The marketization of public discourse: The Chinese universities

Abstract

Contemporary universities are characteristic of an evident proliferation of corporate discourse. A sole concentration on the production of new knowledge and the education of students does not ensure the prosperity or even survival of universities any longer, and equally important are the admission of elite students, the outcome-based evaluation of academic performance, the establishment of alumni network and also fundraising. This article examines how and to what extent this trend of marketization has invaded the order of discourse of Chinese universities. The research methodology combines the paradigms of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and the tenets of critical genre analysis [Bhatia VK (2007) Towards critical genre analysis. In: Bhatia VK, Flowerdew J and Jones RH (eds) Advances in Discourse Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 166–177], with particular attention paid to the notion of genre, interdiscursivity and conversationalization. The texts examined include ceremonial speeches, regulatory documents, insiders’ accounts and field notes. Analytical results show that the trend of marketization, in spite of a potential threat for academic integrity, does facilitate the institutional restructuring and transformation of universities in the context of Mainland China.

Keywords

Conversationalization higher education institution and authority institution and identity interdiscursivity marketization

Introduction

The marketization and commodification of public discourse (Bok, 2004) brings about significant changes to the identity of universities and the behaviors of academics. Universities and their departments and teaching units are, more often than not, treated as financially independent institutions and encouraged to run programs largely for an economic purpose (Clark, 1998). Cost-effective managerial principles that highlight the efficiency of scholarly output (Deem, 1998) become increasingly prominent in the evaluation and selection of faculty members. Fairclough’s seminal work (1993) spots typical discursive presentation of these issues in texts produced for both external and internal communication of UK universities. The style of external communication, that is, job advertisements and prospectuses, shifts from the traditional self-centered pattern of highlighting requirements, obligations and assessment criteria to the new pattern of promoting selling points of university programs and appealing emotionally to potential applicants. Universities’ function of screening and selecting is considerably reduced and the new identity of self-financed tertiary education suppliers reverses the authority relationship between universities and talented students and academics. The internal communication, for example academics’ interaction with promotion committees, is heavily decorated with ‘compelling accounts of one’s contribution to research, teaching and administration’ (p. 152). The invasion of corporate discourse makes the rhetoric of self-promotion and self-portrayal a necessary part of academics’ professional identities, though this may have little to do with academic integrity and creativity.

This discursive investigation of the marketization of universities finds a strong echo in other cultures and societies. Some researchers show interest in universities’ endeavors of selling their education services to the global market. For instance, Teo (2007) observes that the mixture of market force and globalization leads to a prompt transformation in both newly-built and established Singaporean universities and encourages them to strategically visualize existing students and faculty members as advertisement ‘models’ (p. 105), downplay their role of gatekeepers, and compose their informational prospectuses as promotional publicity materials. Connell and Galasinski (1998) and Askehave (2007) discover that items from the corporate world, like ‘customers’, ‘clients’, ‘markets’, ‘corporate identity’, ‘mission statement’ and ‘strategic plans’ already become part of the bank of vocabulary describing international student prospectuses produced in Finland, Australia and Japan. Osman (2008) reports similar phenomena in the production of corporate-like brochures of Malaysian universities as well.

Other researchers are concerned with the changing collective identities of universities and the conversationalization of authority discourse raised by Fairclough. Chiper (2006) shows that great socio-political and economic changes, that is, the prospective integration with the European Union, change Romanian universities from conservative and authoritative public institutions to active participants of a process of ‘westernizing of mind and practices’ (p. 722). Based on a multimodal investigation of homepages, Zhang and O’Halloran (2012) conclude that top Chinese universities still carry the traditional image of gate-keeping public institutions. The texts and documents Chinese universities produce are insufficiently transparent because they bear more demanding ‘high context’ (p. 104) semiotic expressions and fewer scaffolding devices. Following this line of study, the present research expands the analytical focus to a highly institutionalized area of the order of discourse of Chinese universities: graduation ceremonies. It is significant because the highly institutionalized areas like rituals and ceremonies are the last front before a complete colonization of public discourse by the corporate one. Rituals and ceremonies are important mechanisms for universities to acculturate and unite their members and to reproduce their ideological and cultural systems. The weight they carry means that the trend of marketization is less likely to formulate dramatic reforms than to conceive delicate alteration of traditional practices. A thorough investigation of these alterations helps to demonstrate how the authority-holders, university presidents in this case, employ appropriate strategies to embrace the challenges of the upcoming marketization.

