A Pragmatic Analysis of Verbal Humor in Friends

Friends is a very popular sitcom in America and even in China for its great humor, especially for its verbal humor. In order to understand the American humor better, the author tries to find out and appreciate the verbal humor in the framework of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and John Austin’s Speech Act Theory. By this, the paper helps to grasp the wise humor in Friends and convince people of the strength and operability of Cooperative Principle as well as Speech Act Theory.     

Pragmatic Cooperative Principle and Its Effects on Verbal Humor

Humor can be interpreted in many forms,and verbal humor is the most popular one.Grice’s cooperative principle was proposed in 1967 and the violation of cooperative principles as well as its sub-maxims will cause humor.This paper will put the emphasis on CP’s effects on humor and will give some analysis in detail.     

A Cognitive Interpretation of Verbal Humor

In this paper,verbal humor is interpretated from the appreciator’s perspective of cognitive linguistics,precisely,the combination of Relevance Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory,which is a relatively new model,in hope to better understanding verbal humor.     

The Study on the Structural Features of China's Foreign Trade

With the rapid development of our country’s economy,the role and status of foreign trade is increasingly important.Trade structure is the foundation of a country’s foreign trade;the trade structure’s alteration is not only connected with the foreign trade,but also the economy development.Since the reformation and being open to the world,China’s foreign trade has developed steadily both in scale and structure.However,the structure of foreign trade imbalance has been plagued with a key factor in China’s foreign trade.Structure of foreign trade imbalance not only reflects the structure of China’s internal economic imbalances,but also affects our exports more competitive.In this paper,the theory will propose suggestions for the foreign trade China.     

Appreciation of Humor in Mark Twain’s Sketches

As a distinguished humorist and litterateur, Mark Twain has been studied by many scholars and experts. Most of the researches are based on his famous children novels and typical short stories. This paper aims to appreciate Twain’s humor in his sketches from the angle of catalog of humor—verbal humor and situational humor.     

Analysis of English Curriculum for English Major in Chinese Tertiary Education

This paper provides a critical analysis of the English curriculum for English Major in Chinese tertiary education.This curriculum is examined from two dimensions:the innovative nature of this curriculum according to Markee’ s definition of " language teaching inno vation";the interaction of the curriculum and the mainstream context,which is " expanding circle" in the framework of World English es as well as the type of " foreign language teaching in mainstream culture" of bilingual education.     

Mark Twain’s Humorous Satire in Running for Governor

Mark Twain, a mastermind of humor and realism, is seen as a giant in world literature. His humorous satire had great impact on the following men of letters; critics also attached significant importance to it and put forward various interpretations. Noticeably, his humor ous satire finds full expression in his famous short story, Running for Governor. In it, with humor and satire, he exposed the true features and hypocrisy of American democracy. The paper tries to analyze the basic elements which affected Mark Twain’s humorous satire, aiming at offering rational analysis of this humorous satire in Running for Governor as well as making Twain’s works readily understood.     

The crisis of representation in the postmodern era: On Barry Levinson’s film Wag the Dog

Barry Levinson’s film Wag the Dog(1997) is concerned with the technological transformation of American culture in the postmodernism which is isomorphic with the media culture of American society in the late twentieth century. By exploring three dualities illustrated in the film,this paper aims to show the insecure and uncertain categories of these oppositions under the dominant phenomena of this period: the media,so as to bring about the public’s ability to discern the postmodern world as well as a new ways of thinking and living.     

On the Importance of the Teaching Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom of Higher Vocational College

There is general agreement that culture should be taught in the foreign language classroom of Higher Vocational College,but just what this means is unclear.The thesis is concerned with why,what and how of teaching culture.Firstly,it will be demonstrated that teaching foreign language is not the same as giving syntactic structures,but mainly incorporates some cultures elements.Secondly,it suggests which culture is taught in the foreign language classroom.Furthermore,by means of some methods an attempt will be made to incorporate culture into the classroom.As a result of the study shows that Culture has taken an important place in foreign language classroom of Higher Vocational College.     

Tourist Translation of Three Famous Grottoes in China——From Perspective of Domestication and Foreignization

In recent years,with the deepening of reform and opening up and the success of the entry into the World Trade Organization,the tourism industry in China has been booing. More and more foreign tourists come to China. In the face of tourist’s needs changing rapidly,how to accurately and appropriately introduce Chinese tourism resources to foreign tourists in order to promote Chinese and foreign exchanges and the development of tourism have already become a problem that can not be ignored.However,tourism narration as an important media to spread the Chinese tourism culture,the quality of it’s translation is particularly important.     

