On July 18, July 25, August 1 and August 29, 2020, four online fora on appliable linguistics were held by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics (hereafter “Martin Centre”) via ZOOM webinar. The themes of four forums are Chinese studies, discourse studies, multimodal studies and legal discourse studies. Each forum attracted around 600 scholars, academics and graduates from China and abroad.

 

 

Keynote speakers of the first online forum were Prof. Lu Jianming from Peking Univeristy, Prof. Li Yuming from Beijing Language and Culture University, Prof. Fang Mei from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Prof. Su Xinchun from Xiamen University, and Prof. Liu Meichun from the City University of Hong Kong.

 

      

Prof. Lu Jianming first gave a speech on “A Tentative Discussion of Future Chinese Studies”. Prof. Lu emphasized that Chinese studies needed to integrate with other disciplines to promote the digitalization of Chinese ontological research. He also pointed out that linguistic studies were still underestimated in the artificial intelligence field of research and proposed ‘linguistics+’ and ‘+linguistics’ approaches for realizing the multi-disciplinary integration. Also, he introduced the essence and prospect of digitalizing Chinese studies, looking forward to more extensive and intensive attempts made in favor of Chinese linguistic studies by using advanced technological tools.

     

 

Next, Prof. Li Yuming gave a speech on “Discourse as the Actual Existence of Language”. Prof. Li proposed that linguistic studies should focus on the languages’ actual state of being, shifting from Saussure’s Semiotic Traditions to Discourse Analysis. In the era of big data where traditional language research becomes untenable, discourse studies help grasp a broader picture of practical language usage and interactional speech mechanisms, aiming at solving social problems and making an impact on other related disciplines. In addressing the relationship between AI and languages, Prof. Li put forward the idea driven by ‘data+rules’ to support the ‘discourse turn’ in linguistic intelligence studies.

 

 

Subsequently, Prof. Fang Mei gave a speech on “Three types of Chinese topical sentences”. Prof. Fang first introduced the topic-prominence concept in Chinese and reviewed literature of Chinese topical structures, pointing out the focal research questions in studies of Chinese topics. Besides, she categorized different topics in discourse contexts and introduced topic continuity. Prof. Fang investigated three special topical structures of their dependency on the antecedent contextual information and discussed their discourse functions. Last, Prof. Fang concluded that analyzing topical structures at the level of discourse can associate their representational functions with syntactic forms and thus reveal the factors contributing to the construction of syntactic structures.

 

 

Next, Prof. Su Xinchun gave a speech on ‘The Use of Adjectives in Shaping Characters in Textbook Discourse System: A Case Study of New China’s First Chinese Textbooks for Primary and Middle Schools”. Prof. Su first specified textbook discourse as a part of the discourse system governed by the ruling class, which represented the leading social ideology and the use of adjectives manifested political stances, feelings, and attitudes. He took the first Chinese textbooks as example to analyze the functions of adjectives used in four dimensions. Prof. Su concluded that the adjectives’ semantic orientation and distribution helped shape the characters’ image in textbooks, and it was necessary to analyze the pragmatic functions of adjectives especially in expressing feelings and constructing the discourse system.

 

 

Last, Prof. Liu Meichun gave a speech entitled “Cross-categorial Verb and Constructional distinction: A Case Study of the Verb Ānwèi ‘to Comfort’ in Mandarin”. Based on frame semantics and construction grammar, Prof. Liu investigated the cross-categorial verbs by taking Mandarin placement verbs as example, lexicalizing a casual chain that extended from an agentive motion to location change and spatial configuration. Prof. Liu also talked about the cross-categorial representation in the Mandarin verb Ānwèi. She argued that Ānwèi also constructed a causal chain and showed the verb-construction interaction between affect verbs and discourse verbs, revealing the semantic features of cross-categorial verbs and the crucial cognitive mechanisms.

The panel discussion was hosted by Lecturer Wang Dongyan from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. After the Q&A session, Prof. Chang Hui, Executive Associate Dean of School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University delivered a closing speech.

 

 

 

 

Keynote speakers of the second online forum were Prof. Hu Zhuanglin from Peking University, Prof. Zhu Keyi from Fudan University, Prof. Zhao Xue from Communication University of China, Prof. Yu Guodong from Ocean University of China, and Prof. Jonathan Webster from City University of Hong Kong. The opening speech was given by Prof. Chang Hui, the Acting Dean of the School of Foreign Languages, SJTU.

 

First, Prof. Hu Zhuanglin gave a speech entitled “Pragmatics and Metaphor Studies: Pragmatic Thoughts in Metaphors of Western Classics”. Prof. Hu introduced the birth and development of pragmatic metaphor, listed the applications and discussion of metaphors conducted by ancient Greek and Roman scholars, including Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, and emphasized the influences of these scholars’ pragmatic ideas on today’s studies of metaphor in various branches of pragmatics.