Graduation ceremony as a university ritual

The notion of ritual refers to both mysterious and exotic rites of primitive societies (Turner, 1969) and typified and to rigorously recurrent actions and events bearing symbolic significance (Goffman, 1967). In spite of scholars’ apparent failure of reaching a precise definition, ritual points generally to the fact that human cultures are universally subject to and defined by religious, military, disciplinary, educational, entertaining and other types of standardized collective behaviors. Sites of ritual researches vary from large-scale political phenomena to organizational practices, and further to nonpublic interpersonal interactions. According to Abeles (1988), political ceremonies and assemblies become modern rituals where politicians act out scripted performances for the purpose of approaching support. The ‘techniques of presentation and manipulation’ build up a ‘publicity’ of professional politicians which has little to do with the real ‘public’ (p. 391). Similarly, annual meetings of public companies become venues where business executives strive to establish their financial statements as facts and to construct themselves as accountable managing agents (Catasús and Johed, 2007). Private interactional rituals, such as greeting, thanking, apologizing and leave-taking, are an important toolkit for individuals to create, maintain and restructure social relationships and networks with fellows and colleagues (Ohashi, 2008).

Rituals are inherently socially integrative as they supply a mechanism to unify the group and community by reaffirming pre-existing and deep-seated values and commitments (Lukes, 1975). To achieve this, they entail a variety of activities, for example, demonstrating authority relations, reinforcing traditions and conventions, building up collective identities, generating beliefs and emotional bonds, and creating playful time out from the routine flow of lives. These activities are especially important for ‘loosely coupled’ educational organizations because they are recognizable not for ‘rationalized, tidy, efficient, and coordinated structures’ (Weick, 1976: 3), but for fluid participation and less tightly connected clusters of events. A striking frequency of ‘face and linguistic work, numerous myths’ and symbolic construction of social practices (p. 13) set off the absence of close assemblage in educational organizations and demarcate their institutional identity as separated from the surrounding circumstances. Universities, public or private, cannot bear the assumption that the reproduction of their institutions is automatic and requires minimal agency. In order to avoid the potential erosion and drift of institutional cultures, the University of Cambridge, as noted in Dacin et al. (2010), carefully preserves its formal dining ritual, making it a mechanism of solidifying an elite communal identity and legitimizing a collective awareness of social stratification.

Rituals are equally important to Chinese universities. Not uncommonly, a series of ceremonial events awaits newly enrolled students upon their commencement of university lives; the ending of semesters is accompanied by a routine gathering with tutors addressing the issue of safety during holiday; the flag pledge Monday morning requires the attendance of all students. More relevant in the present research is the assembling of all graduates in celebration of the completion of university lives and the conferring of degrees. One of the shared characteristics of Chinese university rituals is a higher degree of convergence, as necessarily caused by the common identity of publicly-funded institutions and the shared control imposed by the authoritative Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (MOE). This convergence is manifested in the preparation, arrangement and proceeding of graduation ceremonies. Traditional graduation ceremonies of Chinese universities are, in spite of minor variations, all typical of presidents’ lengthy moralizing speeches inculcating virtues and ideological values. Graduates attending the assembly are mostly kept separated from the stage as a passive audience of the ritual performance. This universal and rigid form changed in the past decade when the Chinese government gradually cut the public finance supporting universities and took initiatives to transform universities from strictly regulated public organizations to loosely coupled tertiary education and research institutions (Mok, 2000, 2010). Some of the major changes are discussed in this examination of presidents’ parting speeches as a genre.

Methodology and data analysis

This study employs three theoretical constructs, genre (Bhatia, 1993; Martin, 1992; Swales, 1990), interdiscursivity (Bakhtin, 1986; Bhatia, 2010; Candlin, 2006) and conversationalization (Fairclough, 1992, 1994; Fairclough and Mauranen, 1997), to explore university presidents’ discourse performance and the projected institutional changes of Chinese universities. Although the notion of conversationalization is likely not to apply as widely in the analysis of institutional discourses as the notions of genre and interdiscursivity, it has much potential in the investigation of the mediatization and personalization of public discourse. Conversationalization, according to Fairclough (1992: 202), is one of the most striking tendencies of modern discursive changes shaped by the transnational democratization and commodification of social practices in public arenas. The increasing equality and diversity of social actors blur the distinction between the written mode of the public order of discourse and the oral mode of the private one. Professionals and bureaucracies cannot talk in the traditional authoritative and repelling manner anymore; instead, they need to treat clients and citizens more as equals in order to gain information and respect. This, to a larger extent, explains why texts and talks occurring on TV, and in newspapers, press conferences, and other mass media are becoming increasingly dialogic and conversational (Fowler, 1988; Kress, 1986; Thornborrow and Montgomery, 2010).

