Tibetan Written Images : A Study of Imagery in the Writings of Dhondup Gyal

Dhondup Gyal (Don grub rgyal, 1953 - 1985) was a Tibetan writer from Amdo (Qinghai, People's Republic of China). He wrote several prose works, poems, scholarly writings and other works which have been later on collected together into The Collected Works of Dhondup Gyal, in six volumes. He had a remarkable influence on the development of modern Tibetan literature in the 1980s. Examining his works, which are characterized by rich imagery, it is possible to notice a transition from traditional to modern ways of literary expression. Imagery is found in both the poems and prose works of Dhondup Gyal. Nature imagery is especially prominent and his writings contain images of flowers and plants, animals, water, wind and clouds, the heavenly bodies and other environmental elements. Also there are images of parts of the body and material and cultural images. To analyse the images, most of which are metaphors and similes, the use of the cognitive theory of metaphor provides a good framework for making comparisons with images in traditional Tibetan literature and also some images in Chinese, Indian and Western literary works. The analysis shows that the images have both traditional and innovative features. The source domains of images often appear similar to those found in traditional Tibetan literature and are slow to change. However, innovative shifts occur in the way they are mapped on their target domains, which may express new meanings and are usually secular in nature if compared to the religiosity which often characterizes traditional Tibetan literature. Dhondup Gyal's poems are written in a variety of styles, ranging from traditional types of verse compositions and poems in the ornate kāvya-style to modern free verse poetry. The powerful central images of his free verse poems and some other works can be viewed as structurally innovative and have been analysed with the help of the theory of conceptual blending. They are often ambiguous in their meaning, but can be interpreted to express ideas related to creativity, freedom and the need for change and development.

Texts "Con and Pro" : The Early Modern Medical Controversy over Tobacco

The habit of "drinking smoke" , meaning tobacco smoking, caused a true controversy in early modern England. The new substance was used both for its alleged therapeutic properties as well as its narcotic effects. The dispute over tobacco continues the line of written controversies which were an important means of communication in the sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe. The tobacco controversy is special among medical controversies because the recreational use of tobacco soon spread and outweighed its medicinal use, ultimately causing a social and cultural crisis in England. This study examines how language is used in polemic discourse and argumentation. The material consists of medical texts arguing for and against tobacco in early modern England. The texts were compiled into an electronic corpus of tobacco texts (1577 1670) representing different genres and styles of writing. With the help of the corpus, the tobacco controversy is described and analyzed in the context of early modern medicine. A variety of methods suitable for the study of conflict discourse were used to assess internal and external text variation. The linguistic features examined include personal pronouns, intertextuality, structural components, and statistically derived keywords. A common thread in the work is persuasive language use manifested, for example, in the form of emotive adjectives and the generic use of pronouns; the latter is especially pronounced in the dichotomy between us and them. Controversies have not been studied in this manner before but the methods applied have supplemented each other and proven their suitability in the study of conflictive discourse. These methods can also be applied to present-day materials.

Publishing for the Masses : Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets

This study is a pragmatic description of the evolution of the genre of English witchcraft pamphlets from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. Witchcraft pamphlets were produced for a new kind of readership semi-literate, uneducated masses and the central hypothesis of this study is that publishing for the masses entailed rethinking the ways of writing and printing texts. Analysis of the use of typographical variation and illustrations indicates how printers and publishers catered to the tastes and expectations of this new audience. Analysis of the language of witchcraft pamphlets shows how pamphlet writers took into account the new readership by transforming formal written source materials trial proceedings into more immediate ways of writing. The material for this study comes from the Corpus of Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets, which has been compiled by the author. The multidisciplinary analysis incorporates both visual and linguistic aspects of the texts, with methodologies and theoretical insights adopted eclectically from historical pragmatics, genre studies, book history, corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics and cognitive psychology. The findings are anchored in the socio-historical context of early modern publishing, reading, literacy and witchcraft beliefs. The study shows not only how consideration of a new audience by both authors and printers influenced the development of a genre, but also the value of combining visual and linguistic features in pragmatic analyses of texts.

Finlandssvenska åsikter om och attityder till modern språkpåverkan

The study describes and analyzes Finland Swedes attitudes to modern-day linguistic influence, the relationship between informants explicitly reported views and the implicit attitudes they express towards language influence. The methods are primarily sociolinguistic. For the analysis of opinions and attitudes I have further developed and tested a new tool in attitude research. With statistical correlation analysis of data collected through a quantitative survey I describe the views that Swedish-language Finns (N=500) report on the influence of English, on imports, and on domain loss. With experimental matchedguise techniques, I study Finland-Swedes (N=600) subconscious reactions to English imports in spoken text. My results show that the subconscious reactions in some respects differ markedly from the views informants explicitly report that they have: informants respond that they would like English words that come into Swedish to be replaced by Swedish replacement words, but in a matched-guise test on their subconscious attitudes, the informants consider English words in a Swedish context to have a positive effect. The topic is further dealt with in interviews where I examine 36 informants implicit attitudes through interactional sociolinguistic analyses. This study comes close to pragmatic discourse analysis in its focus on pragmatic particles and modality. The study makes a rather strict distinction between explicitly expressed opinions and implicit, subconscious attitudes. The quantitative analyses suggest that the opinions we express can be tied to the explicit in language. The outcome of the matched-guise test shows that it is furthermore possible to find subconscious, implicit attitudes that people in actual situations rely on when they make decisions. The discourse analysis finds many subconscious signals, but it also shows that the signals arise in interaction with one s interlocutor, the situation, and the norms in the society. To account for this I have introduced the concept of socioconscious attitude. Socioconscious attitudes reflect not only the traditions and values the utterer grew up with, but also the speaker s relation to the social situation (s)he takes part in.

Single Particle and Packed Bed Combustion in Modern Gasifier Stoves—Density Effects

This article is concerned with a study of an unusual effect due to density of biomass pellets in modern stoves based on close-coupled gasification-combustion process. The two processes, namely, flaming with volatiles and glowing of the char show different effects. The mass flux of the fuel bears a constant ratio with the air flow rate of gasification during the flaming process and is independent of particle density; char glowing process shows a distinct effect of density. The bed temperatures also have similar features: during flaming, they are identical, but distinct in the char burn (gasification) regime. For the cases, wood char and pellet char, the densities are 350, 990 kg/m(3), and the burn rates are 2.5 and 3.5 g/min with the bed temperatures being 1380 and 1502 K, respectively. A number of experiments on practical stoves showed wood char combustion rates of 2.5 +/- 0.5 g/min and pellet char burn rates of 3.5 +/- 0.5 g/min. In pursuit of the resolution of the differences, experimental data on single particle combustion for forced convection and ambient temperatures effects have been obtained. Single particle char combustion rate with air show a near-d(2) law and surface and core temperatures are identical for both wood and pellet char. A model based on diffusion controlled heat release-radiation-convection balance is set up. Explanation of the observed results needs to include the ash build-up over the char. This model is then used to explain observed behavior in the packed bed; the different packing densities of the biomass chars leading to different heat release rates per unit bed volume are deduced as the cause of the differences in burn rate and bed temperatures.