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This thesis analyses self-Orientalist representations in the Algerian postcolonial novel produced in both Arabic and French, using postcolonial literary criticism, and the historical contextualisation of the novels to reveal how colonial tropes have survived in late colonial and post-independence Algerian literary productions. I argue in this thesis that the encounter between the Orientalist and the colonial legacies and the postcolonial literary thrust, together with the influence of the historical and the political interplay between Western-inspired value systems and indigenous contexts, triggered the re-creation of the clichéd representations that dominated the colonial and the Orientalist discourses about Algeria. As a result, self-depiction in Algerian postcolonial literature reveals regular occurrences that display the features of self-Orientalist perspectives. The internalisation of biased representations of Algeria in Algerian literary output is vividly illustrated in many themes which are covered in this thesis through three main parts: the representation of people and places, beliefs and customs, topics related to politics and linguistic identity. Through these three parts, this project establishes different nuances in the perpetuation of the stereotypical renderings of Algeria, varying from fully-fledged, through ambivalent and reluctant self-Orientalist stances, which are continuously influenced by the historical and political circumstances inherited from the colonial era, and subsequent events such as the Black Decade and the process of Arabisation, among others. The analysis of the self-Orientalist discourse in Algerian postcolonial literature showcases the everlasting influence of the colonial legacy on Algerian literary self-representations and highlights the importance of the Algerian case in the academic debate about Orientalism and self-Orientalism.

This thesis is a study of the career of the Sirr al-Asrār. Beginning with its composition in the 4th/10th century, it then covers its transmission, reception, influence and readership up until the beginning of the 14th/20th century. One of the overarching questions this thesis seeks to address is what can the materiality of the manuscripts and patterns of manuscript survival reveal about the history and transmission of the Sirr, and the contexts in which it was copied? It also includes a descriptive Catalogue of Sirr Manuscripts based on the findings of my survey of extant manuscripts, which includes manuscripts not identified in previous lists. The catalogue testifies to the dissemination of the Sirr in regions not documented before. The thesis also includes a working edition of the Short Form of the Sirr. Part I of the thesis outlines existing scholarship on the cultural influences on the Sirr's origins and its contents before arguing for a shift in focus to the Arabic-Islamicate context of its character and sources. I consider the intentions of the writer when the authorship of the treatise was attributed to Aristotle framed within the contexts of medieval concepts of authorship and authority, and the learned traditions from which the Sirr emerged. Along with internal textual evidence, I examine the contents and the learned traditions from which the Sirr emerged, to point to the audiences that the writer sought to engage. In Part II of the thesis, I draw on my survey of an extant corpus of more than one hundred manuscript witnesses and read this against references to the Sirr in Arabic works and existing studies to chart the career of the Sirr up until the 14th/20th century. Paying attention to the locative provenance of the different recensions of the Sirr, I argue that contrary to commonly held assumptions that the Sirr was composed in Baghdad or the Islamic East, the Short Form (SF) tradition of the Sirr in eight books emerged from the Islamic West, and the SF in seven books and the Long Form (LF) emerged from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. Drawing on the manuscript evidence to map changes in the ways the Sirr was read, this study offers new insights on manuscript owners: how widely the Sirr was circulated; the types of libraries in which copies were kept; and how a shift to the copying of manuscripts of the Sirr for the commercial market, reflects the increasing presence of the Sirr in the libraries of scholars and students rather than royal and elite libraries in the latter part of its career. The manuscript evidence builds a picture of heterogeneous reading communities and the multi-faceted ways in which readers engaged with the Sirr. This study makes a broader argument for the incorporation of analysing the materiality of manuscripts as an integral part of any study of the reception history of a work. It is also intended as a contribution to Islamic intellectual history, book history, and the study of pre-modern manuscript cultures.

This study investigates colonial-era travel writing about Congo by, what I call, 'hyphenated Africans': authors who claim an African identity alongside another identity. Seven authors from different social, cultural and political backgrounds, with dispersion by colonial power as a common thread linking them to each other, have been selected for this study. As well as close reading, this study draws on archival research regarding the lives and other writings of these travel writers who travelled to central Africa, specifically Congo. My study focuses on the ambivalent identities of the writers constructed by the layers of their connection with Africa and the places of their emigration and immigration. I argue that to negotiate identity, the writers navigate through their multiple selves that arise due to their hyphenated identities and their complex relationships with Africa. From these multiple selves, the writer chooses an appropriate self with which to respond and react in a particular situation in the actual event as well as the textual representation of that event. Due to this, and the representation of sameness and difference, multiple others are also constructed as a response to the performativity of multiple selves in the text. I, therefore, argue that the 'other' is also not fixed and stable; it is a textual construction to complement or support the positive textual identity negotiated by the travel writer. This performativity is further enabled through what I call the process of selectivity of silence and voice. I show how writers may choose to be silent during an event itself but then voice an opinion in the text, may sometimes choose to remain silent altogether regarding a particular event, and may sometimes voice the silence by explicitly informing the reader about the choice of 'not speaking'. This selectivity of silence and voice, I argue, allows the travel writer writing in asymmetrical power relations to use the text as a contact zone to communicate with the readers (who are generally presumed to belong to the powerful society, specifically to the colonial structures in the colonial era), and claim voice, authority and power, which is otherwise denied or restricted. By focusing on the agency of the traveller of the colonial period, this thesis reads African travel writing both within and beyond the colonial context. Recent scholarship on African travel writing has started acknowledging and analysing the rich body of African travel writing. However, it is still largely seen as either 'writing back' to the Empire or reproducing the stereotypes constructed by colonial explorers and missionaries about Africa. Although I focus on colonialism as the defining historical force informing the setting and themes of the chosen texts, I also consider synchronous events in other places both within Africa and outside Africa. I argue that travel writing by the travel writers with an agenda is always involved in power dynamics, irrespective of race. Ignoring this leads to maintaining the binaries: travel writing by whites will continue being read for colonial meaning-making and nostalgia, and that by the members of former colonies will continue to be read as either mimicry or counter-narratives to colonial structures; thereby blocking the ways to acknowledge the individuality of the authors. The thesis by reading it against this trend joins the debate to free African travel writing from its Western moorings. Also, by focussing on the agency of travel writers, and the ways they produce travel writing through the politics of representation, the thesis challenges the peripheral status of African travel writing, and tries to position it in the universality of the travel writing genre.

In Saudi society, the role of women is less compared to men. Male domination constantly remains in various fields and women often marginalised in societies. Saudi women are often portrayed as wearing hijab (veil), being mother and wife. Their involvement is merely limited to family matters, women activities, and social affairs. This study examines the way modern standard Arabic online news of Al-Jazirah of Saudi Arabia and BBC Arabic of United Kingdom represent Saudi women in their news reports between 2010 and 2014. The main aim of this study is to discover how Saudi women are represented in these two prominent online news outlets by analysing the ways language is strategically used by Al-Jazirah and BBC Arabic to portray Saudi women. The study will be conducted in the form of Corpus investigation with data being gathered from news archives and then analysed using AntConc software. The research employs Critical Discourse Analysis approaches of van Leeuwen and Fairclough with the help of Corpus analysis techniques. The study finds differences between Al-Jazirah and BBC Arabic representation of Saudi women at both the textual and discursive levels. Also, the analysis reveals that the two outlets practised group polarisation characteristics. The in-group in Al-Jazirah coverage are the Saudi women and the Saudi authorities; hence the outlet produced hegemonised discourse and sustained the government policies. In comparison, the in-group in BBC Arabic is the women activists who criticise the government policies of women. It is recommended that the future study on the representation of Saudi women in the media inquire further into said problems and limitations, to get into a more comprehensive understanding of media coverage of women in Saudi Arabia. The preliminary result of the study shows that both news institution has a different way of portraying Saudi women according to their political agenda and ideologies. Thus, at the end of this study, the researcher hopes to reveal the representation of Saudi women in BBC Arabic and Al-Jazirah online news over the five years under the reign of King Abdullah.