In addition to ‘the simulation of private, face-to-face, person-to-person discourse in public mass-audience discourse – print, radio, television’ (Fairclough, 1995: 80), the phenomenon of conversationalization also refers to clients and citizens’ increasing prominence in negotiating the disclosure and exchange of information. That is to say, discretion is considerably reduced for professionals and bureaucracies to retain, select and reveal information as clients and citizens are repositioned from passive information-receivers to equal and collaborative interlocutors. Both ‘field’ and ‘mode’ (Halliday, 1978) of public discourse is, in this sense, conversationalized along with the democratization and commodification of social practices. This research covers the two aspects by looking at the changing language style (mode) and propositional content (field) of presidents’ parting speeches at one time.

The selection of data is decided according to the reputation and profile of universities and the recentness and representativeness of presidents’ parting speeches. Attention is paid only to the top 20 universities in China which hold the elite group of students and professors and are fully committed to the goal of becoming world-class universities (Xiong, 2012: 319). The first significant alteration of graduation ceremonies of Chinese universities took place in 2005 when Sun Yat-Sen University, one of the top Chinese universities, codified the proceedings of its Convocation as decrees. Since then, a number of universities have legislated on the proceedings of their own graduation ceremonies. This background makes it reasonable to compile a corpus of the parting speeches of presidents of the top 20 Chinese universities from 2005 to 2012. Some of the collected speeches are transcriptions of the records of ceremonies, while most others are accessed in print form, because universities normally take these speeches as important documents and publish them in hard-copy booklets. The compiled corpus consists of 86 speeches altogether. In order to get the holistic scenario of graduation ceremonies, the researcher also chose to sit in on the graduation ceremonies of six Chinese universities in 2012, observing and taking notes appropriately. Insiders’ accounts as complementary data were acquired from 15 students and five teachers attending graduation ceremonies, in terms of their experience with, and views on, this formal occasion.

Although dramatic reforms in the proceedings of graduation ceremonies are not evident, there are actually notable changes in some areas. For instance, student-made videos are played as preludes to the ceremony, celebrity alumni are invited to give talks before presidents’ speeches, and guest seats are saved for parents attending their children’s historical moments. Compared to the traditional quiet and sober scene of the ideological service, these newly adopted practices are much more ‘conversationalized’ and ‘personalized’ (Fairclough, 1995: 80), forming a necessary context for the interpretation of presidents’ evolving ritual speeches. The primary data, that is, parting speeches, are processed in line with the genre analytical framework proposed in Bhatia (1993) and Swales (1990) and the three layered generic scheme (generic structure–stages–speech acts) discussed in Van Leeuwen (2008). A general content analysis of the 86 speeches reveals the following overall structural (STAGE), functional (MOVE) and interdiscursive (DISCOURSE) patterns:

(STAGE 1 ADDRESSING THE PAST)

MOVE 1: Congratulations (AUTHORITATIVE DISCOURSE)

In the first move, presidents begin their speeches with an explicit reference to the primary purpose of graduation ceremonies, that is, to celebrate graduates’ completion of their university lives. The practice of expressing gratitude towards teachers, staff and parents is found in all compiled speeches. The authoritative tone is obvious in presidents’ formulaic expressives such as ‘on behalf of the university, I hereby express sincere thanks’.

MOVE 2: Reminiscence of campus life (CONVERSATIONAL DISCOURSE)

Move 2 dwells on a finely prepared recalling of students’ campus lives, normally a sketchy story starting from the moment of arriving on campus. Presidents draw on personal and campus-specific experiences to close the distance with graduates. The subject matter addressed makes little sense for outsiders and reveals presidents’ intention of confining the ongoing interaction within a closed community of insiders, including graduates, alumni, university professors and other attended audience.

(STAGE 2 ADDRESSING THE FUTURE)

MOVE 3: Teaching the last lesson (AUTHORITATIVE DISCOURSE)

Move 3 is the most bulky section of this genre and occupies, in most cases, more textual space than all other moves do. Carefully selected strategies construct the move as a speech act of coercive advice-giving, imposed on subordinate graduates by knowledgeable and superior presidents as laoshi (teacher).

MOVE 4: The farewell message (CONVERSATIONAL DISCOURSE)

The two steps completed here are 1) to call on graduates to make further contributions to their alma mater and 2) to express a good wish, as required by etiquette, towards graduates’ careers. It is at this moment that presidents stop their authoritative moralizing/lecturing discourse and start to treat graduates as persons of equal status, as indicated by the change of addressing forms from tongxuemen (my dear students) to xiaoyoumen (my dear alumni).

(STAGE 3 ADDRESSING THE PRESENT MOMENT)

MOVE 5: Awarding the degree (NORMATIVE DISCOURSE)

This move is the presidents’ normative statement officially announcing the awarding of degrees.

