Self-built Corpus Research Articles

Image restoration strategies in pandemic crisis communication: a comparative analysis of Chinese and American COVID-19 political speeches

This study explores the effectiveness of image restoration strategies in pandemic crisis communication at the highest levels of administration. By integrating corpus-assisted discourse analysis with Image Repair Theory, it aims to uncover the prevailing strategies adopted by Chinese and American leaders to restore or enhance a positive national image in the post-COVID era. Lancsbox 6.0 was utilized to extract excerpts and analyze linguistic devices from a self-built corpus of 144 political speeches delivered by top leaders in China and the United States. The results reveal that Chinese leaders, through the use of shared image restoration strategies such as bolstering and transcendence, shape a positive national image of a responsible country. In contrast, American leaders construct a confident and ambitious national image, projecting a leading geopolitical role in the world. These strategies have distinct features that contribute to the image restoration process. Apart from contributing significantly to the comparative research on Chinese and American pandemic-related political speeches, the research findings carry implications for the practice and promotion of national ideologies. The study also highlights the diverse ways in which credible and accurate crisis messages are employed, providing valuable insights for handling pandemics or other crises in the foreseeable or distant future.

War and liar: a semiotic account of metaphors in the reports on the discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water in Chinese media

Abstract The release of nuclear wastewater by Japan has generated strong opposition from Japanese citizens, governments of neighboring countries, and global environmental advocates. China, representing the concerns of neighboring countries, has underscored the illicit and detrimental nature of this action. This study explores the metaphors employed in Chinese media regarding the discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water. Based on the self-built corpus, we reveal the rhetorical motives underlying the metaphors, drawing on the framework of critical metaphor analysis. The study centers on two major metaphors – war and liar metaphors – in the discourse of two Chinese official media, China Daily and People’s Daily Online. It is found that according to Chinese media, initiating and protesting the discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water is a war; and that the Japanese government and TEPCO are liars. The metaphor choices reflect China’s stance of opposition and condemnation against the discharge and its intention of uncovering deceptive and misleading information.

End-to-end elevator voice command recognition system based on improved convolutional neural network

Abstract As a common life scenario, the use of voice control in elevator operation can effectively reduce public health risks and improve user experience in the post-epidemic era. However, due to the characteristics of its closure and public space, it is difficult to deploy the elevator. To solve this problem, an end-to-end speech command recognition algorithm based on a new deep neural network is proposed. The algorithm uses the self-built corpus for training, and uses the speech segment interception algorithm to obtain audio segments under the premise of speech stream as input, puts them into the network model in real time for reasoning, and drives the elevator to run according to the output results. The results show that compared with the recognition model using MFCC-CNN, the network has achieved about 10% improvement in accuracy under the premise of smaller computation, and compared with the DTW algorithm, the network has improved the accuracy by about 25%. Finally, a typical deployment environment is constructed to prove the correctness and effectiveness of the method in practical application.

Top-ranked U.S. and U.K.’s universities’ first responses to GenAI: key themes, emotions, and pedagogical implications for teaching and learning

The emergence of ChatGPT, a Generative AI program, has sparked discussions about its teaching and learning value, and concerns about academic integrity in higher education (HE). An extant review of the literature indicates that a scarcity of research exists on GenAI, specifically a synthesis of the official views, guidelines and articles of top-ranked universities on the use, limitations, challenges, and opportunities brought by ChatGPT in the early phase when ChatGPT was released in 2022 until early May 2023, which can offer insights into the concerns and recommendations for educators. Using the corpus assisted discourse analysis approach, this study identified the key themes and emotions elicited by evaluations of the ChatGPT situation from a self-built corpus containing 151 articles from 47 top-ranked U.S. universities and 34 U.K. ones. Our findings indicated three prominent themes discussed on official websites, including ChatGPT as a text and content generator, use of ChatGPT in teaching and learning, and potential implications and opportunities of using ChatGPT in HE. Further examination revealed that bias, concern, worry, threat, fear, and trust were the prevailing emotions relating to ChatGPT. Illustrated with examples collected from our corpus, this paper offers an in-depth discussion of universities’ first responses to the use of ChatGPT. The insights gained have some pedagogical implications for academics, researchers and educators and may inform policy and practice in HE on the use of GenAI.

