Chinese translation norms for 1429 English words

We present Chinese translation norms for 1429 English words. Chinese-English bilinguals (N=28) were asked to provide the first Chinese translation that came to mind for 1429 English words. The results revealed that 71% of the English words received more than one correct translation indicating the large amount of translation ambiguity when translating from English to Chinese. The relationship between translation ambiguity and word frequency, concreteness and language proficiency was investigated. Although the significant correlations were not strong, results revealed that English word frequency was positively correlated with the number of alternative translations, whereas English word concreteness was negatively correlated with the number of translations. Importantly, regression analyses showed that the number of Chinese translations was predicted by word frequency and concreteness. Furthermore, an interaction between these predictors revealed that the number of translations was more affected by word frequency for more concrete words than for less concrete words. In addition, mixed-effects modelling showed that word frequency, concreteness and English language proficiency were all significant predictors of whether or not a dominant translation was provided. Finally, correlations between the word frequencies of English words and their Chinese dominant translations were higher for translation-unambiguous pairs than for translation-ambiguous pairs. The translation norms are made available in a database together with lexical information about the words, which will be a useful resource for researchers investigating Chinese-English bilingual language processing

Lorrie Moore collection, 'A Little Ethnic Kink Is Always Good to See”: Jewish performance anxiety and anti-passing in the fiction of Lorrie Moore

This essay explores the ways in which the performance of Jewish identity (in the sense both of representing Jewish characters and of writing about those characters’ conscious and unconscious renditions of their Jewishness) is a particular concern (in both senses of the word) for Lorrie Moore. Tracing Moore's representations of Jewishness over the course of her career, from the early story “The Jewish Hunter” through to her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, I argue that it is characterized by (borrowing a phrase from Moore herself) “performance anxiety,” an anxiety that manifests itself in awkward comedy and that can be read both in biographical terms and as an oblique commentary on, or reworking of, the passing narrative, which I call “anti-passing.” Just as passing narratives complicate conventional ethno-racial definitions so Moore's anti-passing narratives, by representing Jews who represent themselves as other to themselves, as well as to WASP America, destabilize the category of Jewishness and, by implication, deconstruct the very notion of ethnic categorization

Blanchot, Derrida, Gadamer and the An-archy of Style

This dissertation examines the possibilities of thinking and reading style nonteleocratically through the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida. The title evokes the non-foundational aspect of style—style as that which is not conceptualisable and which defies categorisation by previously established rules. Chapter 1 shows how traditional theories and definitions of style are essentially teleocratic in being always directed towards some external function. Style is considered as a signifier of social, biographical or political signifieds, or else it is discussed as a representation of linguistic, generic, formal, or cognitive structures. Style as an event, on the other hand, cannot be fully understood theoretically but must be encountered always singularly and in performance. Style as an event does not simply represent something that exists before it but creates the possibilities of its readability. Style is then also anachronic, suspending teleocratic conceptions of the temporality of style in terms of original and more essential sources. It is oriented towards the future, the aleatory, that which is always still to come. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 explore the subject through successive, focused discussions of the thinking and performance of style in Gadamer’s, Blanchot’s, and Derrida’s work. Each chapter finishes with a discussion of the respective thinker’s encounter with Paul Celan’s poetry, which, it is argued, demands non-teleocratic readings. For comparative purposes, in Chapter 5, these readings are contrasted to teleocratic theories of style by Fredric Jameson and by various contemporary stylisticians. What results from this comparison is not a new method to be applied in an improved theory of style but an ethical consideration of the singularity of every reading of style marked by moments of interruption and intensification that arise in the performance of style