The aim of this thesis is to address the issue regarding successful translation of yakuwarigo, Japanese character defining register, to Czech language. This study is based on the assumption that yakuwarigo used to describe the literary character of a "jovial Osakan" is derived from an existing regional variation of Japanese language, namely the Kansai region dialect, and that the specific traits it refers to are based on historical and cultural facts of the said region. In this aspect the role defining register of "Osakan" is superimposing with the notion of social deixis, interpreted in a broader sense. This overlap thus enables to pursue the issue with the help of literature regarding translation of dialects. This thesis treats translation from a descriptive standpoint and evaluates the successfulness of existing Czech translations, defined here as the extent of transmission of comparable non-language information (i.e. social deictic meaning) present in the source language original to target language translation, by the means of an public inquiry. The final results of this thesis should be able to provide instrumental information and used as a reference in the selection process of a suitable translation strategy in the case of translating a Japanese character defining language means into Czech...

In the present study, I have analysed changes in writing and genre in grade 9 during the period 1992–2013. My hypothesis requires more informal language and thus poorer adjustment to the right genre. I use a language theory (Teleman 1985) and theories that highlight the chang-es in school and rest of the community. The study material is taken from the years 1992, 2003 and 2013, and consists of 64 essays. The quantitative analysis of student texts reported in study 1 is based on word variation (OVIX), nominal quota value (NQ), percentage of long words, the average graphic sentence length, noun phrases longer than one word and the number of words in student texts. Sub-study 2 is a qualitative genre analysis of six selected essays, in which two from each year were analysed. The selected essays are the closest to and farthest from the prose style genre normally used in society. The analysis showed the following results. OVIX, nominal quota and noun phrases show a negative change in students’ discursive language over time. The differences between the stu-dents declined between 1992 and 2003, but increased during the period 2003–2013. Long words, the average sentence length and the number of words increased between 1992 and 2013. Study 2 showed a result that did not differ much over time. Questions in the texts increased in 2013. The students who wrote mainly in genre-adapted style are also capable of writing about the stances they take on various topics.

This thesis has conducted an extensive character analysis of Sherlock Holmes by comparing the original, authentic detective, as he appears in a corpus consisting of Conan Doyle’s collected works about Holmes, to the characterisation in three select period pastiches. The aim was to analyse to what extent the true characterisation of the famous sleuth has survived in contemporary adaptations, more specifically in the three texts, Sherlock Vs. Dracula (1976), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes (1979) and Sherlock Holmes and the Angel of the Opera (1994), where the detective encounters equally well-known fictional characters. The novel approach of combining corpus stylistic quantitative methods of characterisation with a qualitative literary approach of identifying similar stylistic and narratological features of characterisation efficiently facilitated an illustration on how Conan Doyle’s round and complex character has endured through adaptations and reimaginings. The corpus investigation on the Sherlock Conan Doyle Corpus supplied an encompassing image of the character, and revealed characteristics absent from the inherent cultural perception. The subsequent cross-comparison between the original in contrast to contemporary characterisations presented clear deviations to the character and further demonstrated a tendency to exaggerate select, generic features that complement the narrative and plot of the integrated novels. Overall, this study concludes that Sherlock Holmes remains the character who travels over time and genres, albeit with a reduced complexity as the respective characterisations in each of the pastiches to various degrees have modified core characteristics significant to the mind-modelling process. That is, through the process of adaptational alterations, the detective has become a flat character. Enough features persist for him to be recognisable and compelling, yet Sherlock Holmes in his entirety subsists merely as a caricature of his original self.

As a lingua franca across the globe, English plays a vital role in international communications. Due to rapid economic, political, and educational globalization, the English language has become a powerful means of communication. Therefore, English education is vital to the development of many countries around the world. Since 1932, the need for a lingua franca in Saudi Arabia developed as the country progressed politically, economically, and educationally. Now, English is important to Saudis’ economic, educational, and career development and success. Vocabulary is a major step in learning any language. By deepening students’ lexical knowledge, they will be able to use English accurately to express themselves. However, teaching words in isolation and through memorization is not highly effective; English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners need to interact with the language and its usage in a more profound way. This can be done by integrating corpora and stylistics analysis in an EFL curriculum. The importance of stylistics analysis to literary texts in the EFL classroom lies in the way that EFL learners will be exposed to authentic language. At the same time they will get insight into how English is structured; and by accessing corpora, which provide a wide range of data for the analysis of stylistics, students will be able to compare the lexical and grammatical patterns in authentic texts. Also, it is important to introduce students to the different levels of English (i.e. semantic, lexis, morphology); this will enlarge EFL learners’ knowledge of English vocabulary and various grammatical patterns. This project offers an innovative perspective on how to teach English for EFL university-level students by using corpora in a lexicalized stylistics approach, which will enable EFL learners to acquire vocabulary by reading literary texts. This provides a rich environment of lexical items and a variety of grammatical patterns. This approach offers EFL learners analytical tools that will improve their linguistic skills as they interact with and analyze authentic examples of English and gain insight about its historical, social and cultural background.

