Kí is a special genre in Vietnamese literature which embraces many subgenres of nonfiction which are classified in Western literature under such headings as diary, memoir, travelogue, biography, autobiography, and reportage. Within the twentieth century, kí has experienced many ups and downs before, during and after the Vietnam War. In this dissertation, from the angle of cultural studies which see genres both as historical products and a representation of subjectivity which resists to the assimilation of collective memory, I will investigate the theory and production of kí in the twentieth–century Vietnamese literature in order to find out the hidden mechanism which control the up and down and the variation of kí. The theory and practice of kí in North Vietnam since 1945 to the 1986 Reform, and the performance of kí in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, as well as the return of kí to be a democratic genre in North Vietnam after the 1986 Reform, will be investigated to clarify how a genre, as a historical product, reacts to different rhetorical strategies in different historical situations.

Over the past few decades, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has come into existence as a further development of the communicative approach. There have been some theoretical arguments over the merits of TBLT, and TBLT has taken a variety of different forms. However, a number of empirical studies confirm the feasibility of TBLT under appropriate conditions, and demonstrate its pedagogic effectiveness in ESP settings. To date, there has been no application of TBLT in professional communication courses in English for health science students in Thailand. This thesis investigated the potential of TBLT in this setting, to address a number of known problems with the development of spoken English within ESP in Thai higher education. This study was designed as a teaching intervention, conducted with a group of health science students. An action research design was followed, and both qualitative and quantitative data were obtained in the current study concerning the instructional process, ongoing student learning, and final learning outcomes. Thirty-one second year nursing students from School of Nursing, University of Northern Thailand (a pseudonym), participated in this study. All students attended a 12-week TBLT in Professional English course designed and taught by the researcher, and the central feature of the course was the requirement for students to perform oral role-play tasks over twelve weeks. Data were collected via (1) pre-and post-listening comprehension tests, (2) pre-and post-role play tasks, (3) longitudinal student case studies (4) repeated in-sessional questionnaires, (5) a post-sessional questionnaire, (6) an in-sessional group interview, and (7) teacher journal. The results from the pre- and post-listening comprehension tests and pre-and post-role play tasks showed that the students significantly increased their listening comprehension scores and used more communication skills in the interaction between nurses and patient in the post-role play. The case study results also indicate that individual students increased their use of communication skills, grammatical structures and lexical variety over time, as well as being more confident and adventurous with spoken language use. The positive outcomes of professional TBLT were supported by the findings of the in-sessional questionnaire, post-sessional questionnaire, in-sessional group interviews and teacher journal, which demonstrated very positive opinions towards the implementation of professional TBLT. Implications are drawn and recommendations made for further research and development to promote the fuller application of TBLT in ESP settings.

This study is a comparative analysis of the representations of State, violence and wealth in early 21st Century novels belonging to the literatures of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. It departs from a dialogue with the international criticism of these national literatures and with the field of postcolonial studies to produce a critical intervention which responds to these two wide fields of academic inquiry. As a result, this work argues for a transformation in both fields. It proposes that both the critique of African Literatures written in Portuguese and the field of postcolonial studies must turn their attention to the post-independence internal dimension of these countries in order to promote a much needed refashioning of the concept of postcoloniality.

The recent Umbrella Revolution has drawn the world's attention to Hong Kong's neo-colonial situation, where it is sandwiched in a number of interregna, such as between the postcolonial and the neo-colonial, or between ex-coloniser Britain and current coloniser China. This unique postcoloaniality of Hong Kong - that it has money but no independence - is seldom addressed in postcolonial (literary) studies. The situation is further complicated when one considers the state English writing, given the invisibility and neglect it receives worldwide and among the Hong Kong population, who only recognises the pragmatic value of English. Nevertheless, the Umbrella Revolution has also provided a crucial opportunity to reconsider how Hong Kong culture can contemplate the past and articulate the future of the city, a project undertaken in this dissertation. Believing that it is high time Hong Kong English writing emerged as a distinct literary voice, this dissertation asks how English writing should be positioned amidst, and help to move forward, Hong Kong's various interregna. It evaluates the opportunities and the challenges facing the formation of an English writing community in Hong Kong, drawing inspirations from Pascale Cassanova's vision of a world literary space that is fraught with struggles and competition, and Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of cultural, symbolic and other forms of capital. The recommendations made in this dissertation to develop English writing further share the common idea that Hong Kong English writing should "turn and look inwards" as much as it should present itself as international and cosmopolitan. The main recommendations are: the need to develop committed and dedicated publication avenues for emerging English-language writers and students from Hong Kong, and the need to develop new analytical paradigms that represent the rich layers of social reality and lived experiences across fault lines and geographical segregation in Hong Kong.