The fact that the examined speeches all entail a common structural pattern (addressing the past–addressing the future–address the present moment) reflects presidents’ common understanding that the ceremony is a transitional point signifying the completion of graduates’ university lives and the commencement of their professional careers. This signification is particularly important for graduation ceremonies in the context of Mainland China because Chinese universities have a long tradition of sustaining themselves as ivory towers free of the ‘force of mass culture and industrialization’ (Symes, 1996: 133). In contrast with traditions of the 1990s and early 2000s, the functional and interdiscursive components of this genre are changed. The contents of presidents’ speeches of the 1990s and early 2000s consist primarily of the authoritative discourse, demonstrating, among other things, superiority, authority, indoctrination and moralization. The monopoly of authoritative discourse is now loosened and enriched by the newly acquired discursive practices of conversing with graduates (conversational discourse) and bestowing degrees (normative discourse). The focus of the following analysis is to examine the mix and intertwining of these three discourses as reflecting and also shaping the circumstantial socio-cultural and institutional contexts.

Authoritative discourse

The analysis starts with authoritative discourse because it bridges the past and the present of presidents’ parting speeches as a genre and reflects the essential identity of Chinese universities and faculty members. Chinese universities are allowed to raise funds from private sources, but strict stipulations limit the types of sources that can be approached and the ratio of private funds that is permitted in the overall operating cost. An underlying concern is that Chinese authories are still not fully prepared to let loose the instrumental nature of universities, that is, to serve the national interests (Li, 1990). The concepts of liberal education, vocationalism and utility have a long way to go before they can account for prominent concerns of Chinese universities. The carefully guarded instrumental nature puts much emphasis on faculty members’ duty of teaching and administrative service, in contrast with the duty of research (see Hyon, 2011, for a detailed discussion of faculty’s role in the field of teaching, administrative service and research). Being a full-time faculty member of Chinese universities, one naturally becomes the agent of relating students verbally or behaviorally to the needs and ideologies of the nation. The prevalence of moralizing discourse in the order of discourse of Chinese education actually has a much longer history, and is perfectly illustrated in laoshi’s undeniable authority and students’ absolute submissiveness and loyalty valued by the traditional Confucius learning culture (Hu, 2002: 97). The examination of data reveals two kinds of authoritative discourses: 1) ideological education and 2) moralizing and lecturing, both of which demonstrate a hierarchical relationship between presidents and graduates.

Ideological education

A majority of parting speeches address national interests in Move 3. Presidents employ various assertions and summons to highlight the importance of serving national interests and of complying with national ideologies, as illustrated below:

Example text (1)

(Activity 1) Besides the above, what I want to stress most is that you should never forget our ultimate mission of serving the country and serving the people. X University is closely tied to the destiny of our mother land … (Activity 2) Our graduates must be fully devoted to the great practice of socialism with Chinese characteristics, persevering in the emancipation of the mind, persevering in spurring the reform and opening to the outside world, persevering in the scientific development and social harmony, persevering in building a well-off society in an all-round way … (Activity 3) Volunteers of our university consider little personal gains and losses, endure numerous hardships and disseminate their knowledge acquired in this university to the remote and backward western areas.

The three typical activities annotated in this text manifest the instrumental nature of Chinese universities. In activity 1, the link between graduates’ individual development and national interests are naturally established through the possessive nominal phrase ‘our ultimate mission of serving the country and serving the people’. The appositional ‘of’ makes serving the national interests an assumed and unquestionable task for graduates. Activity 2 equals to an informal but easily identifiable pledging where presidents, speaking on behalf of the university, make an oath to keep loyalty towards the country. This activity, in other situations, may also be realized through a foregrounding parallel of assertive statements, a direct referring to political slogans, or a quotation of Chinese top leaders’ remarks. In this example text, the president invokes one of the most notable Chinese political slogans (‘Four Principles of Perseverance’) (Hu, 2007) delivered by the former Chinese president Hu Jintao in 2007. The pledge spells out this university and its faculty and students’ commitment to the policies promulgated by the Chinese supreme authority.

In activity 3, modal examples are introduced to give an ideal way of adhering to the instrumental nature of Chinese universities and carrying out the pledged national policies. The examples can be taken from students (i.e. ‘volunteers of our university’ in this case), alumni, or faculty members, whose great devotion and selfless contributions are purposively emphasized. One common linguistic feature shared among these three activities is the president’s overuse of emotional intensifiers, carrying a strong rhetorical effect of being judgmental and authoritative (Lim and Hong, 2012: 129). This is not only a personal choice of language style made by the president, but also a common linguistic characteristic of the ‘centralized’ (Hawkins, 2000) Chinese public and political discourse where definitive emotion-charged boosters are used to transmit, in a formalistic manner, policies made by the central government across layers of local governments and public institutions. In this text, the power and superiority vested with the president can be seen in the direct confrontation between the first-person singular (‘what I want to stress most’) with the second-person plural (‘you should never forget’) in activity 1, the undeniable stipulation of graduates’ obligation towards the country in activity 2 (‘our graduates must be fully devoted to’), and the compelling model example described in activity 3 (‘little personal gains and losses’, ‘endure numerous hardships’, ‘the remote and backward western areas’).

