DOCSLIB.ORG

THE STYLE of LAO SHE and MODERN CHINESE By

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
THE STYLE of LAO SHE and MODERN CHINESE By TITLE THE STYLE OF LAO SHE AND MODERN CHINESE A Study of Lao She’s Literary Language in his Fictional Works By CUI Yan Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of China and Inner Asia of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 2009 1 ProQuest Number: 10731736 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731736 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT The works of Lao She have inspired many people from all over the world to cany out research into different aspects of his life. However, to date, the study of Lao She’s literary language has been largely neglected in comparison to the large volume of work that has been dedicated to other aspects of his writings, so there are still gaps in the study of his literary language. This present research provides a detailed analysis of the nature and development of Lao She’s literary language style, and of the unique linguistic characteristics of his works over the thirty-seven year .period of his writing career. The distinctive features of the literary language he used in his novels are identified and classified in the following categories through a thorough investigation based on a large amount of selected language data. These are the usage of (1) spoken language, (2) the Beijing dialect, (3) classical Chinese and written language, (4) English and unconventional language phenomena and (5) his distinctive modes of expression, on which no previous research has been carried out. In addition, this research also provides evidence of the development of Lao She’s literary language through different historical periods by using charts and statistics which have been produced by the present writer. Lao She’s literary language developed with the changes in society around him in China. The pattern of this development reflects the reality of modern Chinese language development: from classical Chinese to the vernacular', and then to the normalised Chinese common language. The Beijing dialect in Lao She’s works is not solely the property of the Beijing citizens in the stories. From the usage of classical words to lexical items of written language, Lao She had his own theories on which he based his choice of words. He always consciously used his literary language in order to widen his readership. He regarded the adoption of a foreign language style in the modem Chinese written system as a way of helping the development of the Chinese language. The proof of this lies in the discovery of a large amount of language data which has an English language style and the lexical items which cannot be found in Chinese dictionaries. 3 SOME KEY TERMS The terms in the following table will appear in the analysis, charts and statistics in this thesis. Word in Pmyin Character English translation Abbreviation Baihua Hi'S' Vernacular (In the analysis in this thesis, baihua refers to the vernacular used in the 20ltl century, but not that of the Ming and Qing dynasties, see 1.5 for more details) Beijinghua Beijing language, Beijing dialect BJH Beijingfangyan Be ijingfai igj’m ici ibM^WinJ(-ibKiiiJ) Words from the Beijing dialect B.IC Beij'mgci biaozlnmhua yuyan Standardised language Biaozhunyu standard language Feiyibcm Unsual expressions FYB Guanhua ‘B’iS Official language (see 1.6 for details) Gtioyu National language (see 1.6 for details) (Xiandai) Many it e i s w i s & m f t Normalisation of (modem) Chinese guifanhua Kouyu Pig- The spoken language KY Konyitci words front the spoken language KYC Nanfang fangyan southern dialect (Nanfanghua ) (itT fiiS) Nanfang fang}>anci words from the southern dialects NFC (Nanfangci ) Onhua Europeanised OUH Putonghua t-iffliS Common language (see 1.6 for details) Shumianyu Thim g Written language SHMY Shitmianyuci words from the written language Weijianci 5fcjALiff] words which cannot be found in dictionaries WJC wenxue yuyan x^m is literary language Wenyan x t classical Chinese WY iVenyanci X a f t ] words front classical Chinese WYC xuexi ziliao Materials used for the study o f Lao She Yinghita Anglicised Yuyande biaozhun The standards of the language 4 CONTENTS Content Page TITLE ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 DECLARATION........................................................................................................................................2 ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................................3 SOME KEY TERMS............................................. 4 CONTENTS................................................................................................................................................5 TITLES OF THE TEN LITERARY TEXTS ANALYSED IN THIS THESIS........................... 9 CHAPTER 1 - Introduction - Thesis, Literature Review, Lao She, Modern Chinese and Stylistics .............................................................................................................................10 1.1. Aim, scope, literary texts and approach ...................................................................................10 1.2. Research background and literature review............................................................................ 15 1.2.1. General research background on Lao She ................................................................................15 1.2.2. Various views of scholars and critics on Lao She’s novels ................................................... 18 1.3. My contribution, critiques and review of previous literature................................................23 1.3.1. My contribution to the study of Lao She compared with that of previous ............................ Scholarship......................................................................................................................•.......... 