This thesis explores the possibilities of introducing modernist literature to Chinese university students by means of participatory drama. The target students are not principally those studying in literature departments but those from other disciplines. The potential space for this teaching is in the courses of general education that many universities have introduced in China in recent years. The research is premised on evidence that intelligent readers in China nonetheless find it very difficult to engage with modernist texts. The thesis begins with a literature review that explores why this is the case and proposes that the problem lies in the restricted nature of their literary education, dominated as it is by Marxist criticism and reflectionist theory. It argues for other, broader theories of literary understanding to be applied, specifically drawing from reception theory and the approach to literary study known as poetics. It also argues for the potential of participatory drama as an innovative pedagogy that could help students connect with the texts, which are far removed from the realistic texts that their high school education introduces them to. The fieldwork itself was undertaken between 2012 and 2015 with five groups of Chinese university students, three of these in Beijing and two from students following Masters courses in the University of Warwick, UK. The fieldwork was conducted in two parts. Part 1 consisted of a questionnaire and interviews to students from the teaching groups to gather information relevant to this project, chiefly concerning their reading habits and literary tastes; and Part 2 consisted of two case studies, each of which principally consisted of a three-hour long workshop on a specific modernist short story: these were How Wang-Fo was Saved by Marguerite Yourcenar and Theme of the Traitor and the Hero by Jorge Luis Borges. Each workshop was taught to all five groups. Theoretical explanations and practical descriptions are provided as to how the stories were adapted into dramatic form, along with detailed analyses of the texts themselves. This is followed, in each case, by a detailed analysis and discussion of data gathered from observation and recordings of the workshops and from subsequent interviews with students. My concluding chapter reflects upon the strengths and limitations of the research and examines the possibilities of how its positive findings could be acted upon in the future.

This thesis joins a series of semantics and historical pragmatics studies about the changing nature of language. It adopts a pragma-historical linguistic perspective in describing and comparing the semantic and functional developments of Vietnamese terms of address and person-references (hereafter, ToA/Rs) that experienced dramatic changes. It theoretically charts their changing discourse functions and meanings, anchoring such developments to the “triggering” mechanisms caused by the oft-neglected dimensions of ideology and interactants’ ideological stance-takings. The change processes could be escalated, impeded and reversed by ideologies and stances which interacted with the broader political and social contexts. This approach of study is “diachronic form-to-function mapping” in diachronic pragmatics, taking a ToA/R as a starting point and tracing its development (Jacobs & Jucker, 1995: 13). Because contextual aspects such as addresser-addressee relationships, communication “rules”, and the physical and social environments of the literature shape ideology, operationalising the micro-level discourses in the text, the approach may fall under pragmaphilology (ibid.:11)(Chapter 2, this thesis). In reality, approaches may overlap because forms undergoing diachronic form-to-function may change or lose their forms, or may be replaced because of functional changes, thus realising the diachronic function-to-form approach (ibid.: 13). Examples of such changes are the other-condescending and self-deprecating ToA/Rs (e.g., §4.7, 4.8, 5.6). Collectively, the ToA/Rs articulate both stable and unstable meanings and functions, contradicting the current model of the linearity of change (Objectivity>Subjectivity>Intersubjectivity)(Traugott & Dasher, 2002)(§2.6, this thesis). This thesis defies the preponderant view that advocates the study of meanings and stances in the gradual construal of utterances. It argues that collocations and co-occurring contextual features such as the relative ages and relationships of the User and Addressee/Audience /referent are significant for grasping meanings and stances. In the applications of ToA/Rs, the projections of identities and persona can become apparent (Chapter 5 and 6, this thesis). Unlike in English, the Vietnamese ToA/Rs function differently, and have overlapping boundaries between person referential functions and membership categories (Chapter 4). This thesis crosses disciplinary boundaries to clarify the meanings of currently misunderstood ToA/Rs, illuminates certain communicative practices (Chapter 6) and sheds light on the evolution and appropriation of ToA/Rs, illustrated non-exclusively with historical episodes in Sino-Vietnamese interaction (Chapter 6). Its arguments are further strengthened with examples from rarely exploited vernacular resources written in the ancient demotic script, Nôm (§2.3). Overall, this study illuminates the perpetuating metaphysical value that respects traditional social hierarchies and authorities blended with affection. Under egalitarian pressures over time, the disregard for self-denigration, direct other-condescension, or other-elevation in informal contexts, together with the regard for indirect displays of negative stances facilitate the construction of a complementary framework for predicting change in ToA/Rs (Table 5-1).

