The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study

Carminati MN, Knoeferle P. The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study. Presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language and Processing (AMLaP), Riva del Garda, Italy

The effects of direct instruction in phonological skills on L2 reading performance of Chinese learners of English

Phonological skills are found to be highly predictive of children's reading achievement in the English LI context. Chinese ESL learners are found to be weak in phonological skills because of their logographic Ll background. They often have difficulties in decoding English words, and thus affect their L2 reading development. \ud LI training studies showed that improvement in phonological skills will lead to improvement in reading performance. But no similar training study for Chinese ESL learners is found. This thesis reports three studies which aim at (i) confirming the relationship between phonological skills and reading development in the L2 context of Chinese learners, (ii) identifying the effects of phonological skills training on reading performance, and (iii) determining the effective level or age for receiving the training.\ud The first study compared two groups of Chinese ESL learners, one with phonological skills training in their LI literacy experience and the other without. Results indicated that better phonological skills had led to more effective L2 reading development of the former group. The second and third studies are phonological skills training experiments conducted to Hong Kong students at primary and secondary school levels. The studies found that training at primary level was effective in improving the students' phonological skills, decoding efficiency and reading performance. However, the phonological skills training at secondary level produced no significant effect.\ud Results of the three studies together add positive evidence to research related to phonological skills and reading development, especially in the L2 context. Results of the two training studies conducted at different levels indicate that phonological skills training can be effective if given at early stage, to support L2 literacy development and to counteract interference from Ll. The participants' age and the length of the programme could be determining factors for the effectiveness of the training.\u

Chinese Shakespeares : an intercultural study of adaptations across performance genres

My dissertation uses the proliferation of contemporary adaptations and performances of Shakespeare in Mainland China from the 1980s to the present as an example to demonstrate the complicated language, historical, cultural, and socio- political interactions between the Chinese and the Anglophone world during the last three decades. It is an inquiry of the (re)presentation, (re)construction, and perception of Shakespeare in contemporary China, in a period of dramatic local, social and economic changes, vis-à-vis the increasingly powerful impact of the global consumption of literary, cultural artefacts. Focusing on the interactions that take place among Shakespearean text and performance and Chinese culture, the dissertation addresses the following issues: Why should Shakespeare be associated with China? To what extent can Chinese interpretations of Shakespeare tell us about social changes in China? How has Shakespeare affected Chinese theatre and Chinese culture? How can Chinese Shakespeares contribute to the general interpretive possibilities of Shakespeare and to the global awareness of foreign Shakespeares?Theorizations of theatrical interculturalism began in the 1970s, but until now, there has not emerged a unanimously agreed theory to explain intercultural theatre. My dissertation deploys cross-disciplinary approaches of translation studies, performance theories, cultural studies, comparative literature and the sociological theory of locality criticism to examine the mechanisms of adapting Shakespeare into Chinese theatrical forms and offers a thick account of the producing, promoting and perceiving of Shakespeare in today’s China. My analysis focuses on shifting localities that cluster around the artists, their works, and their audiences. The first chapter reviews the complexity of encounter between Shakespeare and China, laying the ground for my premise that Chinese performances of Shakespeare are invariably informed by ideological, political or cultural norms and constraints of Chinese society. Three genres of performances—huaju (spoken drama), xiqu (Chinese opera) and dianying (films)—are singled out in this study to discover key cultural and aesthetic moments of their encounter, influence and reception. Nine stage and screen productions are examined as products of the interculturalism of Chinese Shakespeares. My contention is that these intercultural productions have consciously interweaved Shakespeare and Chinese theatrical forms to resonate with the issues of Chinese society and construct the image of China in the globalised world

Projective Citizenship--The Reimagining of the Citizen in Post-War American Poetry

This dissertation examines the work of four poets writing in a projective or "open field" tradition in post-war America: Charles Olson, Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, Susan Howe, and Myung Mi Kim. It considers the way these poets engage, via innovations in poetic form, with conceptions of the citizen and meanings of citizenship at different historical moments in the United States. Drawing on recent developments in citizenship theory which have focussed on what Engin Isin calls "acts of citizenship," "Projective Citizenship--The Reimagining of the Citizen in Post-War American Poetry" suggests that poetry might offer a means for imagining alternative notions of the citizen, conceiving of citizens as active agents rather than passive subjects

Attention Restraint, Working Memory Capacity, and Mind Wandering: Do Emotional Valence or Intentionality Matter?

Attention restraint appears to mediate the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and mind wandering (Kane et al., 2016). Prior work has identifed two dimensions of mind wandering—emotional valence and intentionality. However, less is known about how WMC and attention restraint correlate with these dimensions. Te current study examined the relationship between WMC, attention restraint, and mind wandering by emotional valence and intentionality. A confrmatory factor analysis demonstrated that WMC and attention restraint were strongly correlated, but only attention restraint was related to overall mind wandering, consistent with prior fndings. However, when examining the emotional valence of mind wandering, attention restraint and WMC were related to negatively and positively valenced, but not neutral, mind wandering. Attention restraint was also related to intentional but not unintentional mind wandering. Tese results suggest that WMC and attention restraint predict some, but not all, types of mind wandering

Linguistic complexity of arabic language: a semantic analysis of antonymous homonyms in the holy Qur'ān

Homonymy, is one of the two main sub-divisions of lexical ambiguity that represents the complex nature of form and context of the Qur'anic Arabic which presents a challenge in the translation process. Since Qur'anic discourse abounds with homonymic expressions whose meaning is derived from the context, the translators of the Qur'an should undertake a demanding task decoding the intended meanings. The present paper aims at clarifying some linguistic complexities in some verses of the Qur'ān which may pose difficulty to translators of the holy book most especially those who are not familiar with antonymous homonyms in Arabic language. The reason is that antonymous homonyms are special features of the Qurʾanic Arabic language. It may be viewed as one of the stylistic feature of the Qur'an. Therefore, classification of these linguistic complexity is offered and the samples of these classifications from the Holy Qur'ān are mentioned in relation to antonymous homonyms. Samples of translated Qur'an are compared in order to ascertain the qualities of translations and English translation strategies of the stated verses