As Chinese literature is becoming increasingly disseminated across the world, the translators’ cultural outlook and translation perspectives have attracted the attention of academia. As can clearly be seen, the cultural outlook determines the value orientation of the translated work, while the translation perspective shapes its aesthetic style. The King of Chess, a translated work by the Australian sinologist and translator Bonnie S. McDougall, not only takes the orientation of the Chinese culture as its unique cultural stance into account, but is also faithful to the source language and its graceful diction. With a focus on the strategies and skills that McDougall adopted in her translation, the present paper is a tentative attempt to analyze how the translator accomplished her “cultural root-seeking” and “aesthetic transplantation” journey of translation using a number of examples, as well as to explore the practical significance it can provide for Chinese literature in its “going global” to the outside.

There appear to be dozens of semantic theories ranging over a hundred years, among which cognitive semantics is the most advanced. Talmy (2000a/b) constructed and classified a dynamic conceptual system, and discussed its processes and linguistic representation with the main emphasis on five schematic systems, including the window of attention and the figure-ground (perspective and salience) relationship, the space and movement, quantification and boundaries, schema and macro-events, as well as force, dynamics, and interactions. This paper attempts to expound his first theme and application from the perspective of embodied cognitive semantics. We have found these ideas to be closely related to “embodiment”, but this is not reflected in the name “cognitive semantics” itself, not to mention Marxist dialectical materialism or postmodernist views of humanism, irrationalism, pluralism, and the like. Although Talmy sometimes accepted Chomskyan linguistic universalism, we do not consider this to be appropriate. Accordingly, we propose “embodied cognitive semantics” as a complement.

Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics emphasizes experience and cognition, and is the version of cognitive linguistics that has been transformed by Chinese scholars. The current paper traces the history of linguistics as a starting point, and investigates the characteristics and value of Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics by examining the literature and clarifying historical events. Specifically, it focuses on three aspects of Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics by first investigating its theoretical nature based on “a certain linguistics” and, second, by investigating its universality based on universal grammar. Third, the paper investigates its humanistic nature based on linguistic humanism. This paper aims to overcome the disadvantages resulting from the imitation of Western theories, to promote the spirit of theoretical transformation, and to facilitate the development of linguistics.

From the perspective of semantic and stylistic coherence, this paper first illustrates the unique textual coherence and stylistic effects produced by the opposition and contrast between free indirect discourse (FID) and direct speech in stream of consciousness literature, followed by a case study of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. It then compares two well-known translations of this novel in the Chinese language, and investigates the methods used to represent the characters’ speech in the process of translation. Based on the contrastive analysis of some typical examples of speech presentation in these two different translations and languages, it was found that many translators of the novel appeared to lack awareness of the semantic and stylistic coherence constructed by the different modes of speech presentation in the of stream of consciousness source text, as the translators often tended to simplify the language and the literary style, and merely simplified the language features of the source text in an attempt to make the translated texts easier to be read and interpreted by the target language readers. However, this approach greatly distorted the stream of consciousness style, and damaged the originally impressive narrative effect that was achieved by the opposition and contrast between FID and direct speech in the source text.

Five novels by the famous contemporary American female writer, Joyce Carol Oates, including Black Water, Blonde, Zombie, My Sister, My Love, and The Falls, are drawn directly from and are based on five major events in American society, namely the Kennedy-Chappaquiddick scandal, the mysterious death of Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe, the case of the Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, the murder of the American child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey, and the “Love Canal” pollution case. Adopting the perspectives of literary sociology and literary psychology, this paper attempts to analyze how Oates transforms these social events into literary works of universal significance, to explore the connection and tension between Oates’s novels and American social history, to analyze the strong realistic concern and critical spirit reflected in her novels, and to investigate the author’s profound insights into and observations of human nature.