Situated at the crossroads of Translation Studies, Semiotics and Chinese Studies, this thesis examines the non-localisation (NL henceforth) strategy adopted by Apple for its official website. Website layouts, multi-media information, textual information, such as names of products, services and technological solutions are kept unchanged on the Chinese target-language website. Focusing on the non-localised features, this thesis has three major aims. First of all, it seeks to verify a foreignising impact of the NL strategy on the Chinese translation tradition and Sino-centric values. Secondly, it tries to reconcile translation studies with merits of the localisation industry, namely digital technology and industrial management. Thirdly, regarding global power struggles, this thesis aims to verify that the foreignness of currently ‘dominant’ Anglo-American cultures, NL, is still mediated by the ‘dominated’ Chinese system that has long been a culture centre itself. However, the Chinese system cannot keep its own culture untouched by foreignness either. In order to achieve these three aims, a framework built on semiotics, digital-media, socioeconomics was established, giving birth to the following critical findings. First, NL has a foreignising impact on the Chinese translation traditions. In terms of how this impact is achieved and its efficacy, NL is fundamentally different from Lawrence Venuti’s paradigmatic model in translation studies. Venuti’ suggests translators in target cultures should take the initiative to achieve a foreignising impact by only using target language codes, in the literary domain. On the contrary, NL’s foreignising impact is achieved through:1) Apple’s technological and linguistic control over the development and dissemination of NL items, (such as iPhone and iPad) into the Chinese target culture through digital media, which minimise interference from Chinese publishers and editors who are mainly powerful in print media; 2) In Charles Peirce’s terms, NL items, being source language codes, are signs signifying Apple products that function as objects ubiquitously available in both source and target cultures (e.g. iPhone, a verbal sign, signifies Apple smartphone, an object popular in both U.S. and China); thus, no target code is needed for NL items to be understood in China, highlighting immediate foreignness, with substantially reduced target semiotic mediations; 3) Consumerism which is a foreign-oriented dimension of the Chinese society, conflicts with China’s domestic-oriented translation traditions. Due to China’s booming consumerism, a large and continuous consumption of Apple products in China socially consolidates the foreignising impact, and this cultural impact becomes measurable. The second key finding is the relationship between localisation and translation, and the implication on translation studies. Addressing existing attempts to explore the relationship between localisation and translation, (i.e. ‘localisation is just specialised translation’ vs ‘localisation includes translation’) this thesis discovers that localisation and translation are merely two different text production methods. In other words, both have equal status. Text production method refers to the entire information creation and dissemination process between source and target cultures. The difference between the localisation and translation is the historical, media, and technological context in which both are developed. Drawing on a review of media history, the thesis reveals that translation, as a text production method, includes source text composition, source text selection, translator selection, translation, translation editing and publishing. As print media matured, translation publishers and editors in the target cultures took and continue to take control over almost everything of translation apart from source text composition. The domesticating power of the publishers in the Anglo-American world, pointed out by Venuti, is actually a natural result of the industrial development; accordingly, it’s not difficult to understand why translators’ initiative to challenge the domestication tradition has been difficult. Localisation, as another text production method, includes, source content development and internationalisation, source content rendition, finalisation, and target content release. Multinational high-tech companies like Apple takes control over the entire process of localisation, witnessing a major shift of power from target to the source. This power shift is one of the major propelling forces for NL’s foreignising impact on the Chinese context. The macro-structural differences between localisation and translation pointed out in this thesis have significant implications on the current understanding of how translation creates cultural impacts in academia i.e. what translators do textually, such as a change of language style for instance, is only a part of the entire text production process. Overall this thesis argues that the study of translation impact should include much more than texts per se; instead social-economic and industrial circumstances under which texts are produced and disseminated must be factored in too.