This thesis analyses the contemporary reception of the translations of oriental literature by Sir William Jones (1746-1794), within the timeframe of 1770 to ca. 1835. Jones is often mentioned as one of the most influential orientalists of the eighteenth century. The influence of his linguistic hypothesis and his translations from Sanskrit are mentioned as the origins of what have become the studies of Comparative Linguistics and Indology. This thesis, however, asks the question of the influence of his literary translations, with which he planned to rejuvenate European literature by introducing Asiatic literature. The initial responses to Jones's works are examined here, primarily in the shape of reviews published in journals, and letters written to or about Jones. Furthermore, the reprint and translation history of his work is taken into account. These sources establish an overview of who read Jones's translations and how they interpreted them. Since Jones balanced between being a scholar and a poet, this thesis evaluates these two sides of his work by examining his various audiences. A third audience considered are Romantic poets, who he attempts to inspire by making new oriental imagery available in Britain. The analysis of these sources leads to the conclusion that the goal Jones formulates in his oriental translations was met, after a slow start. His first attempts at popularising eastern poetry were met with incomprehension, but early nineteenth-century poetry shows it is retrospectively being used. Jones's Sanskrit translations, after his arrival as a judge in India, indeed played a role in public interest in the earlier translations, but vice versa did the Persian and Arabic works prepare the audience for Sacontala (1789). I conclude, moreover, that Jones's view on language acquisition played an important role in the institutionalisation of language study within the East India Company.

The Arab Spring, which started in late 2010, has attracted a lot of media attention globally for the political and social significant of the historical event. Media outlets try to portray the event according to their ideological stance and affiliate themselves with either sides of the conflict. This study analyses the Arabic online news discourse of the so-called the 'Arab Spring' in Tunisia and Egypt Revolutions. Utilising the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study analyses the modern standard Arabic online news discourse of two prominent international media outlets Aljazeera and BBC. Based on the Fairclough's three-dimensional analysis framework, the study examines how the outlets represent the social events and the social actors of the Revolutions textually and discursively during the first 70 days of the so-called the Arab Spring. Besides, corpus techniques were applied to further enhance the qualitative analysis of CDA with quantitative evidences. The study examines six textual and discursive practice features including the concordance analysis, content analysis, lexicalisation and predication, presupposition, verbal process and intertextuality. The study finds differences between Aljazeera and BBC's coverage on both the textual and discursive level. Besides, the two outlets practised group polarisation characteristics; the ingroup in BBC's reporting was the Tunisian and Egyptian governments and the outgroup was the protesters. In contrast, the ingroup in Aljazeera's reporting was the protesters and the outgroup was the two governments. The study recommends that the future research on the media representation of the Arab Spring inquire further into said problems and limitations, in order to produce more comprehensive understanding of media coverage of the Arab Spring.

This thesis provides for the first time a detailed description and analysis of masdar constructions within the framework of LFG (Lexical Functional Grammar) in an unstudied vernacular dialect of Arabic, Saudi Southern Arabic (SA) as spoken in Bisha. The current thesis discusses the masdar nominalisations in usual normal constructions, and in complex constructions. Building on previous syntactic accounts of mixed category constructions and masdar constructions in LFG, I argue that the first of those masdar constructions (MC A) includes nominal elements and verbal elements at the same time. Additionally, there is a mismatch between the external syntax (nominal) and the internal syntax (mixed) of the masdar nominalisation in this construction. Therefore, following Lowe (2016), I argue that MC A is a truly mixed construction. On the other hand, I argue that the second masdar construction (MC B) is fully nominal in SA as it shows purely nominal characteristics. The masdar nominalisation in this construction shows a uniform external and internal syntax. Therefore, I treat the masdar in this construction as a non-mixed category, and argue that the masdar in MC B does not entail a mixed heading sharing analysis. In this study, similar to B ̈orjars et al. (2015), I propose a uniform analysis for both bare object masdar construction (MC A) and PP-object masdar construction (MC B). Such an analysis avoids us the long list of problems of the head-sharing approach, and allows us to analyse the controversial masdar constructions smoothly within the normal usual rules of LFG. SA facts appear to be similar to MSA data, especially MC A. However, MC B was found to be different from its counterpart in MSA. This thesis is a contribution to the long-standing debate in the literature on mixed category constructions, and how to analyse them in LFG, as well as to the syntax of neglected vernacular Arabic dialects.

This thesis explores the unique lives women lead in Ottoman and post-Ottoman spaces as represented across six different works of modern and contemporary literature. The cultural, economic, and socio-political impacts of the Ottoman Empire are central to the various lifestyles women lead across post-Ottoman societies today. Nevertheless, due to factors such as orientalism, feminism, and ongoing political affairs, the Ottoman era has not been examined from a postcolonial perspective. As such, the era's influences on post-Ottoman cultures and in turn on women's status are under-researched. The interest I found in creating Ottoman fiction has not yet received adequate or necessary attention from critics. On the one hand, this poses a challenge to the ideas explored in this thesis in that academic interest in this area is rather low and thus research about the Ottoman era around culture and social dynamics is also limited. Through this project, I attempt to initiate conversations around post-Ottoman women and post-Ottoman societies by studying the multiple influences of the Ottoman era historically, politically, and socially. Additionally, this project aims to shed light on the elements affecting women's roles, their rights, and their empowerment. This analysis is done by reading and examining literary works that produce cultural experiences and deliver the private and individual conditions affecting women's daily lives. In terms of literary works, the Ottoman Empire seems to be of great interest to authors. There are numerous popular perceptions of Ottoman spaces and of Ottoman women in particular, and these are evident across the six novels studied in this thesis. Although the worlds in these texts are fictional, in their own distinct ways these six books challenge the exotic and erotic narratives that often characterise the portrayal of Ottoman woman and spaces. In fact, some of the novels utilize this orientalist framework to challenge mainstream perception and reconstruct Ottoman women's stories.

This thesis investigates the way in which humour in Chinese comedies is transferred forEnglish-speaking audiences. It employs multimodality as a concept to underline that to privilege only linguistic approaches to subtitling is to ignore the way in which verbal and non-verbal modes interplay in the generation of humour. The corpus under examination contains four Chinese comedies from different genres: the romantic comedyIf You Are the One(2008), the chick flick Finding Mr. Right(2013), the black comedy Let the Bullets Fly(2011), and the martial arts comedy Monster Hunt(2015). These are used as case studies to investigate the linguistic and cultural barriers inherent in the subtitling of Chinese humour into English. This thesis analyses different types of humour in the original Chinese and their transposition into English subtitles through the prism of multimodality to underline the complex interaction of different semiotic modes in the generation of laughter. This thesis demonstrates that verbally expressed humour and cultural humour tend to travel badly by comparison with non-verbal modes. Non-verbal modes, to a certain degree, however, can compensate for the loss of linguistic or cultural humour. Moreover, on the basis of the case studies of these four Chinese comedies, this thesis works to offer a more precise classification of audiovisual humour. This work highlights that the analysis of humour in this context cannot be limited to linguistic evaluations of subtitles like those in the case studies. Films are multimodal texts, and subtitling humour is a multimodal activity in which verbal and non-verbal modes combine to trigger comic effects. Multimodality is key to understanding the translation strategies which enable the transposition of humour from Chinese into English. This study unpicks the complex ways in which Chinese humour and culture are rendered for English-speaking audiences and argues powerfully that multimodality is a key framework for further studies of subtitling.

Omission and overspecification of the/a/an/Ø are among the most frequently occurring grammatical errors made in English academic writing by Chinese first language (L1) university students (Chuang & Nesi, 2006; Lee & Chen, 2009). However, in the context of competing demands in the English for academic purposes (EAP) syllabus and conflicting evidence about the effectiveness of error correction, EAP tutors are often unsure about whether article use should or could be a focus and whether such errors should be corrected or ignored. With the aim of informing pedagogy, this study investigates: whether explicit teaching or correction improves accuracy; which article uses present the most challenges for Chinese students; the causes of error and whether a focus on article form can be integrated within a modern genre based/student centred approach in EAP. First, a questionnaire survey investigates how EAP teachers in higher education explicitly teach or correct English article use. Second, the effect of explicit teaching and correction on English article accuracy is investigated in a longitudinal experiment with a control group. Analysis of this study’s post-study measures raise questions about the sustained benefits of written correction or decontextualised rule-based approaches. Third, findings are presented from a corpus-based study which includes an inductive and deductive analysis of the errors made by Chinese students. Finally, in a fourth study hypotheses are tested using a multiple-choice test (n=455) and the main findings are presented: 1) that general referential article accuracy is significantly affected by proficiency level, genre and students’ familiarity with the topic; 2) Chinese students are most challenged by generic and non-referential contexts of use which may be partly attributable to the lack of positive L1 transfer effects; 3) overspecification of definite articles is a frequent problem that sometimes gives Chinese B2 level students’ writing an ‘informal tone’; and 4) higher nominal density of pre-qualified noun phrases in academic writing is significantly associated with higher error rates. Several practical recommendations are presented which integrate an occasional focus on article form with whole text teaching, autonomous proofreading skills, register awareness, and genre-based approaches to EAP pedagogy.

