On the evening of 24th November, the School of Foreign Studies (SFS) held an online forum on “Politeness, Impoliteness and Corpus Linguistics” via Tencent Meeting. The guest speakers are Professor Jonathan Culpeper, Head of the Department of Linguistics and English Language (LAEL) of Lancaster University, and Professor Tony McEnery, Distinguished Professor of Lancaster University and leading scholar in corpus linguistics. The forum was presided over by Professor Pang Jiaguang from SFS, with attendees including Chen Xiangjing, Dean of SFS, Li Ying and Cheng Bing, Vice Deans of SFS, as well as more than 90 teachers and students from SFS and other universities. The lecture is the 250th in SFS “Foreign Languages and Culture Forum” Series and the 24th in SFS “Masterclass” Lecture Series.
The forum included basically three parts, namely an interview, a lecture, and a Q&A session. In the interview, Prof. Culpeper reviewed his research journey from literature to linguistics, and discussed with Prof. McEnery about politeness in pragmatics, subjectivity and complexity in language and corpus-based pragmatics research, etc. In his lecture, Prof. Culpeper elaborated on the definitions of "politeness" and "impoliteness" through case studies, and explained the relationship between politeness and language structure, and methods for using corpora to study politeness issues. During the Q&A session, Prof. Culpeper and Prof. McEnery answered the questions on meta-language application, situational models, character language features, as well as politeness in cross-cultural communication.
As this is the last lecture of the "Masterclass” Series, Prof. Chen Xiangjing expressed her gratitude to Prof. Culpeper, and especially to Prof. McEnery for his outstanding contribution to this series of forums.
After the forum, Prof. Culpeper, Prof. McEnery and the relevant personnel in charge of the International Exchange Office of Lancaster University gave a lecture on the student exchange agreement jointly signed by XJTU and Lancaster University on 27th October.
After the lecture, two professors from Lancaster University, SFS's Dean Chen and Vice Dean Li had an informal discussion on further cooperation between the two sides.
The interscholastic visits will start at the end of November and in February 2024. The signing and execution of the inter-school co-operation agreement marks a new level of cooperation between the two universities.
Written by: An Xinyu
Edited by: Chu jianwei