L’enjeu de la thèse est de résoudre et d’expliquer les problèmes liés au passage des structures textuelles anglaises polysyndétiques ou « parataxiques » à des structures plus majoritairement hypotaxiques dans les traductions françaises correspondantes. Pour ce faire, nous avons commencé par comparer des corpus de traductions multiples (même texte anglophone traduit à de multiples reprises, par des traducteurs différents) afin de dégager des « tendances générales » potentiellement systématisables. Partant de ces observations, et après avoir redéfini la notion de « polysyndète » dans une perspective tant étymologique / historique que littéraire, stylistique et linguistique, nous avons souhaité mettre nos diverses hypothèses à l’épreuve d’un nouveau corpus de textes sélectionnés en vertu de leur caractère ostensiblement polysyndétique, et vérifier en cela que le nœud du problème est bel et bien l’emploi fonctionnel divergent de la coordination entre les deux langues, dû à un rattachement à deux réalités énonciatives complexes et idiomatiques qui, tout en donnant l’illusion de se correspondre, ne sont pas équivalentes dans un nombre non négligeable de cas. La polysyndète, fréquemment décrite comme une figure de style, doit être plutôt considérée en anglais comme une figure de syntaxe, héritée d’une longue tradition allant de l’Ancien Testament aux premiers textes chrétiens, jusqu’aux pièces de William Shakespeare et aux romans d’Ernest Hemingway. Néanmoins, en moyenne, le français utilise jusqu’à deux fois moins la coordination que l’anglais, où la polysyndète semble représenter 4% des mots totaux dans les textes de nos corpus. En effet, le français « lie » les éléments de ses phrases par d’autres moyens, lesquels sont représentés en majorité par : l’effacement simple de tout coordonnant (combiné ou pas à l’usage de ponctèmes), les périphrases coordinatives, et la subordination (verbale ou adverbiale). Nous avons ainsi mis au jour une série de tendances générales de traduction, dans le cadre d’une théorie explicative ; puis la dernière partie de la thèse a consisté à les « valider » de manière expérimentale, par le biais d’une expérience de nature pionnière. Ce qui nous a conduit à tenter de dresser quelques règles pratiques pour la traduction automatique de la polysyndète. / The aim of this doctoral dissertation was to solve and explain a set of problems related to the translation of ‘polysyndetic’ structures within texts originally written in English into more frequently ‘hypotactic’ structures in French. To do so, I started by comparing multiple text corpora composed of original English texts, and followed by their French translations (produced by several translators), so as to point out a few ‘general tendencies’ which I expected to be potentially systematizable. Starting from these empirical data, and after redefining the notion of ‘polysyndeton’ from an etymological / historical as well as literary, stylistic and linguistic point of view, I then endeavoured to check the validity of my different hypotheses using a series of texts that had been selected for their plainly polysyndetic character. This was to verify that the crux of the problem lay, indeed, in a certain form of enunciative divergence between the two languages in their use of coordination – this very divergence being the reflection of two different psycho-linguistic realities which, although giving the illusion of being symmetrical, fail to be perfect equivalents in a large number of cases. Polysyndeton – a figure that is often described as a ‘figure of speech’, coming all the way down from an age-old tradition starting with The Old Testament, then passed on through the first Christian texts and followed by William Shakespeare’s plays, and eventually by Ernest Hemingway’s novels – should rather be described as a ‘figure of syntax’ in English. Nevertheless, the French language – contrary to the English language in which coordination stands for 4% of total words in a text – uses coordinated structures amounting to only 1. 5 to 2% of its global lexical items. Indeed, the French language “ties up” sentence elements by other means than mere coordination, especially the following: simple neutralisation of the coordinating device (whether or not coupled with the use of a punctuation sign), coordinative periphrases, and subordination (whether verbal or adverbial). I have thus worked towards highlighting a series of general translational tendencies, as part of an explanatory theory of polysyndeton. In the last part of my dissertation, I attempted to validate these rules by way of an original experimental test – which led me to put forward a short list of practical rules for automatized translation.

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This is a systematic study of tropes of the Holy Qur`an, divided into four chapters… The first chapter is entitled: “An historical review of rhetoric and stylistics” and it consists of two sections; the first section is entitled: “Western rhetoric and stylistics” where as the second section deals with “Arabic rhetoric and stylistics”. The second chapter is entitled: “Tropes and their components” and it consists of two sections; the first section is entitled: “the definition of tropes”. This section deals with the definition of “literal expressions” and “figurative expressions”, and the required condition for figurative expressions; that is the syntactical and semantic coherence and relationships. The second section is entitled: “Components of tropes” which deals with different components of tropes. The third chapter is entitled: “Linguistic tropes of the Holy Qur`an” and it consists of two sections; the first section is entitled: “The spread of linguistic tropes in the Holy Qur`an”. The second section is entitled: “Relationship of linguistic tropes in the Holy Qur`an”. This section quotes each and every relationship of linguistic tropes in the Holy Qur`an. The fourth chapter is entitled: “mental tropes in the Holy Qur`an”, and it consists of three sections; the first section is entitled: “Mental tropes in the Holy Qur`an, from part 1 to part 10”. The second section is entitled: “Mental tropes in the Holy Qur`an, from part 11 to part 20”, and the third section is entitled: “Mental tropes in the Holy Qur`an, from part 21 to part 30”. These sections quote verses of the Holy Qur`an which contain mental tropes. / Religious Studies and Arabic / Psychology