This paper discusses the “Theory Peculiar to Language” (TPTL) proposed by Professor Pan Wenguo, a famous linguist, language educator, and senior translator. Based on his theory, this paper discusses how to identify the characteristics and rules of a language via a contrastive study, how to establish TPTL, and how to derive a corresponding approach to teaching a language. This paper also discusses the basic principles of TPTL, and specifically analyzes the characteristics of Chinese and its TPTL, as well as the corresponding Chinese teaching approach. Finally, the paper analyzes the importance of TPTL in language teaching, and argues that the determination of the approach to language teaching, particularly the approach to teaching a foreign language, should focus on the foreign-language teaching environment in which the interference of the mother tongue (Chinese) occurs, and should be based on an in-depth understanding of the rules that are peculiar to Chinese and to the foreign language that is being taught, as well as the unique cognitive rules that apply to students of different ages in a monolingual area. The conclusion of the paper is that there are no universally applicable teaching approaches, and that teaching approaches are unique. Therefore, a contrastive approach to foreign-language teaching with Chinese characteristics is proposed.

Dynamic assessment (DA) is based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of mind, and provides new horizons for second language (L2) instruction and assessment by integrating these concepts and using the process of assessment to develop learners’ potential. The current study aims to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of DA in college English listening classes. Mixed methods were adopted in the process of the pre-test-intervention-post-test. Based on the data analysis of the test scores, questionnaires, reflection journals, and interview transcripts, the research results were as follows: 1) Systematically designed DA can be applied effectively in English listening classes in college; 2) the abovementioned DA can effectively promote the development of Chinese college English learners’ listening comprehension ability via mediational interactions; and 3) DA is conducive to guiding learners to select effective listening strategies reasonably, thus improving their overall language abilities, and giving them a sense of self-efficacy. In addition, both mediators and learners had positive attitudes toward DA, which contributed to creating a harmonious atmosphere in the classroom during their interactions. The findings provide empirical evidence for the use of DA in China’s college English listening classes, as well as implications for further research and practice.

Teacher-student interactions are an important mechanism for learning in foreign-language classrooms, and teacher talk has an immediate effect on the quality of teacher-student interactions. By adopting the sociocultural theory, the study investigated the scaffolding function of teacher talk in the development of students’ thinking in a university EFL classroom. Taking the classroom discourse analysis approach, this study analyzed the teacher-student interactions in an intensive English reading class at a university in the North China area over a semester, and examined the functions, processes, and features of teacher scaffolding. The main findings of the study were: 1) Teacher talk provided scaffolding for students to engage in thinking activities, which deepened and expanded the students’ thinking; 2) the construction and withdrawal of scaffolding were spontaneous, real-time processes, as the premise of effective scaffolding is that the teacher is clear about the students’ current experiences and cognitive levels, as well as their potential developmental space; and 3) the development of students’ thinking should be the goal of instruction in foreign-language classrooms in which teacher talk plays the key role of scaffolding. This study has important implications for teacher-student interactions and for developing students’ thinking in EFL classrooms.

As widely accepted in the existing literature, evidentiality is a domain that encodes the source of information for a given statement. Studies of the topic have been fruitful in recent years. Based on a survey of the publications in Elsevier, ProQuest, and EBSCO, the study found that 1) theoretically, apart from the dimensions of formal grammar and semantics, cognitive psychology, pragmatics, and discourse analysis were frequently adopted, among which the pragmatic perspective has increased in popularity. Scholars have even proposed the concept of interpersonal evidentiality; and 2) methodologically, evidentiality is not only a target for investigation, but is also a tool for conducting discourse analysis. Moreover, cross-language corpus studies and experimental designs are attracting increasing attention.

Based on the theory of systemic functional linguistics, this study examines the general secretary of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee Xi Jinping’s speeches pertaining to ecological civilization to explore the discursive construction of China’s production of an ecological civilization from the perspective of harmonious discourse analysis. The results revealed that, on one hand, the processes, the participants, and the circumstances in the transitivity system constructed the ecological concept and the consciousness embodied in China’s construction of an ecological civilization; on the other hand, they constructed a harmonious ecological reality. This study contributes not only to the discursive construction study of the creation of an ecological civilization, but also provides implications for harmonious discourse analysis.