Despite notable advancements in artificial intelligence in the domains of common-sense reasoning and semantic understanding, achieving effective mutual understanding in human-machine interactions remains a significant challenge. Drawing on Conversation Analysis as the theoretical foundation, this paper conceptualizes human-machine interaction as a specialized branch of social interaction, and examines the pivotal role of Conversation Analysis in human-machine interaction research, focusing on three core aspects: the role of temporality and participants, anticipations in mutual understanding, the relationship between sequentiality and intersubjectivity, and the application of multimodal conversation analysis in this field. Finally, this paper proposes targeted implications of Conversation Analysis for the design, evaluation, and refinement of conversational systems.
Speech acts constitute one of the fundamental units of human communication, and investigations based on authentic language data are indispensable for uncovering their underlying mechanisms. However, canonical corpus-based approaches based on formal search suffer from notable limitations due to the non-correspondence between pragmatic functions and linguistic forms. With the advancement of natural language processing, digital intelligence techniques have opened up new avenues for addressing the long-standing problem of the form-function mismatch in speech acts. This paper reviews the major developments in speech act research within both corpus linguistics and natural language processing, and highlights the synergetic potential between the two. Moreover, large language model technologies are expected to serve as one of the mainstream empirical methodologies in future pragmatics research.
Using Large Language Models (LLMs), this study conducts a systematic analysis of the distribution characteristics of common English verbs in transitivity processes and their corresponding usages, aiming to demonstrate the complex nature of language as an organic semiotic system. Research findings reveal a distinct macro-level asymmetry in the distribution of common verbs across material, mental, and relational processes. Notably, verbs that realize material processes are predominant. In the realization of processes, English common verbs exhibit a core periphery distribution: verbs that realize material processes occupy the core, whereas those that realize relational processes are predominantly peripheral. Non-core meanings of verbs primarily originate from material processes, followed by mental processes, with relational processes contributing the least. Furthermore, approximately 80% of verbs predominantly realize a single process type, whereas around 20% demonstrate combined usage. The Pareto-style imbalance exhibited by English common verbs in their transitivity processes serves as a microcosm of language as an organic symbolic system. It specifically embodies multiple traits of the system, such as wholeness, dynamics, nonlinearity (emergence and uncertainty), asymmetry, adaptability, and evolvability. This precisely indicates that language systems are simultaneously shaped by both universal biological laws and social-cultural contexts.
With the widespread application of Artificial Intelligence, text generation is no longer the central difficulty of translation practice. Drawing on Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory of “postproduction,” this paper argues that translation is shifting from a production-oriented structure to a curatorial one centered on selection, adjustment, and recomposition. The translator’s role thus evolves from producer to evaluator and organizer, while translational competence moves from the ability to generate equivalent texts to the capacity to analyze linguistic resources and make informed decisions. Based on this structural transformation, the paper further explores the reconstruction of translation pedagogy, including a shift in objectives, methods, and assessment from output-centered training to operational competence. In the era of postproduction, translation education must cultivate learners’ understanding of translational possibilities and their capacity for responsible choice.
This study adopts Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to test four large language models (ChatGPT-4, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Ernie 4.0, and Deepseek-R1) across Chinese and American cultural contexts with Chinese and English prompts. Through 16 experimental conditions and 16,000 samples, it analyzes the cultural tendencies of LLMs. Findings reveal that LLMs can reflect macro cultural differences between China and the U.S., but their representation of American cultural values remains more stable across languages, while representation of Chinese culture is more language-dependent and variable. Model outputs differ substantially from real human data, with higher alignment when simulating American culture. The study discusses the alignment between generative artificial intelligence and human language culture and its implications for multicultural ecology and intercultural understanding.
Based on the national policy guidelines for country and region studies in terms of disciplinary setting, scientific research, and talents cultivation, this paper firstly analyzes the connotation of regionology and country and region studies and puts forward nine core features of regionology. Secondly, it proposes six essential elements for constructing a regionology system with Chinese characteristics: building a disciplinary knowledge system, highlighting locally situated knowledge clusters while constructing a world-oriented social knowledge structure, developing universal theories and establishing a cross-disciplinary knowledge framework, serving the exchange and mutual learning among world civilizations with research objects that must encompass the globe, constructing a body of knowledge shared by all humanity, and adopting problem-oriented, integrated, project-based research. Finally, the paper presents ten key components for talents cultivation, including key countries, key languages, key fields, key knowledge, key methods, key competencies, key perspectives, key processes, key resources, and key curricula.
From an integrated cognitive-functional perspective, this study establishes yu as a superordinate theoretical category encompassing metaphor, metonymy, and grammatical metaphor. It constructs a cognitive-functional framework of experiential meaning to systematically explore three core issues: the nature, origin, and function of yu. The study defines yu as a “conceptual-rhetorical complex” and establishes a unified categorical system based on the three-dimensional parameters of similarity, contiguity, and reconstrual. The study demonstrates that yu originates from the embodied interaction between humans and the world, and develops into a dynamic resource system through the bidirectional processes of experiential conceptualization and experiential socialization. This resource system plays a central metafunctional role in conceptual construction, interpersonal negotiation, and textual organization.