Moralizing and lecturing

Presidents’ authority is also reflected in their remarks addressing virtues and qualities graduates should possess for their future careers. While graduates are still taken as inexperienced students in urgent need of advice and instruction, presidents are not talking in an institutional voice any longer. Their unconditional authority is derived from the somehow divinized identity of laoshi. Far beyond a profession that one takes for the purpose of making a living and attaining personal achievements, laoshi in China is a title of honor, respect and social privilege. Laoshi is held responsible for the teaching of knowledge and the instruction of skills, and also for students’ whole-person development in terms of virtues and ethics (Cortazzi and Jin, 1996). The Chinese saying that ‘Once a teacher, forever a teacher’ still holds values, though not equally, for students of middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities. The socially accepted conformity and obedience students need to demonstrate towards laoshi legitimize the demanding rhetoric used in presidents’ parting speeches.

Presidents may, as shown in example text (2), employ intensifying expressions to show their concerns with graduates’ ethical virtues and career development and change the ceremony from a joyful occasion of expressing acknowledgment, endorsement, and good wishes to a moralizing lecture aimed at reinforcing good qualities among graduates:

Example text (2)

Be filial to your parents and it is them who raise you and support your education; show concerns to your laoshi and it is them who teach you and accompany you in your learning … From now on, you have to handle the unpredictable and complex social lives. Society is another thick book which you need to read after finishing your college textbooks … Society is not as ideal a place as you may have imagined, your jobs may not provide as good opportunities of professional development as you have thought, and your boss will never be as patient and tolerant as your tutors are … My dear students, all these may eventually become true! Learn to face and learn to adapt! Those who can adapt can survive!

The possibility of dialogues between the president and the graduates is closed down in a number of aspects in this text. First, the highly imposing directives (Cohen, 1996: 385) (‘be filial to your parents’, ‘show concerns to your laoshi’, ‘learn to face and learn to adapt’) leave little room of negotiability and render graduates only as passive audience who need to take in the suggested recipes of success wholeheartedly. Second, the cleft sentence (‘it is them’) resorts to non-negotiable ethical standards to justify the legitimacy of the advised actions, whereby one who denies this advice is naturally deemed as ungrateful to parents and laoshi. Third, although graduates are actually addressed (‘my dear students’) in the speech, the president’s purpose of using this emphatic address form is more likely to attract their attention, rather than to mitigate the underlying power relationship.

Also of particular interest is the way in which the president compares real social lives (‘Society is not as ideal a place’, ‘your jobs may not provide as good opportunities of professional development’, ‘your boss will never be as patient and tolerant’) with graduates’ campus lives (‘you may have imagined’, ‘you have thought’, ‘your tutors are’). It is implied that the challenges of campus lives are hardly compatible to the ones of social lives and that graduates are not fully prepared for the latter’s hardship. Such concentration on the negative side of graduates’ future and career is suggestive of one crucial aspect of the Confucian teaching ideology, that is, to criticize more and to praise less. China is generally characteristic of a ‘narrow socialization’ (Gelfand et al., 2006) dominated by strict disciplines, demanding parents and teachers, and a low tolerance for deviant behaviors. Chinese teachers seldom use direct positive appraisals to encourage students in classrooms, believing that an overuse of praise may harm their characters (Ho, 1981; Salili and Hau, 1994); rather, they, as demonstrated in this example text, are more concerned with students’ weaknesses, shortcomings and defects and constantly prompt students to correct them through hard work and perseverance.

Conversational discourse

Chinese universities remained as public organizations till the end of the 20th century. Because of generous government support, universities had little financial pressure or desire to differentiate and brand their distinctive identities. Change started from the late 1990s, when Chinese authorities realized that the enhancement of the competiveness of Chinese universities may have been impeded by the traditional but already unnecessary over-emphasizing of their instrumental nature. It was acknowledged that efforts had to be made to raise the academic and market profile of Chinese universities in order to embrace the increasingly globalized and competing higher education industry. Chinese universities today, not uncommonly, promote and publicize their academic strength, library resources, living conditions, and even campus sceneries through TV commercials, magazine advertorials and prospectuses (You, 2012). This tendency of marketization has invaded the most institutionalized and conventionalized practices of Chinese universities, that is, graduating ceremonies in this case. Presidents’ sole identity of authoritative laoshi is complicated by their new identity of professional executives kept responsible for the performance of universities as academic institutions and expected to be clearly aware of the importance of maintaining alumni network and acquiring ‘alumni giving’ (Monks, 2003: 121). To be more specific, more than two-thirds of presidents in the corpus purport to position themselves in Move 2 as equals of graduates, to build personal rapport with graduates and to reinforce the connection between universities and graduates, all for the purpose of creating a sense of belonging.