Investigating the Hierarchical Relationship Between Clause and Phrase Using the Menzerath-Altmann Law: Evidence from Academic Research Articles

ABSTRACT The study justifies phrases (instead of words) as the direct constituents of clauses using English academic research articles (RAs) by fitting the Menzerath-Altmann Law (MAL) to the correlations between sentence length (in clause numbers) and clause length (in phrase numbers), and between clause length and phrase length (in word numbers). The study was conducted under the framework of dependency grammar, with a self-built corpus of 104,499 tokens. The results indicate that 1) both correlations abide by the MAL, or abide when excluding the second MAL regime, regardless of part-genres, suggesting that phrases are the appropriate direct constituents of clauses. 2) The increasing MAL fitting curve is found in , which has the shortest mean dependency distance. 3) Clustering analysis on the MAL parameters in dependency structure can effectively differentiate the size-restricted from the other part-genres at the lower level, i.e., clause-phrase-word level. Furthermore, our findings have important implications: 1) The second regime may be closely related to text characteristics or linguistic unit levels. 2) The dependency distance minimization effect is possibly a counteractive force against the Menzerathian shortening effect. 3) The competing relationship between clausal and phrasal complexity in RAs is driven by the self-regulating and self-adapting language system.

CONCEPTUAL “HEART” METAPHORS IN AMERICAN MOMMY BLOGS

Based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), this study investigates the use and conceptualization of “heart” metaphors in the self-built corpus of 500 American mommy blog posts in 2021-2022 using some corpus tools namely word sketch and concordance lines. The study aims at exploring the different ways of conceptualizing the metaphorical expressions and the frequency of each category of “heart” metaphor. The results show that HEART IS AN OBJECT is the most common metaphor in the mommy blog corpus, followed by HEART IS A CONTAINER and HEART IS A PERSON.

Metadiscursive nouns in corporate communication: A cross-cultural study of CEO letters in the US and Chinese corporate social responsibility reports

The study of rhetorical devices and how corporate leaders organise the texts and convey attitudes to stakeholders in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports has become an important research area in recent years. A relatively neglected means of rhetorical expressions, however, is metadiscursive nouns. This study investigates the use of metadiscursive nouns in a 0.5-million-word self-built corpus of the US and Chinese CEO letters in CSR reports to reveal cross-cultural variations. The results show that the interactive metadiscursive nouns are twice as frequent in the US discourse as in the Chinese discourse, demonstrating greater efforts invested in cohesion by the US companies. This difference can be attributed to the writer-responsible rhetoric in the West and the reader-responsible conventions in China. The interactional metadiscursive nouns in the US discourse occur twice as frequently as in the Chinese counterpart, suggesting greater exertion of nominal stance by the US companies. This discrepancy mainly arises from the high- and low-context variations between the US and China. This study sheds new insights on metadiscursive nouns as rhetorical resources in cross-cultural CSR communication and provides implications for ESP practitioners to use them as a means of conceptualising writer–reader interaction in corporate communication.

A Corpus-based Analysis on Hedges in Abstracts of Marine Academic Journals

This paper studies the distribution characteristics of hedges in English abstracts of Chinese and foreign marine academic journals, analyzes the similarities and differences in their use based on a self-built corpus with the search tool AntConc3.5.9. and provides some suggestions on appropriate use of hedges in English abstract in a bid. The results show that the frequency of hedges used in Chinese marine academic journals is low, with obvious differences, and the form is relatively simple. Cultural differences, English proficiency and cultural background can partly explain the above findings. This finding provides some reference for the writing of abstracts of academic journals and helps China scholars to show China’s marine academic achievements to the international stage.

Metaphorical translation strategies of the white paper "China's Green Development in the New Era"

In recent years, the use of metaphor in white papers has proliferated as it plays a significant role in cognitive processing. In order to shed light on the intricate relationship between humans and the natural environment, this study focuses on the analysis of metaphor usage in a particular white paper titled "China's Green Development in the New Era" within the field of ecopolitics. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, namely the utilization of a self-built corpus and case studies, is employed to categorize the translation strategies of metaphors. The findings of this study demonstrate that the metaphors utilized in the white paper effectively capture elements of social cognition and ideology. Moreover, with the assistance of part-of-speech tagging tools, it is observed that most translated metaphors strive to maintain the salient features of the source text, aiming to achieve equivalence in both form and meaning.

Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of China’s National Image in Green Development: A Case Study of the White Paper China’s Green Development in the New Era

Under Martin’s Appraisal Theory, China’s national image in the white paper China’s Green Development in the New Era is studied, based on self-built corpus. The text is studied in terms of the distribution of attitudinal resources. According to the results, a positive national image is circulated in the white paper. Compared to the Chinese version, the English version focuses on external publicity functions, contributing greatly to China’s international status, while the Chinese version concentrates on spreading the country’s policies. Both versions have achieved the expected target for the communication of national image.