Metapragmatic discourse reflects speakers’ self-regulation and reflexive awareness in communication. Drawing on the theory of rapport management theory and employing discourse analysis, the present study investigates the interpersonal pragmatic regulatory functions and emotional orientations of metapragmatic discourse used by hosts of emotional helpline programs. The findings reveal significant frequency differences across eight types of metapragmatic discourse. Among them, stance-marking, performative, attitudinal, and emphatic types occur most frequently, primarily serving to construct alignment, facilitate interaction, and regulate emotions, whereas source-based, disclaiming, evaluative, and conventionalized types appear less often. These different types operate across four dimensions—face management, social rights and obligations management, emotion management, and interactional goal management—thereby realizing multi-layered regulatory functions. Regarding emotional orientation, metapragmatic discourse manifests two distinct patterns: positive convergence and negative divergence, reflecting the hosts’ dynamic capacity to regulate interpersonal relations and emotional intervention. The study not only broadens the theoretical scope of metapragmatic discourse but also offers new perspectives and empirical evidence for understanding pragmatic practices in emotion-centered institutional interaction.
From the perspective of critical thinking, this paper explores the path of ideological-political education in the course of Introduction to Linguistics focusing on three aspects: principles, framework and evaluation. First, in terms of the principles, the ideological-political education of the course Introduction to Linguistics should organically combine the core constituent elements of critical thinking with the concept identification, concept judgment and concept construction within the course. Second, in terms of the framework, it should focus on the comprehensive integration of critical thinking into the teaching objectives, teaching content and teaching methods. Third, in terms of the evaluation, it should start from the dual course subjects of teachers and students, to promote the sustainable development of the ideological-political education in the course through the transformation of the concepts of teaching and learning.
This study employs Conversation Analysis (CA) as the theoretical framework and adopts a quasi- experimental design to explore the effects of CA-based instruction on enhancing classroom interactional competence among college English learners. The experimental group (n = 45) and the control group (n = 41) received systematic CA training and conventional instruction, respectively. After a 16-week teaching experiment, the experimental group demonstrated significant improvements in the contribution of short response tokens and adjacency pairs, along with a reduction in average turn length, indicating a preference for economical interaction strategies. Although the increase in the contribution of assessment was not statistically significant, its upward trend suggested enhanced complexity in evaluative expressions. The findings confirm that CA instruction optimizes interaction quality. Future research should integrate multimodal technologies to further investigate the dynamic mechanisms of interactional competence development.
The macro constructs of disciplinary English consist disciplinary contents and English language, whose interface and fusion mechanism at the micro-level are explored hereby from the “event domain” : English language constructs disciplinary contents into knowledge in an academic way, which is held in this paper to be the substantive cross-interface within disciplinary English. Resting upon this interface are layer of grammatical construction, layer of disciplinary knowledge construction and layer of disciplinary feature construction. Disciplinary contents are constructed through English language into knowledge at each of the three layers that constitute a three- dimensional construction mechanism of organic fusion in general.
The Zongbao Edition of the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch embodies Huineng’s Chan doctrine of “the self-nature being originally pure”, and stands as a landmark document in the Sinicization of Buddhism. Its century-long history of English translations provides a vivid case of Chinese cultural dissemination. This paper constructs a four-element analytical framework medium, kernel, agent, and recipient to trace the intertwined genealogy of translations as the dynamic medium, map the implicit trajectories of conceptual aggregation as the kernel, analyze shifts in translators’ identity capital as the agent, and present the feedback loops generated through segmented audience reception as the recipient. Through this framework, the study uncovers the spiral dynamics of transmission among these four elements. The conclusion returns to practical implications and offers a data-driven model for the iterative retranslation of Chinese canons.
In the context of the late Qing “Fiction Revolution”, overseas maritime narratives served as a vital medium for reshaping the national spirit. Focusing on Hanghai Shuqi (The Story of Sindbad the Sailor in One Thousand and One Nights), this study employs comparative imagology to explore how the translator, Qian Kai, endowed Sinbad with an “afterlife”. The research shows that Sinbad’s transformation from a profit-seeking merchant into an adventurous hero is articulated through an ethical reconfiguration that combines righteousness and profit, the penetration of statecraft discourse into the narrative, and a spiritual turn toward modern subjectivity. This reconstruction is essentially a literary practice aimed at reforming national character under the imperative of national survival, reflecting the enlightenment-oriented quest to reshape worldviews and subjectivity in modern China, and offering an imagological lens for re-evaluating the cultural transformation of modern China.
The fragmentation of the media environment, coupled with the diversification of international audiences, needs, has opened up new dimensions in the study of translation reception. Meanwhile, the penetration and integration of digital technologies have facilitated substantive and multifaceted negotiations between translated works and their mass readership. Utilizing online review data from English translations of contemporary Chinese novels (2000-2024), this study examines the focal points of mass readers, evaluations. Supplemented by a needs analysis, it explores the mechanisms through which various reader demands influence overall reception outcomes. The findings indicate that a hierarchy of translation reader needs, constructed on the basis of big data, can dynamically adapt to the identification of readers, multidimensional requirements across diverse contexts. Furthermore, a digital intelligence-driven approach to analyzing and optimizing the overseas reception of literary translations not only paves the way for more feasible methodologies in translation reception studies but also provides valuable insights for the strategic allocation of translation resources, which contributes to the leap from “going global” to “going in” for contemporary Chinese literature.