Building personal rapport with graduates

Unlike the above impersonalized and formalized authoritative discourse, this genre is conversationalized in that presidents are developing new practices of spelling out their personal voices in this ritualized performance. They manage to shift their talking styles from top–down bureaucratic talks to equal friends’ conversations in Move 2 and Move 4, though their distance with graduates in terms of positions, experiences and career achievements makes the choice of content for the intended equal conversations quite a challenging task. Presidents sit at the top of the organizational structure and operate universities on a rather broadly strategic level. Except for a few official visits to departments, dorms and canteens, their opportunities to meet students personally are quite limited. So, few stories and anecdotes can be drawn to substantiate the intended conversations, and of more practicality are strategically vague references to their shared experience with the same university and the meaningful outcomes they end up with:

Example text (3)

I have a special feeling with students graduating this year. Four years ago, I was honored with the appointment of the new president of Zhejiang University. Along with students who are present today, I became a new member of Zhejiang University at that moment and we started a new journey and a new chapter of our lives together … It is my honor to have your company in these memorable four years. The four years’ campus life changes you from high school teenagers to college graduates and also completes my transition from an academic to an educator and a professional executive. I can still remember my words on your commencement ceremony four years ago: ‘On your path to success and achievement, you will always have my company!’

This text carries an apparent intention to spot the commonality between the president and graduates. For example, they join the university together (‘Along with students who are present today’, ‘I became a new member of Zhejiang University at that moment’) and they both achieved a great deal from university life (‘you from high school teenagers to college graduates’, ‘my transition from an academic to an educator and a professional executive’). Being treated as equals, instead of subordinates, graduates are more likely to form solidarity and consolidate their emotional bond with the president as a charismatic university leader, which cannot be easily acquired in a context featuring the dominance of bureaucratic and authoritative discourse (Wodak, 1996). Texts of this kind are not uncommon in the compiled corpus. Although occupying only a small fraction of presidents’ parting speeches, they come to the foreground as their presence establishes a sharp contrast with other parts of the genre where presidents claim no authorial responsibility over the production of text.

The tone of this text is quite personal and verbal. The constant occurrence of the first-person pronoun (‘I’, ‘my’) turns it a personal narrative of the president’s life stories. The expressive thanksgiving (It is my honor to have your company’) points to the reciprocity between the president and graduates. The promise (‘On your path to success and achievement, you will always have my company!’) invites, though symbolically, a personal commitment the president makes to graduates. The repeated mentioning of one same temporal element (‘four years ago’) adds details to the parting speech and impresses the audience that the president cherishes the moment when they first met and is reluctant to part. Most revealingly, the fondness carried by the thematic attitudinal sentence (‘I have a special feeling’) and the positive appreciation of their shared university experience (‘special feeling’, ‘new member’, ‘new journey’, ‘new chapter’, ‘memorable four years’) immediately close the gap between the president and graduates.

It includes, however, elements which are less common for verbal narratives as well. Instances of third-person address forms (‘students graduating this year’, ‘students who are present today’) and nominalized structures (‘appointment’, ‘it is my honor to have your company’, ‘four years’ campus life changes you’) are visible signals inviting an interpretation of written exposition. A plausible understanding of the mixing of these two seemingly incompatible discursive values (verbal narratives vs written expositions) requires a reference to the operating practice of Chinese universities. When Chinese officials, including university presidents, give public speeches in official occasions, they are used to preparing well-written scripts in advance (Lei et al., 2010). It is believed that written scripts are better because they avoid contingency and imprecision inherent in spontaneous verbal accounts and they allow speakers to guarantee a consistency between the contents of their talks and the contents of speeches delivered by higher-ranked authorities. Such consistency is important within a basically top–down governing social system like China. The fact that the president discussed here referred to the script he was holding from time to time during the speech shows that he has no intention of hiding this practice of reading scripts for his ceremonial talk.