Next, Prof. Zhu Keyi gave a speech entitled “A Textual Research on the Origin, Differentiation, and Amalgamation of ‘Quotations Style’’’. Prof. Zhu introduced the ideational meanings of ‘Quotations’ and ‘Quotations Style’, making a distinction between their styles, stylistic changes, and discourse paradigms. She took the Analects of Confucius as an example to discuss the stylistic features of ‘Quotations Style’ and argued for the importance of realizing the intertextual means to the evolvement of ancient and modern styles. Lastly, Prof. Zhu proposed the amalgamation of ‘Quotations Style’ promoted by electronic platforms, semantic generalizations, and online generated ‘Quotations’.

Subsequently, Prof. Yu Guodong gave a speech on “Doing being objective: turn design in the preliminary to a journalist’s question at the press conference of the National People’s Congress of China”. Prof. Yu applied the theories of conversation analysis to investigate the turn-taking design in the preliminary to raising questions that constructed the social behaviors between the journalist and the spokesman. He emphasized the importance of question design since the preliminary set up its relations to the following questions and constructed the objectivity of interaction. To conclude, Prof. Yu proposed that social behaviors, turn design, and sequence organization were crucial to conversation analysis, and the proper use of linguistic devices can help journalists better express ‘opinions’ objectively.

 

Prof. Zhao Xue gave a speech entitled “The Conceptual Metaphor of ‘Zhànyì’ in News Reports”. First, Prof. Zhao listed some examples of conceptual metaphors in reports of battling the COVID-19 epidemic and introduced the theoretical background of conceptual metaphor. She referred to the approaches in critical metaphor analysis proposed by Charteris Black, identified the metaphorical uses of ‘Zhànyì’, categorized different types of metaphors, compared the frequency of occurrence in a corpus, and discussed the similarity between ‘Zhànzhēng’ and ‘Zhànyì’. Prof. Zhao concluded the war metaphor denoted the contrariety between humans and COVID-19 but failed to reveal the coping strategies and their outcomes highlighted by ‘Zhànyì’.

Prof. Jonathan Webster talked about course design with the topic “The influences behind Discovering how language works in a university setting”. Prof. Webster investigated the course design in meta-functional and genre-based approaches of Systemic Functional Linguistics, aiming at improving university students’ academic writing abilities. Also, he applied Rothery’s Teaching-Learning Cycle to discuss the three stages of a writing teaching model, helping students identify the functional-discourse properties such as genres and linguistic choices for textual cohesion beyond the grammatical knowledge at sentence level.

Panel discussion was hosted by Associate Prof. Huan Changpeng (SJTU). After the Q&A session, Prof. Wang Zhenhua, Director of the Martin Centre, delivered a closing speech appreciating the speeches given by the five keynote speakers, reviewing the First Online Forum on Chinese studies, and announcing the topics and speakers of the Third Online Forum.

 

 

 

 

Keynote speakers of the third online forum were Associate Prof. Louise Ravelli from the University of New South Wales, Prof. Zhang Delu from Tongji University, Associate Prof. William Feng from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Prof. Kay O’Halloran and Gautam Pal from the University of Liverpool. The opening speech was given by Prof. Chang Hui, Acting Dean of the School of Foreign Languages, SJTU.

 

 

A. Prof. Louise Ravelli gave the first keynote speech themed “Multimodality and the built environment: Spatial discourse analysis”, where she reviewed multimodal researches on buildings and elaborated the “Spatial Discourse Analysis” that she and Robert McMurtrie had proposed with a social-semiotic and metafunctional approach applied to the analysis of buildings. She illustrated the analysis framework with abundant pictorial examples and demonstrated the “appliability” of SFL.

 

Prof. Zhang Delu gave a speech entitled “Multimodal discourse analysis and multimodal grammar”. He investigated the necessity of studying multimodal grammar, explained the definition and characteristics of grammar, explored the determining factors for the choice of analysis of multimodal grammar, and finally discussed the selecting procedure of the ways or modes of multimodal discourse analysis.

 

Prof. William Feng gave a speech entitled “Multimodality and Intercultural Communication Research”. He studied the appliability of SFL-based multimodal analysis frameworks in intercultural communication research, so as to understand transcultural identities in contemporary China. He elaborated three notions, i.e. “Cross-cultural”, “Inter-cultural” and “Trans-cultural”, with three different aspects of focus, and applied them to multimodal intercultural communication research with rich visual materials. He suggested that inter/transcultural multimodal Chinese discourse in new media is an important new domain for multimodal research and Chinese scholars.

