Foreign Language and Literature Department

Bram Stoker incorporated the aristocratic character in the tradition of vampire literature with late nineteenth-century ideologies by making Victorian bourgeois write about the historical figure, Count Dracula, in the novel. Taking the issue of memory as the point of departure, this research explores the significance of the narrators' recording and filing behavior and how it represents the work ethic the Victorian professionals follow. This thesis analyzes the antagonism between the vampire Count and the Van Helsing crew by inquiring into the latter's compulsive clerical work, and further discloses its significance in the economic history. The first chapter discusses the issue of memory from both the textual level and the story level, and then elucidates the truth production and knowledge management in Van Helsing crew's recording and filing work. The second chapter reconsiders the binary oppositions presumed in most Dracula studies about the power relations in the novel, and

‘Tai-Lao’ is a Chinese term which literally means low-skilled migrant
workers from the lower class in Taiwan. In current Taiwanese
society, this phrase is used to criticise those young Taiwanese
who encounter difficulties in the competition for white-collar jobs
in Taiwan and travel to Australia for a working holiday. Based on
31 in-depth interviews with Taiwanese working holidaymakers
conducted in Taiwan, this paper argues that, surprisingly, a
working holiday is regarded as downward mobility in Taiwan
although it is a type of temporary migration to the West.
Therefore, ‘Tai-Lao’ is a stigma that works as a classed form of
symbolic violence in Taiwanese society. This violence, which
stems from neoliberal ideology, further reproduces this stigma
through middle-class expectations of global perspectives in
Taiwan. In order to avoid being labelled as ‘Tai-Lao’, Taiwanese
working holidaymakers try to redefine the Tai-Lao identity from a
Western perspective. However, it is still difficult to reduce this
stigma due to their lack of personal achievements in the
Taiwanese labour market. Only those returnees who successfully
commodify their own Western experience and increase their
personal market value are able to destigmatise themselves and
regard ‘being Tai-Lao’ as a process of being successful within
Taiwan’s neoliberal system.

The number of Taiwanese working holidaymakers in Australia has grown rapidly over the last decade. They are criticized as ‘losers’ and are labelled ‘Tai-Lao’ in Taiwanese society. This thesis explores how Taiwanese working holidaymakers respond to the public narratives in Taiwan through their experiences in Australia and their achievements after returning home.
      Based on 31 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Taiwanese working holidaymakers conducted in Taiwan, I show that, in response to the prejudice they experience in Taiwan, these young people refute, relabel, or even redefine the term ‘Tai-Lao’ to avoid a negative social identity. Nevertheless, they also unconsciously reproduce prejudices, which has led to internal conflicts within this group. Some of them dream of being financial winners, while others identify themselves as cosmopolitans from a Western perspective. This thesis critically examines issues such as English language skills, cultural values and social networks as important resources for their identity formation within the Australian workplace. These resources enable them to make sense of who they are while at the same time leading to intragroup comparison between these Taiwanese. Moreover, becoming successful returnees requires negotiation between the self and neoliberal ideology. This negotiation enables them to commodify their experiences in Australia and forces them to participate in the competition in the Taiwanese labour market.
    Inscribing itself within wider theoretical discussions about the role of capital, reflexivity, postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism on identity formation in a neoliberal economy, this thesis proposes the notion of ‘malleable success.’ A working holiday is seen as a journey for Taiwanese young people’s identity formation. On the one hand, they try to become successful in Australia through their aspirations of becoming cosmopolitan subjects. On the other hand, they need to negotiate neoliberal ideology, social stratifications, and socio-cultural expectations of being a successful young person in Taiwanese society. Hence, success, for them, is malleable and shifting. The idea of malleable success is, I argue, essential for interpreting these young people’s identity formation in neoliberal Taiwan.

We investigate the perceptions of international and American Chinese bilingual pre-and in-service graduate students and language teachers regarding Chinese varieties. The 25 participants were currently enrolled college students or recent graduates majoring in language education or other associated programmes at an urban university in the north-eastern United States. Semi-structured interviews probed their views regarding alternative forms of Chinese. Themes identified included: what constitutes a language versus a dialect, a consideration of ethnic and regional identity associated with Chinese varieties (fāngyán), issues of mutual intelligibility, writing systems, sociopolitical and educational policy, language varieties as a resource, and concerns regarding the real and potential loss of language and associated subcultures. Findings show that with exposure to sociolinguists' views of language, teachers can clarify terminology so that they can potentially present language to students more accurately, design curricula, and consider policy alternatives.