In this article, the "Ologies" series of books are interrogated with a focus on whether they present new challenges for the reader or merely require previously acquired skills. The multimodal texts are unusual in that they combine non-fiction with fantasy while including tactile elements such as flaps, pull-outs and items to stroke. Ways…

Abstract of a thesis is the brief and accurate representation of the thesis, with the important function of persuading readers to read on the thesis. So how the writer constructs the abstract and wins readers' recognition is our main focus. On the basis of Burke's Identification Theory, this paper analyzed 10 abstracts from "Nature" from…

Today, children's literature given the concept of childhood, has gained a special status in the studies of humanities. Children's poetry is one of the branches of this type of literature. Naturalistic themes have the highest frequency among the themes of children poems in two countries. The population of this research consists of collections that…

This essay provides much-needed critical attention and historical context to the long-neglected 1924 edition of Gertrude Chandler Warner's "The Box-Car Children." Commonly overshadowed by its more recent and more popular 1942 version--known as "The Boxcar Children"--this earlier edition calls attention to the original cultural…

The concept of paratopia in Dominique Maingueneau's literary discourse analysis designates the writers' paradoxical location, their oscillation between belonging and not belonging to the literary field and to the society. This in-between situation is also characteristic to bilingual people, and as such translingual writers (Steven Kellman,…

This article reports on what three white critical whiteness scholars learned about the ways white supremacy was affirmed and resisted during a two-day improvisational, critical whiteness workshop. The authors relied on critical literacy to theorise the castle as a sign or text with implicit, racial meaning. Furthermore, the authors use…

Authors for young adult literature often present their tales directly through the voice of the story narrators. However, Kashmira Sheth, in her "Boys without Names," seeks to present her tale, specifically the issue of child labor, through the use of frame stories which are recounted by two or more narrators. Through frame stories, the…

Looking through the eyes of Persian culture, we see that man is not all noetic; he is not driven by intellect or consistent in his use of reason. On the contrary, he is most moved by emotion. A perfect example: Persian philosophy is most commonly uttered in both poetry and prose. This is, I believe, where the brilliance of Persians rests, in the…

Gholam Hussein Sa'edi is one of the greatest Iranian writers of short stories in the present era. Sa'edi's stories are based on the existence of fanciful and dreamlike settings in which he attempts to establish the endings of the stories to be the direct result of the characters' psychological reaction against their dreams. The linguistic and…

With reference to Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation (1989) and four other texts I examine how translingual writers represent experiences of bringing what Hoffman calls 'terms from elsewhere' into dominant cultural dialogues. Alongside Hoffman's memoir I consider BulgarianFrench philosopher Tzvetan Todorov's "Bilinguisme, dialogisme et…

This is discussion of one of Leo Tolstoy's fictional dramatisations of aggressive but dull-witted pedagogy. In "Anna Karenina," two adults badger a lively, deep-souled, active-minded boy, Anna's son Seryozha, to learn his rote-lessons.

Working within a multiliteracies framework, this paper moves beyond the traditional concerns with comprehension of a video text or the use of video for communicative purposes and demonstrates how a film clip might be used in a language classroom to explore the meaning-making process in film. Specifically, I investigate how language, filmic…

Research on academic literacies has predominately focused on writing practices in higher education. To account for writing practices in the digital age, this paper emphasizes the importance of extending the focus of academic literacies beyond writing to include multimodal composition. Drawing on social semiotics, we put forward a framework for…

English writing is one of the four indispensable skills that English learners need to master, but unfortunately, many Chinese college students have much difficulty composing clear, concise and coherent essays although they have studied English for at least over six years. To address the problem, the researchers and teachers in China have tried…

This study focuses on the political chaos in Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" (1963). While the main scholarly studies focus on the postcolonial peculiarities of the novel, this study will focus on the post-nuclear characteristics and will render the novel's position distinctive within the discourse on political and social affairs. The…