 

 

Prof. Kay O’Halloran and her team gave a speech entitled “Persistence and Decay of Trends: The Dynamics of News and Social Media as COVID-19 Emerged and Spread”. She pointed out that recent move towards big data required us to develop computational models for multimodal analysis. Her team proposed a novel Multimodal Analytics Platform (MAP) that models the trends of the news and social media as a reflection of a current event in a multimodal response function. Prof. O’Halloran then presented a case study on trend dynamics of mainstream newspaper articles on COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter.

Panel discussion was hosted by Dr. Yang Xiran, which lasted for fifty minutes. After the Q&A session, Prof. Wang Zhenhua, Director of the Martin Centre, gave a closing speech.

 

 

 

 

The 4th Online Forum on Appliable Linguistics – Legal Discourse Studies was successfully held on August 29 by The Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). Keynote speakers were Dr. Liu Yanhao (Deputy Director General, Bureau of Justice, Shanghai), Prof. Zhang Falian (China University of Political Science and Law), Prof. Dong Xiaobo (Nanjing Normal University), and Prof. Yu Suqing (East China University of Political Science and Law). More than 100 scholars, academics and graduates attended the forum. Prof. Chang Hui, Executive Associate Dean of SFL (SJTU) delivered the welcome address.

 

 

Dr. Liu pointed out that the linguistic style, logical reasoning, and rhetorical techniques help specify the justified reasons upon which the judgments are based and at the same time reinforce the acceptability of these judgments. He elaborated that the legal judgment plays an important role in promoting judicial transparency, procedural justice, the pronouncement of results, legal guidance and development, and legal publicity and education. He also compared the different writing styles of judgments in the Civil-Law System and the Anglo-American Common Law System. Finally, he discussed the difficulties in composing Chinese legal judgments, reviewed the changes in judgment writing norms and their developmental features.

 

 

The topic of Prof. Zhang Falian’s talk is ‘Increase the Applicability of Legal Language, Improve the Legality of Emergency Language’. Prof. Zhang initiated his talk with the concepts of ‘emergency language capacity’, ‘legal language’, and ‘legal service’. He emphasized the indispensable role of language in coping with the national emergency affairs. He also proposed that the applicability of legal language helps measure a country’s level of legal construction and the linguistic application involving foreign-related affairs contributes to shaping China’s national image. In his talk, Prof. Zhang took an example of the information distorted by media in reporting the COVID-19 epidemic to discuss the legal language standards of emergency language.

 

 

Prof. Dong Xiaobo gave a speech on ‘A Study of Language Problems and Planning in China’s Judicial Domain: From the Perspective of China as a Law-Based Country’. Prof. Dong first reviewed the leading theories of language policy and planning (LPP) established by overseas scholars. Based on the features of language problems in the domain of justice, Prof. Dong further developed the traditional categories of LPP and proposed a theoretical framework adapting to China’s legal language planning which is composed of status planning, corpus planning, acquisition planning, service planning, and publicity planning. Prof. Dong pointed out that China’s legal language is still problematic in relation to its standardization, balanced development, legal language service, and so forth. He concluded that language planning in the judicial domain was problem-solving oriented and was beneficial to maintain social harmony and stability.

 

 

Prof. Yu Suqing gave a speech entitled ‘An Analysis of Cognitive Context in Courtroom Trial Narratives’. Prof. Yu first introduced forensic linguistics in both its narrow and broad senses, highlighted the significance of courtroom discourse, in which the effectiveness of speech acts is dependent on the speakers’ knowledge of the context. Then she reviewed the objective, subjective, and socio-cultural context factors in general discourse, elaborated the traditional context factors in courtroom trials and the institutional features of courtroom trial context, the concept and construction of courtroom trial narratives, and the definition as well as studies of cognitive context. She designed a questionnaire to investigate how the background knowledge, the psychological status, the social roles of participants, and other cognitive context factors influence courtroom trial narratives. Prof. Yu concluded that the trial’s fact-finding is made upon the judge’s cognitive representations, the judge’s use of legal language coordinates the efficacy and efficiency of courtroom trials, and the level of legality and justice.

 

 

 

The panel discussion was hosted by Prof. Wang Zhenhua (Founder, Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics, SJTU). After the Q&A session, Prof. Wang expressed his gratitude to the four keynote speakers for their insightful talks. He shared his ideas of the ways to integrate the research domains of linguistics and forensic studies. He called on researchers to attend the initiative of ‘+linguistics’ research approach proposed by Prof. Lu Jianming (Peking University). He finally announced that the topic of the Centre’s Fifth Online Forum is Study of Pedagogic Language.