Translation studies is a young discipline in search of a sound theoretical basis. In the past half century, translation scholars have turned to linguistics (general linguistics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics), game theory, comparative literature, cultural studies, cognitive sciences, and memetics just to cite the main approaches. As a result, translation studies is clearly emerging as an interdiscipline, yet there seems to be no consensus on the core question: "what do we talk about when we talk about translation" The present study puts forward Peirce's semiotics as a theory around which such consensus may be found. My starting hypothesis is that all translation is semiosis but not all semiosis is translation ie, translating is a special case of sign-action which occurs under conditions of its own. I will test this hypothesis using insights from Peirce's semiotic writings. My main conclusion is a two-layered model: the outer layer brings together what I call the Foundation of translation, translation events, and translation norms. Following Peirce's metaphysics, these elements correspond to the firstness, secondness and thirdness of translation semiosis. The inner layer zooms in on the Foundation. There, another triad can be found: similarity, difference, and mediation. These characters are the logico-semiotic conditions that would allow one to trace an edge for translating among other forms of sign-action. The latter part of this work explores the phenomenology of translation. Key notions from Relevance theory are used to sketch a general theory of translators' intentions. Upon interpreting translated signs, one may attribute three classes of intentions to a translator: a desire to play interpres, motives for the translation project, and a translation strategy. This leads to a discussion of translation agency. The proposal to replace 'wave' to 'transfer' as the core trope for translation rounds up the present work.

This study reports on a corpus analysis of samples of online and face-to-face intercultural communication among a group of British and Taiwanese adolescents, with the aim of exploring the particular lexical, grammatical and discourse features of the online and spoken discourse from three perspectives: a keyness approach, a discourse analytical perspective and a multi-word sequence perspective. Keyness approach brings together three levels of keyness analysis: keywords, semantic domains and parts-of-speech, and further highlights those linguistic features that deserve particular attention. Furthermore, a discourse analytical approach adds greater detail and depth of description of language patterning by examining the particular linguistic features in context. Such findings that pertain to discourse and pragmatic functions in context are not likely to be made when only keyness is examined. The third approach of this thesis focuses on recurrent multi-word sequences, paying particular attention to their discourse functions in online and spoken settings. It is evident that multi-word sequences often perform systematic discourse functions, even though they do not usually constitute complete grammatical or idiomatic structures. The approach also examines the developmental perspectives of multi-word sequences, showing that intercultural contact with native speakers of English fosters the longitudinal development of the use of sequences by the Taiwanese learners. The method here, which focuses on naturally occurring language output, diminishes the effects of the artificial contexts often created in language testing settings. In light of the potential significance of the research to EFL pedagogy, the thesis further reports on the extent to which EFL textbooks used in Taiwan represent the particular linguistic features identified in authentic intercultural communication. The research findings demonstrate the pedagogical merit of the analyses of the three perspectives and thus help in the design of courses for adolescent intercultural interaction in both online and face-to-face settings.

This Critical Discourse Analysis investigates the representation of Hillary Rodham Clinton and women in the New York Times during the presidential candidacy campaigns 2008. First, relevant aspects of social practice in the United States of America are introduced. The concept of "women" in U.S. society, prevalent gender stereotypes, the public's perception of Rodham Clinton and leadership ideals are among the facets of social practice that are dealt with in the course of this essay. This is followed by a discussion of how aspects of social practice are drawn upon and utilised in the representation of Rodham Clinton and women by the New York Times. Excerpts of an in-depth linguistic analysis carried out on the article "Clinton's Message, and Moment, Won the Day", which was published in the New York Times on 10 January 2008, are used to exemplify how the Times' represents the candidate and women in general. Besides drawing conclusions with respect to which facets of social practice the New York Times draws upon in its representation of Rodham Clinton and women, this essay also attempts to give a short insight into how the newspaper's reporting, in turn, might affect social practice with regard to "women".

- / -

The main a i m of this stud y is to contri bute t o the e x pl i cation of the central discourse notion , ' co herence ' , by comparing t he d e ns i ties of differen t te xtual features in more cohe rent a nd l e s s cohe rent studen t a c ademic writing . The l a tte r ty pe of writing i s defined as that sub-genre of e x posi t ory wr i ting tha t is required f rom studen ts in the study o f "co ntent " sub j ects , with composition writi ng e xcluded . A corpus o f studen t academ i c te x t s was assessed i mpressionistic al ly f or c ohere nce by three rater s, using Bamberg ' s Ho lis t i c Coherence Sca l e ( Bamberg 1983 ; 1984) as a gu id e , an d s o eac h t e x t ' s Holi stic Coherence Rat ing (HCR ) was der i v ed . The te x t ual fea tu r es investiga t ed are r e f erence and c onjuncti ve cohes i o n and errors in these domains, a n d also relat i onal coherence, th i s l atter term ref erring to the wa y s in whic h the funct i onal units of te x t cohere wit h one another in terms of binary r elation s (c f . Crombie 1985a; 1985 b) such as Reason-Res ult a nd Means- Purpose. One of the k e y bac kground assumptions of the study is that te xts are c ommunicati ve phenomena , and a f ter a cr i tical review of various approac hes t owards the e x p li cation of ' coherence ' in text l inguistics and in quanti t ative ( corpus-based) writing research, an a n al y t i cal f ramework is developed in which subcategories of reference and conjunctive cohesion, and errors in these domains, are defined not only formally, but also in terms of how they function in the conte x t of communication - with specific reference to the pragmatic conte x t of student academic writing . Relational coherence is also included i n this framework, and the study develops a measure for the quantification of the amount of relational coherence in a text - the Relational Coherence Quotient. Sample analyses demonstrating the application of the framework to the texts form part of the study. The main findings of the study are: that the application of the analytical framework identifies considerably more features that correlate significantly with Holistic Coherence Ratings than do two other quantitative writing research approaches; that the functionally defined features correlate more significantly with the HCR ' s than the formally defined features; and that the most strongly significant correlation with HCR ' s was revealed by relational coherence, as quantified by the Relational Coherence Quotient. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil.(Linguistics)