Underpinned by a constructionist approach to adolescence, this doctoral thesis investigates the ways in which Arab adolescents are represented in the field of Arabic adolescent fiction. More specifically, it examines how they are spoken of in the publishing scene, how they are imagined as characters in novels labelled as adolescent fiction and how these ideas are received by young people themselves. The focus will be on contemporary realistic adolescent literature published since 2000. The study adopted a multi-pronged research strategy that included interviews with ten authors and publishers of Arabic adolescent fiction, close reading of two selected novels and fieldwork with a class of adolescent readers in a state secondary school in Beirut, Lebanon to capture their responses to Arabic adolescent fiction. The constructs elaborated by these actors and within the novels were then examined in relation to wider discourses on adolescence and youth, including dominant developmental paradigms. The authors and publishers interviewed engaged with several constructs of adolescence, such as the developmental adolescent, the adolescent as future citizen and the adolescent consumer with unprecedented access to the world of information and global culture. In turn, adolescent literature was envisioned as needing to appeal and address the needs of this target group while also fulfilling its socialising function in preparing young people for their future as mature adults and active citizens at home in their cultural identity. Two Arabic adolescent novels selected by the research participants were analysed: Cappuccino by Fatima Sharafeddine (2017) and The Mystery of the Falcon Eye by Taghreed Najjar (2014). The novels presented different models of adolescence and charted the growth of the main protagonists towards greater comfort in their gender and national identities while they remained entrenched in relations of interdependence with family members, peers and community members. The novels also explored young people’s power negotiations with oppressive structures such as the patriarchy and military occupation, presenting avenues for resistance and societal change as well as drawing the limits of youthful agency. Three main themes emerged from the fieldwork with adolescent readers, and they bore evidence to the cultural positioning of the students as well as the cultural content embedded in the texts, in line with Brooks & Browne’s (2012) theory of culturally situated reader response. To begin with, they engaged on an ethical level with the characters in the novels, and their moral evaluations were informed by ideologies of justice, age as well as models of social relationships that prioritised interdependence. Secondly, the students demonstrated an awareness of the links between larger societal and political structures and the personal struggles of characters through the issues raised by the novels. Finally, there was an intense debate around language variety, in particular the use of Colloquial Arabic in the novels. This discussion touched on the dual role of literature to educate and entertain, the links between standard Arabic and cultural identity and the existence of linguistic considerations specific to literature that targets adolescents. By venturing into relatively under-studied fields, the study makes a case for more research into Arabic adolescent novels and adolescent readers’ engagement with literature as well as their increased visibility in the scholarship on international children’s literature, Arab literature, literacy and the cultural history of the region. In addition, it also advocates for research and teaching methodologies with the adolescent at their centre rather than in the margins.

This thesis argues that Legge’s ‘Confucianism’ represents his reformation on the teaching of Confucius by making the ancient religion in the Chinese classics Confucius’ principal instruction. Legge’s reformation has its hermeneutical and contextual legitimacy, it nonetheless embeds Legge’s missiological attempt at a constructive Christian encounter with the Chinese Ruism (儒家思想, the Doctrine of Literati School). Through his reformation, Legge anticipates a missiological approach in China that can draw on what is good in the Chinese classics, supplement what is wanting or deficient in the teaching of Confucius, and unravel to Chinese people “what truth there is in Confucianism about God and His moral government.” Legge’s reformed ‘Confucianism’ also implies his solution to the Term Question of rendering Elohim/God in translating the Bible into Chinese. Legge’s nuanced ‘Confucianism’ was not understood by the missionaries of his time, nevertheless it is conflated with Max Müller’s the Sacred Books of the East (50 volumes, 1879 –1910) and develops into a major aspect of the Sinological notion of Confucianism. Legge’s idea to “reform” and “revolutionize” Confucianism is conceived in his controversial 1877 paper delivered to the Missionary Conference in Shanghai. Legge’s “Texts of Confucianism” (1879 -1885) as his contribution to the Sacred Books of the East marks his textual reformation of the Chinese classics into religious scriptures of ‘Confucianism’. His 1880 Lectures on Confucianism showcases his theological construction of ‘Confucianism’ that connects the Chinese ritual practices and moral teaching of Confucius back to their originator and creator – Shang Di (Supreme Ruler, God). Legge’s Chinese Classics project (1861 -1872) is more than translation. Legge creates a new set of Chinese Classical commentaries by participating in the Chinese classical commentary tradition and introducing biblical exegetical tradition, literary criticism and Continental hermeneutics into his works. Legge’s Chinese Classics project results from the aftermath of his Shang Di (Supreme Ruler) advocacy in the Term-Question debate of the 1850s on translating God into Chinese. It is Legge’s continued effort to prove his argument and to fulfill his duty to God that “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses him name” (Exodus 20:7). Legge’s scholarship on Chinese Classics and Chinese religion is still meaningful today. Legge’s biblical criticism methods and hermeneutical principles provide new perspectives on interpreting Chinese classical texts. More importantly, Legge’s scholarship is related to three term questions concerning China-western encounters that have been essential to the mutual understanding. Apart from the Term Question on the proper Chinese term of translating God, there is also the term question of rendering the Chinese term Ru Jiao (the Teaching of Literati School) into English. The third debate concerns whether or not Confucianism/Ru Jiao is religion/zong jiao (Chinese expression for “religion”). The last debate is controversial as it is built on two equally controversial term issues: the Sinological Confucianism vs. Chinese Ru Jiao and religion in its western sense vs. zong jiao as the Chinese characterization of religion. These three controversies constitute the fundamental barriers in the western-China communication. Confucianism is not Ruism ( the Doctrine of Literati School). Confucianism as an English coinage represents western efforts at studying, interpreting and characterizing the Chinese Ruist classical texts within western disciplines and academic principles. In its Chinese context, the Ruist School consists of an unbroken tradition of pedagogically transmitting, scholarly interpreting the truths contained in the classics, and making practical use of lessons taught by ancient sages for present time. In a sense, they are as different as that between the religious studies on Christianity and the Christian theological studies.

This thesis presents a new perspective on power relations in translation by introducing Retro-cultural Translation (RCT), a concept developed for this work to capture a subtle case of inverse translation of cultural writing. Examined in the Arabic translations of Anglophone books about Iraq following the 2003 war, this concept demonstrates the potential to reverse the power balance on various levels. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, the study argues that the language and the cultural aspects the RCT texts consist of are owned by the native culture. It contends that such a possession of capital can allow this type of translation to disrupt the cultural capital gain that some scholars claim to flow from English, the dominant language, into other peripheral languages, Arabic in this case. RCT in the context of the US-led war against Iraq materialises in three levels of dominance: that of English over Arabic, of the source text over the target text, and of the invader over the invaded. By integrating a postcolonial perspective into cultural translation paradigms, this study attempts to demonstrate if these relations could be reversed and, hence, whether the accumulation of cultural capital is inactivated.

My research investigates the translation of self-help books from English into Arabic. Its primary concern is to analyse the translation of self-help books with emphasis on the terminology, as they constitute the core of this genre, from English into Arabic. It is a corpus-based study that aims to: (1) distinguish semantic shifts from equivalence; (2) identify the causes behind the shifts; and (3) propose a model for semantic shifts analysis that consists of three phases: (a) identification of shifts; (b). explaining them; and (c). evaluation of the shifts from a relevance theorey perspective. The classification taxonomy in this study consists of three main types which are: 1). addition; 2). omission; 3). mutation, and three subtypes including: a). mistranslation; b). wrong word choice; and c). incorrect literal translation. The methodology of this dissertation is based on a corpus linguistics approach as I created a parallel corpus of samples of English self-help books aligned with their Arabic translations. Then, following error analysis (EA) analysis procedures, I applied the following steps to the context of translation analysis: data collection, identification of problematic segments, definition of shift types, explanation of shifts, and finally evaluation. The results of applying the semantic shifts analysis model show that translators of the three books under investigation show a tendency towards mistranslating abstract concepts. The main findings of the study indicate that: 1). Mistranslation is the most common type of semantic shift in the data; 2). Omission is the least frequent type; 3). Most semantic shifts are caused by lack of translators' competence; and 4). From a relevance theory perspective, the frequency of shifts in the data indicates failure in achieving the conditions of relevance provided in the model.