A computationally-assisted analysis was undertaken of Tahitian oral poetry transcribed in the early 19th century, with the aim of discovering its poetic organization. An automated pattern detection process attempted to recognize many of the organizational possibilities for poetry that have been documented in the literature, as well as be open to unanticipated varieties. Candidate patterns generated were subjected to several rounds of manual review. Some tasks that would have proved difficult to automate, such as the detection of semantic parallelism, were pursued fully manually. Two distinct varieties of meter were encountered: A syllabic counting meter based upon a colon line, and a much less common word stress counting meter based upon a colon line or a list item. The use of each meter was ubiquitous in the corpus, but somewhat sporadic. Word stress counting meter was typically applied to lists, and generally co-occurred with patterns of syllabic counting meter; perhaps in order to enhance metrical effect through an addition of rhythm. For both meters, counts were regulated by an external pattern, wherein they were observed to repeat, increment, form inverted structures, or group into alternating sequences. There appeared to be few limitations as to the possibilities for a pattern‟s starting count or length. Patterns were found to juxtapose freely, as well as alongside unpatterned counts. According to Nigel Fabb and Morris Halle, syllabic counting meter is only otherwise encountered in a style of Hebrew poetry from the Old Testament (Fabb and Halle 2008:268, 271, 283). Word stress counting meter may be unique to Tahitian poetry. The colon also functioned as poetic line for purposes of sound parallelism, which manifested itself in patterns of simple assonance, simple consonance, and complex patterns that combined simpler ones of assonance, consonance, and parallel strings of phonemes. Although sound patterns most often spanned lines, they were sometimes constrained to within a line. Occasionally, they were arranged into inverted structures, somewhat analogous to those noted for counting meter. Some sound patterns were contained within names and epithets, and perhaps served as recurring islands of parallelism. Syntactic parallelism was common, especially in the organization of lists. Occasionally, its application was suggestive of canonical parallelism. Items of syntactic frame lists were often arranged so as to assist patterns of counting meter. A syntactic frame‟s variable elements often belonged to a single semantic category for which there seemed to be no restriction, and which could represent any taxonomic level. There appeared to be complete freedom in regards to the arrangement of syntactic frame patterns, and it was common for several to follow one another in unbroken succession. There is evidence that some of the corpus poetry was memorized. Other evidence suggests that a capacity existed, and perhaps continues to exist, of poetic composition-in-performance.

This essay aims to examine two texts, one autobiography and one essay, by Swedish author Olof Lagercrantz, through the means of stylistical analysis and to investigate the worth of stylistics in regards of trying to capture the style of an author. The main questions are: Which are the distinguishing stylistic features of the two texts? and Is it possible to capture the literary style of Olof Lagercrantz through the methods of stylistic analysis? In aid of trying to answer these questions the methods of Per Lagerholm and Peter Cassirer is being applied. The results points to the autobiographical text being economical in language, dramatic, poetic and personal; the essay being intimate, formal, personal and creating participation. The methods of stylistical analysis is criticized for being a insufficient tool in the analysis, but its benefits are also pointed out.

This dissertation examines the central use of implicature within the Victorian novel. 'Implicature' denotes a communicative strategy in which a reader must infer the primary meaning of an utterance from that utterance's relationship to its context, rather than 'decode' explicitly presented information. While all communications rely on implicature to an extent, the novels examined in this thesis contain large gaps in their explicit narration and rely primarily on implicature to communicate central elements of their plots. If readers do not recognise these texts' implicatures, the texts will often appear incoherent: their implicatures must be acknowledged in order for the text to be understood. Because little has been said about the central role implicature can play in fictional narration, this thesis contributes to interpretations of these novels that are currently being discussed in Victorian literary scholarship, as well as literary pragmatic debates about the use of implicature within fictional texts. The dissertation's secondary aim is to examine the implicatures which may be generated by the author's exploitation of certain reader assumptions. It focuses on the reader's potential assumption of narratorial omniscience, and relates it to the reader assumption of the narrative's fictionality. This secondary emphasis contributes to literary pragmatic conceptions of fictionality, and contributes to narratological discussions of narratorial omniscience. Chapter One examines represented illegitimate pregnancies in Victorian novels, and illustrates implicature's use as a politeness strategy. It explains how this use of implicature is called for by the novels' fictional and Victorian contexts. Chapter Two discusses implicatures which communicate characters' semiconscious romantic desires, and relates these representations to Victorian discourses on the unconscious and narratological scholarship on consciousness representation. Chapter Three discusses the central use of implicature in sensation fiction to create narrative 'puzzles', and connects the ensuing playful, sometimes offensive tone to these implicatures' satire of the realist mode.