Centre for Corpus Research on Business English

In the era of digital humanities, corpus research has attracted much attention from the academic community. The corpus approach may provide technical assistance for traditional language research, for example by calculating or classifying repetitive or complex information. It helps the quantification of language data, which may provide new perspectives into the explorations of language phenomena or the relationship between language and society.

The Centre (CCRBE) was established in September 2017. We aim to build several corpora of business and financial language and hopes to apply these corpora to teaching and research in general. So far, the research team in our Centre has already built a number of business corpora. We have a few on-going projects such as the one funded by the Ministry of Education (“The Construction and Application of Multimodal Financial English Corpus”) and the graduate teaching reform project (“New Cases that Promote Curriculum Ideological and Political Construction in Business English Teaching”). The research team has also published a number of academic papers in international journals such as Language Learning & Technology, Language Teaching Research, English for Specific Purposes, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, and Computer Assisted Language Learning.

Director: LI Shuangling

Centre/Key Research Base for the Study of Translation and Society

Without translation, there could be no talk of ‘globalization’ in the world today. Furthermore, the ongoing processes of globalized society are changing the ecosystem of translation, causing dramatic changes in the form, means, methods, techniques, and even politics of translation. For instance, translation is becoming increasingly conditioned by local, national, and global economies; the relationships among the original author/writer, translator, publisher, and reader/consumer are vastly different from the past; modern developments in communications technology have resulted in translation having newer forms of contact, ex-/inter-change, communication, transmission, and consumption; those internationally vulnerable or disfranchised languages, along with the cultures they represent, are being further edged out and marginalized; within the historical and realistic context of post-modernity and post/neo-coloniality, where differences exist between the North and the South (in terms of economic and social development) and between the East and the West (with regard to cultural traditions, etc.), the politics of translation is being played out in new ways with new political dimensions and dynamics emerging. All these factors have contributed to major paradigmatic shifts now being seen in translation studies.

The Centre takes it as its mandate and mission to advance translation studies by examining the relationship between translation and the ever-changing society. Since its establishment in 2008, the Centre has received unfailing support from the Faculty of International Studies, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. In 2014, the Centre became a Key Research Base sponsored by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

For more information, please contact Guo Yangsheng, Director of the Centre/Key Research Base.

Director: GUO Yangsheng

Centre for the Study of Discourse and Society

The Research Centre for the Study of Discourse and Society (hereinafter referred to as “the Centre”) is one of the academic institutions at the Faculty of International Studies, SWUFE. Upholding the spirit of “better telling China’s stories, making China’s voice heard”, the Centre strives to promote research on the construction of Chinese discourse, the representation of China’s contemporary society, and national image as seen in the mainstream English-language media and official government documents of China. In combination with research methods such as discourse analysis, corpus analysis and Python, the Centre has embraced a strong research team comprising members with rich research experiences and strong scientific research capability, including university professors and postdocs, experts from UNESCO, the CEO of Russell School as well as postgraduates and undergraduates in Applied Linguistics. The Centre aims to render suggestions for the government and the media of China as well as a platform for scholarly exchanges between scholars and learners from home and abroad.

At present, research projects at the Centre address a wide range of fields and the main research focus is placed on China Global Television Network (CGTN), China Daily, Global Times, People’s Daily, and mainstream English-language media in other countries. Major findings and conclusions at the Centre have been rendering supports for the construction of Chinese discourse, the overseas communication of Chinese society and culture, and further development of the English-language media of China.

One of the research projects of the Centre “A study on the construction of Chinese Discourse by the mainstream English-language newspapers of China” has been approved by the National Social Science Fund and completed with success. The related book The Construction of Chinese Discourse by the Mainstream English-language Media of China has been published by the People’s Publishing House.

Director: PAN Zimeng

Centre for the Study of Language Use and Society

The Centre aims to combine language structure and use with social environment from the perspective of the relationship between language and society, focusing on the corresponding relationship between language variety and social variations, including two major research approaches of "Discourse Analysis" and "Communication analysis" in the field of social research. "Discourse Analysis" mainly studies the construction of discourse in social domains. It involves language analysis, discourse analysis, pragmatic analysis, conversational analysis, functional analysis, cognitive discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, political discourse analysis, business discourse analysis, etc. "Communication Analysis" mainly concerns cultural research, cultural adaptation, cross-cultural communication, conflict analysis, interpersonal communication, business communication, etc.

This Centre has strong scientific research capabilities. In recent years, the Centre has published multiple academic papers in top and authoritative journals both domestically and internationally, and has established multiple national and provincial research projects.

Director: ZHANG Wei

Foreign Literature Research Centre

The Centre aims at teaching and researching comparative literature and world literature as well as translation from a multicultural perspective by relying on the advantages of the multilingual foreign languages in the Faculty of International Studies, improving the level of academic research and expanding academic dialogue and exchanges among disciplines. In the meantime, it is among our goals to enrich students’ humanistic literacy and enhance their capability of intercultural awareness and communication.

The Centre focuses on research about contemporary British literature, while taking Chinese literature as a reference and exploring the relationship between literature and various factors in social development by using comparative literature theory. Pedagogically, based on the curriculum construction and talent training of the Master of Translation and Interpreting, the Centre is committed to the research of translation teaching methods, helping MTI students to strengthen their understanding of the theory and proper application in practice, so as to improve their translation accomplishment and ability.

Director: XIAO Qinghua

Centre for Academic Writing in English

With the internationalization of higher education, English has become the principal medium for the transmission of academic knowledge. English writing courses, as an important component of foreign language education, should serve not only to improve students’ English proficiency but also to enhance their ability to engage in academic exchanges through English so as to increase the likelihood of participating in international competition and cooperation.

The Centre aims to set up a language education platform on which we focus on advising students, carrying out relevant research, curriculum development and teachers’ professional development. Our work mainly involves: (1) providing one-to-one guidance with academic writing; (2) developing courses and teaching materials on academic English writing for finance and economics majors; (3) researching the teaching and learning of academic English writing; (4) launching workshops on academic paper writing.

We welcome anyone with an interest in teaching and/or researching academic writing to join us.

Director: ZHAO Ting