The study focuses on the translation of intertextual metaphors in the trilogy of the Algerian novelist Ahlam Mosteghanemi (Dhākirat al-Jasad [1993], Fawḍā al-Ḥawās [1997] and ʿĀbir Sarīr [2003]). In addition to literature, religion, history and politics, most of the intertextual metaphors in the trilogy involve references derived from the collective national memory of Algerians and Arabs in general. Mosteghanemi’s selective metaphoric incorporation of intertextual references not only serves aesthetic purposes but also, expresses specific ideological and political stances. Therefore, the difficulty in translating intertextual metaphors may arise both from the indirectness of their meanings and their use of different intertextual references loaded with political and historical concepts. The model this study develops explains the various complex structures of intertextual metaphors (semantic, stylistic and thematic) using the concept of ‘multiple inputs’ from blending theory (Fauconnier and Turner, 1998, 2002). Moreover, the model uses the ‘principle of relevance’, predicted by relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995), to propose four strategies that present a means of investing contextual resources (e.g., textual clues) with meaning to ensure more communicative translation. The strategies aim to maximise the target reader’s recovery of the different aspects of the source text’s intertextual metaphor (e.g., its semiotic and pragmatic meanings and its intra-textual relations).

The present research investigates two sociolinguistic variables in the dialect of the Dawāsir who reside in Dammam in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Those Dawāsir immigrated from their homeland Wādi ad-Dawāsir in Najd to Bahrain and later returned to KSA, specifically Dammam. Dammam is a coastal city located in the Eastern part of KSA, very close to Bahrain. Sociolinguistic interviews were carried out to obtain data from 39 speakers from the Dawāsir who were born, and still live in Dammam. The research investigates two variables: (ʤ) (the variation between [ʤ] and [j]); and the rounding and unrounding of the long vowel (ɑ:) word-medially. The correlation between internal (linguistic) factors and three social factors, namely age, gender and social networks is examined. The present study provides a quantitative analysis within the framework of the variationist theory, by using the multiple regression software Rbrul. The data analysis shows that the occurrence of the traditional variants [j] and [ɒ:] is much lower in comparison to the innovative variants: 76 % for [ʤ] and 97 % for [ɑ:]. Overall, the use of [j] and [ɒ:] word-medially is receding, seemingly indicating a change in progress away from the traditional, local variants. The local dialect is undergoing levelling of the marked features toward the koinised or the supra-local linguistic features in KSA. In regards to the social predictors, the results show that speakers who maintain loose social networks, predominantly men across the different age-groups (old, middle-aged, young) and young females, are leading the change in using the common features in KSA. On the other hand, speakers with tight social networks, mainly old women, are more conservative in retaining the traditional local linguistic features. In terms of the internal factors, preceding environment is a strong predictor of variation. Contrary to the literature, the innovative variant [ʤ] prefers high vowels, and [ɑ:] prefers dorsal and coronal consonants.

This thesis consists of two parts: my main creative project, Tamám; four translations of the Chinese T'ang poet Yu Xuanji; and an accompanying critical commentary. Tamám is a present-day reimagining of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám consisting of one-hundred-and-one quatrains. It frames translation as a creative process informed by philosopher Jacques Derrida's la trace (trace): that source texts and other sources defer their meaning to one another, simultaneously absent and present in the genesis of new writing. These sources tangentially influence and "mark" the content and meaning of a new text. The main translational elements of Tamám are the Persian source text of The Rubáiyát; Edward FitzGerald's 19th century translation of The Rubáiyát; the case of the Somerton Man; the sociopolitical climate of 21st century south-east England; translation theory and deconstruction theory. The critical element of this thesis is split into three chapters, led by images from Tamám that focus on different aspects of trace in relation to creative writing and translation. Case studies include poets not traditionally considered translators (Ed Dorn and Tom Raworth), and contemporary poet-translators (Tim Atkins and Anne Carson) to suggest that trace is a peripheral element of writing processes. The commentary for Tamám follows these analyses and foregrounds the issues I encountered in the writing process, solutions to them, and justification of my creative response to aspects of trace and translation discussed in the theory. This is held against translations of Chinese poetry to demonstrate how the strict form, regulated verse, provides new creativity with absent-present trace of the form in its native language. In doing so, I argue that for the poet's practice translation is an act of creative (re)interpretation that informs and supplements the composition of new poetry by way of trace.

This thesis concerns an exploratory practice (EP) project conducted at a two-year college in north east Japan, which was severely affected by the earthquake of March 2011. The focus of research is a 13-week EFL course for 25 first-year college students, specifically designed to enhance their future visions of themselves as L2 users (Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014). This study examined opportunities that the course created for the students’ vision development in the classroom and the factors that may have contributed to these opportunities. The data came from 1) students’ written narratives, 2) semi-structured interviews, 3) teacher/researcher reflections, field notes and audio- and video- recordings of the classes, and 4) course evaluation questionnaires. Findings show that the course was beneficial for enhancing students’ appreciation of their language-relevant futures and the thesis engages with the factors that contributed to these findings by 1) tracing the trajectories of L2 learning and intercultural experiences of selected interview participants, 2) examining group dynamics and pedagogy adopted for the course, and 3) piecing together an understanding of the role that the teacher played in mobilising one focal participant’s future vision. The key contribution of this EP inquiry turned out to be more far-reaching than originally envisaged; however, pointing to the broader role that language education can play in young people’s lives. The thesis concludes by discussing educational and research consequences of this finding.

'The Tale of Genji' had been out of print in Japan for nearly two centuries when its first English translation debuted in 1882. Ironically, as fin de siècle Anglophones encountered early reviews of 'Genji' in 'The New York Times' and elsewhere as a Japanese classic, the text was unavailable in Tokyo bookstores. This study investigates the millennium-long history of 'Genji', shedding light particularly upon how its English translators introduced textual and marketing strategies that were adopted by Japanese to domestically popularize the work. Such findings will extend those of G.G. Rowley (1997), who first contended that 'Genji' had fallen out of print between the years of 1706 and 1890. This study builds upon Rowley's research, clarifying how English translations of 'Genji' were responsible for the work's return to print in Japan, where 'Genji' has subsequently become the country's national classic. Methodologically, in exploring how translators have creatively enriched Murasaki's legacy up until the present, this study applies Anthony Pym's notion of humanization (2009) and Pascale Casanova's call for literary historicization (2007). Additionally, this thesis contributes to translation research by introducing the Japanese concept of reverse-importation. The term describes a process through which objects can gain recognition in their domestic market due to perceptions of popularity achieved abroad. Murasaki's tale provides a case to better understand how English translations of 'Genji' have, through reverse-importation, altered the work's standing in Japan.

This is a sociolinguistic investigation that focuses on variation and change in Medini Arabic (Saudi Arabia). Data in the form of sociolinguistic interviews were collected from 58 speakers, and analysed quantitatively within the framework of the quantitative variationist paradigm using Rbrul. The study investigates the correlation between two linguistic variables and the social variables of age, gender and community (urban and Bedouin). The dialects under investigation originate from two different norms: ‘Bedouin’, in this study a sub-type of Najdi; and ‘Sedentary’, the traditional dialect of Medina (viz. Medini). The Bedouin group share the same origin and culture whilst the urban group come from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The first linguistic variable is (ʤ), which has two realisations in both communities: a traditional affricate [ʤ] and an innovative fricative [ʒ]. The second linguistic variable is resyllabification, which is precipitated by syncope or epenthesis. The innovative variant for the urban group is syncope whereas for the Bedouin group it is epenthesis. Overall, the results indicate that both dialects are undergoing levelling of marked linguistic features and change in progress towards the adoption of koineised or supra-local forms. In the case of (ʤ), the change towards the innovative form is led by the younger women in both communities. With respect to the resyllabification variable, the age group of adult (30-44) urban and Bedouin men take the lead in syncope and epenthesis, respectively. The interpretation of the results is twofold: (i) linguistic, where the results are interpreted within the principles of Optimality Theory and Moraic Theory; (ii) sociolinguistic, where the focus is on social structure, socio-political and socioeconomic change in the locality.