23 1.3.2. My critique of Wang Jianhua’s, Yang Yuxiu’s, Zhang Qingchang’s, Zhan Kaidi’s writings on Lao She’s literary language and Index ...............................................................................32 1.4. Lao She’s life and his ten novels...............................................................................................38 1.4.1. The educational background of Lao She and the formation of his character.......................................................................................................................................43 1.4.2. Lao She’s training in classical Chinese and the influence of the May Fourth Movement .......................................................................................................................................................43 1.4.3. The influences of Western writers on Lao She ........................................................................44 1.5. The baihuawen movement - from classical Chinese to the vernacular................................ 45 1.6. Guanhua , Guoyu and Putonghua ..............................................................................................47 1.7. The standard modern Chinese language ...................................................................................49 1.8. Normalisation of the modern Chinese language .................................................................... 53 1.9. Style and stylistics ....................................................................................................................... 54 1.10. Chinese stylistics and the structure of the thesis .....................................................................58 CHAPTER 2 - The Spoken Features of Lao She’s Literary Language ..................................... 64 2.1. Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 64 2.2. General features of spoken language and of the Chinese spoken language ....................... 67 2.3. Criteria, methods and principles of categorisation ................................................................. 73 2.4. The nouns from the spoken language in Lao She’s writings (examples 1-20) ...................75 2.5. Appellations in Lao She’s writings (examples 21-40) ...........................................................79 2.6. The verbs from the spoken language in Lao She’s writings (examples 41-70) ... 81 2.7. The adjectives from the spoken language in Lao She’s writings (examples 71-90) ......... 85 2.8. The adverbs from the spoken language in Lao She’s writings (examples 91-110) ............87 2.9. The method of using onomatopoeia (examples 111-140) ......................................................89 2.10. The method of adopting yuqici (examples 141-170).............................................................. 92 2.11. Short sentences in spoken language (examples 171-190) ......................................................95
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Background I. Names
    Background I. Names 1. China It used to be thought that the name ‘China’ derived from the name of China’s early Qin dynasty (Chin or Ch’in in older transcriptions), whose rulers conquered all rivals and initiated the dynasty in 221 BC. But, as Wilkinson notes (Chinese History: A Manual: 753, and fn 7), the original pronunciation of the name ‘Qin’ was rather different, and would make it an unlikely source for the name China. Instead, China is thought to derive from a Persian root, and was, apparently, first used for porcelain, and only later applied to the country from which the finest examples of that material came. Another name, Cathay, now rather poetic in English, but surviving as the regular name for the country in languages such as Russian (Kitai), is said to derive from the name of the Khitan Tarters, who formed the Liao dynasty in north China in the 10th century. The Khitan dynasty was the first to make a capital on the site of Beijing. The Chinese now call their country Zhōngguó, often translated as ‘Middle Kingdom’. Originally, this name meant the central – or royal – state of the many that occupied the region prior to the unification of Qin. Other names were used before Zhōngguó became current. One of the earliest was Huá (or Huáxià, combining Huá with the name of the earliest dynasty, the Xià). Xià, in fact, combined with the Zhōng of Zhōngguó, appears in the modern official names of the country, as we see below. 2. Chinese places a) The People’s Republic of China (PRC) [Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó] This is the political entity proclaimed by Máo Zédōng when he gave his speech (‘China has risen again’) at the Gate of Heavenly Peace [Tiān’ān Mén] in Beijing on October 1, 1949.
    [Show full text]
  • Late Aramaic: the Literary and Linguistic Context of the Zohar’, Was Conducted in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London
    As per the self-archiving policy of Brill Academic Publishers: the article below is the submitted version. The final version is published as ‘The Aramaic of the Zohar: The Status Quaestionis’, in L.O. Kahn (ed.), Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective (IJS Studies in Judaica; Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 9–38. The Aramaic of the Zohar: The Status Quaestionis1 Alinda Damsma Toward the end of the thirteenth century the Kabbalah in Spain reached its creative peak with the emergence of Sefer ha-Zohar, Judaism’s most important corpus of mystical texts.2 It is a 1 This is an extended version of the paper I presented at the ‘Jewish Languages’ conference at University College London (26–27 July 2016). I would like to thank the conference organisers, Dr Lily Kahn and Prof. Mark Geller, for their kind invitation as well as for the acceptance of my paper in this volume. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Zohar — East and West’ at Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, in conjunction with the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem (28–30 December 2015). It is a pleasure to thank my respective hosts and audiences. I am particularly indebted to Prof. Theodore Kwasman, Prof. Ronit Meroz, and Prof. Willem Smelik, for reading the draft of this paper and kindly offering their expertise. I bear sole responsibility, however, for any errors that this paper may contain. The Aramaic dialects referred to in this article are abbreviated as follows: JBA = Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. This dialect was used in Babylonia from about 200 CE until 900 CE (one of its sub-dialects is BTA= Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic, the main dialect employed in the Babylonian Talmud).
