从信息论的角度看欠额翻译与超额翻译现象

翻译是语际间的信息转换。本文依据信息论的基本理论分析翻译中的欠额与超额现象,并从信息论的角度去探析欠额翻译与超额翻译的规避问题,即调整平衡源语的冗余度,从而使译语适应目的语信息接受者的信道容量,促使交际的成功。     

Re-Learning American History: Understanding the Assumptions Underlying Intercultural Communication

Course: Intercultural Communication

Objectives: Students will challenge their assumptions about other cultures and question ethnocentric understandings of other cultures     

Media criticism group speech

Objective: To integrate speaking practice with rhetorical theory Type of speech: Persuasive Point value: 100 points (i.e., 30 points based on peer evaluations, 30 points based on individual performance, 40 points based on the group presentation), which is 25% of course grade Requirements: (a) References: 7–10; (b) Length: 20–30 minutes; (c) Visual aid: Yes; (d) Outline: Yes; (e) Prerequisite reading: The appropriate chapter (e.g., generic, feminist, metaphoric, fantasy theme, pentadic criticism, neo-Aristotelian) in Foss (1996); (f) Additional requirements: Each group member should be given an equal amount of time to speak and an equal amount of work in preparing the final presentation This assignment gives students a chance to engage in the study of popular culture as public address, giving them insight into their own worlds and the ways popular culture may help shape/instruct that world. This assignment also allows students to engage in critical analysis, which not only means that students can learn about rhetorical theory, but they also get to engage in the types of analysis used by their instructor during the course.     

Political Participation,Efficacy and the 2008 Minnesota Presidential Caucuses

The purpose of this study was to learn why Minnesota residents participated in the presidential caucus on Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008. The research team interviewed a total of 37 registered Republican (n = 15) and Democrat (n = 22) Minnesota voters from a mid-sized Midwestern community on caucus night. Open-ended, semi-structured interviews elicited the reasons voters said they participated in the caucus. Using grounded theory, several categories of responses emerged from data including duty and responsibility, making a difference, special election, participation, supporting a candidate, and concern for the country. The results show the majority of participants were motivated to take part because they viewed it as a duty and a responsibility as citizens of a democracy. Participants did not use the caucus as a forum for discussion and dialogue surrounding the election, but as an outlet to achieve political efficacy.     

College Students' Sexual Health: Investigating the Role of Peer Communication

This study used the Theory of Planned Behavior as a guide to investigate college students' discussions with their peers about sexual health-related topics. Two hundred thirty-one undergraduates from a large university completed a questionnaire that assessed their comfort level discussing sexual health-related issues, the topics discussed, and the sex of the discussion partners. Some of the topics most frequently discussed included birth control, condoms, sexually transmitted diseases, and resources. Although a majority of the participants felt comfortable talking with both males and females, participants felt more comfortable discussing with their own gender than the opposite gender, and were in general more comfortable talking with females than males. Results showed that most students felt comfortable discussing sexual health-related topics with their peers, with females reporting a slightly higher comfort level than males.     

An Examination of Women's Decision-Making Processes During Unplanned Pregnancy

Through the current study the author sought to analyze discourses of women who have experienced an unplanned pregnancy. A qualitative approach was used to gather responses regarding the decision-making process women undergo during this phenomenon. Data showed that persuasive messages from outside sources frequently had a reported impact on the pregnancy option women chose. Often, women would plan on carrying their pregnancy to term initially, yet the persuasive messages they received caused them to change their mind. Women's speculations about the assumed reactions they would receive from others also had an impact on their decision. Implications from this research suggest that women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy may benefit from their family members, significant others, and friends' awareness of the strong impact opinions can have on this decision-making process.     

Preparing literary material for public utterance

This essay claims that arguments about the genres of discourse contain as a crucial element an attribution of status, which involves a dialectic of authority and marginality. Rhetorical scholarship is often a reaction against the condition of marginality. Reflection on these matters illumines the ontology of rhetorical discourse.     

From Infantile Citizens to Infantile Institutions: The Metaphoric Transformation of Political Economy in the 2008 Housing Market Crisis

The logic of political economy depends on a domestic metaphor, using the oikos or household as a model for the polis. Historically, this metaphor has imagined citizens as the children of a paternal state. However during the 2008 housing crisis, this metaphor was turned upside down, depicting citizens as the parents of infantile state institutions. Although initially portraying citizens as juvenile “delinquents,” the rhetoric of the mortgage crisis ultimately repositioned citizens as surrogate caretakers for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant politico-economic institutions that constituted the majority of the mortgage market. In this way, the rhetoric of the housing crisis inverted both the metaphorical and material structure of political economy.     

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno and the Practice of Rhetorical Theory in Colonial Peru

This essay takes up Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno as an artifact of early colonial Peruvian rhetoric and an evocative example of American rhetorical theory. Our analysis illuminates how Guaman Poma theorizes transcultural colonial communication from an Andean perspective. We highlight three key elements in his theory: its ethical copia, its concern with the insufficiency of the available genres, and its assumption that communication will fail. In the end, we suggest, Guaman Poma provides a generative, if incomplete, theory that helps account for the complexities of colonial rhetorical practice.     

Climbing the academic ladder: A critique of provincialism in contemporary rhetoric

Finding its place in the Sun, rhetoric has been corrupted by its own unexpected success.