This study investigates sociolinguistic variation and change in the dialect of Ha’il city, a dialect that belongs to the Najdi type of dialects, especially Northern Najdi. Two traditional linguistic features of Ha’ili Arabic (HA) are examined: the realisation of the feminine ending (ah) and realisation of the feminine plural suffix (a:t), in relation to three social factors: age (Younger, Middle-aged, Older), gender (Male, Female) and levels of contact (High, Low) with people from different dialectal backgrounds. Raising of the feminine ending -ah is defined as: fronting and raising of short /a/ to /ɛ/ or /e/. In traditional Ha’ili Arabic, /a/ is raised unconditionally in all environments even after guttural and emphatic sounds (Abboud, 1979). The results, however, show progressive lowering of the (ah) variable, constrained by social and linguistic factors. Younger female speakers especially those with high level of contact lead the change toward the innovative and supra-local variant [a], while older speakers, even those with high level of contact, maintain the use of the traditional variant [e] at a very high rate (96%). Women are slightly ahead of men in using [a]. Such gender patterning can be interpreted in relation to the fact that there is no negative social meaning associated to the use of the two variants. Regarding the second variable (a:t), /t/ in the feminine plural suffix -a:t can be lenited to /h/ or /j/ in HA. According to previous research (Abboud, 1964 and Ingham, 1982, 2009), lenition of /a:t/ is linguistically conditioned by the following environment. It is promoted pre- pausally and when the following word begins with a consonant, but it is precluded when followed by a vowel across word boundary. The results show that the innovative variant [a:t] is highly favoured when it is followed by a vowel across word boundary. Additionally, the number of syllables and the stress on the final syllable appear to have a minimal effect on the realisation of (a:t). All the younger speakers, except low contact female speakers, use the innovative variant categorically, while the older speakers use it at a rate of 52%. Concerning gender, men are found to lead the change in using [a:t] than women. This gender pattern is explained with reference to men’s social interaction, mobility and to the overt stigmatisation associated with the use of the traditional variants [a:j] and [a:h] by male speakers. Overall, a progressive levelling out of local/marked features in HA has been observed in favouring the innovative features found in the emerging supra-local variety in the central region of Saudi Arabia.

This thesis presents a linguistic ethnographic case study on a large Chinese complementary school (CCS) in Birmingham, England. Guided by Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia, the study investigates multilingual practices of adult participants in and around the school, focusing on the changing constructions of language ideology, Chinese teachers’ professional identity and the ethnic identification of Chineseness. It documents the impact of globalisation on the shifting relations among Chinese varieties and English in the Chinese diaspora. The 10-month fieldwork for the study was conducted in 2013/14 academic year, with observations and interviews as dominant methods for data collection. Main findings are: (1) an ideological ecology including ‘separate bilingualism’, ‘translanguaging’, ‘a hegemony of Putonghua’, and ‘a preferred school-wide monolingualism’ is dynamically constructed in the school. ‘Language as pride’ and ‘Language as profit’ are simultaneously in play leading to the dynamic ecology; (2) Chinese teachers’ professional identities are shaped by the changing structure of Chinese diaspora, the shifting power balance among different Chinese varieties and English, and teachers’ own biographical trajectories of settlement into English society; (3) practices in CCS context reflect an evolving ethnic identification of diasporic Chineseness which ‘de-freezes’ from a cultural heritage affiliated purely with the past and the national homeland.

Today many Middle Eastern states are experiencing political violence, either in the form of foreign occupation, civil war, revolution or coup d’état. This regional violence is not dissociated from international politics. In fact many foreign states are directly involved through influencing, financing or manipulating the situation, and have subsequently been the target of violent attacks themselves. Responding to this situation, a plethora of academic and artistic output concerning Middle Eastern terrorism has emerged from the West. These efforts, especially in English-language fiction, have been mainly reductive and simplistic and have contributed to furthering an atmosphere of mistrust and Islamophobia that emerged after 9/11. Yet in the decade following 9/11 little attention has been given to Middle Eastern writers who have been treating the subject of political violence in their own fiction and whose works are available in a variety of languages. This thesis analyzes five Middle Eastern novels that depict major regional conflict zones. Alaa Al-Aswany, Orhan Pamuk, Assaf Gavron, Yasmina Khadra, and Mohsin Hamid’s novels describe the nuances of their respective contexts: Egypt, Turkey, Israel/Palestine, Iraq and Pakistan. The following analyses highlight the complexity of Middle Eastern political violence and shed light on how these authors perceive or respond to Terrorism discourse in their fictions.

This dissertation examines the production and perception of some selected stress patterns in Libyan Arabic by English speaking learners and compares them to the production and perception of the native speakers. Two tasks were utilised to investigate the participants’ performance: a picture naming and an identification task. Word patterns covered potential problematic and non-problematic areas. An optimality theoretic approach is adopted in the discussion of the results of the perception and production of stress by the participants (Chapters 5 & 7) while a metrical approach is referred to in the discussion of the Libyan Arabic stress system in Chapter 3. It is found that structural effects (e.g. syllable structure, vowel quality, syllable position or class) have consequences on how the learners perceive and produce stress and on how they use this information in assigning stress. The study found that if the stress patterns match in the L1 and L2, and they follow regular phonological conditions, the learners get these patterns right by just applying the predictable patterns. If the stress patterns are similar but applied differently and they contradict predictable conditions, these unpredictable and/or marked patterns are not accessible in the L2 despite their partial availability in the L1. If a particular stress pattern does not exist in the L1, then the L1 negative transfer effect may appear in the L2. The misperception of stress is not only restricted to L2 learners but native speakers also fail in certain patterns to perceive the stress location. The learners use grammatical class and syllable structure as stress indicators but they show a deviation from the native speakers in using the vowel length cue. The native speakers are more sensitive to vowel length; the absence of vowel length or syllable closure in the stressed syllable in certain patterns prevent the native speakers from perceiving stress accurately.

The research is a hermeneutic-cum-semiotic approach to the study of the translatability of religious language in a secular play, using The Merchant of Venice in China as a reference. Under the ”power turn” or “political turn” in translation studies, omissions and untranslatability of religious material are often seen as the product of censorship or self-censorship in the prevalent socio-political context. But the theology of each individual translating agent is often neglected as an important contributing factor to such untranslatability. This thesis offers a comprehensive approach in tracing the hermeneutical process of the translators/directors as a reader and the situational process and semiotics of theatre translation, which altogether gives rise to the image of translated literature which in turn influences audience reception. This interdisciplinary study thus traverses the disciplines of translation studies, hermeneutics, theatre studies, and sociology. In this thesis I argue that while translation theorists under the current “sociological turn” view social factors as the overarching factors in determining translation activities and strategies, I will show how the interaction between the translator’s or the dramatist’s theology and religious values interact with the socio-cultural milieu to carve out a unique drama production. Often, as one can see from my case studies, it is the religious values of the translating agents that become the overarching factor in determining the translation product, rather than social factors. This thesis further argues that the translatability of religious discourse should be understood in a broader sense according to the seven dimensions proposed by Ninian Smart, rather than merely focusing on untranslatability as a result of semantic and linguistic differences.

This Creative Writing PhD consists of a novel, The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul, and accompanying critical essays, Ottoman Crossroads: Coffeehouses, Politics, Theatres and Storytelling. The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul is historical in nature, and magically real in temperament. It is an account of fin de siècle Constantinopolis, and contains forgotten fairy tales, remnants of an ancient manuscript culture, Armenian playwrights, Turkish feminists, Greek fortune-tellers and Sephardim cantors. It tells the tale of six intersecting lives in 1876, a time known as “the year of the three Sultans” in Ottoman history. This period was filled with tensions between traditionalism and Westernization, but also new political possibilities forwarded by the Young Ottomans. While the characters in The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul are fictitious, they are inspired by historical events and figures. The second element of my PhD, Ottoman Crossroads, is made up of four individual essays that focus on selected themes from the novel. They scrutinize, in order of presentation, the history of coffeehouse culture, the secretive society of the Young Ottomans and their political thought, the formation of Armenian-Turkish theatre, and the rediscovery of Ottoman fairy tales. Whilst the novel and essays are coherent independently, they also link to each other in ways that are sometimes direct, and at other times subtle.

