Due to the competitive edge it confers on students, educational institutions, and non-English speaking nations in a globalized economy, English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has been gaining ...popularity in tertiary education in non-native English-speaking (NNES) countries. Institute-wide EMI implementation has often been imposed by top-down decisions, in combination with the optimistic view that the horse should always be placed before the cart. However, emerging evidence suggests that the delivery of such programs to NNES students has led to new pedagogical challenges and learning problems that go beyond the scope of language learning and teaching and deserve immediate attention. For example, how would an instructor respond to situations in which students’ learning of content is compromised by their limited language proficiency? This book draws on the current practice of EMI in diverse disciplines and university settings and examines how these new pedagogical and learning issues can be addressed. The discussion also involves a reflection on the essence of EMI in relation to the use of the first language (L1) as the medium of instruction in tertiary education. In addition, the book includes discussion about how to ensure and maintain the quality of EMI programs and assess the readiness of stakeholders for such programs, which include administrators, teachers, and students. The discussion is led by exemplars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the majority of students are native Chinese speakers, in the hope of developing critical perspectives and practical guidelines as references for EMI in other NNES settings.
Rupture of a pregnant uterus in early pregnancy and an unscarred uterus are extremely rare, and some non‐specific symptoms might appear before this occurrence. We report the case of a multiparous ...woman (gravida 3, para 2) with uterine fundal rupture in her early second trimester (17+ weeks of gestational age), who presented upper abdominal discomfort and vomiting for 3 days, and progressed into sudden acute abdomen and shock. During emergent laparotomy, the entire amniotic sac was found in the peritoneal cavity with a rupture of the uterine fundus. Although we could not confirm that the appearance of upper gastrointestinal symptoms and severe vomiting was associated with uterine rupture in this pregnant woman, abdominal symptoms or signs might be a hint or cause of severe catastrophic pregnancy‐related complications.
► We examine the usage of 1st plural personal pronoun in the political discourse. ► We compare political interviews with political debate as the example of different contexts (venue). ► We analyze ...American politicians during 2008 presidential elections. ► We found that 1st plural personal pronoun is manipulated according to the venue of the speech/talk. ► We found that politicians through the usage of the personal pronoun
we reveal whom they support and do not support.
Billig (1995) wrote that politicians often evoke nationalistic views when delivering their speeches – they do this through the use of simple words (as personal pronouns) in a specified context. The context, and the way personal pronouns are utilized, creates decisive turning points for any politician, especially one on the electoral road (
Johnson, 1994; van Dijk, 1997, 2002). A politician must decide which stance to take on given issues, which constituents to support, and with which group/ideology to self-identify. This paper analyzes self-identifications that particular American politicians develop through their employment of pronominal choice. The period that was of particular interest was during 2008 elections in the US and the subsequent year. We compared how the 1st person plural pronoun was used during the interviews and during the debate. This paper finds that American politicians make use of personal pronouns to evoke nationalistic emotions and achieve their career goals differently, depending whether it is during the interview or during a debate. We argue that the role of the venue as an external characteristic of context is underestimated in the political discourse research.
The present study aimed to investigate the neural mechanism underlying semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese adult learners, focusing on the learners who were Indo-European language speakers with ...advanced levels of proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging technique and a semantic judgment task to test 24 Mandarin Chinese adult learners (L2 group) and 26 Mandarin Chinese adult native speakers (L1 group) as a control group. In the task, participants were asked to indicate whether two-character pairs were related in meaning. Compared to the L1 group, the L2 group had greater activation in the bilateral occipital regions, including the fusiform gyrus and middle occipital gyrus, as well as the right superior parietal lobule. On the other hand, less activation in the bilateral temporal regions was found in the L2 group relative to the L1 group. Correlation analysis further revealed that, within the L2 group, increased activation in the left middle temporal gyrus/superior temporal gyrus (M/STG, BA 21) was correlated with higher accuracy in the semantic judgment task as well as better scores in the two vocabulary tests, the Assessment of Chinese character list for grade 3 to grade 9 (A39) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. In addition, functional connectivity analysis showed that connectivity strength between the left fusiform gyrus and left ventral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, BA 47) was modulated by the accuracy in the semantic judgment task in the L1 group. By contrast, this modulation effect was weaker in the L2 group. Taken together, our study suggests that Mandarin Chinese adult learners rely on greater recruitment of the bilateral occipital regions to process orthographic information to access the meaning of Chinese characters. Also, our correlation results provide convergent evidence that the left M/STG (BA 21) plays a crucial role in the storage of semantic knowledge for readers to access to conceptual information. Moreover, the connectivity results indicate that the left ventral pathway (left fusiform gyrus-left ventral IFG) is associated with orthographic-semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese. However, this semantic-related ventral pathway might require more time and language experience to be developed, especially for the late adult learners of Mandarin Chinese.
