Journal of Linguistics and Communication Studies

Tech Powerhouse or Tech Threat? An Attitude Analysis of News Reports on Science and Technology in China by China Daily and The New York Times

Siyang Liu — 2025-12-22

This study investigates how science and technology (S&T) in China is represented through attitudinal resources by China Daily (CD) and The New York Times (NYT). 215 news articles from CD and 133 from NYT were analyzed according to a revised system of attitude within the appraisal framework. Results show that CD features overwhelmingly positive evaluation, highlighting the value of China’s technologies and scientific research as well as China’s tech strength. The competence of Chinese scientists in striving for innovation excellence is also foregrounded. By contrast, NYT displays both positive and negative attitudes in its reports. On the one hand, it emphasizes China’s prowess and determination in developing high-tech industries as well as the utility of China’s tech products. On the other hand, it depicts China’s sci-tech endeavors as unethical and worrisome, and underlines the weakness and shortcomings of China’s technologies. The significance of this study lies in its focus on the cross-cultural comparison of science news and the media representation of China’s science and technology.

A Comparative Study of Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre with the “Structure of Feeling” — The Contradiction Writing of the Victorian Era

Jing Hou — 2025-12-22

Raymond Williams, an important British Marxist literary theorist, coined the term “Structure of Feeling” to analyze the shared personal feeling and experiences of people during specific historical periods. This framework reveals unstructured yet pervasive social mentality and emotional responses, offering a unique perspective for interpreting literature from social transition periods. Based on this theory, this study compares Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1838) and Charlotte Brontë’ s Jane Eyre (1847), two iconic Victorian-era (1837-1901) works, to explore the shared emotional tensions in 19th-century British industrialization and urbanization. The research demonstrates that both novels sharply criticize structural injustices like the Poorhouse system, class divisions, and gender oppression while compromising with mainstream ideology and values through magic solutions such as kinship redemption, unexpected inheritance of fortune, and marital order. These narratives modes reflect the dynamic tension unique to Victorian era’s transitional period between old and new values. This contradictory nature mirrors Williams’ “Structure of Feeling”, revealing the complex interplay between individual experiences and social structures, as well as the collusion between critical demands and ideological frameworks during social transformation.

A Conversation Analysis of Turn-Final haobuhao in Chinese Parent-Child Interaction

Shuyu Pan — 2026-01-23

Haobuhao (“好不好”) is a recurrent linguistic practice in Mandarin conversation and performs different interactional functions depending on where it is positioned within a turn. This study examines occurrences of turn-final haobuhao in parental talk in naturalistic parent-child interactions, drawing on a corpus of video-recorded data and using the analytic framework of Conversation Analysis (CA). The analysis shows that when haobuhao is deployed in responding position, it frequently implements other-initiated repair targeting the child’s conduct. In these cases, parents use haobuhao to mark the child’s behavior as inappropriate, to frame it as a departure from social norms, and to assert their epistemic authority. When used in initial position, haobuhao commonly accompanies directive formats. In directives delivered through commands or complaints, haobuhao strengthens an accusatory stance and highlights the problematic nature of the child’s behavior. When accompanying request-based directives, however, haobuhao mitigates the directive force and downshifts parents’ deontic authority. By revealing how haobuhao contributes to the management of epistemic and deontic relations in interaction, this study demonstrates the intricate ways in which interactional practices participate in the construction of social norms and parental authority. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Mandarin parent-child interaction and expand CA research on epistemics in family and institutional settings.

Voice-Over as a Substitute for Visual Explanation in Short Videos

M. D. Reynolds — 2026-01-29

Short-form video has become a dominant mode of audiovisual communication on contemporary digital platforms, where limited duration, rapid editing, and fragmented viewing practices increasingly undermine the explanatory capacity of visual continuity. This paper examines the growing role of voice-over narration as a substitute for visual explanation in short videos and argues that voice-over should be understood not as a stylistic or technical supplement but as a core explanatory mechanism. Drawing on audiovisual theory, narration studies, and platform media research, the analysis shows that visual explanation traditionally depends on temporal development, spatial coherence, and sustained attention, conditions that are structurally weakened in short video formats. In response, voice-over assumes primary explanatory authority by guiding interpretation, condensing processes, and stabilizing meaning across fragmented visuals, offering a level of clarity and abstraction that images alone struggle to achieve under accelerated and distracted consumption. The paper situates this shift within broader media conditions such as everyday multitasking, the perceptual stability of sound, platform norms favoring rapid comprehension, and cultural preferences for explicit guidance, and it discusses the narrative and cultural implications of this transformation, including a movement from showing to telling, reduced interpretive openness, and the normalization of guided meaning. By reframing voice-over as a substitute for visual explanation, the study challenges assumptions of visual dominance in audiovisual media and highlights a rebalancing of sound and image in platform-based communication.

Composite Social Actions: Question-Intoned Repeat-Formatted Repair Initiation in Mandarin Conversation

Jian Guan — 2026-01-29

Repair refers to the process of detecting and responding to problems with speaking, hearing or understanding in talk-in-interaction. In Mandarin conversation, repetition can function as a linguistic device for implementing other-initiated repair. This is primarily realized through three specific practices: question-intoned repetitions, repetitions suffixed with the final particle “a” and repetitions suffixed with the final particle “ma”. Focusing on the first type, this study conducts a fine-grained analysis of naturally occurring Mandarin conversations to demonstrate that such repetitions function not merely as a device for repair initiation, but as inherently composite social actions. Within a single turn, they can simultaneously accomplish additional interactional work, such as seeking clarification, highlighting unexpectedness, or negotiating responsibility. By examining their sequential environment and co‑occurrence patterns, this study reveals how interactants utilize this repair form to manage both understanding and social relations within the micro‑dynamics of conversation.