On the Artistic Value of Literary Ekphrasis

As a language attribute that exists for visual arts, ekphrasis is not only a bridge to communicate poetry and painting, but also an important category in the cross-media and cross-disciplinary research of literature and art. Through the process of recreating paintings by using language as a medium, ekphrasis realizes the conversion from visual art to auditory art, and explores the richness of cognitive creation on the basis of the reproduction of visual art. In this process, the literary narrative diagram shows significant differences from the artistic doctrinal diagram, which are mainly reflected in the three levels of academic guiding ideology, narrative style difference, classic deconstruction and reconstruction, and language style writing paradigm. In addition, literary storytelling plays an important role in the writing of art history and the dissemination of artworks. It provides reference and inspiration for the current cross-border and in-depth integration of literature and art from the perspective of practical creation.

Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea: A Glimpse at Female Writing Divergence and Consensus from Jane and Antoinette

This essay mainly focuses on the female writings in the 19th and 20th century that are represented by Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, considering the strong connections between them. In particular, the stark contrasts between the two fictions’ settings, plots and attitude toward love and female identities leave plenty room for exploring the interconnections. In Chapter One, the essay will introduce the two fictions briefly, and reveal the mirror image relationship between the two heroines. Chapter Two will devote to identifying the commonalities behind the aforementioned characters, pointing out a potential female writing paradigm among contemporary female writers. Despite the overlapping features with male writing paradigm, topics usually focusing on marriages and the large proportion of mean women figures mark the uniqueness of the paradigm that belongs to females. Based on the two features, Chapter Three will postulate the exclusion mindset among female writers, and explain the possible historical and psychological reasons behind this theory. Chapter Four will offer a glimpse at a growing woman consensus under the discrepancies by discussing two women figures in the two fictions, who shed light into the awakening female wisdom. Finally, Chapter Five will focus on the collective identity recognition concluded from female writers, and bring up the continuing problem in female communities.

Intergroup dissimilarity predicts physiological synchrony and affiliation in intergroup interaction

Interpersonal similarity attracts. In intergroup contexts, however, similarity between groups potentiates bias. The current study examined whether intergroup similarity versus dissimilarity engenders cross-group friendship formation. We used an essay-writing paradigm to manipulate perceived intergroup similarity or dissimilarity between the ethnic groups of participants prior to a dyadic interaction that involved a competitive party game. During the interaction, we continuously recorded physiological and behavioral responses from both participants. We used the physiological responses to derive a measure of physiological synchrony: the mutual activation of partners’ sympathetic nervous systems. People primed with dissimilarity, not similarity, experienced physiological synchrony with their partner. Moreover, the partners of people primed with dissimilarity acted more affiliative than the partners of people primed with similarity, which in turn predicted friendship initiation by participants. We discuss the seemingly counter-intuitive value of emphasizing differences between groups to foster positive intergroup relations.

The cultural ID in the modal system: A contrastive study of English abstracts written by Chinese and native speakers

An abstract is a brief summary of a research paper, review or conference proceeding, which can be considered as a sub-register of academic writing and is often used to help readers quickly ascertain the paper's purpose, thesis, main results and conclusions. With the development of international academic communication, English abstracts play an increasingly vital role in international publishing and academic papers, being the basis for international academic citation indexes. UNESCO prescribes that all published scientific articles, no matter in which language, require a succinct English abstract. Most literature database search engines, such as the EI index, only display abstracts rather than providing the full text of the paper. Since an unsuccessful English abstract would be detrimental to the whole paper as well as to the general quality of the journal, no academic authors would want to lower their guard. In this context, the study of linguistic features of academic abstracts has attracted more and more attention of EAP scholars. The studies on English abstracts in China mainly focus on the writing paradigm as well as such linguistic features as stylistics, textual coherence, grammatical patterns, tense, voice and usage of prepositions (Xiong, 2002; Li et al, 2004; Wang, 2005; Fan, 2006; Li, 2008; He & Cao, 2010).

Mobile Tracking for Mental Health and Wellbeing

Mobile tracking is the latest burgeoning area in the field of technology in mental health care with mobile apps, SMS protocols, and new devices used to track mood and behavior in order to improve mental health and wellbeing. To date, there has been little research investigating the effects of mobile tracking on mental health although this research is promising. The concept of tracking, or self-monitoring, has grown over the last 40 years stemming from behavioural homework between therapeutic sessions, the expressive writing paradigm and momentary sampling. Exploring the theory and evidence surrounding these paradigms provides insight into the mechanisms of mobile tracking. Further research using rigorous methodologies and investigating mechanisms of mobile tracking is warranted.