Reinforcing the connection between universities and graduates

Graduates’ aversion to overwhelming authoritative and ideological discourse is further relieved after presidents present themselves as unobtrusive and considerate narrators reminiscing about graduates’ campus lives. The direct invocation of details and anecdotes immediately lightens the air of the ritual performance and arouses an emotional echo and unity by communicating a sympathetic understanding towards graduates’ parting sorrows (Cohen, 2011). Example text (4) shows how the president of Peking University recaptured graduates’ campus life in 2011:

Example text (4)

You will never forget Building 29, Weiming Lake, and Jingyuan Garden; you will never forget the hardship of completing assignments and passing tests of GRE, TOEFL and IELTS; you will never forget the ‘Top Ten’ of our BBS, funny jokes you share with roommates, and the Small White House serving delicious chicken wings at late night; you will never forget joyful moments you spend with your lovers … you will never forget your beloved classmates, knowledgeable teachers, and certainly also amiable dormitory guards.

The repetition of ‘you will never forget’ adds much poetic character to this text and forcibly expresses the president’s reluctance to say goodbye. Cognitive efforts required for the processing of this text are reduced by the repeated use of one affirmative syntactical structure and a coordination of contents (‘Building 29’, ‘Weiming Lake’, ‘Jingyuan Garden’; ‘beloved classmates’, ‘knowledgeable teachers’, ‘amiable dormitory guards’). The accessibility of this text is, on the spot, welcomed by graduates’ loud and lasting applause. The president’s rhetorical focus is, of course, not on the poetic textual structure only; the text is effective as it catalyzes graduates’ shared memories of the university. The president’s expression of personal feelings can be interpreted as an implicit reminder prompting graduates to maintain a close tie with their alma mater. The addressed stories and anecdotes are all locale-confined and make little sense for people who are not members of the university, for example, ‘“Top Ten” of our BBS’ and ‘Small White House’, thus creating an identifiable degree of alienation for outsiders.

Presidents may further arrange the contents of their speeches to transform graduates from powerless subordinates to authority-holders. Most Chinese universities have been experiencing quick expansion in terms of the campus development and the number of student enrollments in the past two decades (Wan, 2006). This unavoidably causes unpleasant problems for students’ learning and living conditions on campus. Instead of silencing such unpleasant experiences, presidents in the compiled corpus candidly address them and claim their responsibility in an explicit manner:

Example text (5)

(Activity 1) Our university is quickly growing owing to the fast development of Chinese society and economy. The campus construction and upgrading of facilities annoyingly disturb the peace of campus life from time to time. (Activity 2) I am sorry for that! (Activity 3) Your understanding, support and cooperation are much appreciated … please forget long queues in the canteen, old-fashioned air-conditioners in the dormitory and unpleasant noise from the construction sites. Let them go! You will have a larger world and better future!

This text can be taken as a standard illustration of the speech act of apologizing discussed in Cohen et al. (1986), consisting of three activities: accounting for the offensive problem (Activity 1), expressing the apology (Activity 2) and offering the repair (Activity 3). Activity 1 explains the reason (‘Our university is quickly growing’, ‘campus construction’, ‘upgrading of facilities’), manner (‘from time to time’) and consequence (‘disturb the peace of campus life’) of the offensive problem, and more importantly, it shows the president’s negative attitude (‘annoyingly’) towards it. In activity 2, the performative ‘I am sorry’ demonstrates that the president is placed in a culpable position and is willing to recognize his fault in causing this problem. Activity 3 highlights the ways by which the influence of this problem can be minimized (‘please forget’, ‘Let them go!’).

The president here changes his identity from the enshrined laoshi to a professional university executive who is responsible for the operation of an increasingly corporatized university. The authority is redirected towards graduates who pay high tuition and accommodation fees in exchange for quality education services. The speech act of apologizing is the president’s direct acknowledgment of the university’s obligation of ensuring the quality of curriculum and learning environments. However, Chinese university presidents are ‘adaptors’ who accept existent norms and conventions and make gradual changes, but not ‘innovators’ who make dramatic changes by departing the current traditions abruptly (Kirton, 1980). A detailed linguistic analysis of this example text can demonstrate that the president does not entirely remove the elements of the powerful authority discourse. The justification in activity 1 (‘owing to the fast development of Chinese society and economy’) and the boosting of positive attitudes (‘Your understanding, support and cooperation’) and the coercive advice (‘Let them go! You will have a larger world and better future!’) in activity 3 both indicate that the apology is far from a sheer expression of regret and guilt. The justification shoulders off the president’s personal responsibility towards the problem by attributing blame to the uncontrollable social context (‘Chinese society and economy’), hinting an implied lecturing that the problem is an unavoidable consequence of China’s social and economic development and the best students can do is to accommodate them and minimize the influence. In like manner, the implicit inclusion of positive attitudes in activity 3 presupposes the existence of graduates’ understanding, support and cooperation towards the ongoing campus construction works and purposively silences alternative negative responses.

