Abstract
Louise Erdrich is one of the most prolific and important writers of contemporary NativeAmerican literature. In 2012,her new novel The Round House was published to the intensiveattention from critics and general readership alike. The novel won the National Book Award.
The Round House is centered on a rape case, telling a story of striving to survive whilepursuing justice through the jungle of discrimination and despair. Erdrich draws from Ojibwemyths,storytelling technique and skillfully merge with western mainstream culture to explorethemes such as subversion to colonial discourse, the loss and reconstruction of ethnic identity.
In this thesis, postcolonial theory is applied to analyze the loss and reconstruction ofethnic identity of the native people and Louise Erdrich's strategies to resist white colonialdiscourse. To the Natives struggling between two cultures and traditions, the loss of identityis inevitable, yet it is possible and necessary for them to reconstruct their ethnic identity.
Through the novel,Erdrich shows how different characters make efforts to reconstruct ethnicidentity, represent the national self-esteem and subvert the white hegemony. Throughanalyzing the text and the strategies of the author, the thesis suggests the way to reconstructethnic identity-surpass the ethnic boundary, recuperate traditional culture, embrace hybridity,mix with advanced culture of the mainstream society and make changes accordingly to gain abetter ground for survival and thriving.
The thesis first introduces the research background, the organization, and thesignificance of an interpretation of The Round House from the perspective of postcolonialismand the object of the thesis. Then it presents the critical reviews on Louise Erdrich's worksfrom three perspectives. Besides, it provides a brief introduction to the development and mainframe of postcolonialism, among which Edward Said's notion of “otherness”,GayatriSpivak's notion of “subaltern” and Homi Bhabha's notion of “hybridity” are the key termsemployed in the thesis. The central part of the thesis is devoted to analyzing the loss andreconstruction of ethnic identity embodied in the lives of different characters. In theconclusion part,the thesis reveals that for people living between two cultures, neitherretreating to the tradition nor yielding to the white society is a good choice. In themulticultural world, the native people should unite the community power to embracehybridity and recuperate brilliant traditional culture. Only in this way, can they survive andreconstruct their ethnic identity successfully.
ABSTRACT
The present study, which is based on the Competing Values Framework （i.e. CVF:a framework to identify the organizational effectiveness and to define organizationalculture）， aims to investigate English teachers, teaching motivation at universities, theirperception of the organizational culture in the target university,their professionalaspiration and how they affect each other. The research questions to be addressed are asfollows: （1） How do the English teachers perceive the organizational culture at theirworkplace? （2） How much effort will the teachers pay for their professionalengagement and aspiration? （3） What kinds of motivation do the English teachers in thetarget university appear to have? （4） How will the organizational culture and theprevious experience affect teachers' motivation?
This study employed four different questionnaires as the research instruments,including one demographic questionnaire and three research questionnaires, i.e. thedemographic questionnaire, the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument （i.e. theOCAI） （Cameron & Quinn, 1999），the Professional Engagement and CareerDevelopment Aspiration-scale （i.e. the PECDA-scale） （Watt & Richardson, 2008b），andthe Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers Teaching （i.e. the WTMST） （Fernet et al.,2008），to investigate the above mentioned research questions. The whole investigationtook roughly 12 weeks and involved three stages: the preparation stage,the pilot study,and the main study.
The findings of the present study show that most of the teachers are intrinsicallymotivated and with identified regulation influenced by the performance culture and theclan culture which are the dominant culture types of the target research site. Results alsoindicate that the overseas experience and length of teaching experience affect teachers'
perception of tixe organizational culture and motivation. The participants who haveoverseas experience tend to be more with the sense of professionalism, moreintrinsically motivated and be more confident with their competence in the academicarea; and the ones who have longer years of teaching experience are with moreidentified regulation and introjected motivation and are more committed and moreassured of staying in the education field. The participants in the target universitybasically belong to the highly engaged persisters,and the male teachers expect to be theleadership.
Abstract
Categorization, as an important theory in cognitive linguistics, refers to humans1 mentalprocess of classification under interaction of objective elements and subjective psychology.
With profound psychological basis,categorization has certain theoretical and practical valueto translation study. Taking Shuihuzhuan and its two English versions as corpus data,thisthesis intends to study lexical re-categorization and translation from the perspective ofcontemporary categorization theory.
Dating back to Classical Theory put forward by Aristotle, prototypical category theory isgradually molded in the development of categorization with the point-making such as “familyresemblance” and “foci”. Prototypical categorization theory holds that there exists a prototypein each kind of category.
There are three levels of category: basic level category, subordinate level category, andsuperordinate level category. Compared with the other two levels, basic level category gets arelatively central position, which is more common in our perceptional process.
Based on the notion claimed by cognitive linguists that words have cognitive andpsychological foundation, the nature of words translation is a process containing the switchingof cognitive categories between languages. Drawing materials from Shuihuzhuan and itsEnglish versions respectively by Pearl Buck and Dent-Yang,this thesis mainly studies thetransfer of lexical category in English and Chinese. Lexical category in the thesis principallyincludes three types: general category like color terms, sound imitation, unit terms, actions;culture-specific category as ecologicalculture, material culture, social culture, religious culture and linguistic culture; and alsocategory extension, containing metaphor and metonymy. In addition to these, lexical categorycan be used as a textual cohesive device. Langacker's S,T scanning model is referred toexplain the four translation outcomes of Pearl Buck and Dent-Yang,which can be concludedas: S>T（overtranslaion）； S<T（undertranslation）； S=T（equivalent translation）； S 幸T（mistranslation）。
The thesis has studied the translation difference of the lexical categories betweenDent-Yang's work and Pearl Buck's based on the qualitative and quantitative comparison. Theoutcome shows that Pearl Buck has done a relatively better job in terms of the lexicalcategories translation with higher frequency of equivalent translation and lower frequency ofovertranslation and undertranslation. However, there are certain inadequacies in Buck'stranslation with a higher frequency of mistranslation and non-translation. The differenceresults are mainly due to the different understandings to the source text and the differenttranslation strategies' adoption.
