Abstracts of Major Papers in This Issue

s of Major Papers in This Issue

On the Unbalanced Family Ethic in Harold Pinter’sTheHomecoming, by LIU Hongwei, p. 9

Harold Pinter’sTheHomecoming(1965) dramatizes the broken family structure and the discord with each other while presenting the failed appeals of Ruth’s identity. The process of Ruth’s quest for the identity and love constitutes the main ethical line of the drama. Initially, Ruth is eager to be accepted by her husband Teddy’s family; later, however, prevented by Lenny’s deliberate distortions, Max’s vicious misinterpretations and Teddy’s betrayal, she eventually abandons the endeavors. From the perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism, Ruth’s choices demonstrate that she has decided to terminate any familial relationship with the family, particularly, when she is proposed and devalued into a prostitute who has to earn her keep, which causes the imbalance of the ethical family structure. Since the essence of “home” has been changed, this “home” becomes meaningless to Ruth and actually for her there is no “home” to go. InTheHomecoming, Pinter tries to illustrate his idea about the family value: the family is only an “empty shell” without the family warmth. Moreover, Ruth’s failure also reflects that the materialized social value pervade and smash the traditional family ethic and kinship.

Clyde’s Ethical Choice inAnAmericanTragedy, by CHEN Xi & ZHANG Yu, p. 14

AnAmericanTragedyis a representative work of Theodore Dreiser, an American novelist of realism. This novel, with a vivid description of the protagonist Clyde’s brief life, reveals the corruption and destruction of the young generation exerted by the social trends, life style and morality during the transitional period of society. This paper deems that the external cause of Clyde’s tragedy is the ethical environment, including the prevailing materialism, money worship the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the misinterpretation of the “American Dream”, all of which lead to the distortion of Clyde’s personal values. Furthermore, the internal cause of his tragedy lies in his lack of ethical awareness and his tendency of being controlled by personal desires. Immersed in pursuit of material comforts and personal pleasures, Clyde violates the traditional ethical norms and challenges the ethical taboos, which leads to his loss of self and hence his tragedy. Therefore,AnAmericanTragedyis not only a tragedy about family, love, law, politics, and religion, but in essence an ethical tragedy. Due to the novel’s rich ethical connotation, this paper, from the perspective of ethical literary criticism, explores how the ethical environment affects Clyde’s ethical selections by deconstructing the three phases corresponding to the three parts of the novel: Clyde’s restless animal factor, his incontrollable free will and the return of his rational will. This paper focuses on how the different combinations and variations of the Sphinx Factor in the process of Clyde’s ethical selection cause the ethical conflicts between his free will and rational will, aiming to explain the ethical essence of Clyde’s tragedy as well as embody the significance of traditional moral norms in the course of ethical selections.

Ethics and Evolution in Jack London’s Boxing Literature, by ZHENG Jie, p. 19

Although Darwinism played a major influence upon Jack London’s life and literary creation, Jack London was never confortable with evolution’s unethical aspects. This article, with a focus on London’s boxing literature, attempts to examine various ways London explores in his works in reconciling his belief in Darwinism with his conviction that the ethical process is the defining factor in human civilization and social progress. His four works on boxing provide substantial evidence of development in his thoughts on Darwinism. In “The Game” at the same time that London demonstrates how Darwinian notion of “survival of the fittest” governs the reality of boxing, he shows his awareness of the ethical difficulties inherent in boxing. The influence of Darwin is also apparent in “A Piece of Steak”, but from the description of Tom King’s miserable life and of his tears when losing the game, it is clear that London builds his sympathy for the old and weak boxer. London’s later works such as “The Mexican” and “The Abysmal Brute” reflects his revisit and revision of his views on the Spencerian position of social progress. In “The Mexican” the game between Rivera and Danny is presented more like a parody, or in other words, a criticism of social Darwinism, as Rivera the physically weaker one wins the game and proves himself to be more “fit” than Danny by his devotion to Mexican revolution and moral superiority, other than by physical strength and boxing skills. “The Abysmal Brute” demonstrates London’s departure from simple notions of social Darwinism. Joe’s exposure of the corruption of boxing and his subsequent decision of giving up this career could be interpreted metaphorically as Joe’s first ethical choice in his development from “a natural being” to “a social being.” It is in this sense that the text demonstrates London’s increasing commitment to ethics and his belief in the cultivation of individual ethics as differentiating human beings from other living beings.

“Kill Child and Abuse Mother” with Ethical Taboos: On the Ethical Crisis inTheAmericanDream, by ZHANG Lianqiao, p. 25

Edward Albee’sTheAmericanDreamis a moral fable about ethical taboos. The ethical crimes appeared in that play reveals the existence of Sphinx factors in people’s mind and its complexity: the mutual collide and transformation between “human factor” and “animal factor” actually show the ethical conflict among rational will, free will and irrational will. The play centers on a “l(fā)oveless marriage” and the natural emotion of characters: because of the weakness of ethical consciousness, those characters driven by their natural emotion to “kill child and abuse mother”, thus, which causes the breakdown of consanguinity relationship and goes against the human ethical taboos that has already been formed for ages, consequently, their behavior lead to a serious ethical crisis. The main reason why they dare to blatantly violate the ethical taboos is that they are all controlled by irrational will and lose their rational will, so they make their ethical choices wrongly and execute ethical crimes. This paper uses Ethical Literary Criticism as its research perspective, and it focuses on “kill child and abuse mother”, the core event of ethic in that play, meanwhile, it probes a series of ethical propositions, which are caused by this ethical event, such as responsibility, obligation, filial piety, mercy, fear, despair, killing, suicide and so on. What’s more, it reveals the ethical purport of Albee’s drama creation: through writing the extreme moral behaviors in American family life and the damage these behaviors have made to those family members, Albee attempts to awaken people’s attention of familial affection and their maintenance of family ethical order.