- / -

Y a-t-il un point de rencontre entre l’anthropologie et la sémiotique ? C’est la question à laquelle cette thèse essaye de répondre, à la recherche notamment du dialogue entre les disciplines en question et en interrogeant leurs objets de recherche : la culture et le sens. La découverte d’un « ancêtre commun » des idées, fondant leurs domaines théoriques, ouvre à la possibilité d’une vision commune qui est celle d’une science de la signification à vocation scientifique. Le problème de la culture en sémiotique et celui du sens en anthropologie ne sont pas résolus par de nouveaux paradigmes théoriques à étiqueter selon les modes académiques,mais ils constituent l’occasion pour réfléchir sur les fondements théoriques et sur le statut épistémologique de l’ancienne sémiotique structurale et de l’hypothèse générative. Cette sémiotique archaïque et oubliée, à côté de la réflexion anthropologique, peut-elle dire encore quelque chose de sensé sur le sens ? / Does it exists an interaction point between antropology and semiotics? This is the question this thesis tries to aswer to and it tries to do it by looking for a way of communication between these two disciplines and their main subjects of research: culture and sense. Discovering a common ancestor for the fundamental ideas of these two theoretical areas allows the possibility of a common vision that is the cornerstone of a discipline of meaningwith a scientific vocation. The problem of semiotics culture and the one of sense for anthropology don't need new theoretical paradigms, maybe following academic trends, butthey are themselves the chance to think about the fundamental theoretical principles and theepistemological statute of the ancient structural semiotics and of the generative hypothesis.Does this forgotten archaic semiotics, maybe together with the anthropological thought, still say something reasonable about sense and culture?

No description available.

This study explores the implications of the post-structuralist discursive theories for a new approach to the study of communication. Drawing on the theories of discourse developed by Foucault and Bourdieu, the study suggests a theoretical framework for a critical analysis of discursive practices. The framework is applied to the analysis of the discourse on pornography in South Africa. The application of the theoretical framework illustrates the utility of such a framework as a method for analysis and critique of discourse and provides insights into the controversy about pornography. The implication of the discursive theories for the study of communication are explored. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)

L’ambition de François Rastier est d’unifier le mot, la phrase et le texte au sein d’une sémantique interprétative coordonnée en paliers textuels micro, méso et macrosémantiques. L’œuvre en tant que totalité signifiante se définit par la somme de ses parties, et le titre par la somme de ses traits (morphèmes, lexies, sémèmes, etc.). Pour cette thèse que nous présentons sur les interactions sémantiques entre titres et œuvres, il s’agit de rechercher la production, la dissémination, la propagation / distribution des traits sémantiques et tensifs impliqués par le titre. La nécessité étant de comprendre du point de vue textuel le sens des sémèmes. Nous exploitons donc la sémantique interprétative de François Rastier et la sémiotique tensive de Claude Zilberberg comme cadres théoriques en analysant le titre d’un texte comme une condensation ou groupement structuré de sèmes. Notre hypothèse de travail étant que le titre est un interprétant pour l’œuvre. L’interprétant, ce sont des données (savoirs) sémiotiques qui permettent de construire une interprétation. Le titre permet d’actualiser, de virtualiser ou de changer le degré de saillance de l’œuvre. On se demande en problématique comment les sèmes d’un titre sont générés dans les unités de complexité comme le corpus ? Quels sèmes des titres sont inhérents / afférents, actualisés / virtualisés, spécifiques / génériques et quels sont les degrés de systématicité (idiolectal, relations réflexives, transitives et semi-symboliques) qui les structurent ? / The ambition of Francis Rastier is to unify word, sentence and text into an interpretive semantics structured in micro, meso and macro semantic levels. A literary work is defined as a totality of meaning, and its title as lots of features (morphemes, lexical and semantic features). In this thesis on semantic interactions between title and literary work, the aim is to study the production, the dissemination, spread /distribution of semantic and tensive features involved by the title. To understand the meaning of semantic features in a textual point of view, we choose Zilberberg theorical frames. The title is considered as a condensation of a structured organization of semantic features. We work on the hypothesis that the title is one of the interpretants of a literary work. Those interpretants give semiotic information on interpretation. The title allows actualize, virtualize and change the saliency level. The question is how semes of the title are generated as units in a complex and holistic corpus? Which semes of the title are inherent/afferent, actualized/virtualized, specific/generic and what are their systematic structuring levels (idiolectal, reflexive or transitive relations, semi-symbolism)?