Chinese Discourse Studies

S. xu

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349473663, 9781137365033
• eBook ISBN: 9781137365040
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Social Sciences

Chinese Discourse Studies presents an innovative and systematic approach to discourse and communication in contemporary China. Incorporating Chinese philosophy and theory, it offers not only a distinct cultural paradigm in the field, but also a culturally sensitive and effective tool for studying Chinese discourses.

Part I
Paradigmatic Construction

1

Cultural Discourse Studies

Mainstream discourse analysis, as well as communication studies, is basically Western and in many respects Westcentric. As such it is not only unhelpful to multicultural humanity in the process of accelerated globalization, but also counterproductive to human intellectual growth and prosperity. It is against the backdrop of such cultural–intellectual crisis, as well as wider human cultural alienation at the beginning of the twenty-first century, that a new paradigm in discourse and communication research is emerging: cultural discourse studies (CDS). This is manifested in the forms of (a) participation by researchers from the (under)developing world in significant proportions, (b) growing cultural consciousness in the discipline, and (c) development of locally grounded, globally minded research frameworks. The new breed of scholarship, inspired by non-Western, Third/Fourth World experiences, aspirations and approaches, proceeds from the assumption that human discourses are sites of cultural contestation, cooperation and transformation and, accordingly, strives to deconstruct ethnocentrism in discourse research, construct culturally diversified modes of research and propel intercultural dialogue and debate, all with a view to enhancing human cultural coexistence, harmony and prosperity (Shi-xu 2005). CDS has yielded deeper, novel and practicable insights into culture-specific realities on the one hand and broadened and enriched international scholarly understanding on the other.

Introduction

The central object and objective of this book is Chinese discourse studies (CNDS). But it is part of something much broader: CDS. It is the aggregate of cultural paradigms of which CNDS is a constituent member, it is the overarching programme by which CNDS is guided, and it is an emerging project which CNDS contributes to and provides for. There is a sense in which the two mutually feed upon each other. Therefore, I would like to begin my account with CDS.

As indicated in the Preface and Introduction, CDS in general and CNDS in particular are motivated by two general and common concerns: ‘globalism in society’ on the one side and ‘Westcentrism in scholarship’ on the other. For the sake of exposition of this chapter, let me briefly recap them here. Firstly, as is becoming clearer and clearer, the age of accelerated globalization has brought us, not a less, but a more, divided and hegemonic world still dominated by the world’s single superpower, the US, especially since the latter launched its global War on Terror in 2001 – a current international condition that I term ‘globalism in society’ (cf. Stager 2005). As the power of the developed, or First and Second World, nations in social, economic, military, political, cultural, scientific and other spheres is expanding and consolidating, the opportunities of the developing, or Third and Fourth World, countries, which account for the overwhelming majority of the human population, are shrinking, their poverty worsening, and pressures on their environment mounting. Further, whilst the US is wielding its imperialist (i.e. armed-force-driven) power, blatant or covert, through Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, the South China Sea, to the Korean peninsula, more readily after President Obama took the Nobel peace prize, the developing world’s opposition and resistance to violence, threats of sovereignty, encroachment of national autonomy, and neo-colonialism are increasing. In the face of aggravating cultural conflicts and nettlesome cultural tensions, can a social science discipline like discourse studies make a difference or even an effectual response? Our chaotic and alienated world calls for an urgent answer.

On the other side, the more particular and salient motivating factor for CDS is the deepening and sprawling Westcentrism in the scholarly and academic community of discourse and communication studies, namely, universalizing Western knowledge and reproducing it unidirectionally on the global market, rendering non-Western, Third/Fourth World scholars and students intellectually dependent and deprived of cultural identity and voice thereby. This ethnocentric condition may be best exemplified by critical discourse analysis (CDA), as a globalized discourse. Its merit in functional analysis and ideological critique of sociopolitical texts and success in impacting on other fields notwithstanding (e.g. Fairclough 1995; Van Dijk 2001a; Wodak 2001a), CDA employs Western world views, values, concepts, ways of thinking, analytic tools, topics of interest, etc. but presents these as universal standards or truths. Enabled and consolidated by Western multinational corporate financing and marketing, border crossings, international educational programmes, etc., this scholarship has become a culturally dominant and exclusive discourse marginalizing alternative traditions and reproducing neo-colonialist, stereotypic knowledge. In consequence, the actual cultural diversity and divisiveness of human discourses are obscured, potential for research innovation reduced and academic legacies from non-Western cultures ignored or left to decay (Alatas 2006; Scheurich 1993; Shi-xu 2009). It may be added that this sorry state in the discourse analysis community is an example of the more general Westcentric condition in the human and social sciences (Flyvbjerg 2001; Halloran 1998; Schuerich 1993; Scheurich and Young 1997; Wokler 2008). It is imperative, therefore, that we reflect critically on the ethnocentric tendencies of our scholarship, (re-)construct culturally different and appropriate perspectives or paradigms and search for new ways of conducting genuinely intercultural dialogue and debate over discourse research. In other words, a dire need arises to provide for and engage in a culturally critical, pluralist and dialogical mode of discourse research; more specifically, our field calls for a new paradigm that will enable us to demystify and debilitate the Westcentric, and any other ethnocentric, forms of scholarship, to investigate the cultural identity, diversity, division and potential of human discourses from culturally conscious perspectives and to achieve cross-cultural exchange, fertilization and ultimately innovation in human discourse scholarship.