Metamorphosis·Growing-up·Ethical Choice: An Ethical Reading of Andersen’s Metamorphosis Fairy Tales, by BO Ling, p. 31

Metamorphosis is a motif often used in literary works. In his fairy tales, Andersen creatively connects the motif of metamorphosis with maturation. He presents the ethical dimension of humanity through metamorphosis and explores the meaning of growing up. Andersen creatively imbeds initiation ritual in transformation from animal-human hybrid to human being, connects human-to-animal transformation with the drive of socialization, and presents petrifaction as a metaphor of the termination of growing-up. By connecting metamorphosis with maturation, Andersen brings a new ethical dimension to this traditional motif, presenting growing-up as an ethical rebirth. From the perspective of ethical literary criticism, metamorphosis results from the change of Sphinx Factor, which is constituted by human factor and animal factor. Human factor, as a result of ethical choice, comes into being during the process of civilization, with moral consciousness as its core, while animal factor, the irrational one, is the legacy of human beings’ animal ancestors, with desire at its central place. In fairy tales with metamorphosis motif, the protagonist can successfully transform to human being and, at the same time, grow up, when he or she becomes morally conscious and can restrain their irrational desire; if the protagonist surrenders to his or her desire, he or she will be changed into animal or inanimate being, with their maturation and socialization process terminated. With its ethical implication, in Andersen’s metamorphosis fairy tales, maturation means to form an ethical identity, becoming morally conscious and capable of making ethical choice. Imbedding the ethical implication in metamorphosis, Andersen aims to set up model figures to help children understand the difference between man and animal, and thus guide their ethical choices.

A Study of the Word Class Labeling inConciseChinese-GermanDictionary, by WANG Renqiang, p. 37

In analytic languages like Chinese, the issue of word classes has become a “Goldbach Conjecture”, and word class labeling has become a major concern in Chinese and Chinese-foreign language dictionaries.ConciseChinese-GermanDictionaryis the first Chinese-German dictionaries trying to label its entries with word classes. This paper is intended to make an in-depth study of the word class view based on the Preface, User’s Guide as well as the word class labeling practice in the dictionary, focusing on the selection of word class systems, the criteria and procedures of word class identification, the labeling objects, and the implementation of the Principle of Translating by POS. It is found that there are both achievements and problems in the word class labeling of the dictionary, that the difficulties faced by the compilers to a great extent reflects the true picture of the difficult situation in the word class study of Modern Chinese, and that the existence of multi-category words in German can shed some light on Chinese word classes.

The Speculative Way on the Being of Language and the Way-building under the Form of Space-time, by XIAO Fuping, p. 42

This paper explores the speculative process based on transcendental space-time and the way back to language home in Reason. The speculative process on the Being of language is preconditioned by the unity of Being of Reason, through which the Being of language can be exhibited as the unity of its essence and its phenomenon; the language practice, as a subjective activity, is always a comprehensive application of its transcendental form under the condition of time and space; relying on the speculative process with the space-time form in the comprehensive application, reason can establish an absolute world of language beyond its phenomenon; as for the Being of language, the speculative reason concerns nothing about language’s phenomenal, conditioned and experienced part, but its original, unconditioned and pure Being.

Cognitive Psychology of Interpretation: Paradigm and Prospect, by KANG Zhifeng, p. 52

This study puts forward the new concept of Cognitive Psychology of Interpretation/Interpreting (CPI), thereafter studies its introduction, formation, definition, characteristics, objects, prospect and so on herein. That the concept of CPI has formally been raised indicates that not only CPI as a new theory will be deeply studied by experts and scholars in both theoretical and empirical ways, but also CPI as a new independent researching discipline will be learned by postgraduates in terms of curricula. Therefore, this research program has both the prominent potential of theoretical researches and the effectiveness of interdisciplinary permeation. It hence helps interpreting studies to develop from surface to depth, from holism to degrees, from one level to multi-levels, and from one modality to multimodalities.

Interpreters’ Subjectivity in DI Paradigm: From an Intercultural Perspective, by YIN Donghao, p. 57

Dialogic interaction (DI) paradigm, as an important paradigm in interpreting studies, indicates that interpreters, not limited to the role of sound transmitter, simultaneously have the function of “coordinating”. Based on DI paradigm, this paper discusses the function of “coordinating” from an intercultural perspective, proposing that the function of “coordinating” is just a manifestation of interpreters’ subjectivity in interpretation. Through some detailed examples and analyses from three intercultural dimensions (individualism vs. collectivism, high context vs. low context, and power distance), this paper elaborates how interpreters use appropriate strategies to realize the aim of maintaining a smooth communication between the speaker and the listener. Finally, by combining interpreters’ role of “cultural mediator” and interpreters’ subjectivity, this paper attempts to prove that in DI paradigm, interpreters should give a full play to their subjectivity, thus helping to enhance the interpreting effectiveness and making their due contribution to the successful conversation between the speaker and the listener.