This study analyses the ways in which gender relations are expressed and articulated through the use of folk proverbs amongst Pashto-speaking people of Pakistan. Previous work on Pashto proverbs have romanticised proverbs as a cultural asset and a source of Pashtun pride and ethnic identity, and most studies have aimed to promote or preserve folk proverbs. However, there is little recognition in previous literature of the sexist and gendered role of proverbs in Pashtun society. This study argues that Pashto proverbs encode and promote a patriarchal view and sexist ideology, demonstrating this with the help of proverbs as text as well as proverbs performance in context by Pashto speakers. The analysis is based on more than 500 proverbs relating to gender, collected from both published sources and through ethnographic fieldwork in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Qualitative data was collected through 40 interviews conducted with Pashto-speaking men and women of various ages and class/educational backgrounds, along with informal discussions with local people and the personal observations of the researcher. The study is informed by a combination of theoretical approaches including folkloristics, feminist sociology and sociolinguistics. While establishing that patriarchal structures and values are transmitted through proverbs, the study also reveals that proverbs’ meanings and messages are context-bound and women may, therefore, use proverbs in order to discuss, contest and (sometimes) undermine gender ideologies. More specifically, it is argued that: (1) Proverbs as ‘wisdom texts’ represent the viewpoint of those having the authority to define proper and improper behaviour, and as such, rather than objective reality represent a partial and partisan reality which, in the context of the present research, is sexist and misogynist. (2) While proverbs as ‘texts’ seem to present a more fixed view of reality, proverbs as ‘performance in context’ suggest that different speakers may use proverbs for different strategic purposes, such as to establish and negotiate ethnic and gendered identities and power which varies on the basis of gender, age, ethnicity, and class of the interlocutors. The thesis concludes that, rather than considering folk proverbs as ‘factual’ and ‘valuable’ sources of cultural expression, scholars should pay more attention to their ‘performatory’, ‘derogatory’ and ‘declaratory’ aspects as these often relegate women (and ‘other’, weaker groups) to a lesser position in society.

Over the last two decades, research has exposed the need for new responses to English in various regions of the world, raising many critical issues. Recent English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)-oriented research deals with English in Asian contexts; however there seems to be insufficient research related to South Korea and, especially, Korean postgraduate-level students’ orientations to English. To help address this gap, this PhD thesis reports research into changes to South Korean postgraduate students’ use of and feelings about English during their study abroad in the UK. Explorations and discussions of the findings of this study shed light on the students’ orientations and attitudes to English before coming to the UK, how their attitudes and beliefs adjusted over the course of an academic year, and the factors that played a part in these changes. This research produces a comprehensive study of Korean postgraduate students using English in a multilingual but also native English language setting and reveals how the students oriented themselves to English in Korea, how useful their English preparation was before arrival in the UK, how they feel about their English, and what influenced the evolution of their perspectives over time. Importantly, the findings of the study suggest that the experience of living and studying in the UK had an impact on the participants’ attitudes and orientations towards English and their language use; among numerous other effects, a move away from norm-dependence in general, and in particular increasing awareness of the existence of different English varieties, were widely evidenced. The results give rise to new potential avenues for research into language attitudes and provide a deeper understanding of language(s) and language users in the field of English as a lingua franca in this previously unexplored context.

This is a thesis in variationist sociolinguistics. It attempts to make a contribution to the study of a dialect of Arabic—Palestinian Arabic—spoken in a region where the population is gradually becoming engulfed in a language, which was once quite similar to Arabic, namely Hebrew, but has undergone drastic changes, particularly in its phonological structure, as a result of contact with European languages. Now, Modern Hebrew is acting as a colonizing language vis-à-vis Palestinian Arabic, and in this study we are exploring the effects the contact between the two languages on the phonology of Arabic in the town of Jaffa, where Arabic-speaking Palestinians and Hebrew-speaking Israeli Jews reside, perhaps not in harmony, but nonetheless in the same urban space. Employing quantitative methods for one linguistic variable and a sociohistorical analysis for another, we make the case that the two variables observed in this study are but a fragment of the entire complex. Examples from the data collected are provided and briefly analyzed, some of which are from other domains of the language, and these will be further explored at a later date.

The present work addresses the notions of poverty and poverty relief in Buddhist social and economic ethics, comparing them to current approaches to conceptualizing poverty used in the development community. Given the Buddhist preoccupation with ceasing suffering and removing its causes, and the key Buddhist principle of Right Livelihood that is found in the Ennobling Eightfold Path to enlightenment taught by the Buddha, economic ethics appear to be central to the Buddhist path and a concern for the suffering caused by extreme poverty therefore ought to be a key point of concern in Buddhist ethics. Buddhist ethics has developed into a field of study all its own over the last few decades, addressing issues in applied ethics from bioethics to human rights and environmental concerns, but little has been written by virtually any standard on the important topic of poverty relief. The present work makes a step toward filling that gap by examining relevant passages in the Pāli Canon as well as popular and influential Mahāyāna sūtras to demonstrate that a concern for deprivation or non-voluntary impoverishment is evident in key Buddhist doctrines and teachings from the earliest recorded history of the Buddhist tradition. The thesis further discusses the duties to relieve poverty outlined in Buddhist social ethics as well as the development of Buddhist economics and its critique of dominant mainstream economics. It also offers a comparison of Buddhist conceptions of poverty with contemporary notions of poverty, such as the capabilities approach to poverty developed by Amartya Sen and currently in use by the UNDP. In both of these cases poverty is portrayed in a comprehensive and multi-dimmensional manner which views income as only one aspect of poverty. Additionally, this dissertation examines the contemporary Socially Engaged Buddhist movement and identifies historical and contemporary examples of Buddhist poverty relief efforts.

Previously, research on multinational teamwork with various nationalities and cultures involved, which looked at the aspect of communication, was largely based on the examination of specific facilitators and barriers to its communication (i.e. Watson, et al., 1993; Hofner Saphiere, 1996). There it was found that multinational teams might have specific communication facilitators dependent upon the cultures involved. This is reflected in the theoretical development in the field of intercultural management, which gives guidance for culturally complex team settings (i.e. Trompenaars, 1993). The complexity managers’ face is increasing further through China’s involvement in the implementation of globalization strategies (Podsiadlowski, 2002). Recently, the relevance of China’s involvement has been increasing for Germany, in particular given Chinese companies’ investments in Germany. Therefore, the study of various nationalities in one research project has been reconsidered and currently there is new demand for studies, which seek to understand the complexity of Sino-German teamwork (Podsiadlowski, 2002). However, besides non-research based literature, research focusing solely on Sino-German teamwork occupies a marginal place (i.e. Podsiadlowski, 2002). Additionally, much of the multinational team research (for example, Watson, et al., 1993) looked at outcomes and disregarded the team members’ experience itself by using quantitative methods. It provided an understanding influenced by positivistic perspectives, saying that certain factors are pre-conditions for successful team communication. This study recognized these positions, but questioned the positivist bias demonstrated there. Throughout this research, associated factors were understood as being non-linear and interrelated, representing the complexity managers are experiencing. As a result this study argued that Chinese and Germans working in teams were marginalised in the intercultural management research field until today and their needs were not addressed by much of the existing research. These led to my conclusion that there is a need to conduct research that for the first time is informed by a postmodern theoretical framework that seeks to privilege multiplicity and diversity and that also attends to the silences surrounding this group. Therefore, a postmodern framework provided the theoretical lens through which this research, and its authorial, methodological, and interpretive characteristics were construed and represented. This perspective emphasised local stories about experiences, attended to ‘difference’, was concerned with the multiple nature of ‘reality’, and recognised the importance of language as a medium for the social construction of what may be considered ‘truth’ (Cheek, 2000). Narrative inquiry represented in this thesis the postmodern epistemological framework to understand subjective experiences by exploring the stories of twelve Chinese and German participants and the meanings derived from these. These stories were themselves experiences structured and recalled inside wider cultural and social contexts (Kirkman, 2002; Webster & Mertova, 2007). The socio-cultural contexts were woven into the language used by the participants to explain their experiences and signified the meanings of these experiences. However, Chinese and Germans not only differed with regards to language and language variety, but also with respect to their patterns of usage and how meaning was generated in interactive situations on the basis of socio-cultural knowledge. Therefore, my narrative inquiry took into account both linguistic and sociocultural aspects and addressed the relations between interactive communication strategies and larger social and cultural phenomena. Within the context presented above, the focus and contribution of this study were the descriptions of the intercultural communication experiences of members of Sino- German teams and the analysis of factors relating to interferences in communication to provide a thicker explanation of communication interferences in intercultural communication, where theoretical attempts so far remained rather fragmented, and to contribute findings from different perspectives on what has traditionally been viewed from a positivistic standpoint. Through sharing the participants’ lived experiences of working and communicating with Chinese and Germans and vice versa, a number of linguistic and socio-cultural factors influencing communication behaviour and causing interferences were uncovered. The factors identified from the study resonate with a number of factors previously established in existing multinational teamwork research and whilst others contributed new information that adds to the understandings of the meanings that may be made from such experience of communication interferences. Comparing the experiences related by Chinese participants with those related by German participants showed a substantial consensus with regards to the communication interferences experienced in Sino-German teams and the factors relating to these interferences, as well as observable differences in communication behaviours. The lack of foreign language proficiency on the side of both Chinese and German individuals was stated as being a major factor for communication interferences that was further enhanced through the strong linguistic barrier between these two languages. Good language proficiency minimises the occurrence of misunderstandings and miscommunications. It allows better personal contact between the team members since it better enables people to establish personal contacts and relationships, as well as to use an interlinked communication structure that allows informal communication and therefore compliance with the Chinese cultural ‘rules of the game’. However, foreign language proficiency alone is not a guarantee for successful intercultural communication in Sino-German teams. This study also analysed, in addition to the practical and theoretical significance of language and language skills, the cultural influences on the communication between Chinese and German team members. Many participants were either unaware (especially on the German side) or only partially aware of the fact that differences in communication behaviour are based on different culture-specific communication conventions and strategies. It was found that intercultural awareness on the part of individuals in a team, meaning the knowledge and awareness of culture-specific conventions and norms, had a positive influence on communication within the team. Knowledge of the meaning of the two key terms mianzi and guanxi plays an important role in Sino-German teams. On the other hand, an ethnocentric perspective on either one or both sides inevitably results in mutual negative attributions. This findings added to the understanding how this communication could be improved and, most importantly, as a prerequisite for actions of any kind to achieve improvements, to draw the attention of German team members to the relevance of communication when working with their Chinese colleagues and vice versa. Furthermore, the study functioned as an act of empowerment, a way to give voice to managers and team members who were methodologically not heard.