This paper investigates hyperbolic expressions of emotion in Mandarin Chinese conversations in Taiwan for two dimensions: how hyperbole is realized via a variety of syntactic devices based on ...metaphor, and how hyperbole takes affective stance to evidence speakers’ intersubjectification. It is shown that syntactic devices utilized to render hyperbole include polysyndeton, extreme case formulation, resultative verb construction, and four-word idiomatic construction. Highly understood in metaphorical senses, hyperbolic expressions of emotion have rich data revealing that hyperbole draws on metaphor as a bedrock mechanism. This paper argues that it is the analogical and imaginative capacities of metaphor that opens up possibility for speakers to talk about exaggerative interpretations of events, which further increase speakers’ intersubjectification to indicate their stance for interactive purposes.
Construction in conversation Hsieh, Chen-Yu Chester; I-Wen Su, Lily
Review of Cognitive Linguistics,
08/2019, Volume:
17, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Abstract
Although the Construction Grammar (CxG) model has yielded fruitful findings, the role that pragmatics plays in language has not yet been fully considered in this theoretical framework. The ...recent development of spoken corpora, however, enables construction grammarians to develop a new approach called Interactional Construction Grammar, which incorporates interactional factors into CxG analysis to account for patterns that involve interpersonal functions and global contexts. Adopting this approach, the present study attempts to examine the use of a complement-taking mental predicate
xiangshuo
in Taiwan Mandarin conversation and analyze the co-occurrence patterns of this cognitive verb with different subjects. We identify three sequential patterns in which
xiangshuo
most frequently occurs, including account-giving, contrast-projecting and involvement-constructing, and argue that only by taking into account the sequential context and interactional function can the distribution patterns of subjects and particles that recurrently collocate with
xiangshuo
be explained.
The present study sets out to construct a semantic network for -kai in Chinese resultative verbs based on the framework of Principled Polysemy. Our analysis concerning the cognitive-pragmatic ...motivations for the meaning extensions of postverbal -kai pinpoints the significance of perspective-taking and real-world force dynamics in the conceptual structure of Chinese resultative verbs. With the aid of corpus data, we further demonstrate how pertinent textual cues help to disambiguate polysemous V -kai complex verbs and evoke metaphorical readings of the gestalt V–V constructions, hinting at the distributed and context-sensitive nature of the meaning construction of Chinese resultative verbs.
This paper takes a corpus-driven approach to re-examine the widespread synonymy view regarding Mandarin lian...dou and lian...ye, through a scrutiny of how they are actually manifested in natural ...language use. With corpus data, first of all, we verify the constructional statuses of lian...dou and lian...ye, and show that the two constructions are crucially distinguished via a split preference of focalization. Second, we argue that the split preference can be adequately explained by a comparison between the usage patterns of ye and dou. Third, our findings suggest an inheritance effect and interaction between related constructions. Finally, it is proposed that the constructionist approaches will benefit from investigating such subtleties in discourse usage as revealed in this study.
Information technologies have now matured to the point of enabling researchers to create a repository of language resources, especially for those languages facing the crisis of endangerment. The ...development of an online platform of corpora, made possible by recent advances in data storage, character-encoding and web technology, has profound consequences for the accessibility, quantity, quality and interoperability of linguistic field data. This is of particular significance for Formosan languages in Taiwan, many of which are on the verge of extinction. As a response to the recognition of this burgeoning problem, the key objectives of the establishment of the NTU Corpus of Formosan Languages aim to document and thus preserve valuable linguistic data, as well as relevant ethnological and cultural information. This paper will introduce some of the theoretical bases behind this initiative, as well as the procedures, transcription conventions, database normalization, in-house system and three special features in the creation of this corpus. Adapted from the source document
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