A corpus-based study on the English-Chinese swearwords produced by amateur (fansubbing) and professional (prosubbing) subtitling

ABSTRACT The translation of culturally-sensitive elements, especially swearwords, poses a unique challenge for audiovisual (AV) products which are increasingly disseminated online to millions ofdiverse audiences. This study focuses on the convergence and divergence in the translation of swearwords by fan-produced and professional subtitles. Fansubbing, a fusion of ‘fan’ and ‘subtitling’, has gained prominence as volunteers translate foreign AV content into their domestic markets mainly due to the technological advances. Adopting a corpus-based approach, this study analyses translation patterns from a self-built corpus of 549,349 words from the original English scripts aligned with 528,889 professionally and 543,522 non-professionally translated Chinese words from a diverse sample of 57 recent English films. Ourresults predominantly reveal convergent practices, however, fansubbing appeared to adopt a more vulgarising approach when rendering swearwords (55%) than prosubbing (46%). No significant change or difference isobserved in terms of the frequency of strategy use over time and the frequency of retained semantics and pragmaticsbetween the two practices. Our findings help todisentangle the complex task of translating swearwords in audiovisual content, contributing novel and valuable empirical evidence.

Author self-reference: A cross-linguistic/cultural and cross-disciplinary analysis

This study explored the use of author self-reference from cross-linguistic/cultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives in research articles (RAs). Based on a self-built corpus consisting of two disciplines (Computer Science and Linguistics) and two languages (Chinese and English), this study extracted the self-reference markers and compared their uses across the linguistic/cultural and disciplinary corpora. The cross-linguistic/cultural analysis showed that English RAs contain a higher frequency of first-person pronouns, while Chinese RAs tend to utilize more inanimate NPs in both disciplines. The cross-disciplinary comparison identified that English Computer Science texts are characterized by a more explicit authorial persona, while Chinese RAs display a mitigated authorial presence in the text construction. The findings contribute to our knowledge of how the specific disciplinary community and cultural conventions influence writers’ manifestation of their authorial presence.

Discernment2 and Discernment1: does historical politeness need another binary?

Abstract Historical politeness scholars use Discernment as a second-order metaterm for compulsory social behaviour that is scripted according to circumstances and rank difference. However, in Renaissance courtesy books the Italian verb discernere ‘to discern’ has a first-order meaning: to individually work out appropriate behaviour when the fit of rules to circumstances is unclear. Discernment1 and Discernment2 appear to contradict each other. This paper addresses a theory gap: a theory of Discernment2 must unravel the link with Discernment1, given that Discernment1 functions as a metaterm in prescriptive politeness sources from a historical period for which scholars believe social practices are determined by Discernment2. Using a self-built corpus of ca. one hundred nineteenth-century etiquette books in US-UK English, French, Italian and Dutch, I conduct a semantic analysis of discern* (92 hits) and its collocate “tact”, tact, tatto, takt (575 hits), which point to a practical type of reasoning, to carry out a careful assessment of the unique and complex situation at hand before deciding on a course of action. However detailed etiquette scripts are, discernment (tact) is needed to process the complexity of real-life circumstances. Hence, Discernment1 and 2 appear complementary.

The Pragmatic Functions of High-Frequency Discourse Marker So in Chinese EFL Teacher Talk

Discourse markers have multiple pragmatic functions and have significant influences on classroom organization and teaching. This study aims to analyze the pragmatic functions of discourse marker so in a self-built corpus of Chinese middle school English classroom discourse. The corpus analysis shows that discourse marker so has various pragmatic functions, including marking results and inferences, managing topics, summarizing, rewording and giving examples at the textual level. Besides, at the interactional level, so functions as a marker of speech acts such as questions, requests, opinions, elicitations and confirmations. The research shows that discourse marker so can make classroom discourse more closely linked, promote students’ understanding of teacher’s discourse and create a harmonious classroom atmosphere. The findings of this research might have important implications for English teaching and teachers’ professional development in middle schools.

A Corpus-Assisted Comparative Study of Chinese and Western CEO Statements in Annual Reports: Discourse-Historical Approach

Abstract This study presents a corpus-assisted comparison of Chinese and Western chief executive officer statements in annual reports. Using two self-built corpora of 15 statements from 2017 to 2021 annual reports in three Chinese listed pharmaceutical companies, representative of Chinese companies, and 15 statements from 2017 to 2021 annual reports in one American multinational, one British multinational and one Australian listed corporation in the same industry, representative of Western companies, this study employs the Discourse-Historical Approach of Critical Discourse Studies and the corpus linguistic analysis tool Wmatrix5 to investigate linguistic means, discursive strategies and semantic domains of the two corpora. The study results show that Chinese CEOs tend to present an objective, authoritative and thriving “out-group” identity with strong awareness of environmental protection while Western CEOs tend to project an affiliative, inclusive and well-established “in-group” identity with leading industrial status and a global mindset. This study is of significance in understanding cross-cultural differences in projecting corporate identities through CEO statements in annual reports.