    [Show full text]
  • Globalised Knowledge Flows and Chinese
    Paradoxical Integration: Globalised Knowledge Flows and Chinese Concepts in Social Theory Xiaoying Qi A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Cultural Research University of Western Sydney 2011 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support I have received from a number of people during the research and writing of this PhD thesis. I am grateful to my principal supervisor, Associate Professor Greg Noble, for his support for my application for funds to attend and present a paper at the International Sociological Association XVII World Congress of Sociology in 2010 and for his close reading and detailed comments on the draft and revised chapters, which led to many improvements. My associate supervisor, Professor Peter Hutchings, is thanked for his comments on draft chapters. My gratitude also goes to the three anonymous reviewers of a paper, „Face: A Chinese Concept in a Global Sociology‟, which was published in the Journal of Sociology in 2011. This paper prefigures the arguments of chapter 5. I am also grateful to the University of Western Sydney for granting me a scholarship and for providing me with an opportunity to undertake the research reported and discussed in this thesis. I must also acknowledge the support I received from the staff of the UWS library system, and its inter-library loan provision. The most enduring support I received during the period of research and writing of this thesis was provided by my family. I thank my parents and sister for their belief in my ability and their continuing encouragement. Last but by no means least I thank my husband, Jack Barbalet, for his unfailing love, inspiration, encouragement, guidance, advice and support.
    [Show full text]
  • Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies
    Arabic and its Alternatives Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies Editorial Board Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA) Bernard Heyberger (EHESS, Paris, France) VOLUME 5 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cjms Arabic and its Alternatives Religious Minorities and Their Languages in the Emerging Nation States of the Middle East (1920–1950) Edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg Karène Sanchez Summerer Tijmen C. Baarda LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Assyrian School of Mosul, 1920s–1930s; courtesy Dr. Robin Beth Shamuel, Iraq. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Murre-van den Berg, H. L. (Hendrika Lena), 1964– illustrator. | Sanchez-Summerer, Karene, editor. | Baarda, Tijmen C., editor. Title: Arabic and its alternatives : religious minorities and their languages in the emerging nation states of the Middle East (1920–1950) / edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Karène Sanchez, Tijmen C. Baarda. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Christians and Jews in Muslim societies, 2212–5523 ; vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Rickshaw Boy Free
    FREE RICKSHAW BOY PDF Lao She | 300 pages | 07 Sep 2010 | HarperCollins Publishers Inc | 9780061436925 | English | New York, NY, United States Rickshaw driver's son beats odds to join famed UK ballet school | UK news | The Guardian Kamal Singh did not even know what ballet was when he turned up nervously at the Imperial Fernando Ballet School, in Delhi, during the summer of Rickshaw Boy But the year-old, known as Noddy, whose father was a rickshaw driver in the west of the city, had been transfixed by ballet dancers in a Bollywood film, and wanted to try it for himself. Four years on Singh is now one of the first Indian students Rickshaw Boy be admitted to the English National Ballet school. He started this week. I am the first in my family to come to London. He had a Rickshaw Boy that was ready-made for ballet by god Rickshaw Boy he just needed to be taught how to use it. He studied at the school for 10 to 12 hours every day. I Rickshaw Boy him for four years, and he Rickshaw Boy asked for a break, he never missed a single day. He also made Singh and his family realise that there was a future in ballet. After that my father allowed me to study full-time. He had been granted a scholarship to return this year but the Covid pandemic happened and everything was cancelled. Just as it seemed as if the opportunities were disappearing, an advert on Instagram said that English National Ballet in London was looking for male dancers.