Past research has addressed the disparities in educational achievement for primary seven school leavers in Uganda but it did not take into account the multidimensional perspectives: those on poverty (as reported by the poor) and on educational inequalities between and within regions, particularly with regard to the impacts of the 1997 Universal Primary Education (UPE) policy. The central question for this enquiry was: whether the UPE policy reforms have eradicated the regional poverty and educational inequalities in Uganda given the evidence of a decade of UPE implementation (1997-2007). Five research questions arose: (1) What is the state of the regional poverty and educational inequalities in Uganda a decade after the launching of the 1997 UPE policy? (2) What are the perceptions of Primary leavers and adults on UPE and NFE and the effects of these interventions in reducing poverty and educational inequalities? (3) Is there evidence that UPE is helping poor people to escape from poverty? (4) How are poor people in Uganda socially constructed? What is the impact of the social construction of UPE on the learning outcomes of learners across the three different locations? and (5) How can UPE be meaningfully designed to help reduce regional poverty and educational inequalities in Uganda? The field data was collected during a year-long (June 2007 - May 2008) qualitative, field-based study of 16 Primary school graduates and pioneer beneficiaries of the 1997 UPE policy and of 34 adults – the latter identified by the nature of their role and position in relation to these UPE graduates. Broadly, the typology provides the central framework for a comparative study, through the diverse perspectives of Primary leavers, head teachers, education officials, community leaders and Education Executive Committee members and others chosen through a purposive sampling strategy, in three distinct education settings (the City, the peri-urban Municipality and the Village) using face-to-face interviews, focus groups and participatory techniques. The research adopted an integrated approach using critical ethnography, social constructionist and the emancipatory paradigms for triangulation. The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ II 2005 - Byamugisha and Ssenabulya) Survey on Numeracy and Literacy levels for Grade 6 in Uganda provided data to validate the findings from the integrated account and to support the thesis that UPE has not reduced regional inequality in Uganda. The study identified the following gaps for further research: (a) gathering robust disaggregated data to address exclusion – gender, disability, socio-economic status, ethnic origin and place of residence; (b) an investigation of the most practical and cost-effective approach to meet the education aspirations of the disadvantaged school-age out-of-school children and youths; c) a study of the impact of the language policy implemented through the thematic curriculum in the multi-lingual and multi-ethnic classrooms, (d) an investigation of the high attrition rates and the attribution of poor quality of UPE to teachers, and (e) a clarification of the meaning of UPE in Uganda from an inclusive and an equity perspective.

The goal of this study is to investigate language use among a relatively young immigrant community in Britain with a view to finding out what role English plays in their lives, whether they still use their languages of origin, and what are the reasons for their particular language behaviour. Language use and maintenance in an immigrant minority setting is an important area of investigation if one is to understand some of the factors involved in the community's integration process, or the lack of it, in general, and to appreciate the role of language for integration in particular. Minority communities adopt a number of linguistic strategies for communication among themselves and their wider community. In most cases, these linguistic strategies are dictated by both the social and linguistic environment the immigrant minority finds itself living in. The thesis first looks at the sociolinguistic situation of Morocco in order to establish the linguistic background of this community. It then considers the British Moroccans from a socio-economic perspective with a view to identifying factors that may influence language shift behaviour. The empirical part of the thesis is concerned with establishing linguistic as well as non-linguistic determinants of language maintenance such as those that influence language choice, code-switching, attitudes and use of language-specific media. The study has two main hypotheses: first, the Moroccan community in Britain is undergoing a generational language shift, and second, typical Moroccan sociolinguistic patterns are reflected in the language use of Moroccan speakers in Britain as well. While the former hypothesis has, on the whole, proved correct, the latter did not hold true.

The study discusses the translation of intertextual expressions in political articles, aiming at understanding the role of intertextuality within the cultural, ideological and individual circles. Critical discourse analysis shows clearly how indispensible intertextuality is to political discourse in particular as a major ideological tool, especially in the information age when the media employ numerous forms of intertextuality to reinforce their message in terms of legitimisation or delegitimisation. Political newspaper comments tend to belong to the argumentative or vocative (appellative) type of texts, which are intended to achieve a maximum impact on the receiver. In an attempt to relay intertextual expressions across languages, a culture-specific problem is mainly found since different aspects of intertextuality are likely to arise in social, historical, religious and literary terrns which form the unique background of each culture. It is suggested that a three-stage process underpins the successful translation of intertextual expressions. First, an intertextual expression needs to be identified; second, its 'host of associations' have to be fully comprehended; thirdly, the appropriate type of equivalence is to be chosen to 'reflect the same ideological force' of the original expression. This is often achieved by means of functional equivalencc, which provides corresponding target language culture expressions that are expected to 'Invoke the same effect' of those of the source language culture.