许国璋高研院学术讲堂第二十四讲
Exploring text in context inThe Sunset Limited
主讲人：Jonathan Webster, City University of Hong Kong
时间：2018年5月31日（周四）下午2:30
地点：北外东院图书馆四层学术报告厅
主办：北京外国语大学许国璋语言高等研究院
讲座内容：
The play/filmThe Sunset Limitedby Cormac McCarthy provides the data for investigating the correlation between socio-contextual features and the verbal exchange between the only two characters in this story.The Sunset Limitedpits both characters in a contest of wills, played out in a small tenement flat ‘in a black ghetto in New York City’. Other than changes in the two players’ postures and positions throughout what appears to be a single room, the action is verbal only. Three scenes from the play have been selected for closer scrutiny in order to explore the role of language in making not only each other, but also us the audience, aware of who they are and how they think of the other. The biography of interactions realized over the course of the three scenes included within this present study increases their familiarity with each other, decreasing their personal distance. There are many factors in the film than just text. For example, the intonation, the tone, the pausing, the facial expressions and the surrounding environment. All these factors play a role to help convey the meaning of the message/text.
讲座人简介：
For more than ten years, Jonathan Webster headed up the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at City University of Hong Kong.He is currently Director of The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies, which has the unique advantage of being the only research centre worldwide bearing the name of this distinguished, globally renowned scholar in linguistics, M.A.K. Halliday. He has actively contributed to studies in language and linguistics through his role as Editor of the Collected Works of several leading scholars, including M.A.K Halliday, Ruqaiya Hasan, Sydney Lamb, and Braj B. Kachru. Jonathan Webster authored the book Understanding Verbal Art: A Functional Linguistic Approach, published by Springer; and co-authored (with M.A.K. Halliday) Text Linguistics: The how and why of meaning, published by Equinox UK. In addition, he is the founding Editor ofLinguistics and the Human Sciences, and one of the founding Editors – along with Professor Huang Guowen (South China Agricultural University) and Professor He Wei (Beijing Foreign Studies University) – of the new Journal of World Languages, published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis. He is also the Managing Editor of the journalWORD.
