Discourses of the Developing World

Researching properties, problems and potentials

Shi-xu, Kwesi Kwaa Prah, María Pardo, María Laura Pardo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780367133849
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317702542
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Against the backdrop of overwhelming discourse scholarship emanating from the Western cosmopolitan centres, this volume offers a development-centred approach to unfamiliar, marginalized or otherwise disadvantaged discourses of the Third World or the Global South. Written by leading researchers based in Asia, Africa and Latin America, respectively, this book reconstructs Eastern paradigms of communication studies on the one hand and explores the discursive problems, complexities, aspirations, and dynamics of the non-Western, subaltern, and developing societies on the other. As methodological principles, the authors i) adopt the cultural-political stance of supporting cultural diversity and harmony at both academic and everyday levels, ii) draw upon Asian, African and Latino scholarship in critical dialogue with the existing mainstream traditions, and iii) make sense of the discourses of Asia, Africa and Latin America from their own local as well as global, historical and intercultural, perspectives. This book will particularly appeal to scholars and students in the fields of discourse studies, communication and cultural studies, and development studies.

Part I
Asian discourse studies

1
Asian discourse for development

This first chapter has two interrelated or complimentary objectives In one perspective, it attempts to consolidate the nascent paradigm of cultural discourse studies (CDS) by showing that it is not only necessary but also possible to construct a culturally conscious and critical paradigm of discourse studies within the international arena on discourse and communication studies. In another, it strives to contribute to development discourse studies (DDS) as a particular, arguably most typical, constituent strand of CDS by carving out Asian discourse studies (ADS), a development-oriented approach on a par with African and Latin American discourse studies (which will be found in Parts II and III of the book). To these ends, the chapter will begin with a cultural critique of the limitations and consequences of Western/centric discourse analysis, then enumerate the foundations for a paradigmatic articulation in terms of the cultural conditions of Asian communities on the one hand and the Asian intellectual resources on the other. After that, it formulates a provisional system of philosophical, theoretical, methodological and topical components for the study of Asian discourses. In conclusion, suggestions are offered for a common research agenda of Asian development discourse studies.

Introduction

The Asian community, which accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the human population and extends for over 30 per cent of the world’s land, is by far the most complex, diverse and dynamic one in the world. There is no greater urgency to re-examine, re-evaluate and reorient Asia since WWII than right now, when globalization of capitalism and imperialism has accelerated with America’s military ‘re-entry’ into Asia as a most recent example and when the talk of an ‘Asian century’ during the past two decades has quickly given way to America’s ‘rebalancing’ of Asia (David 2012; Nissanke and Thorbecke 2010). Indeed, reassessment of Asia’s development, peace and unity has become an utmost important and urgent task for students and scholars of Asian studies and of development studies more generally (Oga 2004; Wang 2007; Wang 2010; Yoichi 1993).

To make sense of Asia – its past and present, whether in terms of its actions, agency, or aspirations, and to positively impact upon its potential future, there is no better way perhaps than to study its communication or discourse, namely the social events or activities in which people engage in meaning-making through verbal and other mediums in historical and cultural contexts. (‘Discourse’ is preferred here to ‘communication’ because the latter is often narrowly conceptualized in linear, non-verbal and a-cultural terms; but both will be used interchangeably for variable contextual emphasis.) For, a discursive perspective, as will be explicated shortly, offers a most comprehensive, careful and concrete vantage point through which to view human actions and their meaning-making (Shi-xu 2015).

There has been a growing, culturally critical and distinct, tradition of building an Asian approach to communication and discourse – which may be traced back at least to the mid-1980s (e.g. Chu 1986). This tradition makes critical reflections upon the Western etic, pan-cultural and universal paradigm and offers new theoretical prisms as well as methodological tools to look into Asian cultural communicative practices and complement existing communication research more generally (Chen 2003, 2006; Dissanayake 1988, 2003, 2009b; Hasnain 1988; Irwin 1996; Ishii 2001, 2006, 2009; Jia 1997; Jin 2009; Miike 2002, 2006, 2007; Shi-xu 2009a, 2014; Tehranian 1988; 陈光兴 2006; 施旭 2010; 周光庆 2002).

As yet there are still serious limitations and challenges to this evolving scholarship which call for urgent solutions, however. It has been suggested that there are tendencies of binarism, overgeneralization and eurocentrism (Chen 2010; Dissanayake 1988a, 2003, 2009; Kim 2009, 2010; Wang and Shen 2000). Further, as will be argued shortly, the theoretical and methodological constructive work has largely focused on the traditional and philosophical aspects of Asian communication and culture and not adequately reflected present-day issues, concerns and aspirations of the Asian peoples and societies. A comprehensive paradigmatic system of research, complete with methodology and empirical research agenda, has yet to be formulated. In addition, much of the research has been focused on displaced migrant Asians in the Western world and questions asked are more often than not to do with living in the West, for example, multilingualism and interethnic interaction in Europe or America.

