Chinese Discourse and Interaction: Theory and Practice

Although Chinese is one of the most thoroughly studied languages in pragmatics, and has a pivotal role in intercultural communication studies because of the increasing cultural and economic interaction between China and other countries, no large-scale study has been devoted to this topic. This groundbreaking volume ?lls this gap in pragmatic and discourse studies through high-quality research focusing on the theory and practice of Chinese discourse and, in a wider sense, interaction analysis. It introduces the different layers of Chinese discourse and interaction, and makes a valuable contribution not only to Chinese studies but also to other ?elds such as intercultural and discourse studies.

The contributors to this volume include renowned experts within the ?eld. They present their arguments in an accessible style, making this book useful to both experts of Chinese and discourse studies, as well as advanced students with an interest in communication and society.

Yuling Pan is a Sociolinguist at the U.S. Census Bureau, where she directs multilingual projects for survey research. She has conducted extensive research on Chinese politeness, intercultural communication, professional communication, and discourse analysis. Her current research interests extend to cross-cultural communication norms and survey interviews, politeness and institutional discourse, survey translation and interpretation. Her publications include Politeness in Chinese Face-to-Face Interaction (Ablex, 2000), Professional Communication in International Settings (co-authored with Suzanne Scollon, and Ron Scollon. Blackwell, 2002), Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese Communication - A Comparative Analysis (co-authored with Daniel Z. Kadar, Continuum, in preparation), Cantonese-English Dictionary (ed.) (Dunwoody Press, forthcoming). Daniel Z. Kadar is a Research Fellow at the Department of Oriental Studies of the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has conducted extensive research on historical Chinese politeness, politeness research, historical pragmatics, Chinese letter writing and Critical Discourse Analysis. He currently studies the driving force behind the collapse of historical Chinese politeness during the 19th and early 20th centuries. His publications include Terms of (Im)politeness (ELTE University Press), Historical Chinese Letter Writing (Continuum, in press), and Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese Communication - A Comparative Analysis (co-authored with Yuling Pan, Continuum, in preparation).