This study presents a corpus-based analysis of the use of “wh” sentences by language learners, in language textbooks and in authentic written discourse. It focuses on the polysemeous nature of “wh” words, which can be usedas interrogatives, declaratives and to introduce subordinate clauses. The analysis of “wh” sentences in EFL textbooks showed that there are more prototypical examples at low proficiency levels. When teaching the interrogative, textbooks focus almost exclusively on grammatical words, particularly at the beginners’ level. The analysis of “wh” sentences elicited from Chinese speaking learners of English and Expert users of English suggested that the prototypical structure is very strong in both sets of data, although native speakers tend to use more prefabricated chunks of language. The analysis of “wh” sentences from native speakers and non-native speakers’ written corpora suggested that subordinate clauses are strongly present in both corpora, except for the word “why” in non-native speakers’ data. The use of different words occurring immediately after “wh” words in the two corpora can be explained by (1) the relatively small vocabulary size of the L2 speakers; (2) non-native speakers’ lack of awareness of restricted collocations; (3) L1 transfer; (4) over/under-generalization of rules and (5) textbooks.

This thesis explores how Wang Wei 王維(701-761), a Chinese Tang-dynasty poet, was received and represented through the twentieth century in the Anglophone world and what images of him different translators have created at different times for different readers in the receiving context. Wang Wei, like some of his contemporaries, notably Li Bo 李白(701-762) and Du Fu 杜甫 (712-770), is one of the most translated Chinese poets. The translation and reception of Wang Wei’s poetry have been dominated by emphasis on imagery, landscape, and Zen over the past one hundred years although his poetry also includes other themes. The hypothesis is that Wang Wei was more discussed for his contribution to Chinese landscape art at the beginning of the twentieth century, then began to be connected with Zen Buddhism around the mid-century. In the post-war period and beyond, his nature poetry associated with eco-spirituality has been widely explored. Starting with an introductory chapter, which explores critical debates about Wang Wei’s life and establishes a theoretical framework based on systemic approaches, this thesis will discuss the following elements chapter by chapter: classical Chinese poetry in English translation, Chinese imagery traditions and the development of Imagism, Wang Wei’s poetry about landscape and Zen, and difficulties of and patterns in translating Wang Wei. The concluding chapter will stress that the sustainability of Wang Wei’s poetry in English lies in its constant interactions with various literary, political, and social factors in the polysystem of the target culture. Thus, the translation of a foreign literary figure, like Wang Wei, goes beyond the linguistic and takes into account contextual relationships.

This thesis explores the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the speech of Chinese non-native speakers (NNSs) of English and native speakers (NSs), using corpus methodologies, the 'Linear Unit Grammar' analysis (Sinclair and Mauranen 2006) and text-based analyses. It reports that the DMs for analysis, 'like', 'oh', 'well', 'you know', 'I mean', 'you see', 'I think' and 'now', occur more frequently in the dialogic genres than in the monologic genres extracted from the three corpora, SECCL, MICASE and ICE-GB. The co-occurrence of DMs is taken as evidence to determine the categories for discussion with the suggested functions being secondary interpretations. Surprisingly, there are similarities in the use of DMs between Chinese NNSs and NSs. For the differences, some require NSs to become more tolerant and inclusive of the versions of English and some require pedagogical interventions for the Chinese NNSs. This thesis demonstrates that the use of DMs correlates with the genre, context, type of activity and identity of the speaker. All such factors affect the speakers' choice of a DM to use when giving priority to discourse organisation, fluency, the engagement of the listeners, the construction of the speaker‟s persona and the creation of solidarity.

The main aim of this study was to explore whether or not low achievers in EFL at a Japanese university perceive peer cooperation in cooperative learning contexts to be effective in improving their levels of expectancy, motivation and ultimate attainment in the L2. The main findings in this study pertain to the relationship between peer cooperation and L2 classroom motivation. The relationship involved several perceived routes which mainly indicated that the learners felt that peer cooperation had had a positive influence on their levels of motivation. The perceived routes linking peer cooperation to motivation can be roughly divided into two types; 1) the two routes which were mainly focused on in this study: through expectancy alone or a combination of levels of English and expectancy; and 2) other routes identified during the course of the study: through group cohesion and/or cohesion-generated factors (a sense of responsibility for their peers and having fun in class) or through factors related to status ordering or hierarchy among students (feelings of superiority/inferiority to their peers).

In this thesis, I have examined the screen translation of Japanese politeness into Cantonese dubbing as well as Chinese subtitling at three difference levels: (a) face threatening acts; (b) frequently used politeness markers and (c) discernment aspect of politeness. It is not difficult to find equivalents in the target languages for the politeness strategies exploited in dealing with face threatening acts. However, the indirectness expressed through certain commonly adopted politeness markers (such as negative interrogative) in Japanese cannot be conveyed into our target languages easily. Translators also encounter some difficulties when they deal with the discernment aspect of Japanese politeness (i.e. the distinction between plain, formal and honorific form). Both target languages are able to distinguish politeness of two levels instead of three as observed in the Japanese original. Finally, the screen translation, especially the dubbed version, of the two films that I examined demonstrates the dual role of a translated text as not only a reproduction of the original text but also a text which has its function in the target culture.