    [Show full text]
  • Submitted for the Phd Degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
    THE CHINESE SHORT STORY IN 1979: AN INTERPRETATION BASED ON OFFICIAL AND NONOFFICIAL LITERARY JOURNALS DESMOND A. SKEEL Submitted for the PhD degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1995 ProQuest Number: 10731694 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731694 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 A b s t ra c t The short story has been an important genre in 20th century Chinese literature. By its very nature the short story affords the writer the opportunity to introduce swiftly any developments in ideology, theme or style. Scholars have interpreted Chinese fiction published during 1979 as indicative of a "change" in the development of 20th century Chinese literature. This study examines a number of short stories from 1979 in order to determine the extent of that "change". The first two chapters concern the establishment of a representative database and the adoption of viable methods of interpretation. An important, although much neglected, phenomenon in the make-up of 1979 literature are the works which appeared in so-called "nonofficial" journals.
    [Show full text]
  • Laughter and the Cosmopolitan Aesthetic in Lao She's 二马 (Mr. Ma
    CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 16 (2014) Issue 1 Article 6 Laughter and the Cosmopolitan Aesthetic in Lao She's ?? (Mr. Ma and Son) Jeffrey Mather City University of Hong Kong Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the East Asian Languages and Societies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Mather, Jeffrey. "Laughter and the Cosmopolitan Aesthetic in Lao She's ?? (Mr. Ma and Son)." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 16.1 (2014): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2115> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field.
    [Show full text]
  • Representations of Cities in Republican-Era Chinese Literature
    Representations of Cities in Republican-era Chinese Literature Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Hao Zhou, B.A. Graduate Program in East Asian Languages and Literatures The Ohio State University 2010 Thesis Committee: Kirk A. Denton, Advisor Heather Inwood Copyright by Hao Zhou 2010 Abstract The present study serves to explore the relationships between cities and literature by addressing the issues of space, time, and modernity in four works of fiction, Lao She’s Luotuo xiangzi (Camel Xiangzi, aka Rickshaw Boy), Mao Dun’s Ziye (Midnight), Ba Jin’s Han ye (Cold nights), and Zhang Ailing’s Qingcheng zhi lian (Love in a fallen city), and the four cities they depict, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Hong Kong, respectively. In this thesis I analyze the depictions of the cities in the four works, and situate them in their historical and geographical contexts to examine the characteristics of each city as represented in the novels. In studying urban space in the literary texts, I try to address issues of the “imaginablity” of cities to question how physical urban space intertwines with the characters’ perception and imagination about the cities and their own psychological activities. These works are about the characters, the plots, or war in the first half of the twentieth century; they are also about cities, the human experience in urban space, and their understanding or reaction about the urban space. The experience of cities in Republican era fiction is a novel one, one associated with a new modern historical consciousness.
    [Show full text]
  • Growing Demand and Challenges Kuang-Ting Huang a Dissertation
    Remaking Chinese Planning as a Profession: Growing Demand and Challenges Kuang-ting Huang A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2012 Daniel B Abramson, Chair Jeffrey Hou, Chair Kam Wing Chan Susan H. Whiting Program Authorized to Offer Degree: College of Built Environments University of Washington Abstract Remaking Chinese Planning as a Profession: Growing Demand and Challenges Kuang-ting Huang Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Daniel B. Abramson Department of Urban Design and Planning Associate Professor Jeffrey Hou Department of Landscape Architecture Since China initiated its pro-market reform in 1978, the way Chinese cities are governed has undergone a profound change. Central to such change is the fundamental revival of urban land as economic assets, because of which making plans for future land use has become an increasingly important government function and therefore the practice of urban planning (chengshi guihua) has begun to expand and take shape as a profession. However, with the expansion and professionalization of Chinese planning, there is also a growing criticism against the way urban planning has been developed into a development- and profit-driven profession. This dissertation thus aims to examine the evolutionary process of Chinese planning, through which the key factors causing such contradictory development are identified: First, since the 1994 tax sharing reform, the government at the local level has been put under intense pressure to increase its reliance on land transfer revenue and pursue land development. Increasingly, the role of urban planning has been limited to serving as a tool to facilitate the process, leaving other concerns largely unaddressed.
