The Treatment of Geographical Dialect in Literary Translation from the Perspective of Relevance Theory

This paper discusses problems involved in the translation of literary works that apply linguistic varieties, especially geographical dialects. It surveys selected approaches to the functions of dialects in literature and to the strategies of dealing with linguistic variation in translation, arguing that the understanding of the issue may be deepened and systematized by applying notions drawn from relevance theory. The use of dialect in literary texts is interpreted as a communicative clue and the translators′ approach to its rendering is described with reference to the cognitive environment of the recipients and the balance of processing effort and communicative gain. Examples are drawn from the Polish translations of The Secret Garden by F.H. Burnett, the oldest coming from 1917 and the newest from 2012, which highlight the translators′ changing assumptions on the recipients′ cognitive environment reflected in the choice of the strategy of dialect rendition

Robert Burns and the Hellish Legion

Folk tales and beliefs are as important a part of cultural history as novels or organised religion. Robert Burns and the Hellish Legion explores some aspects of life in the world in which Burns lived and wrote, the supernatural beliefs which people held, and how they fitted into their everyday lives. Burns himself did not believe that the cloven-hoofed Devil appeared in Ayrshire, but he understood that other people did think that Satan walked the earth and witches were real, and that these were genuine beliefs which stemmed from the need to understand the inconsistent world. This is the world of ordinary men and women who deserve to have their history recorded, whether they are washing clothes in the burn, harvesting corn or sitting at the fireside, telling the story of a witch pursuing a drunken farmer on a grey horse. Devils, witches and evil – this book examines beliefs in these in Burns’s time. Several of his most famous poems deal with the supernatural. In contrast with the insubstantial but terrifying world of the supernatural the book also looks at the lives of country people and the nature of the material world in which they lived. ‘Tam o’Shanter’ brings all of this together and the book ends with a discussion of the poem

Response through the Intentional Arc: Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus and Second Language Acquisition

Language, when considered as part of the lived experience of human beings, fails to be reduced to mere representation. In line with non-representationalist understandings of the mind and knowledge-how centered understandings of knowledge, purposiveness in skill acquisition and second language acquisition may be understood through Dreyfus’s skillful coping, based in Merleau-Ponty’s intentional arc and maximal grip. Such an approach to second language acquisition decentralizes rule-based representationalist understandings of the process, such as universal grammar, and instead sees language and communication as responsive, dynamic and dyadic

Do Yourself a Favor – Go to France!

This letter from returnee Nicole Burnett explains the value of studying abroad in France

Adaptive Response Modeling Using GIS, Blog 6

Student blog posts from the Great VCU Bike Race Book

Medium for empowerment or a 'centre for everything': students’ experience of control in digital environments within a university context

In maximising opportunities to nurture rich and productive learning communities, there is a need to know more about the cultures and sub-cultures that surround virtual learning environments (VLEs). Drawing from a small-scale interview study of students’ digital practices, this paper explores how different discourses may have patterned a group of students’ experiences of VLEs. Unlike studies which have focused upon evaluations of specific projects or interventions, this study investigated their experience across their course. It explores the student identities they associated with digital environments and the power relationships which seemed to pattern how they positioned themselves (or felt positioned) as learners. Whilst none were intimidated by technical aspects, the student identities available to them seemed to vary, as did their perceptions of the student identities associated with university-sponsored digital environments. The analysis considers three aspects of their experience: how they related to the VLE itself, how they related to others through this, and the alternative communities they created to attempt to manage their engagement with the VLE. The paper concludes by arguing for further research which focuses on the broader student experience across courses in order to explore how university-based digital environments intersect with students’ identities as learners