Against this large problem, we shall in the present chapter take a modest initiative: to sketch out a provisional Asian framework of communication or discourse research ‒ in terms of interrelated philosophical, theoretical, methodological and investigative components, call it Asian discourse studies, in critical dialogue with the existing cultural counterparts. Previously, we have suggested the motives, foundations and directions of such an endeavour (Shi-xu 2006, 2009a, 2009b). To that end, we shall first identify the practical reasons and foundational resources for the paradigmatic construction. Next, we shall consider the realities of Asian communication in its global context. Then, as the central objective of this chapter, we shall canvas the paradigm itself. In conclusion, some suggestions will be made regarding the directions for future research efforts.

If the mainstream (critical) discourse analysis is Westcentric in the sense of ‘being’ culturally specific yet ‘doing’ universalistic and hegemonic, how would the proposed Asian paradigm overcome possible Asia-centrism? If the proposed Asian paradigm of discourse studies is to be constructed as an alternative or a new speaker in the international-intellectual arena, would it be completely unique and unconnected to the Western counterpart? If a generalism or univeralism and a particularism are equally binary in conception, why is ADS not bi-polar?

Obviously, these are interrelated questions and so my answer below to one can have implications for another. First of all, it is out of the recognition of the Western intellectual domination that the need for an alternative has arisen. Therefore, the present proposal to construct and consolidate an Asian-culturally-grounded paradigm is, not to repeat the same mistake, but to help diversify and so enrich and enliven our field. To that end, ADS will not exclude other cultural approaches or impose itself on other cultural realities; on the contrary, it will strive as a distinct identity and voice to enable cultural-intellectual dialogue and debate. In this sense, the proposed paradigmatic shift is not merely a theoretical and methodological turn, but also a cultural-political movement (Shi-xu 2005, 2009a, 2009b). Thus, it should also be clear that my notions of Asia and for that matter of an Asian paradigm are cultural-politically defined. This leads to my next answer.

Second, while an Asian paradigm is designed to enable an Asian intellectual identity, voice and perspective, it will assimilate insights and techniques from other disciplines and traditions. For, in the age of globalization, Asia is, complex and diversified as it is, already interwoven with the rest of the developing world and the wider international community. Thus, the construction of an Asian paradigm is a culturally dialectic process: in order to enrich and empower itself, ADS draws upon the useful elements and concepts of the existing Western counterparts and upon those from other non-Western counterparts, whether African or Latin American. This also implies that the Asian paradigm in question is not (to be) a closed system, but rather a globally minded one.

Third, as should become clear by now, ADS does not assume a reified, fixed and homogenous ‘Asia’, ‘East/West’, ‘developing world’; to speak of an Asian paradigm or for that matter the African/Latin American/Western paradigms is meant neither to dichotomize nor essentialize these entities. Just as there are cultural-critical intellectuals within the Western tradition, there can also be culturally domineering elements in the Asian/Third World discourse. Many Western businesses can and do operate in the place we call Asia and many Asian communities can and do have their diasporas in America and Europe. There are internal differences and complexities, between rich and poor, men and women, urban and rural, connected or displaced, and so on. So the construction and practice of an Asian paradigm are designed also as a cultural-political,domination-resistant move counter-balancing or overcoming the rampant universalizing but Westcentric tendencies in discourse and communication scholarship.

With such an Asian paradigm of discourse studies, it is hoped, we shall have a culturally productive apparatus with which to interpret, evaluate and engage with current Asian practices of discourse and communication. Besides, a cultural-intellectual Asian identity is created in the sphere of international communication and discourse research. Further, what is being proffered here may serve as a reference point for colleagues and students of other cultures to (re)construct other parallel paradigms of discourse studies, whether African, Latin American, Feminist or Black. Furthermore, what is being explored here may provide not only a framework for the founding of ‘lower-level’ intra-Asian research systems but also a basis for the establishment of ‘higher-level’ Third World or Eastern or Global-Southern paradigms of discourse studies (Shi-xu 2009b). In addition, the present attempt is intended to contribute to the Asianization of Asian Studies by offering a development-oriented, at once locally grounded and globally minded, approach to Asian discourse and communication.

Western bias on human discourse and its globalization

At the outset of the paradigmatic construction, let me summarize the reasons identified earlier (Shi-xu 2005, 2006, 2009a, 2009b; see also Asante 2006; Miike 2002, 2006, 2007). First, the mainstream Western discourse and communication studies is steeped in binarism which is against the grain of the Asian way of thinking (Miike 2006, 2007). For example, in Western discourse analysis, language is treated as separable from context, the researcher from the researched, good from bad, true from false, right from wrong, standard from deviant, and so on. The West is assumed to be democratic whereas the East, Asia or China is totalitarian. Similarly, researchers often adjudicate discourses in terms of whether statements or representations therein are true or false in relation to reality. Despite its theoretical recognition of the relation of context to text, practitioners of discourse studies tend to indulge in analysing observable, ‘objective’ linguistic forms – singular (segments of fragments of) texts – drawing on aspects of context as unproblematic or given tools for justifying interpretation.

In close connection w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• PART I Asian discourse studies
• PART II African discourse studies
• PART III Latin American discourse studies
• Epilogue
• Index