This thesis presents a linguistic ethnographic case study on a large Chinese complementary school (CCS) in Birmingham, England. Guided by Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia, the study investigates multilingual practices of adult participants in and around the school, focusing on the changing constructions of language ideology, Chinese teachers’ professional identity and the ethnic identification of Chineseness. It documents the impact of globalisation on the shifting relations among Chinese varieties and English in the Chinese diaspora. The 10-month fieldwork for the study was conducted in 2013/14 academic year, with observations and interviews as dominant methods for data collection. Main findings are: (1) an ideological ecology including ‘separate bilingualism’, ‘translanguaging’, ‘a hegemony of Putonghua’, and ‘a preferred school-wide monolingualism’ is dynamically constructed in the school. ‘Language as pride’ and ‘Language as profit’ are simultaneously in play leading to the dynamic ecology; (2) Chinese teachers’ professional identities are shaped by the changing structure of Chinese diaspora, the shifting power balance among different Chinese varieties and English, and teachers’ own biographical trajectories of settlement into English society; (3) practices in CCS context reflect an evolving ethnic identification of diasporic Chineseness which ‘de-freezes’ from a cultural heritage affiliated purely with the past and the national homeland.

Linguistic research showing dependence on context in deriving language meaning discloses the integral linking of the Luo language with their departed ancestors and the upholding of customary laws. Meaning and impact being transformed in the process of translation from one context to another explains the severe limitations found in previous attempts at cross-cultural understanding between Western and Luo (African) peoples. Studying Luo people’s understanding of ‘bad’ in the light of the above reveals much that often remains invisible to Westerners. ‘Bad’ arises from the activities of ghosts acting through people’s hearts often as a result of breaking taboos. Cleansing, especially of ghosts, through prayer, keeping customary laws and salvation are used to counteract such ‘bad’. Conventional Biblical and mission hermeneutics are, in failing to account for pragmatic linguistics, found seriously wanting. Forces and powers being spiritually based in a monistic worldview amongst the Luo render clear cross-cultural communication with a rationalist and monotheist West impossible. Theological education based on African languages is advocated as the way to engage the challenges of Christianity with Luo ways of life in a way that will result in a deeply rooted African church, and a moral, vibrant, intellectually and economically active African society.

Since the transition from apartheid, there has been much discussion of the possibilities for the emergence of a truly ‘national’ literature in South Africa. This thesis joins the debate by arguing that Black Consciousness, a movement that began in the late 1960s, provided the intellectual framework both for understanding how a national culture would develop and for recognising it when it emerged. Black Consciousness posited a South Africa where formerly competing cultures sat comfortably together. This thesis explores whether such cultural equality has been achieved. Does contemporary literature harmoniously deploy different cultural idioms simultaneously? By analysing Black writing, mainly poetry, from the 1970s through to the present, the study traces the stages of development preceding the emergence of a possible ‘national’ literature and argues that the dominant art versus politics binary needs to be reconsidered. Emphasising the long-term influences of education and language policy, and of publishing, the thesis documents the continuous dialogue of art and politics in South Africa, and in the process unpicks the paradox of South Africa’s (un)national literature.

The Yuanshi (Yuan History)- a Chinese-language account of Mongol rule in East Asia compiled in haste between 1368 and 1370-presents hundreds of liezhuan biographical narratives on imperial subjects. Vital primary sources for reconstructing Mongol and Chinese history, these are viewed as chaotic texts receiving limited rhetorical input Taking the 4 7 subjects of an influential fourteenth-century biographical collection as a sample, this study demonstrates the considerable rhetorical fashioning undergone by some of these biographies, exposing narrative tools employed by the fourteenth-century Chinese historian-compiler. Starting from a case study on the biographies of Yelü Chucai (1189-1243), we identify three themes to the compilers' edits, which three thematic chapters follow across the sample texts. The first of these sees narrative scope narrowed, marginalizing non-'Chinese' elements of the imperium to impose a 'Yuan' shape on Mongol East Asia. The second situates bureaucratic governing institutions as a moral good, imposing a negative positioning on rival approaches. Finally, we demonstrate the characterization of the deserving populace as beneficiaries of moral rule. Though none of these themes emerge in full coherence across the work, the broad tendencies are clear, as is the all-embracing, shaping influence of the storytelling imperative toward vivid juxtaposition of ideal and deviant.

Scholarship on twenty-first century Nigerian female-authored novels has long been dominated by womanist readings, regardless of the fact that these modern narratives represent feminism in strong terms. The readings often subsume subversive femininity within non-aggressive liberation, resulting in an insufficient narrative of the intricacies of the novels of the period. This thesis challenges such representations by proposing subversion as the hallmark of twenty- first century Nigerian female-authored novels through a textual analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow. Through a gynocentric approach, the analysis of the novels foregrounds a feminist view of domination, resistance and solidarity, espousing the premise that the contemporary heroines are understandably rebellious in asserting female agency. The thesis draws three fundamental conclusions: that the feminist paradigm is useful to the comprehension of the nuances of twenty-first century Nigerian female-authored novels, that dissidence is a remarkable feature of contemporary texts, and that this revolutionary tendency contrasts with the conservative attitudes of the previous epoch.