In response to this cultural–intellectual demand and the conjunctures of global Americanization and resultant intensified human cultural alienation, an assortment of intellectual orientations, activities, oeuvres, forums, publishing platforms and research frameworks has sprung up, especially since the turn of the new millennium, with a growing number of researchers especially from the non-Western, developing world, as well as like-minded critical scholars from around the world. The aggregate of these developments, trends and participating agents form what I call cultural discourse studies (CDS). Profoundly concerned with the cultural diversity, dynamic and divisiveness of human discourses that have hitherto been suppressed, obscured or explained away in the mainstream, this new paradigm strives as its mission and objectives to highlight, deconstruct and neutralize ethnocentrism in current discourse and communication scholarship, (re)construct culturally conscious and critical frameworks and pay attention especially to the culturally unfamiliar, mystified or marginalized discourses, and facilitate intercultural mutual learning and cultural–intellectual creativity. Ultimately, CDS aims to contribute to human cultural coexistence, peace and prosperity. As such it expands and invigorates the common and general field of discourse studies with cultural–political acuteness and action.

Below I shall outline this emerging paradigm in terms of its general concept and main properties, starting points, objectives, basic strategies of construction, basic tools of research, issues of concern, and resources. In the process, I shall try to explicate how, by treating human events and activities as culturally diversified, dynamic and competing discourses, CDS can be an incisive and productive research programme to tackle issues of contemporary culture which acultural and ahistorical approaches may be unable to do.

An emerging multicultural scholarship

CDS, broadly conceived, is a nascent paradigm in discourse and communication studies. By ‘paradigm’ I mean a general system and mode of research practised by a like-minded group of researchers; as a system, it has its own philosophy, theory, methodology and issues; as a mode, it has its own norms and strategies of action. As an overarching programme, it has more particular, constitutive subparadigms or lineages. Different from most other kinds of discourse analysis and communication studies, it is profoundly concerned with the diversity, dynamics and division of human cultures as the most fundamental problematics for research.

This paradigm may be seen as germinating in the late 1970s and gathering momentum in the first decade of the twenty-first millennium. It is manifested in various scholarly forms, the most typical and prominent of which are activist–academic forums,¹ a kindred set of research systems,² as well as a particular intellectual trend in the humanities and social sciences. Some published works constituting this paradigm include: Alatas (2006), Angermüller (2011), Carbaugh (2005), Carey (2008), Chen (2001), Dissanayake (2003), Gordon (2007), Ishii (2004), Kramsch (1998), Maingueneau (2011), McQuail (2005), Miike (2006, 2009), Pardo (2010), Prah (2010), Shi-xu (2005, 2007, 2009), and the list is not exhaustive. In sum, it is an emerging community in which scholars and students, committed to cultural innovation in discourse research and common prosperity of human cultures, develop and practise culturally conscious and critical frameworks and approaches through historical and intercultural dialogue.

CDS proceeds from two fundamental, interrelated assumptions. Firstly, different human communities communicate and (inter)act differently – in terms of world views, concepts, representations (of Self, Other, etc.), values, rules, strategies, means and channels, purposes, consequences, historical circumstances and, most crucially, intra/intercultural power relations, etc. (Shi-xu 2001, 2009).³ This view dovetails, secondly, with the same understanding, though from a different perspective, that the contemporary world order, with American–Western continued dominance, globalization of neo-liberalism, deregulation and privatization, the dependency syndromes of the developing world or the global South and so on, is deeply unequal and inequitable, and the disorder is inextricably linked with Western colonialist and imperialist history (Holliday 2011; Halualani and Nakayama 2010; Robertson 1992; Thussu 2006; Tomlinson 1997). It is in this sense that human discourses are culturally different (see below for discussion of the notion of culture).

