Culture Shock Is No Shock

正THIS article is about the new expat-executive in China.I am writing to offer my perspective on what it’s like to be the new boy(or girl)in a country that some people regard as the embodiment of culture shock itself.First I’m going to talk about two typical situations that I’ve encountered over 10years in the country,then I’m going to offer some analysis.These are just my opinions,but I hope you find them helpful.All Change!The fi rst pattern of expatbehaviour which I’ve experi-     

Trade Unions and Political Parties in Italy (1946–2014): Ideological Positions and Critical Junctures

The paper investigates party-union relationships in Italy (1946–2014) by hand-coding parties’ parliamentary speeches and trade unions’ congress motions. In line with the cartel party thesis, a time series analysis shows that the ideological closeness between the left-wing Italian General Confederation of Labour and left-wing parties deteriorated when the Italian Socialist Party (1980) and the heirs of the Italian Communist Party (1998) converged toward the centre of the ideological spectrum. Conversely, the closeness between the Catholic-inspired Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions and the heirs of Christian Democracy increased after 1994, when the former party’s leftist factions became the major part of the Italian Popular Party.     

Writing,Space and Authority: Producing and Critiquing Settler Jurisdiction in Western Australia

On the edge of Stirling Gardens in central Perth, Western Australia, five large, old-fashioned pen nibs stand in a curved line, their tips in the ground. Anne Neil’s sculpture, Memory Markers, commemorates the history of this site, which includes the Supreme Court. Taking this sculpture as an emblem of writing, which in the context of its setting highlights the relationship between literature and law, this article explores the image of the pen in the ground. As a symbol of literacy, it evokes the powerful network of discourses—particularly law, science and religion—that underwrote the imperial project. It signals, in Michele Grossman’s terms, “the event of literacy [that] radically interrupts and disrupts—but never eliminates—pre-existing Aboriginal epistemologies”. The article goes on to explore the sculpture as a symbol of the assertion of jurisdiction, the speaking of law in and over colonised space. It analyses a group of written texts associated with this site, from colonial legal assertions of jurisdiction over Aboriginal people in Edward Landor’s The Bushman (1847), through a proclamation under the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA), to Stephen Kinnane’s Indigenous family memoir of life under that act, Shadow Lines (2004).     

略谈公安文书分类的基本方法

公安机关按照不同的工作部门,适应不同的公安工作需要,产生了不同种类的公安文书。正确区分公安文书的种类,对于文书的撰写、运转,提高工作效率,具有十分重大的意义。     

Determining Line-Crossing Sequences Between Laser Printing and Writing Pen Using Coaxial Light

Determining the application sequence of hand-written pen ink and printer toner lines has attracted significant interest in questioned document examination. This study uses coaxial light to determine line-crossing sequences, with intersections observed under a VSC600 forensic document workstation and a Leica M205A Stereo-microscope. Results show that reflected light at intersections and color contrast between intersections and nonintersections was observed when a hand-written ink line passes over a toner line, while a toner line passing over a written line appeared dull, with no color contrast. The procedure was tested under a range of conditions, such as types of writing pens and laser printers, the writer, and writing pressure, with the latter playing an important role in the evaluation. To validate the results, a 90% detection rate and 98% accuracy rate were achieved from 50 samples of blind testing, which is more effective than optical microscopy.     

Errors have been made,others will be blamed: Issue engagement and blame shifting in prime minister speeches during the economic crisis in Europe

This article investigates prime ministers’ communication strategies during the most recent economic crisis in Europe. It argues that when electoral risk is high but governments’ policy options are severely limited, prime ministers will use specific communication strategies to mitigate electoral risks. Two such communication strategies are analysed – issue engagement and blame shifting – by applying state-of-the-art quantitative text analysis methods on 5,553 speeches of prime ministers in nine European Union member states. Evidence is found for both strategies. Prime ministers talk about the economy more in response to both high (domestic) unemployment and low (domestic) gross domestic product growth. Furthermore, it is found that the (domestic) unemployment rate is the most consistent predictor of blame shifting: as the domestic unemployment rate goes up, this is followed by an increase in blame shifting towards banks, Greece and the Troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.     

思想政治教育文本的风格初探

思想政治教育文本作为思想政治教育的基础之“源”,为整个思想政治教育实践活动提供了理论之基。思想政治教育文本具有着不同于其他学科文本的风格,如载体的多样性、内容的意识形态性、价值的实践性、目标的明确性。研究思想政治教育文本的风格,对于有效开展思想政治教育工作,发挥文本在思想政治教育中的作用,增强思想政治教育活动的实效性,拓展思想政治教育新的研究领域,开辟新的研究视角,都有着积极的理论意义和现实意义。     

Picture–text congruence in translation: images of the Zen master on book covers and in verbal texts

The study aims to demonstrate how cover pictures and verbal texts are congruent with each other in presenting the Zen master Huineng in two English translations of the Platform Sutra. The focus is on the interpersonal/interactive meanings and the analytical tools adopted are systemic functional linguistics and Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual social semiotics. Results show that the visual techniques employed to depict Huineng on the book covers are in consistency with the verbal choices adopted to present Huineng in the translated texts. While the medium to close shot and eye-level angle complement the choice of speaker-plus “we” as dominant interactive subject person, and qualified statements and polite suggestions/commands in Wong’s translation, the very long shot matches the use of speaker “I” and addressee “you”, and categorical statements and direct commands in Cleary’s translation. In this way a consistent image of Huineng is presented in each translation: friendly and willing to be close to the viewer/audience in Wong’s translation, but authoritative and distant in Cleary’s translation.     

Regendering modernism: the woman artist in Irish women’s fiction

The period between 1922 and 1960 is often characterized as one of social and cultural stagnation in Ireland. Irish fiction was dominated by an avant-garde writing in exile and the local dominance of the short story. Attention to the non-canonical fiction of women during the period, however, reveals a literature that exceeds this paradigm. Meaney focuses on two novels, The Troubled House by Rosamond Jacob and As Music and Splendour by Kate O’Brien, which both feature women as artists. This figure provides in both cases a mode of combining a commitment to narrative realism with a self-reflexive exploration of the role of art, thus evading the fictional polarities of the period. The woman artist as fictional character also offers an opportunity to explore the relationship between gender, sexuality, politics and art. The linkage between sexual dissidence and aesthetic freedom is a persistent trope of modernism in the Irish context, even if it is often critically submerged under the figure of exile. Both The Troubled House and As Music and Splendour might be considered to be supplements to Irish modernism in the Derridean sense, ‘an originary necessity and an essential accident’. Through the figure of the woman artist, both of these marginal novels transgress the configurations of gender at the heart of that modernism’s aesthetic project. Both link transgressive sexuality with artistic production. In doing so they posit a very different relationship between sexuality, aesthetics and politics.     

Here be monsters: a choreomaniac's companion to the danse macabre

Consider this a vade mecum: an invitation to “walk with me” through more or less uncanny terrains of worlds in the making in search, of(f) course, of monsters. The search will be delving into the areas of “creepypasta:” pieces of cursed prose and pictures that circulate online, waiting to contaminate and possess the next reader. Using a theoretical framework of posthuman and feminist theory, not least the work done by Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway, this vade mecum asks what it might mean to engage ethically with that which is not supposed to exist, but which haunts us nonetheless. In other words: what does it mean to move, live and engage with spectres in digital times?