    [Show full text]
  • Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism
    Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism Kevin Buckelew Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Kevin Buckelew All rights reserved Abstract Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism Kevin Buckelew This dissertation explores how Chan Buddhists made the unprecedented claim to a level of religious authority on par with the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and, in the process, invented what it means to be a buddha in China. This claim helped propel the Chan tradition to dominance of elite monastic Buddhism during the Song dynasty (960–1279), licensed an outpouring of Chan literature treated as equivalent to scripture, and changed the way Chinese Buddhists understood their own capacity for religious authority in relation to the historical Buddha and the Indian homeland of Buddhism. But the claim itself was fraught with complication. After all, according to canonical Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha was easily recognizable by the “marks of the great man” that adorned his body, while the same could not be said for Chan masters in the Song. What, then, distinguished Chan masters from everyone else? What authorized their elite status and granted them the authority of buddhas? According to what normative ideals did Chan aspirants pursue liberation, and by what standards did Chan masters evaluate their students to determine who was worthy of admission into an elite Chan lineage? How, in short, could one recognize a buddha in Song-dynasty China? The Chan tradition never answered this question once and for all; instead, the question broadly animated Chan rituals, institutional norms, literary practices, and visual cultures.
    [Show full text]
  • Learning Chinese
    Learning Chinese Chinese is the native language of over a billion speakers, more Language Family people than any other language. It is spoken in China, Singapore, Sino-Tibetan Malaysia, and in many overseas Chinese communities. Dialect 4UBOEBSE.BOEBSJOJTCBTFEPO/PSUIFSO Writing Systems: Chinese dialects. Standard Mandarin is Simplified, Traditional, and Pinyin the language of business, education, and the media in all regions of China, and is tSimplified Chinese (e.g. 汉语) characters are widely used in the People’s widely understood in almost every corner Republic of China. They are based on and share most of their characters of the Chinese-speaking world. with traditional Chinese characters. t Traditional Chinese (e.g. 漢語) characters are in widespread use in Your Learning Options Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and in many overseas Chinese communities. t3PTFUUB4UPOFPGGFSTZPVUIFDIPJDFPG Knowledge of traditional characters will also allow you to recognize many Simplified or Traditional characters characters in classical Chinese texts. for your course. Simplified Traditional tPinyin (e.g. hàn yǔ) is a method of writing Chinese using the Roman alphabet. Pinyin is a transliteration of characters into the Roman script and is used for teaching the language phonetically and for typing Chinese. t3PTFUUB4UPOFBMTPBMMPXTZPVUPMFBSOUP speak and understand spoken Chinese Language Tips without learning Chinese characters. t$IJOFTFJTXSJUUFOXJUIOPTQBDFTCFUXFFOXPSET If this is your objective, you can study your course in the pinyin script. t&BDIDIBSBDUFSJO$IJOFTFDPSSFTQPOETUPBTJOHMFTZMMBCMF tThe meaning of a Chinese syllable depends on the tone with which it is spoken. Chinese has four tones: t3PTFUUB4UPOFHJWFTZPVUIFBCJMJUZUP mā má mǎ mà view pinyin along with the characters. steady high 2 high rising 3 low falling-rising 4 falling You can use this feature as a t"UPOFNBZDIBOHFTMJHIUMZEFQFOEJOHPOUIFUPOFTPGJUTOFJHICPSJOH pronunciation guide for the characters you encounter in the course.
    [Show full text]
  • Analysis of Constructive Effect That Amplification and Omission Have on the Power Differentials—Taking Eileen Chang's Chines
    ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 588-592, March 2014 © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.4.3.588-592 Analysis of Constructive Effect That Amplification and Omission Have on the Power Differentials—Taking Eileen Chang’s Chinese-English Self-translated Novels as Examples Hao He Gan Su Normal University for Nationalities, Hezuo, Gansu, 747000, China Xiaoli Liu Gan Su Normal University for Nationalities, Hezuo, Gansu, 747000, China Abstract—By taking Eileen Chang’s two Chinese-English self-translated novels as examples, this paper analyzes the construction effect that employment of amplification and omission has on the asymmetrical power relationships from four aspects of critical discourse analysis: classification system, transitivity system, modality system and transformation system. The conclusion is that the author-translator’s adoption of amplification and omission serves for the construction of asymmetrical power relationships, which has negative influence on cultural communication based upon equality between the west and the east. Index Terms—Eileen Chang, Chinese-English self-translation, amplification and omission, critical discourse analysis Eileen Chang was a legendary writer in Chinese literature history in 20th century but few people know that she is also an excellent translator. She has translated many English novels including Hemingway’s The Old man and The Sea and some of her own works. In recent years, the research on Eileen Chang is very hot whereas the research on her translation, especially on her self-translation is limited. It is easy for us to take for granted that it should be the most faithful that the author translates his/her own works.
    [Show full text]