In comparison, The State Council of China is found to have used evidently fewer appraisal resources, except for “proclaim” and “quantification” words and expressions. The Chinese reports have been found to be more concrete and substantial in the citation of “attribution” sources, but less skillful with the separate or combined usage of “disclaim” and “propriety” resources, a phenomenon seemingly related to the general “conflict-avoiding” Chinese culture as well as a lack of confidence in international debates. In light of the above research results, the Chinese government is advised to examine and borrow certain refined appraisal strategies used by its foreign counterparts when drafting the human rights reports. An increased tactical utilization of linguistic devices in foreign-oriented discourse is deemed advisable and essential for both the deconstruction of international discourse hegemony and the elevation of China’s international speaking rights.

Based on the Appraisal Theory in SFG, guided by the multimodal analytical framework of attitudinal meaning (an interdisciplinary theoretical construction of social semiotics and cognitive psychology) in video discourse, the paper conducts a multimodal attitudinal analysis of the self-made mini corpus of the traffic discourses of British TV public service advertising by means of Multimodal Analysis Video (MMAV), a software used for multimodal discourse (video) analysis. The study reveals the SPS progressive pattern of the traffic discourse of British TV public service advertising: Situation-Problem-Solution. It argues, from the perspective of the choice and allocation of the multimodal attitudinal resources, the triggers of the attitudinal meaning mainly take the form of visual resources, and the attitudinal expressions frequently put priority on the verbal language, intonation and facial expressions. As far as the Attitudinal appraisal is concerned, the videos generally begin with pictures of positive appraisal, followed by the ones of extreme negative appraisal with disastrous traffic crashes shocking the audiences, and end with positive appraisal with some imaginary happy pictures or friendly traffic reminders. The whole process is full of dramatic conflicts and contrasts, with the high purpose of embedding the strong sensuous contrasts into the audience’s minds, thus enabling them to change their attitudes initiatively.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, written by Washington Irving, is a story with the Gothic artistic elements of a mysterious, imaginarily haunted countryside. Based on the study of the language of the translated text of Eileen Chang, the thesis aims to explore the strategy of mixed use of common sayings, four-character idioms and hyphen, with which the “Gothic” artistic elements are reinterpreted. Eileen Chang, as proficient as Washington Irving in mixed use of words with different flavors, successfully catches the rhythm of Washington Irving’s prosaic narrative language, builds up the idyllic “Gothic” background, reinterprets the timid, pedantic, ridiculous hero and intensifies the Gothic frightening atmosphere of the story. The translated The Legend of Sleepy illustrates the initiative of Eileen Chang as a translator and her language creativity as well, which reflects the real appeal of a piece of translated literary work. Literary translation is an art of language and the language creativity of the translator to reinterpret the artistic style of the source text decides the aesthetic value and vitality of a piece of translated literary work.

Howard Goldblatt is the most noted and the most productive English translator of modern Chinese novels. However, by careful reading and analysis of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out written by the first Chinese Nobel Prize writer Mo Yan, three categories of mistranslations in this novel are discovered: 1) the mistranslation caused by the translator’s lack of thorough understanding of the cultural background in the source language; 2) the mistranslation caused by lack of discourse analysis and insufficient grasp of the situational context; 3) the mistranslation caused by negligence of numbers, names, consistence and other detailed errors. Malinowski, the founder of modern context theory, put forward the triarchic theory of contexts, which are “the context of culture”, “the situational context” and “co-text”. By catering to the co-working of the three types of contexts, we can improve the accuracy of the translation as well as reducing information deviation and loss. Meanwhile, this paper aims to re-translate the mistranslations in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by employing the triarchic theory of contexts, thus hopefully it can provide some meaningful references to the further development and transmission of Chinese literature in the western countries.

Modern narratives reorchestrate the desire-laden journey in which the subjective makes attempts for self redemption in modern context. Keenly experiencing the original trauma that he undergoes when bidding farewell with “childhood”, the subjective tries to find comfort in the social language. In the grand masquerade that modern culture enacts, the subjective revels in the indulgence of the desire signification and dances with it, disguising himself in the splendid apparels of modernity. The subjective is hereby turned into a disconnected signifier, floating and tripping aimlessly in the linguisitic system. And with it, the true ego vanishes into meaninglessness, his self-redemption journey turning out to be a ticket to death. Try as he might, out of the desperate passion of “death drive”, towards that lost “thing”, the subjective can never escape his destiny imposed by social language. However, if contemporary humanity is well aware of his “original intention”, and therefore take a nostagic look upon the lost childhood, he might circumvent the misleading development conceptions. At close reading of modern English classics, the paper attempts to disclose the true nature of subjective in the modern sphere, and herein makes new assessments of modernity, with relevant philosophical propositions suggested by postmodernist scholars like Lacan, ?i?ek and Foucault.

Kenzaburo Oe is the flagman of Japanese postwar literature. The social issues needed to be solved by his generation are the sequelae of Japanese civilization since the Meiji Restoration and the reconstruction of Japan after the war. Kenzaburo Oe opposed to follow the western development mode blindly, and advocated that Japan should build the development mode of itself. In order to achieve the Japanese development mode, it needs to enlighten the people firstly, which is consistent with Lu Xun's thought of “Liren”.The literature of Kenzaburo Oe was influenced by Lu Xun, and he changed the image of Ah Q in Lu Xun’s works, creating the Agui of Japan in Aghwee the Sky Monster. This paper tries to reinterpret the image of “Agui” through the method of text analysis to confirm the connotation and essence of the thought of Kenzaburo Oe’s literature.

By reviewing Zhao Peng’s book A Discursive Approach to the Historical Change of “Learning from Lei Feng”, this paper highlights the point that (critical) discourse analysis needs to attend to the issue of the interplay of discourses. It will show that this reviewed book made an initiative attempt at the historical interplay between discourses, and at the interaction of this historical interplay of discourses with the development and change in social life, thus leading the study of history of discourse in the Chinese community of critical discourse analysis.

The study of numeral classifier constructions in Mandarin Chinese is mainly represented by two groups of ideas: the division of count classifiers and mass classifiers by Cheng & Sybesma（1998, 2005）in contrast to the classification of counting classifiers and measure classifiers proposed by Rothstein（2009, 2010）and Li（2013）. This article introduces Li’s book Numeral Classifiers in Chinese: The Syntax-Semantics Interface（2013）mainly with his study on Chinese classifiers of counting and measure, and then makes a brief comment.