International Journal of English Linguistics, Issue: Vol.16, No.5

What Reviewers Mean by “Writing Quality”: An Analysis of Published Peer Review Reports in BMJ Open

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:40:13 +0000

Recent developments in scholarly publishing have led to increasing adoption of open peer review (OPR), a set of practices intended to enhance transparency and participation in the peer review process. Despite the centrality of peer review to academic writing and its acknowledged relevance within English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) and EAP, reviewers’ comments remain a largely occluded genre. This study examines published peer review reports from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Open, a widely recognized journal in the medical field and one of the earliest adopters of fully open peer review. Drawing on a corpus of 109 research articles and their review histories from a full 2024 issue, the analysis focuses on the frequency and nature of language-related comments in reviewers’ reports. Results show that reviewers frequently comment on text organization, word choice, clarity and compliance with “academic style” norms. These findings suggest that OPR reports offer a valuable resource for ERPP and EAP pedagogy by making visible the linguistic, rhetorical and epistemic expectations that shape publication-oriented academic writing.

Cognitive and Affective Preparation for TOEIC Among Three Proficiency Groups

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:40:30 +0000

The Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) has been used as a graduation requirement in many higher education institutions. The students failing to meet the required benchmark are often to enroll in a remedial English course. Limited research has examined students’ cognitive and affective preparation for the TOEIC. To address the gap, this study investigated cognitive and affective preparation for the TOEIC reading section: Incomplete Sentences among three proficiency groups. Fifty-four non-English major students participated in this study. The instruments included pre- and post-tests of the reading section: Incomplete Sentences, a demographic questionnaire on background information of the participants, a questionnaire measuring cognitive and affective preparation, and a satisfaction questionnaire regarding the instruction. Quantitative analysis served as the primary research method. The findings revealed that paired-sample t-tests showed statistically significant improvements in participants’ performance on this reading section. Results from the questionnaire of the cognitive and affective preparation indicated that the students demonstrated strong engagement in cognitive preparation and stable affective preparation, particularly the high proficiency group. However, with the extended study hours, lowest stress status, highest relaxed regulation, and the greatest satisfied instruction, the low proficiency group enhanced the greatest score. In contrast, due to the lowest cognitive preparation, the poorest stress regulation, and the lowest level of the diet regulation, the middle proficiency group made less progress than the low group. This study highlights the crucial roles of the cognitive and affective preparation along with test-oriented instruction in contribution to the improved level of TOEIC reading performance.

Constructional Shift in Translating Hong Lou Meng: A Case Study of the Yang and Hawkes–Minford English Translations

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:40:46 +0000

This study investigates constructional shifts in two influential English translations of Hong Lou Meng: the version by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang and the Hawkes–Minford version translated by David Hawkes and John Minford. Drawing on Construction Grammar and cognitive approaches to translation, the study adopts a qualitative comparative case-study design to examine how source-language constructions are reconfigured in the two translations. The analysis focuses on three textual domains: culturally loaded terms, poetic structures, and dialogue and narrative voice. Constructional shifts are examined across syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic dimensions, with particular attention to their effects on semantic fidelity, cultural representation, literary style, and target-language readability. The analysis shows that the Yang version generally exhibits a stronger tendency to retain source-text structural relations and culturally specific meanings, whereas the Hawkes–Minford version more frequently employs restructuring, explicitation, and stylistic adaptation to enhance accessibility and literary fluency in English. These recurring differences reveal distinct translational orientations rather than a simple opposition between literal and free translation. The study argues that constructional shift provides an integrated framework for explaining how linguistic form, conceptual organization, cultural meaning, and literary function are reconstructed across languages, thereby contributing to the study of literary translation from a construction-based perspective.

The Semiotic Commodification of Yi Embroidery

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:40:58 +0000

Under the globalized new economy, ethnic minority cultural practices are increasingly transformed from symbols of identity and cultural preservation into marketable economic resources. As a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage of the Yi ethnic minority in southwest China, Yi embroidery has become deeply entangled with heritage tourism, cultural industries, and rural revitalization initiatives. Drawing on the theoretical framework of pride and profit (Heller & Duchêne, 2012), the study examines how Yi embroidery is semiotically constructed as ethnic heritage, profitable cultural capital, and gendered labor under neoliberal cultural production. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted periodically between August 2024 and February 2026 in a Yi ethnic community in Yunnan province, data were collected through participant observations, semi-structured interviews, field notes, visual materials and artefacts. Findings indicate that Yi embroidery semiotically constructs Yi ethnic identity through culturally recognizable motifs. Findings also show that Yi embroidery is semiotically commodified as a profitable ethnic cultural IP for heritage tourism and transnational consumer markets. Through processes of resemiotization and recontextualization, traditional motifs are simplified, redesigned, and hybridized with Western aesthetic elements in commercial collaborations, transforming ethnic culture into marketable symbolic capital. The study contributes to the understanding of the increasingly complex power relations and the multiple effects of practices constituting the dynamic shift between resemiotization and recontextualization at the periphery.

