Discourse as Cultural Struggle

by Shi-xu

Overview

The volume argues, through theory and research in multicultural perspectives, that discourse/communication is a site of cultural contest, change and cooperation and sets out a practical research agenda for this new area.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789622098114
Publisher:	Hong Kong University Press
Publication date:	12/12/2006
Series:	Studying Multicultural Discourses Series
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.36(w) x 9.32(h) x 0.74(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Shi-xu is Qiushi Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute of Discourse and Cultural Studies, Zhejiang University, China. He was previously Reader at the University of Ulster, UK. A leading scholar in discourse studies, Shi-xu is the author of A Cultural Approach to Discourse, Cultural Representations: Analyzing the Discourse about the Other, and the lead editor of Read the Cultural Other: Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong's Decolonisation. He is also the founding editor of the Journal of Multicultural Discourses.

Table of Contents

Foreword     vii
Contributors     xi
Cultural Issues in Theory and Methodology     1
Discourse Studies and Cultural Politics: An Introduction   Shi-xu     3
Discourse and Cultural Transformation   Robert Maier     17
Agendas for Multicultural Discourse Research   Aydan Gulerce     29
Cultural Struggles in Discourse     47
Discursive Transition in Central and Eastern Europe   Norman Fairclough     49
Cultural Value Change in Mainland China's Commercial Discourse   Jieyun Wendy Feng   Doreen Wu     73
A Chinese Christmas Story   Gary Sigley     91
Western Representations of the Other   Qing Cao     105
Western Politeness Theory and non-Western Context   Jung-ran Park     123
Discourse, Cultural Imperialism, Black Culture and Language Research in the United States   Garrett Albert Duncan     143
The Discourse of Chinese Medicine and Westernization   Zongjie Wu   Qingxia Lu     155
Intercultural Communication and Conflict Resolution: Towards an Iranian Approach   Reza Najafbagy     177
Teaching Intercultural Communication in a Chinese Perspective   Shen Zhaohua     187
Index     199

Editorial Reviews

Here is a book that takes diversity seriously and lifts it to the level of an epistemic paradigm. What we know is culturally constituted and discursively articulated; this relativism is converted into an absolutism due to historical power relations, and we find ourselves a curious situation in which anything that suggests diversity at fundamental levels of thought becomes a serious theoretical problem. This book addresses this absurdity, and in the context of globalization, the exercise is to be welcomed.

Jan Blommaert

"Here is a book that takes diversity seriously and lifts it to the level of an epistemic paradigm. What we know is culturally constituted and discursively articulated; this relativism is converted into an absolutism due to historical power relations, and we find ourselves a curious situation in which anything that suggests diversity at fundamental levels of thought becomes a serious theoretical problem. This book addresses this absurdity, and in the context of globalization, the exercise is to be welcomed." Jan Blommaert, University of London

From the Publisher