Grassroots Charity in China: Case Analysis of a Charity Project Organised by Jane Zhang Fan Club

As unregistered grassroots charities do not appear in official statistics in China, they tend to remain unnoticed by scholars. Also as they operate unofficially and avoid publicity, their work is usually not reported by the media. In this research I explore the grassroots charity activity of one pop music fan club from the viewpoint of trust as a sociological concept. I will also establish the general situation on charity in China. By using textual analysis on internet blogs and discussion forums I map the charity project from the discussion of the original idea to the execution and follow up phase. I study the roles the fan club members assume during the project as anonymous participants of internet conversations, as well as concrete active charity volunteers outside of the virtual world. I establish parties, other than the fan club, which are involved in the charity project. Interviews with one of the participant of the project in 2010, 2014 and 2015 bring valuable additional information and help in distributing the questionnaire survey. A quantitative questionnaire survey was distributed among the fan club members to get more detailed information on the motives and attitudes towards official and unofficial charity in China. Because of the inequality in China, the rural minority areas do not have similar educational opportunities as the mostly majority inhabited urban areas, even though the country officially has a nine year compulsory education. Grassroots charities can operate in relative freedom taking some of the government’s burden of social responsibilities if they are not criticizing the authorities. The problem with grassroots charity seems to be lack of sustainability. The lack of trust for authorities and official charities was the reason why the Jane Zhang fan club decided to conduct a charity case unofficially. As a group of people previously unknown to each other, they managed to build mutual trust to carry out the project transparently and successfully, though not sustainably. The internet has provided a new and effective platform for unofficial grassroots charities, who choose not to co-operate with official organisations. On grassroots level charities can have the transparency and trust that lack from official charities. I suggest, that interviewing the real persons behind the internet aliases and finding out what happened outside the discussion forums, would bring a more detailed and outspoken description of the project concerning of the contacts with the local authorities. Also travelling to the site and communicating with the local people in the village would establish how they have experienced the project.

"I might be a duck, but I'm human" : an analysis of clothing in Disney cartoons

Mickey Mouse, one of the world's most recognizable cartoon characters, did not wear a shirt in his earliest incarnation in theatrical shorts and, for many years, Donald Duck did not wear pants and still rarely does so. Especially when one considers the era in which these figures were first created by the Walt Disney Studio, in the 1920s and 1930s, why are they portrayed without full clothing? The obvious answer, of course, is that they are animals, and animals do not wear clothes. But these are no ordinary animals: in most cases, they do wear clothing - some clothing, at least - and they walk on two legs, talk in a more or less intelligible fashion, and display a number of other anthropomorphic traits. If they are essentially animals, why do they wear clothing at all? On the other hand, if these characters are more human than animal, as suggested by other behavioral traits - they walk, talk, work, read, and so on - why are they not more often fully clothed? To answer these questions I undertook three major research strategies used to gather evidence: interpretive textual analysis of 321 cartoons; secondary analysis of interviews conducted with the animators who created the Disney characters; and historical and archival research on the Disney Company and on the times and context in which it functioned. I was able to identify five themes that played a large part in what kind of clothing a character wore; first, the character's gender and/or sexuality; second, what species or "race" the character was; third, the character's socio-economic status; fourth, the degree to which the character was anthropomorphized; and, fifth, the context in which the character and its clothing appeared in a particular scene or narrative. I concluded that all of these factors played a part in determining, to some extent, the clothing worn by particular characters at particular times. However, certain patterns emerged from the analysis that could not be explained by these factors alone or in combination. Therefore, my analysis also investigates the individual and collective attitudes and desires of the men in the Disney studio who were responsible for creating these characters and the cultural conditions under which they were created. Drawing on literature from the psychoanalytic approach to film studies, I argue that the clothing choices spoke to an idealized fantasy world to which the animators (most importantly, Walt Disney himself), and possibly wider society, wanted to return.

El gènere del text de divulgació científica: una proposta d’aplicació a l’aula

L’objectiu d’aquest estudi és presentar una proposta de lectura i producció textual, el Text de Divulgació Científica, tot fent servir una seqüència didàctica, per tal de preparar l’alumne per a la lectura i anàlisi de l’estructura textual que presenta aquest gènere discursiu, així com despertar-li l’interès per la recerca. D’aquesta manera, l’alumne comptarà amb instruments per a la producció escrita del gènere discursiu del text de divulgació científica. La proposta es basa en els treballs d’autors de lingüística textual i anàlisi del discurs.