Teacher and Student Roles in Chinese Culture

Nowaday, going abroad to further education has gained the greatest popularity among chinese students. Majority of these oversea students may suffer from some problems in their cross-cultural classrooms, even though they are excellent in their own country. Chinese learners are frequently labeled as"passive learners", compared with other foreign learners. The teachers in foreign countries may also play a sharply different role in teaching. These problems have already attracted some education experts and researchers’attention and a few research programs and experiments have been conducted. This paper will adopt Tweed and Lehman (2002)’s Confucian-Socratic framework to systematically analyze student and teacher roles in Chinese culture and communicative norms of the students and teachers in Chinese contexts. A better cross-clutural classroom will be built on the basis of foreign teachers and chinese students’mutual efforts on understanding each other’s culture background.     

The Application of Peter Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory to the Translation of Chinese Historical Allusions

Chinese historical allusion is the essence of traditional culture,and its structure is simple and far-reaching,but literal translation can not let foreign readers understand and accept.Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory is based on the point of the target language to deliver information,make smooth and clear translations to the target language readers.The applica tion of Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory to the translation of Chinese historical allusions can reduce the commu nication barriers of foreign readers.     

Analysis of the Causes of Chinglish in Spoken English among Students

Chinglish is what occurs when the Chinese language and English language crash into one another.When native Chinese speakers who are learning English attempt to directly translate Chinese into English,using Chinese sentence structure,wording and grammar,a blend of Chinese and English happens.Among Chinese English teachers and English as a second language (ESL) foreign experts working with students,this phenomenon is commonly referred to as Chinglish.In order to help students to overcome Chinglish in their oral English and cultivate their sensibility of foreign culture and mode of thinking the awareness of the causes of Chinglish is a must.This paper focuses on analyzing the causes in terms of negative transfer of mother tongue and the differences between modes of thinking and cultural backgrounds.     

Analysis of Cultural Differences and Translation from a Memetic Point of View

Language and culture are two interwoven elements of a certain society.Culture difference is one important factor in the procedure of translation.Therefore,how to translate culture differences and the interpret these differences in the target language,should be taken into careful consideration.This paper analyzed the translation of culture loaded information from a perspective of memetic and holds that in the process of translation we should keep the meme unchanged as much as possible,so that the features of a certain culture were spread.     

Language Teacher’s Information Literacy in the ICT context

With the rapid development of Information and Communication Technology(ICT),the modern information and communica tion media have been changing the rationale of learning and teaching.Under such circumstances,a person’s,especially an educator’s in formation literacy plays an important role in their personal and professional development.This essay discusses the influence of the new challenge on EFL(English as a foreign language) teachers’professional development.EFL teachers should be fully empowered to be infor mation literate language educators in the curriculum innovation of TEFL(teaching English as a foreign language).It is suggested that EFL teachers’awareness,attitudes,and personal needs should be taken into account in the process of integrating ICT into their professional practice and self-development.     

Analysis of Black humor in Catch-22 with Cooperative Principle

This paper takes Grice’s Cooperative Principle as an analyzing tool to study the conversations in Catch-22, a representative work of black humor. This thesis proves that the violation of Cooperative Principle can also create black humor. First present a general introduction to Heller and its work at first, which is followed by a brief introduction of cooperative principle. And then case analysis of the conversations creating black humor.     

Analysis of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? from the Perspective of New Historicism

Edward.Albee’s masterpiece Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?is generally considered as one of the representative works of Theatre of the Absurd.This paper will analyze the two sets of opposing power structure in the play from the perspective of New Historicism and further demonstrate the cultural and historical context implied in the play.     

The Imagined Other——Image of China in Kubla Khan

Said’s Orientalism points out that the Occident is the interpreter and the Orient is the interpreted. The Occident has the privilege to interpret at will the history, culture, character and tradition of the Orient, in which the Occident finds its legitimate excuse in dominating and seizing the Orient. The paper presents an analysis of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan in which China has been constructed as the ’Other’. In addition, it also demonstrates that cultural hegemony participates in the process of colonizing the world.