Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the central theme of modern critical literary theory has developed along two important lines: the separate practices of the Russian Formalists and Anglo-American New Critics who turned their attention from the content to the form of literary works, and the paradigmatic influences of Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralist linguistics—which resulted in semiology/semiotics—on literary and cultural studies. In view of the overlapping interests of modern linguists and literary scholars, and the mutual permeation of linguistic and literary theories, this paper focuses on the intersection of these two fields in the following aspects: (1) the linguistic engagement with literary works and critical literary studies; (2) linguists as critical thinkers, literary critics and theorists; (3) literary critics and theorists as critical semioticians and linguists; and (4) general linguistic theory as “critical theory” or simply “theory” interested in the modalities of production and reception of meaning rather than the meaning or value of texts, both literary and non-literary. It concludes that a comprehensive linguistic theory must include reflections on literature, and an integrated critical literary theory should incorporate linguistic-philosophical reflections on language. Indeed, many shifts in literary studies are related to paradigmatic turns in linguistics, and a series of issues that perplex the study of literature (the theory of literature, literary study/studies, literary theory, critical theory, theory/meta-theory, and criticism/meta-criticism, etc.) can be elaborated from a modern linguistics perspective.

The year of 2020 saw the global occurrence of COVID-19 pandemic. In China’s fighting against the coronavirus, the national emergency system of language services has become a hot topic of scrutiny and debate. This paper is intended to define the concept of emergency language services and review the international and domestic research developments in language and emergency control. It puts forth five proposals concerning how to rapidly build and develop China’s system for emergency language services, including language service infrastructure, language policy and planning, language service capacity building, development of the national standard for emergency language services, and the training of professionals for emergency language services. The article concludes by emphasising the importance of our national language service capability, and recommends that the emergency system of language services should be improved as soon as COVID-19 pandemic is over in order to contribute to crisis management. This paper has been written in tribute to all of the Chinese people fiercely and tirelessly engaged in battle against COVID-19 pandemic.

National emergency management capability is the key sign of the modernization of national governance capacity. Emergency language service is an essential part of the national emergency management system. It is the cornerstone to ensure efficient communication, life assistance, and public opinion guidance. China has always attached importance to emergency language services and incorporated them into the outline of the national language development plan for the new era to advance the nation’s emergency language construction. The sudden occurrence of the coronavirus, COVID-19, in late 2019 provided us with an opportunity to review emergency language services and improve emergency language management planning and construction, which has attracted scholars’ research interest. However, few studies have discussed the subject attributes, research topics, and research paradigm of emergency language services from a subject matter perspective. Therefore, the article takes the realistic language needs for the prevention and control of the coronavirus epidemic, from the perspective of emergency language services, discusses the subject attributes, research topics, and research directions of emergency language services, and proposes ten major research topics for emergency language services, together with three research paradigms. This article maintains that emergency language service research is promising, and it aims to provide multidimensional perspectives to meet the language needs of public emergencies and enhance the level of national emergency language capability.

Since December 2019, a new type of pneumonia has occurred in China and around the world. In the early stage, multiple names for the disease emerged. Some of these names are inaccurate or even discriminatory, with the potential to adversely affect public opinion and even epidemic prevention and control. Recently, the World Health Organization officially referred to the disease as “COVID-19”, while the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses has proposed naming the virus itself “SARS-CoV-2”. While the establishment of clinical terminology for novel coronavirus is objective and accurate, the nomenclature “SARS-CoV-2” is still controversial. This paper discusses the naming of the virus, the disease and the surrounding controversies from the perspective of naming norms for medical terms, including some discussions of emergency language services. In order to accurately name the virus and disease and avoid misleading the public, we recommend that experts in relevant medical disciplines as well as linguists actively participate in naming this new virus and the disease and put forth their own views in order to facilitate the global public’s accurate understanding of the disease.

Following the text-oriented and culture-oriented paradigms, studies on translation criticism are now heading towards a new paradigm, namely, the translators’ behaviour-oriented paradigm. The text-oriented paradigm focuses on intra-translation issues, and the culture-oriented paradigm focuses on extra-translation factors. Though the two paradigms once played positive roles in certain contexts, they gradually began to exhibit limitations and deficiencies. The translators’ behaviour-oriented paradigm takes both intra-translation issues and extra-translation factors into account, combining the evaluation of translators’ behaviour and the quality of translated texts, the static analysis of text and the dynamic study of context, and prescriptive and descriptive studies. The new paradigm was first proposed a decade ago. In 2019, which marks the 10th year of its development, the author interviewed its advocator Professor Zhou Lingshun, who reviewed the development of the theory, reiterated the significance of constructing native translation theories for international translation studies, clarified several issues susceptible to misunderstandings and proposed specific suggestions for further studies. The translators’ behaviour-oriented paradigm and the relevant theoretical framework constructed by Professor Zhou is now being viewed as one of the representatives of native translation theories, which will certainly promote the development of translation studies and translation criticism.

