语言学小论文哪里有？本文主要研究结果总结如下：在对以用户为中心的因素的讨论中，发现三个因素与《沙府》中的性话语特别相关，即地域方言、性别和社会网络。关于使用因素的讨论主要讨论功能需求和语域对语言选择的影响。
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background and Significance
Sexual discourse, coined by Wang B. B. (2008, p. 102) in his comments on sexuality in the novels of Bi Feiyu, refers to any spoken or written language involving sex or sexuality, including descriptions of sexual organs. activities and feelings surrounding sexual intercourse or even the rhetorical use of sex. Accordingly, the term is used in this thesis to refer to all the sex-related language in literature. According to Wong K. (2007, p. 287), “how obscene elements are portrayed reveals as much about the society as about sex itself”. Sexual discourse is abundantly present in world literature and makes a significant part in the revelation of social identities and human nature. However, it is often considered as a taboo language for its cultural sensitivity, especially in cultural contexts with conservative attitudes towards sex and morality. Translating this kind of discourse poses a great challenge to translators. Unfortunately, to date, the translation of it has received scant attention.
Li Ang, one of the best-known contemporary feminist writers in Taiwan, rose to prominence with her bold exploration of sex issues and gender relationships in the late 1960s. Despite being publicly criticized for explicit descriptions of sex after her story Renjian Shi was published in 1973, Li Ang continued to produce a large number of fictions with the interest in sexuality running through the whole texts to convey her social views. In an interview, Li Ang emphasized that sexual descriptions should not be easily denied for their value in portraying characters and reflecting the characteristics of that era, citing successful examples in ancient and modern classics such as the Midnight by Mao Dun (Wen N., 2002, p. 60).
Chapter Three Theoretical Framework
3.1 Sociolinguistics and Translation
The relevance of sociolinguistic theories to translation is mainly reflected in the connection between the basic principle of sociolinguistic propositions and the fundamental purpose of translation. For one thing, Sociolinguistics sees the transmission of information as the nature of communication, while for translation as an interlingual communication, its nature is the transmission as well. For another, Sociolinguistics holds the idea that language makes part of social culture, while at the same time it reflects the socio-cultural differences between communities, which becomes an obstacle to social and cultural exchanges. It is the very responsibility of translators to overcome the language gap to realize communication across social cultures.
Since the 1970s, the development of Sociolinguistics has motivated a large number of scholars in France, Russia and America to conduct translation studies from the perspective of sociolinguistics, increasingly exposing the social nature of translation activities and opening up a new avenue for translation studies. Shvicher, the Russian Sociolinguist and translation theorist, has been advocating a Sociolinguistic perspective to translation studies. He put forward that the sociolinguistic aspect of translation is how to reproduce the society depicted in the source text (Cai Y. and Duan J. H., 2000:13-14). It involves the translation of society-specific items, the translation of sociolinguistic variations, and translation standards that vary with the times and social communities.
Chapter Four Translation of Linguistic Variations in the Sexual Discourse of Sha Fu
4.1 Translation of User-focused Variations
According to Holmes and Wilson (2017, p. 131), the participants of interaction often use a language to indicate their affiliation with particular groups and to construct their social identity. In a literary work, it is the writer who manipulates the language to reflect the characters’ social features through either his/her narration or the characters’ own words. Important dimensions of identity usually include regional and social dialects, social status, gender, age, ethnicity and the social networks that the participants belong to. In this section, the author will illustrate the dimensions of particular significance to the sexual discourse in Sha Fu and analysis their translation techniques in depth.
4.1.1 Variations Dominated by Regional Dialect
Speech characteristics within languages, such as pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, often serve a unifying and separating function for their users, one of the results of which is dialect. Sociolinguistics divides dialect into two types: regional dialect and social dialect. A regional dialect refers to a distinct form of a language spoken in a particular geographical area, while a social dialect, also known as a sociolect, is associated with a particular social class or occupational group within a society (Holmes & Wilson, 2017, p. 131). In literary works, there are two ways of using regional dialects: using a regional dialect through the whole work or using a regional dialect to construct particular characters’ image (Zhu D. Q., 2001).
4.2 Translation of Use-focused Variations
Besides the various aspects of the social identity of the speaker, Sociolinguists further examined some other situational factors in language usage that sometimes play an equally decisive role in linguistic choices, such as the functional demands of particular situations and register.
4.2.1 Variations Dominated by Functional Demands
According to Holmes and Wilson (2017, p. 240), a speaker’s language style is sometimes also determined by the intended functions of the speech, i.e., why are they speaking. In the previous discussion on variations dominated by social networks, the author mentioned speech convergence in the accommodation theory to illustrate how the social network of a person influences his/her language style. However, accommodation does not just influence a person’s habitual language style, but more importantly, determined one’s linguistic choices in particular situations. Meanwhile, accommodation does not just include speech convergence that signals the speaker is on the same wavelength as the addressee, but also include speech divergence which refers to speakers’ deliberate deviation from their own usual speech style or that of their addressee. Speech divergence could occur when the speaker disagrees with the sentiments of the addressee and has no desire to accommodate his speech. For example, giving a speech in a minority language to an audience mostly made up of majority group monolinguals is sometimes done deliberately to make a political point.
Chapter Five Conclusion
Sexual discourse is commonly seen in the writings of many highly recognized writers in world literature. However, only a few studies have been conducted on its translation. In the meantime, translators and scholars still tend to see ideological pressure concerning sex as a tabooed topic in the source or the target community as an overwhelming concern in sexual discourse translation and treat sex-related elements by means of neutralizing, generalizing or deleting, without full consideration and recognition of social and cultural motives behind sexual discourse in the source text itself. In view of this, the paper attempts to discuss the translation of sexual discourse from a sociolinguistic perspective. For one thing, sexual discourse itself is closely related to sex and gender, part of human’s biological nature and social nature. For another, translation is a social activity that bridges linguistic gaps to realize communicative functions. Therefore, Sociolinguistics that pay special attention to the relationship between language and society is of particular help for this study. The paper centres around the linguistic variation theory, one of the major branches of sociolinguistic theories and also the fundamental concept in sociolinguistic analysis. The thesis conducted a case study of the English translation of Sha Fu, a well-known feminist text that is loaded with sexual discourse and has been translated into seventeen foreign languages. The author identified the variations in the sexual discourse, looked into their determinant social factors and classified them into two broad categories: user-focused ones and use-focused ones.
