Discourses of the Developing World: Researching properties, problems and potentials

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.

Shi-xu is Changjiang Distinguished Professor, founding Director of the Centre for Discourse and Cultural Studies, Hangzhou Normal University, China. He is founding and former Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Discourse Studies, Zhejiang University, China and has held teaching posts in the Netherlands, the UK and Singapore.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah is Professor Emeritus in Sociology of the University of the Western Cape. He is founder and former Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) based in Cape Town, South Africa.

María Laura Pardo is Researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Director of the Department of Linguistics at the Philosophical and Cultural Anthropology Research Centre (CIAFIC-CONICET), Professor of Analysis of the Languages of the Mass Media at the Faculty of Arts, University of Buenos Aires.