Chinese martial art films often feature elements of both traditional Chinese culture and martial arts, which constitute the primary selling points when they are screened abroad. As such, the caption translator must ensure that these elements are properly treated so as to enable a positive overseas reception. This, however, is an under-researched topic both in and outside of China. Javier Franco Aixelá’s taxonomy of translation strategies for treating culture-specific items requires modification before it can be aptly applied to Chinese-English subtitling. Using this amended version as an analytical tool, this article seeks to examine the subtitling strategies employed by Linda Jaivin when rendering the Chinese martial art terms in Wong Kar-wai’s film The Grandmaster into English. The quantitative analysis of 54 Chinese martial art terms along with their corresponding English forms indicates that Linda Jaivin employs cultural conservation strategies more often than cultural substitution strategies. The qualitative analysis further demonstrates that she translates Chinese martial art terms in a flexible and resourceful manner, thereby ensuring that the English subtitles are both easily accessible to Western audiences and instrumental in popularizing Chinese martial art culture in the West. The case study has important implications for promoting traditional Chinese culture abroad via the medium of cinema.

The Remains of the Day, the third novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, demonstrates simplicity, subtlety and elegance in its narration. Told from the perspective of the butler Stevens, the novel portrays his reminiscence and the events that occurred to him during the journey. Using techniques drawn from narratology and the close textual reading advocated by New Criticism, this paper argues that the personal memory of the protagonist has a retrospective and reconstructive importance on shaping and understanding both the present and the past. Stevens’ fragmented and misplaced recollections, as well as his unreliable narration, highlight the ways in which history has been filtered through the lens of memory. Meanwhile, the narrative chasm between the protagonist and other characters reveals to the reader the dialectical relationship between history and memory. In addition, Stevens’ meditative reflection on the past intertwines with events experienced at present on the road, which propel him to reach an epiphany regarding the tragic moments of the past, render him a better understanding of the tie between personal life and historical moments, and offer him a positive stance on the future when making way back home.

Tracking EFL users’ strategy employment in performing language test tasks has been a serious concern in language testing since the early 1990s. However, in-depth, process-oriented research is still limited in this line of inquiry. This paper details an investigation into the strategies employed and the patterns exhibited by two groups of Chinese EFL users when processing a text-based grammar-completion task in a think-aloud experiment. Four general types of strategies have been identified, and differences in the frequency and type of strategy use were found among the two groups. An in-depth analysis revealed three typical text processing patterns with different levels of efficacy for the task. Among these, two patterns (M1 & M2) were deemed to be more efficient for task completion. The third (M3)—which could possibly be affected by learning behaviour—was found to have a debilitating effect on learners’ task performance. Textual-level backtracking, logical analysis of unit coherence, retrieval of formulaic expressions, structural analysis, and multi-strategy interactions were identified as playing important roles within efficient text processing and task accomplishment. These findings not only attest to the validity of text-based grammar-completion tasks in NMET and deepen the understanding of Chinese EFL language users’ problem-solving habits as influenced by their learning behaviour, but also demonstrate an exemplary case for exploring efficient text-processing models.

Interfaces in Grammar, published in 2019 as one of volumes of the Language Faculty and Beyond (LFAB) series by John Benjamins Publishing Company, constitutes an important response to the increasing interest in interface studies on language. In this volume, the emphasis has been placed on the interactions between different grammatical components, which are believed to be closely related to the internal structure of the language faculty. This volume is an important contribution to the theoretical and empirical study of the interactions of grammatical components in Chinese and other languages. It addresses issues such as anaphora universals over non-isomorphic languages, the central role that attraction and repulsion play in the grammar of natural languages, the linking of resumptive pronouns to the periphery, the inner-outer dichotomy of reflexive adverbials, the semantic effects that prosodic features have on the output of the computational system at the Conceptual-Intentional interface, the V-copy construction in Chinese, the syntax of the scope indicator either and its syntactic relation with disjunction, the negators bu (不) and mei (没) and their interactions with focus and event quantification, VP-ellipsis and null object constructions, child language acquisition of the mapping of nominal structure, word order and referentiality, as well as second language acquisition of syntax-semantics interface properties in Chinese NP₁ NP₂ V constructions.