Crafting Elastic Masculinity: Formations of Shenti, Intimacy and Kinship among Young Men in China

Under the ever-deepening transformations in contemporary China, traditional gender relations have been reshaped, but elements of patriarchy informed by the legacy of Confucianism still linger. These intricately interwoven forces have exerted a great impact on the gendered lives of the young generation. This research aims to examine young men’s views of Chinese manhood and how they construct and negotiate masculinities in their everyday lives. I conducted 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Chinese men aged between 22 and 32, who are mostly ordinary men in the middle social stratum in Shanghai and Shenyang. I regard Chinese men as actively negotiating their identities within particular stages of their life course. Overall, this thesis is informed by perspectives of relational selfhood and Confucian notions of the relational, reflexive, and embodied self that is an ongoing process of becoming. I bring indigenous concepts and cultural repertoires into critical dialogue with global and leading sociological theories of individualisation and reflexivity. Based on my analyses, I introduce and develop the concept of ‘elastic masculinity’. Specifically, I argue that the masculinity of ordinary young men is flexible, adaptable and accommodating. However, the term elastic masculinity also illustrates that it is limited by the availability of resources, structural constraints, cultural traditions and diverse personal relationships. Thus, elastic masculinity is an appropriate metaphor and an important concept to understand Chinese young men’s active engagement with China’s global modernity, increasing individualisation, shifting gender values and local realities

Desarrollo de una herramienta computacional para el estudio de los marcadores discursivos

Los marcadores discursivos son un conjunto heterogéneo de unidades con significación subjetiva, idiosincrásica e intraducible (Martí Sánchez, 2009). Introducen información relacionada con la actividad comunicativa, contribuyen a construir texto o discurso, facilitando así la interpretación de los mensajes, y siempre comunican más de lo que explícitamente expresan. Es más, su uso y entendimiento implican madurez lingüística. Según esta definición, al grupo de los marcadores discursivos pertenecen términos de distintos tipos, cuyo significado puede variar según el uso y el contexto, y que, además, se clasifican en tipos que pueden ser rasgos distintivos de los diferentes tipos de textos. Asimismo, los marcadores discursivos de cada lengua son elementos propios de la misma. Todo lo antedicho constituye el motivo por el que hemos elegido los marcadores discursivos como objeto de estudio para nuestro análisis contrastivo de textos. Se trata de un elemento lingüístico que caracteriza el tipo de texto y los usos discursivos que se dan en el mismo; por tanto, un emisor competente en una lengua dada se ajustará al uso característico de los marcadores según el tipo de texto. Su estudio y el conocimiento de la frecuencia de uso de cada tipo de marcador atendiendo al contexto, es algo de gran utilidad para profesionales de la traducción, la enseñanza o la escritura

Maritime expressions:a corpus based exploration of maritime metaphors

This study uses a purpose-built corpus to explore the linguistic legacy of Britain’s maritime history found in the form of hundreds of specialised ‘Maritime Expressions’ (MEs), such as TAKEN ABACK, ANCHOR and ALOOF, that permeate modern English. Selecting just those expressions commencing with ’A’, it analyses 61 MEs in detail and describes the processes by which these technical expressions, from a highly specialised occupational discourse community, have made their way into modern English. The Maritime Text Corpus (MTC) comprises 8.8 million words, encompassing a range of text types and registers, selected to provide a cross-section of ‘maritime’ writing. It is analysed using WordSmith analytical software (Scott, 2010), with the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference corpus. Using the MTC, a list of keywords of specific salience within the maritime discourse has been compiled and, using frequency data, concordances and collocations, these MEs are described in detail and their use and form in the MTC and the BNC is compared. The study examines the transformation from ME to figurative use in the general discourse, in terms of form and metaphoricity. MEs are classified according to their metaphorical strength and their transference from maritime usage into new registers and domains such as those of business, politics, sports and reportage etc. A revised model of metaphoricity is developed and a new category of figurative expression, the ‘resonator’, is proposed. Additionally, developing the work of Lakov and Johnson, Kovesces and others on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), a number of Maritime Conceptual Metaphors are identified and their cultural significance is discussed

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing the operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution to July, 1893.

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. 1 July. HMD 184 (pts. 1 and 2), 53-2, v29-30, 1622p. [3257-3258] Research related to the American Indian