A (não) assunção da responsabilidade enunciativa no gênero acadêmico artigo científico produzido por alunos do curso de Letras

This research is inserted in Textual Analysis of Discourses (from now on, TAD), elaborated by linguist J-M Adam and developed nowadays by scholars from Brazilian textual linguistic. ATD consists of a theoretical and descriptive perspective from Textual Linguistics that is concerned about a theoretical and methodological position which sets Textual Linguistics in the most extensive Discourse Analysis panorama. In this work, on the enunciative level of text we investigate: the enunciative responsibility (ADAM, 2008) in 14 examples of the academic genre paper published in the journal Ao Pé da Letra and written by university students from degree in Language. The research is oriented by the studies about enunciative responsibility by Adam (2008, 2010), Rabatel (2010), Guentchéva (1994), the perspective of discursive heterogeneity by Authier-Revuz (2004). We established as general objective: (1) Analyzing the occurrence of the (not) assumption of enunciative responsibility in the academic genre paper . The analysis followed the qualitative paradigm on an interpretative basis. The conclusions show, therefore, the excerpts of the discursive genre used to present the analysis reveal a particular nature of using the recourse to the discourse of several knowledge sources that many times can (not) be assumed by the enunciator.

A Representação discursiva da figura feminina no jornal O Porvir (Currais Novos/Rio Grande do Norte - 1926-1929)

The objective of this paper is to analyze how the female figure was portrayed in discursive narratives in the bi-weekly newspaper O PORVIR , which circulated in Currais Novos, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, between May 2, 1926 and January 20, 1929. Our analysis was based on the semantics of the text, by applying one of the primary concepts used in Textual Analysis of Speeches, Discursive Representation (ADAM, 2011; RODRIGUES; PASSEGGI; SILVA NETO, 2010). Textual Analysis of Speeches has its roots in Textual Linguistics and consists of a theoretical and descriptive approach (ADAM, 2011). This research is characterized as documentary (SEVERINO, 2007) and its corpus includes a review of 39 editions of the aforementioned newspaper, of which we extracted 292 articles that dealt with the female figure and 396 statements for analysis. We used the following semantic categories: referencing (CASTILHO, 2010; NEVES, 2007; KOCH; MARCUSCHI, 1998; MARCUSCHI, 2008; KOCH, 2009); predication (NEVES, 2007; RODRIGUES; PASSEGGI; SILVA NETO, 2010); modification (ADAM, 2011); and spacial and temporal localization (RODRIGUES; PASSEGGI; SILVA NETO, 2010). Our analysis revealed that lady, mother, wife and homemaker were most represented, and always combined with questions about motherhood, marriage and devotion to the home. Such representation does not diverge from pre-colonial models in the early twentieth century, which served as a standard for the female figure

Em cantos de reis: a tradição discursiva em Autos de Natal

This study incorporates many areas of knowledge to the Linguistics field, as it centers the social historicity of Brazilian and autos potiguares on two analytical proposes: the presence of linguistic formulas - in its macrostructure - into the paradigm of discursive traditions, following Kabatek (2006), Koch and Oesterreicher (2007), besides the theory of Speech Acts, in its microstructure, proposed by Austin (1990) and Searle (1995). Under Zumthor (1993; 1997; 2000; 2005; 2010), the idea of textual variability (mouvance) was alluded, highlighting that the text is always modifying, according to the performance and reception of the language uses. Considering this theoretical framework, we focus on the trinomial linguistic formulas, orality and performance, in order to describe the dynamics of stability, variation and change, emphasizing yet how extra-linguistic social-historic cultural relations influence its composition. Such discuss is inherent more precisely to Textual Analysis in enhancing the orality tradition as a linguistic support. The text, in its turn, becomes effective as an evocation, motivated by the transmission, reception and variability from its conservation and reiteration. Naturally, a methodological support based on quali-quantitative research was chosen, based on Flick (2009), who justifies the corpus composed by Brazilian Folias de Reis chants and Bois de Reis potiguares . Thereby Language dynamics, subjacent to tradition which takes effect by the use of a common social memory, are observed from two dimensions: on the first, it evocates the sacralization (religious) in which they stand their devotion to biblical History; secondly, a dissacralization with identified and ideological values, inherent to a people culture. The chant shows, in this ludic impulse, a contextualized activity which results in the following conclusion: the changing and stability processes in textual macro and microstructures occur, at the same time, by the adjustment to the use of the text accomplishing a social-political function and an ethical-pedagogic one; supposedly, social relationships arise the tradition and it, on its turn, evocates the variability and the nomadism in the text

Representações discursivas de Ficar e Namorar em textos de vestibulandos e pré-vestibulandos

This doctoral thesis investigate the way vestibulandos and pré-vestibulandos construct their discursive representations of Ficar and Namorar in their textual production. At the same time, aims to discuss its implications for the ATD and for the teaching and learning of textual production in the context of Portuguese Language classes. Its theoretical framework is inspired mainly by three sources: textual linguistics, the textual analysis of discourses (ADAM, 2008), as well as by frames semantics (FILLMORE, 2006; FELTES, 2007). The methodology is based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches (VIANNA et al., 2008). The data is composed of 168 empirical texts written by the vestibulandos of PSV/2005 da UFRN, Natal, RN, and by secondary school students who attended Escola Estadual Juscelino Kubitschek (EEJK), Assú, in the 2008 school year. The results indicate different categories of discursive representations of Ficar and Namorar , such as designation of referents, prediction, aspectualization, spatial-temporal circunstances , and metaphor, which reveal the influence of factors such as: the encyclopedic knowledge, the culture, as well as the cognitive components related to textual production. These results point out to the necessity of a teaching practice which enables the interaction among students, the discussion of current themes, as well as the student involvement with different textual genres, mainly the work with textual production in the classroom, so that it enables the students do acquire the textual production strategies. Thus, the overall goal is the (re)construction of their discursive representations, so that they can cope with new contexts of communicative interaction.