The present study was conducted to investigate possible interpretation discourse level effects of processing instruction and re-exposure to processing instruction on the acquisition of a specific feature of the Japanese linguistics system: namely Japanese passive forms. Processing instruction is a type of focus on form which is framed around the input processing theoretical framework. In order to carry out this investigation two separate experimental studies were conducted. All participants were native English speakers and were randomly assigned to two groups. In both experimental studies, one group received processing instruction which involved an explicit instruction component and structured input practice directed at altering the way L2 learners process input; the other group was used as a control group and received no instruction. Interpretation and production sentence level tasks, and discourse level tasks were used to measure performance after a one day instruction. A pre-test/post-test design was adopted to collect data in both studies. In the second experimental study, the processing instruction group received a re-exposure treatment between the post-test and the delayed post-test. Based on previous research carried out on the effectiveness of processing instruction, it was hypothesised that processing instruction would have positive effects on the accuracy with which subjects interpreted and produced sentences containing Japanese passive forms. A further hypothesis was that the effects of re-exposure to the processing instruction treatment (after the first post-test) would further improve subjects ability to interpret and produce sentences containing Japanese passive forms. A set of two hypotheses were formulated on possible interpretation discourse effects for processing instruction. It was hypothesised that the group receiving processing instruction would improve in its ability to interpret discourse (guided recall: dialogue and story version) containing Japanese passive forms, and that learners in this group, receiving re-exposure to the processing instruction treatment would further improve in their ability to interpret discourse containing Japanese passive forms. Overall the statistical analyses carried out on the raw scores of all the measures used supported the four hypotheses of this study. The results obtained in this research provide clear evidence that processing instruction has positive effects on the acquisition of Japanese passive construction. The present study showed that processing instruction was successful in altering the way in which learners processed the input and its effects had also an impact on the way learners produced Japanese passive construction forms. The main findings of the present study also provided new evidence on the effectiveness of processing instruction in improving learners’ performance on interpretation discourse level tasks. In addition to this, it also provides new evidence that learners receiving re-exposure to the processing instruction treatment between a post-test and a delayed post-test can further improve in their ability to interpret and produce the target feature at sentence level and interpret the target feature at discourse level. The results obtained in the two studies have implications at two levels. At the theoretical level this research provides further support for the role that input processing plays in SLA. At the pedagogical level it demonstrates the effectiveness of processing instruction on the acquisition of a different linguistic feature of the Japanese grammar system (passive forms), not only on an interpretation and production sentence level task but also on an interpretation discourse level task. It also demonstrated the important role of a re-exposure instructional treatment.

This multiple ethnographic case studies aims to investigate the critical literacy which emerged and emanated in the Chinese classrooms using drama as pedagogy. Drawing on the perspectives of Critical theories, Bakhtin Mikhail's dialogism, and also the literatures on critical literacy, this study argues that there is disparity of statuses of languages, knowledges, cultures and peoples within the Chinese language classrooms. Considering that indoctrinated teaching, official Chinese language and functional literacy are deeply ingrained within Chinese education, this study explore the efficacy of drama to promote pupils' voices and transform the Chinese language education. Concepts grounded in dialogism such as habitus, anwerability, voice, carnival were applied to constitute a theoretical frame for data analysis. Finally, six Chinese classrooms were selected as cases for in-depth discussion. It was found that there was an absence of dichotomous practice of critical dialogical literacy when drama was used. Instead, shades of grey of criticality and dialogicality were identified within those case study classrooms, showing that the dynamic and intricate power relations between pupils and teachers, as well as the interplay between the official language, culture, knowledge and habitus and those of the unofficial. The results also revealed that the more drama was applied in the classroom, more lively and carnivalesque the classroom was, and hence a higher degree of criticality and dialogicality. It was found that drama allows pupils to participate and create their learning content and environment. In addition to the use of drama, the use of space, the classroom order, the teaching materials, the classroom talk and discussion, the pupils' bodily response all are crucial for giving rise to a dialogic space for drama to take place. All these elements worked as the integral architectonics which affected the emergence and development of pupils' voices.

This research is an analytical study and an edition of Sürat al-Fätiha and Sürat al-Baqara from a copy of the manuscript that is the tafsir ascribed to Ibn 'Abbas according to the transmission of al-Kalbi from Abü Sälih. Historians reckon some ninety-eight copies of this manuscript exist, some complete and others partial commentaries, as mentioned in the Fahras al-Shimil. I have relied upon the main copy extant at Markaz Juma ` al-Mäjid, Dubai, cross-referencing it against three separate manuscripts and the printed Tanwir al- Migbäs. The study concludes that the text is neither the authorship nor the direct narration of Ibn `Abbas but is likely to be the work of al-Kalbi. This is based on a careful and detailed presentation of the life of Ibn `Abbas, his knowledge, his scholarship in exegesis, the sources upon which he relied for his exegesis, methodology and the aspects and subjects he treated therein; The aim of this chapter is to ascertain what the probability is of the edited text being the work of Ibn `Abbas, the probability that al-Kalbi has transmitted it from him, and if not, then is it correct to posit that al-Kalbi is its author ? Also, the life of al-Kalb-i, his works in tafsir, his style, methodology and his contributions to the field of exegesis. Also the study concludes that the printed Tanwir al-Migbäs is the same in transmission, with some differences in words order or commentaries with the other manuscripts, we used in this study. I have divided the study into two parts: an analytical study of the text and edition. The study includes a biography of Ibn `Abbas covering his social and intellectual life in order to ascertain whether there is any truth in the ascription of the manuscript to him. There is also an account of the life of al-Kalbi, the alleged reporter of this tafsir, and the one who ascribes it to Ibn `Abbas, covering similar aspects as that for Ibn `Abbas, in order to shed some light on whether there is a possibility that he is the author of the manuscript. R , ere is also a comparative study on some aspects that appear in the manuscript with other books in tafsir. After this I undertake an analytical study of the manuscript to clarify its methodology in tafsTr by way of presenting the sources of tafsir it uses and the subjects it covers along with its style. Also included are the characteristics of the manuscript with a conclusion covering the results found. The second part of this study is an edition of al-Fätiha and al-Baqara taken from the manuscript and in Arabic. The edition involved the following: inserting of grammatical inflections to verses of the Qur'än and numbering, writing of the verses in a font (Kufic script) differentiating them from the rest of the text, referencing of hadith from their sources, the inserting of grammatical inflections on unusual or unclear words and an explanation of their meanings, correction of typographical errors, indications of variant readings of verses if required, biographies of personalities and the identification of countries, places and tribes.

The research aims to provide an alternative working methodology from the perspective of a contemporary Chinese artist, not a calligrapher, to answer the research question: how does one create new works of calligraphy an art so burdened with historical tradition? This is practice based research; the designed pattern of study aims to test and to exemplify the relationship between theory and practice. As a consequence of understanding the relationship, and also most importantly based on the nature of the investigation and practical necessity, the strategy of the research project is implemented in a dialectical construction as the title of the thesis suggests. The thesis is accordingly comprised of two parts. Part I is an historical review of the Chinese language, a contextual analysis of the philosophical significance of Chinese calligraphy from an historic perspective, and reflections on those conceptions and theories that have informed the development of the research practice. Part II is a detailed description on the series of research practice, which is presented in two chapters: Chapter 1 describes the daily practice of calligraphy by studying the originals (selected masterpieces of Chinese calligraphy) so as to attain a thorough understanding of the calligraphy - to obtain firsthand knowledge is regarded as vital to the research outcome. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, Chapter 2 features four subsequent, sometimes parallel, individual projects: the painting project, collage project, photography project and video project, which seek to examine key characteristics embodied by Chinese calligraphy and through the descriptions to demonstrate the potential and possibilities within each individual practice in order to re-present this burdened art form through diverse available media (available to the practitioner). The integration of the two (contradictory) methods of practice into one construction is one of the essential features of this research. The benefit of this methodology as it has been experienced/presented is not losing the depth of the investigation on the one hand, but also covering a broader field of knowledge (ways of presentation) related to the subject on the other hand; as a result, more new works will be generated in the course of the engaged practice.

This study explores perceptions of Chinese texts by Western audiences while looking into the interrelation between film and literature. This is done by two means: firstly, through a detailed discussion of film adaptations with the focus on Chinese cinema, and secondly, through a practical demonstration of a filmic style in prose fiction in the form of an original book-length piece of fiction. Using Bakhtin’s ‘dialogism’ as the point of departure, the research on adaptations adopts an intertextual approach of adaptation theory as developed by Robert Stam, looking into the intertextual relationship between a hypotext (a source text) and a hypertext (film adaptation). The analysis of Raise the Red Lantern by Zhang Yimou (1991) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee (2001) concludes that both films contain elements of familiarity and strangeness for Western audiences, an uneasy mix of intimacy and exoticism which underpins their appeal. However, this phenomenon is unintended by the filmmakers themselves, chiefly because, firstly, the directors’ exposure to Western film art has contributed to the use of techniques that are familiar to Western audiences in the making of their films, and, secondly, the elements of strangeness are related to the natures of the films, the cultural elements involved and the locations in which the films are made, which are unfamiliar to a Western audience. The writing of the novel, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes, reveals the necessity of incorporating cultural elements into a narrative that is set in a time and place where the culture is deeply rooted. My background as a fourth-generation Chinese in Malaysia informs my urge as an artist and critic to explore aspects of my own cultural identity. The main concern, which is the key discovery of this experiment, is that once a writer understands the shared creative mechanism between film and literature, he can place a camera before his pages to capture the scenes he carefully arranged, making the page a screen onto which images as well as words can be projected.