Abstract
Critical Pragmatic Studies on Chinese Public Discourse, authored by a leading Chinese pragmaticist, Chen Xinren, investigates a variety of public discourse in the contemporary Chinese context. Drawing on theories from pragmatics and extensive original language data, the monograph seeks to provide an alternative path to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as well as a new window for understanding China.
In Chapter 1, Chen starts the introduction by stating the definition, the function and the properties of public discourse. He argues public discourse can be ‘purposefully deployed to serve the interests of a few’, ‘an appropriate resource for transmitting positive values’ and ‘a response to the constant needs of its users’ (p. 12). The aims of the study are then laid out: practically, to uncover problematic practices and promote appropriate ones in the context of Chinese public discourse; theoretically, to develop a critical pragmatic framework in analyzing these practices.
After reviewing the existing research on Chinese public discourse from both the classical pragmatic perspective and the critical discourse-analytic perspective, Chapter 2 situates the current study in the literature landscape. Chapter 3 points out the necessity to incorporate a pragmatic perspective in CDA. Then, the author introduces some pragmatic theories that will be used in the following case studies, including deixis, speech act theory, (im)politeness theories, pragmatic presupposition and adaptation theory.
Chapters 4–9 are separate critical pragmatic studies revolving around selected social issues from different genres. Each chapter builds on one or more specific pragmatic theories, while its critical discussion is based on Chinese socio-cultural factors. Specifically, Chapters 4–6 focus on negative pragmatic practices. Chapter 4 reveals the misguided assumptions that govern the naming discourse for shops and hotels, such as the assumption that foreignness is superior, and the belief that bizarreness is beautiful. Chapter 5 uncovers some common ‘pragmatic traps’ in advertising discourse that lead to ‘pragmatic frauds’ and devote particular attention to tricks in the real estate ads. Chapter 6 exposes the ‘suspected’ discrimination or prejudice against some social groups in news discourse and advocating discourse. For instance, a concordance analysis of the ‘post-90s’ in news reports reveals that up to 81.3% of its collocations are negative, suggesting the potential social bias toward the post-90 generation. In turn, Chapters 7–9 showcase some positive trends in contemporary Chinese public discourse. Chapter 7 demonstrates the tendency toward civility in the use of public slogans and signs. Linguistic mechanisms like politeness strategies, politeness markers and indirect speech acts are employed to achieve ‘pragmatic civilization’. Chapter 8 notices the tendency toward personalization and rapport management in advertising discourse. Such a feature is a discursive strategy employed to involve the reader/audience even in non-profitable discourse like weather forecasting. Chapter 9 pinpoints the subjectivity in news discourse as well as its varied linguistic manifestations. Rather than treating the subjectivity as a negative feature, Chen contends that it is an encouraging one that manifests reader-centered orientation.
Chapter 10 concludes the entire study by summarizing the main findings from the previous chapters, acknowledging the principal limitations of this study and raising some suggestions for future research.
This book has several important merits. First, it covers a large amount of original language data. Chapters 4–9 analyzes public discourse of various types. They touch not only upon the oft-discussed sources such as advertisements and news reports, but also the little-researched genres like business names, street banners, slogans and weather forecasting. The data amount to thousands of texts, some of which are listed in appendices for reference. Some interesting examples are presented at the beginning of each chapter, serving as an attention hook to the readers; some are studied in detail in the rest of the chapter. With these data at hand, the book reflects the negative and positive phenomena and the changes in contemporary Chinese public discourse.
Second, it provides an alternative path to CDA. First, the book takes a wider scope of targets into analysis. Unlike CDA which is primarily ideologically oriented, a pragmatic perspective takes up other social problems such as economic and telecommunication fraud, linguistic vulgarity and social stereotyping. The book also notes the positive side in public discourse which is often neglected in CDA research. Second, the book applies an empirically based and viable method. As scholars acknowledged, CDA tends to establish a direct link between linguistic forms and ideologies, leaving the process of interpretation unexplored. To avoid the subjective interpretation, this book resorts to interviews, surveys, analysis of the texts of laws and regulations and statistical analysis of the language data in concluding the results.
However, the current study has left many other problems in public discourse unaddressed. It does not touch upon ideological problems that are central to CDA either. The question of how to tackle these problems from a pragmatic perspective needs further exploration. At times, it seems that the author chooses from the inventory of pragmatic theories at will, and picks what may tackle the individual issues best. A unified framework is needed if the author wants to make critical pragmatic theory more operational and powerful in evaluating public discourse. These weaknesses aside, this book provides a sample analysis of public discourse from the critical pragmatic perspective and paints an interesting and comprehensive picture of contemporary Chinese discourse in the public sphere.