Globalization and Linguistic Identity: Vision 2030’s Impact on Bilingualism Among Saudi Youth

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:41:12 +0000

While existing literature has addressed bilingualism and language policy in Saudi Arabia, few research studies have examined the everyday lives of young Saudis as they move across bilingualism, identity, and sociopolitical transformation under Vision 2030. Drawing on Bourdieu’s linguistic capital, Phillipson’s linguistic imperialism, and Canagarajah’s negotiated multilingualism, the present study aims to investigate how bilingualism and cultural identity are co-constructed among Saudi young people, the interplay of English and Arabic in daily life, and how Vision 2030 impacts these processes. Twenty-six semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants aged 18 and older from urban centers (Riyadh, Jeddah) and non-urban regions (Al Qassim, Asir). Findings show that bilingualism is highly context-dependent: participants consistently associated Arabic with emotional authenticity and belonging, while English was compartmentalized to professional and academic domains, often under considerable social and financial pressure. Generational differences were pronounced, with older participants treating Arabic as heritage to be protected and younger participants treating language as a flexible, strategic tool. Rural participants maintained stronger Arabic dominance and reported a distinct pressure of feeling “left behind” rather than pressure to use English directly. Hybrid forms like Arabizi have arisen. The research recommends inclusive language policies that reflect regional and generational diversity.

China’s National Image in News Reporting on “Dual Carbon”: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:41:24 +0000

This article applies a corpus-based harmonious discourse analysis to explore China’s image as represented in a series of “dual carbon” Chinese (i.e., China Daily) and foreign (i.e., The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post) English-language outlets over the period from 2014 to 2023. The findings show that China is reported in a generally positive light, particularly in Chinese English-language newspapers. China is depicted as a reliable partner that assumes responsibility for global environmental governance, cooperates with other countries, pursues mutual benefit and a win-win outcome, and aligns with the principle of harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature. However, a stereotypical image of “China as a polluter” is occasionally constructed in American and British newspapers, largely shaped by political factors, although this portrayal has shifted toward a more positive side in recent years. Moreover, Chinese harmonious ecological philosophy, which holds that humans and nature are a community of life and should be harmonious to achieve integration, is presented behind the Chinese “dual carbon” discourse. This study may contribute to the corpus-assisted ecological discourse studies and offer insights into the construction of China’s image.

A Cognitive Linguistic Study of the Semantic Evolution of Salty in American English

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:41:39 +0000

Taste words provide an important window into the interaction among embodied experience, cognitive mechanisms, and sociocultural factors in semantic change. From a cognitive linguistic perspective, this study investigates the major senses, diachronic relationships, and cognitive motivations of the adjective salty in American English. The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) serves as the primary data source, supplemented by evidence from historical dictionaries. All instances of salty returned under the specified search conditions were collected and examined after proper names, duplicates, OCR errors, and contextually indeterminate cases had been excluded. The results show that the central meaning of salty is “containing salt” or “having a salty taste.” On this basis, the word has developed meanings associated with marine and coastal environments, sailors and maritime life, evaluations of speech and style, personal character and behavior, and emotional states such as annoyance, dissatisfaction, and resentment. These senses do not constitute a simple sequence in which one meaning replaces another; rather, they form a radial polysemy network in which older and newer senses coexist. The marine-environment sense is metonymically extended to sailors and their stereotypical characteristics, while the perceptual intensity of taste motivates metaphorical descriptions of vivid, pungent, blunt, or offensive language. Recurrent contextual inference from speech and behavioral evaluation further contributes to the conventionalization of the emotional sense. The semantic evolution of salty is therefore jointly motivated by embodied experience, conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy, pragmatic inference, and sociocultural transmission.

Unpacking Borderland Translation Ideologies in a Chinese Ethnic Minority Region

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:40:37 +0000

This study aims to investigate the agency of Wa translators in Han-Wa translation practices at a film and television translation center on the China-Myanmar borderland, focusing specifically on how they negotiate the ideological tension between state-sanctioned political discourse and locally rooted indigenous knowledge, and to theorize the semiotic mechanisms of simultaneity and bivalency (Woolard, 1998; Woolard & Genovese, 2007) that underpin this negotiation. These concepts capture the simultaneous availability and evaluation of multiple linguistic and ideological registers in translational choices. The empirical data were gathered through ethnographic fieldwork carried out from July to September 2025, which included semi-structured interviews with Wa translators, systematic analysis of translation products posted on digital platforms, and participant observation with detailed field notes; data triangulation across these sources ensured the reliability and validity of the qualitative findings. Guided by Woolard's framework, the analysis reveals that Wa translators occupy dual positionalities—they function simultaneously as state agents and cultural guardians. As state agents, they predominantly employ transliteration to reinforce the unidirectional authority of official Chinese political discourse, whereas as cultural guardians, they strategically reframe indigenous experiential repertoires as legitimate cultural knowledge, thus enacting a subtle but consistent bottom-up resistance. The principal novelty of this study lies in extending the concepts of simultaneity and bivalency to the under-explored context of borderland translation, where it becomes evident that Han-Wa translation is not a neutral transfer of meaning but a discursive field in which centripetal state-building forces and centrifugal ethnic-identity forces constantly intersect. The findings suggest that these translational practices may open up autonomous discursive spaces for the articulation of ethnic identity and the preservation of cultural authenticity among Wa audiences. These findings challenge the conventional dichotomy between state power and indigenous agency, revealing instead a dynamic interplay of centripetal and centrifugal forces. More broadly, this article contributes a theoretical framework for understanding translation as an ideological contestation in multilingual state-minority encounters, offering implications for translation studies in analogous diglossic and borderland settings.