Saramago, Braff e seus personagens duplos: uma análise comparativa

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Análise de assunto de conto espírita por meio do percurso figurativo e do percurso temático

Pós-graduação em Ciência da Informação - FFC

O hibridismo textual em como agua para chocolate (1989), de Laura Esquivel: folhetim, almanaque, caderno de receitas e diário íntimo

Este artigo pretende discutir como se articulam, na estrutura híbrida do romance Como agua para chocolate, alguns gêneros textuais discursivos comumente dedicados à leitura de mulheres – folhetim, almanaque, caderno de receitas e diário íntimo –, cuja presença fica sugerida desde o subtítulo “novela de entregas mensuales, con recetas, amores y remedios caseros”. Esses gêneros se misturam na construção da narrativa, possibilitando, no âmbito da pós-modernidade, uma leitura crítica do papel da mulher na sociedade patriarcal da primeira metade do século XX.

Marcadores prosódicos da escrita literária: uma análise da obra Manuelzão e Miguilim, de Guimarães Rosa

to each other. These approaches reveal the speaker's attitudes, their feelings expressed in statements and in the contexts in which those expressions are used. Cagliari (1989) calls this kind of discursive reference as prosodic markers in literary writing. In this project, the corpus for the analysis comes from the work of Guimarães Rosa: Manuelzão e Miguilim. The main goal of the present project is to develop studies on the subject, since there is virtually nothing done about the prosodic writing markers. Develop working methods is an important objective, in order to show how the prosodic markers can be studied. This type of study is not only important to linguistics: phonetics, textual analysis and discourse, but also to literary studies. Different ages of literary expressions used differently such resources as shown by the work of Cagliari (1989). The methodology of this project starts collecting data to compose the corpus with examples categorized as prosodic markers. Then, according to prosodic theories, these expressions are classified in types. The contexts in which they appear are important elements and they will be highlighted. The narrative of the plot is also an important context. Dialogues are good source of prosodic markers. In the work of Guimarães Rosa: Manuelzão e Miguilim, it was observed that the author likes to reveal the feelings of the characters in the novel through stated words in their speech. There are prosodic markers showing feeling like: intimidating, serene, gentle, cheerful, worried, angry, with irony, etc. The authors also refer to the fact that the character pronounced his speech with different voice qualities such as loud, hoarse, whispering, etc. This project studies the association between some prosodic elements of speech and their occurrence in literary texts as prosodic writing markers, as defined in the project. The data come from the phonetic descriptions of words and expressions regarded as prosodic...

Marcadores prosódicos da escrita literária: uma análise da obra Manuelzão e Miguilim, de Guimarães Rosa

to each other. These approaches reveal the speaker's attitudes, their feelings expressed in statements and in the contexts in which those expressions are used. Cagliari (1989) calls this kind of discursive reference as prosodic markers in literary writing. In this project, the corpus for the analysis comes from the work of Guimarães Rosa: Manuelzão e Miguilim. The main goal of the present project is to develop studies on the subject, since there is virtually nothing done about the prosodic writing markers. Develop working methods is an important objective, in order to show how the prosodic markers can be studied. This type of study is not only important to linguistics: phonetics, textual analysis and discourse, but also to literary studies. Different ages of literary expressions used differently such resources as shown by the work of Cagliari (1989). The methodology of this project starts collecting data to compose the corpus with examples categorized as prosodic markers. Then, according to prosodic theories, these expressions are classified in types. The contexts in which they appear are important elements and they will be highlighted. The narrative of the plot is also an important context. Dialogues are good source of prosodic markers. In the work of Guimarães Rosa: Manuelzão e Miguilim, it was observed that the author likes to reveal the feelings of the characters in the novel through stated words in their speech. There are prosodic markers showing feeling like: intimidating, serene, gentle, cheerful, worried, angry, with irony, etc. The authors also refer to the fact that the character pronounced his speech with different voice qualities such as loud, hoarse, whispering, etc. This project studies the association between some prosodic elements of speech and their occurrence in literary texts as prosodic writing markers, as defined in the project. The data come from the phonetic descriptions of words and expressions regarded as prosodic...

The role of discourse analysis for translation and translator training

It has been widely recognised that an in-depth textual analysis of a source text is relevant for translation. This book discusses the role of discourse analysis for translation and translator training. One particular model of discourse analysis is presented in detail, and its application in the context of translator training is critically examined.