In CDS, discourse is defined as a historically and interculturally embedded communicative event, or activity (i.e. a class thereof), in which participants (real and potential) interact with particular purposes and consequences through particular mediums (e.g. language, facial expressions, the mobile phone, time and space). It may be noted that CDS has quite a broad and complex view of its object of enquiry.

Given these points of departure, CDS sets out to achieve three broad, interconnected objectives in and through the study of discourse. To begin with, CDS strives to counter what I have called globalism in society on the one hand and Westcentrism in scholarship on the other. Specifically, research will be directed towards critiquing both everyday forms of cultural hegemony whether in politics, economy, the media, art and (more oblique) academic forms of ethnocentrism, especially within our own field of discourse and communication. Moreover, CDS endeavours to develop local–global approaches to human communication, while applying them to socially and culturally significant discourses. This means that researchers will attempt at both theoretical and empirical levels to rediscover, characterize, highlight and render understandable, from a culturally conscious and critical perspective, the qualities, principles, rules, issues, concerns and aspirations of the discourses of divergent human cultures, especially those culturally repressed, excluded or otherwise discriminated-against human discourses (Carbaugh et al. 2011; Chen 2001; Miike 2009; Pardo 2010; Prah 2010; Shi-xu 2009, 2012a; cf. Scollo 2011). Under this rubric, one may find variant orientations and emphases, however: for example, some approaches are more concerned with internal cultural characteristics and problems, others with intercultural relations and issues. Furthermore, in order to accomplish the above goals as far as possible, CDS aims to enable, coordinate and facilitate intercultural exchange, critique and mutual learning in discourse and communication studies. Thus, it may provide frameworks and create opportunities for these activities of intellectual cross-fertilization. Ultimately, the goal of CDS is to enhance human cultural coexistence, harmony and prosperity. The present CNDS will be a culturally particular attempt contributing to these broad aims.

At this juncture, it might be necessary and useful to make explicit the notion of culture as it is so central to the present study. This is a common concept in the human and social sciences and yet most diversely defined and variably used (Bhabha 1994; Geertz 1973; Ngugi 1986; Said 1994). In this book, the concept of culture, and for that matter, those of East, West, Chinese, Asian, the global South and the like, are not understood in an essentialist sense, i.e. not as representing some reified, fixed or homogeneous entity (e.g. Swidler 1986). Nor is culture considered metaphorically, for example as ahistorical or domain-specific features of national, gender, generational, professional or organizational groups (Gunnarsson 2000).

Rather, culture is conceived of holistically, and thus historically, socially, economically, politically, ethnically and globally (庞朴 1993; Robertson 1992; Shi-xu 2005; Tomlinson 1997). Thus, briefly, culture is a system of world view, concepts, symbols, representations, values, rules and patterns of action, social relations, etc. in both human (inter)actions as well as artefacts. These are related to particular civilizations and the world’s local and global histories. They are constantly being maintained, challenged and transformed in the contemporary competing world order, so that the boundary of culture is blurred, the content changing and social position shifting. Contemporary dynamic Chinese culture is a case in point. In this light, the current world order can be defined as one in which American–Western cultures dominate, repress and give rise to prejudice against other human cultures, while the latter resist such cultural hegemony. It is in this sense of the word that we speak of the diversified, competitive and unequal cultures of the West, the East, the developing world, the global South, the Asians and so on and so forth. The present notions of culture in particular and CDS as a whole are designed especially to illuminate such culturally hegemonic and resistant relations, practices and effects.

However, sometimes ‘anti-essentialist’, ‘anti-binary’ or ‘postmodernist’ charges are made against this kind of notion of culture and thus such cultural-power-oriented analysis (Barinaga 2007; Collier 2000). It is suggested that the West is internally different and externally indistinct and therefore to speak of the West is to reify it. By the same token, the argument goes, it will be essentialist to speak of the East, the Third World, the Chinese and so on. Here it may be cautioned that such facile denials or erasure of the concepts of West, the Rest, the East, the developing/Third/Fourth World, the Asians, the Chinese, etc. serve effectively, if not consciously, to cover up the real and continuing cultural domination, inequality and colonial and imperialist practices that continue to divide our contemporary world on the one hand, and to gloss over the cultural properties, problems and potential of the developing world, which are already overshadowed or neglected on the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction: De-Westernizing Discourse Analysis
• Part I Paradigmatic Construction
• Part II Discourses of Contemporary China
• Notes
• References
• Index