A Corpus-Based Study on Reporting Verbs Used in Doctoral Dissertations by Chinese EFL Learners

Reference to previous studies is an indispensable component in the academic discourse. Based on a self-built corpus, this study aims to analyze the use of reporting verbs in doctoral dissertations written by Chinese EFL learners with both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The findings show that Chinese EFL learners show a preference for citing previous studies as Discourse Acts. The absence of certain subtypes of Research Act verbs and Cognitive Act verbs reveals the reluctance of Chinese EFL learners to convey a critical viewpoint or judge the cited materials as false or incorrect. In terms of tense, simple present tense is most frequently used in the corpus to refer to previous studies as accepted facts. As for voice, active voice plays a dominant role in the corpus with a high proportion of 92.14%. At the same time, a small percentage of passive voice is used by writers to emphasize the essential contribution of certain cited scholars.

A Corpus-Based Study of America Media Discourse on Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has played a significant role in the lives of the Chinese people and is gradually entering the global arena. The process of its globalization can be mirrored by the mass media, such as newspapers, due to their capacity of reflecting the changes in the culture and ideology of a certain region. This study explored the changing trends in America Media Discourse on TCM from 1860 to 1959 in the aspects of vocabulary, readability, and content, based on the analysis of a self-built corpus. The findings reveal that over a century, American media reports on TCM have been picking words that are relatively simple and close to daily life, with a low content of academic vocabulary; scored high for the Flesch Reading Ease Readability formula, decreasing the difficulty of being understood by readers; ranged from shallow to deep in the overall perspective, reflecting the historical process of TCMs transmission and development in global terms.

Probability distribution of dependency distance and dependency type in translational language

As a “third code”, translational language attracts considerable attention in linguistics research due to its distinctive features. Adopting the quantitative linguistic approach, the current study examines its features by investigating the mean dependency distance (MDD), as well as the probability distribution of the individual dependency distances (DDs) and distribution of a high-frequency dependency type in translational language. The MDD and the distributions were tested in a self-built corpus which contains parallel and comparable language materials in both Chinese-English and English-Chinese translations. The results show that: (1) compared with source texts and native texts, translated texts in both translation directions yield an MDD in between; (2) both the distribution of DDs and that of the dependency type nsubj follow the Zipf-Alekseev distribution in translated texts, as in source texts and native texts; (3) the in-between feature is further confirmed by parameters a and b in Chinese-English translation materials when fitting the distribution of DDs to Zipf-Alekseev distribution; (4) translational texts in both directions show higher a and lower b than their source and native texts when fitting the DD Distribution of dependency type nsubj to Zipf-Alekseev distribution. These findings suggest that, on the one hand, dependency distance minimization (DDM) occurs in translational language, which is consistent with native language and reflects a general tendency of natural languages to reduce cognitive load; on the other hand, translational language presents distinctive feature in nsubj type, but in most cases, it is subject to the gravitational pull of both source and target language systems, exhibiting a “compromise” feature in between. The current study highlights the contribution of syntactic quantitative methods to deeper understanding of the complexity of translational language and its cognitive underpinnings.

On the Phraseology of Chinese College Student Oral English in Public Speaking

Prior investigations of phraseology have systematically researched the teaching and learning of phraseology in EFL setting. Nevertheless, little research has been done specifically on the phraseology of Chinese college student oral English in public speaking. This study sets out to study the formal and functional features of phraseology in a self-built corpus containing 300 speeches delivered by Chinese college students by comparing them against those of native speakers. It has been found that the overall use of phraseology by Chinese college students bears a resemblance to that by native speakers across the four structural types of chunks, including polywords, phrasal constraints, institutionalized expressions and sentence builders. On the other hand, Chinese college students show some unique features in the use of phraseology, including the lack of diversity and the over-reliance on some chunks, etc. The findings of this study also provide significant pedagogical implications for teaching spoken English, especially English public speaking.

A corpus-based study of signalling nouns in marketing and economics research articles

Signalling nouns (SNs, hereinafter) as grammatical metaphors serve as effective clues to disciplinary epistemology. Based on self-built corpora, this study explores disciplinary variation in the use of SNs by investigating marketing and economics research articles (RAs, hereinafter). The results show that marketing RAs employ SNs with significantly higher frequency than economics RAs. In terms of grammatical patterns, marketing RAs prefer the “SN+ to-infinitive” pattern, whereas economics RAs tend to use the “SN+ that-clause” structure. Semantically, marketing researchers prefer modal fact and idea nouns to show a greater tendency for writer visibility, greater interest in factors influencing consumer purchasing behaviors, and the more empirical and experimental nature of marketing. In contrast, economics researchers prefer fact and idea nouns to explore the decision-making process of economic agents, and reveal the more hypothetical, econometrical, and abstract reasoning nature of this discipline. The choices of SNs reflect distinct disciplinary epistemologies between marketing and economics. This study sheds new light on the significance of SNs in revealing disciplinary variations, and creates a database of detailing the characteristics of SNs used in both disciplines, which can aid EFL learners and EAP practitioners to better use SNs to construct interpersonal relations with readers in academic writing.