This thesis argues that a nuanced understanding of Egyptological writing across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can only be achieved through the consideration of the broader literary and artistic culture in which these texts were produced, and that an understanding of contemporary cultural artefacts requires a complementary awareness of Egyptology. It demonstrates the wealth of generic and material exchange between Egyptological and literary texts, and reveals cultures of mythmaking in which Egyptologists embellished their accounts, while those who collected Egyptian objects invented supernaturally-charged fictions in a bid to establish their own authority. It establishes the inflation in Egyptian iconography not merely in textual form, but across material culture, claiming that the growing availability of texts addressing ancient Egypt encouraged linguistic experiment among writers of fiction, and the domestication of hieroglyphs. It argues that interests in Egyptology and psychology often went hand-in-hand, shifting the understanding of hieroglyphs as something ‘other’ to a product of the ‘self’. Finally, it charts the commercialisation of Egyptian iconography, increasingly connected to products that drew upon Egypt’s glamour (and the glamour of theatre and cinema), but also obverses a counterculture that harnessed ancient Egypt’s fascination and connected it to more meaningful spiritual experiences.

Wars and conflicts have no recognised linguistic boundaries as they break out irrespective of differing languages and cultures. However, verbal negotiations for truce, ceasefire, and peace conventions still need to be engaged in between the conflicting sides. Consequently, the need for interpreters to overcome language barriers in war zones has recently increased significantly as even local conflicts are given a global dimension in the contemporary political scene. Despite all this, there has been a lack of studies submitted in the field for which this thesis is a focus: the roles that war-zone interpreters can play in framing narratives of conflicts. The contribution this study attempts to achieve is in developing a new model to assess how narratives are framed in the field of interpreting. This model can be used as an analytical framework in order to collect and analyse oral interpreting data; in addition, it is designed to be used in other conflict interpreting studies. This thesis examines the roles that Libyan interpreters played in framing narratives of Libyan conflict in the Libyan uprising during the period from the first days of the uprising on the 17th February 2011 to the implementation of the intervention on the 19th March 2011.

The translation unit has been regarded as an elusive notion in linguistics. The literature shows that there seems to be little agreement regarding, in particular, their identification and size. This study attempts to rethink these two central issues of translation units with the help of a parallel corpus: the ARC (the Alignment of Reuters Corpora), an English-Japanese newswire corpus. The main achievements of this study are: the identification of five variables associated with translation unit size; the establishment of an unbiased, reproducible identification method; and, the demonstration that translation pairs (i.e. translation units and their equivalents) are ideal for contrastive analysis. The identification method, ‘the one-equivalent principle’, established in this thesis is justified linguistically by a thorough, systematic review of the relevant literature, and empirically using nine case studies. The target words of the case studies were the most frequent content words in the ARC: market; government; year; economic; new; foreign; said; told; and, expected. The examination of translation unit size, as well as non-translation units and translation pairs, shows that parallel corpora, and the one-equivalent principle, are powerful tools for understanding the nature of translation units.

This study presents a corpus-based analysis of the use of “wh” sentences by language learners, in language textbooks and in authentic written discourse. It focuses on the polysemeous nature of “wh” words, which can be usedas interrogatives, declaratives and to introduce subordinate clauses. The analysis of “wh” sentences in EFL textbooks showed that there are more prototypical examples at low proficiency levels. When teaching the interrogative, textbooks focus almost exclusively on grammatical words, particularly at the beginners’ level. The analysis of “wh” sentences elicited from Chinese speaking learners of English and Expert users of English suggested that the prototypical structure is very strong in both sets of data, although native speakers tend to use more prefabricated chunks of language. The analysis of “wh” sentences from native speakers and non-native speakers’ written corpora suggested that subordinate clauses are strongly present in both corpora, except for the word “why” in non-native speakers’ data. The use of different words occurring immediately after “wh” words in the two corpora can be explained by (1) the relatively small vocabulary size of the L2 speakers; (2) non-native speakers’ lack of awareness of restricted collocations; (3) L1 transfer; (4) over/under-generalization of rules and (5) textbooks.

In this thesis, I have examined the screen translation of Japanese politeness into Cantonese dubbing as well as Chinese subtitling at three difference levels: (a) face threatening acts; (b) frequently used politeness markers and (c) discernment aspect of politeness. It is not difficult to find equivalents in the target languages for the politeness strategies exploited in dealing with face threatening acts. However, the indirectness expressed through certain commonly adopted politeness markers (such as negative interrogative) in Japanese cannot be conveyed into our target languages easily. Translators also encounter some difficulties when they deal with the discernment aspect of Japanese politeness (i.e. the distinction between plain, formal and honorific form). Both target languages are able to distinguish politeness of two levels instead of three as observed in the Japanese original. Finally, the screen translation, especially the dubbed version, of the two films that I examined demonstrates the dual role of a translated text as not only a reproduction of the original text but also a text which has its function in the target culture.