The strategic juxtaposition of the conversational speech act of apologizing and the authoritative discourse of moralizing reveals partly the president’s handicapped skills of public speaking and partly their cautious handling of the transitional order of discourse of Chinese universities. The rhetoric of public speaking has long been downplayed in Chinese educational and political settings, where reticence is normally praised as a valued asset (Cheng, 2000). Educators and officers seldom acquire credits for their decently constructed speeches and addresses, unless they are directly related to actual praiseworthy actions and deeds. This rhetorical tradition may prevent the president from being quickly accustomed to the conversational talking style which is necessary for his increasingly marketized university. Alternatively, the president may intentionally add these elements of authority discourse, because he knows that the employing of a personal talking style within a still authority-dominated order of discourse needs to be carefully maneuvered and that he should keep in alignment with his colleagues to win their acceptance and support.

Normative discourse

The trend of marketization brings changes to the organization and proceedings of graduation ceremonies, in addition to the presidents’ talking style as discussed earlier. The traditional solo performance of presidents and other executives is enriched by a growing, though limited, participation of graduates. Investigation shows that more than half of the collected speeches end up with an official awarding of degrees, where graduates are invited to the center of stage to collect their diplomas personally from the hands of presidents and selected professors. Move 5 is indexical of such increasing dialogicality and interactivity of Chinese university rituals, which has long been recognized as venues for the sole purpose of authority-performing. Since a full ethnographic account of the degree-awarding is beyond the scope of the present discursive studies, the following analysis attempts to bring substance to this practice by concentrating on presidents’ language of awarding.

The following text is read out in a tone of solemnity and gravity after the president completes his farewell message (Move 4) to graduates:

Example text (6)

(Institutional authorization) As the president and the Chairman of Academic Degree Appraising Committee of X University, according to the Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Academic Degrees and the decisions of the 66^th meeting of Academic Degree Appraising Committee of the X University, (declarative force) I hereby announce (propositional content) that the Bachelor of Arts degree is awarded on Z and other 165 graduates of Y college …

This text encompasses all elements required for the composition of the speech act of declaration: institutional authorization, declarative force and propositional content. Searle (1979) observes that the performance of declarations presupposes the existence of appropriate extralinguistic institutions (institutional authorization), which gives the speaker the power to change the reality through the actual verbal uttering (declarative force) of the declaration (propositional content). For example, a judge may sentence a criminal, but he/she must do it in courtrooms; a football referee may penalize a player, but he/she must do it in games. Here, the identity authorization (‘the president and the Chairman’), the legal authorization (‘Regulation of the People’s Republic of China’) and the organizational authorization (‘the decisions of the 66^th meeting of Academic Degree Appraising Committee’) ensure that the president’s declaration is enforced immediately. Taking a close bearing on the syntactic structure of normative texts like written laws, judges’ opinions and government regulations (Bhatia et al., 2005), this text seems to impose an absolute authority on graduates, which is, however, true only at the linguistic level.

The formal ritual of conferring degrees was not introduced to Chinese universities until very recently (Qin and Lu, 2007). Certificates of degrees used to be piled in registrars’ offices and graduates went to collect them in rather an informal manner. An implication of this traditional practice of collecting certificates is the arrogance and high-and-mightiness of universities as bureaucratic institutions and the trivialness of graduates as individuals. The Western style of conferring degrees has been, against this backdrop, introduced not to create a new platform to reinforce presidents’ authority over graduates; rather, it has been introduced largely for the purpose of differentiating universities as communities of distinctive academic practices and cultural symbols, as different from other public bureaucratic institutions. Accounts from selective informants show that graduates and parents read little from the imposition of authority, but respect and dignity from the formality of the president’s above normative declaration. The somehow sacred awarding moment symbolizes that graduates start to be treated like individuals who have successfully completed one important stage of their lives and merit a serious and respectful finishing procedure.

Conclusions

University presidents’ ritual speeches at graduation ceremonies are an important mechanism of maintaining and reproducing university conventions, customs and cultures. It supplies an important window through which explore the order of discourse of Chinese universities. The present discursive study examines how the operation of Chinese universities changes when they are transformed from fully publicly-financed institutions to partially marketized ones. The process of conversationalization renders not a linear and clear-cut arrangement of authoritative, conversational and normative discourses in the genre of presidents’ parting speeches, but a mixing and hybridization of all three discursive values. The authority discourse forms the key note of this genre, with which the conversational and scripted discourses are intertwined. On the one hand, the prevalence of authority discourse has a long tradition in the centralized system of Chinese universities and many aspects of Chinese universities are still monitored and supervised by the state (MOE), including curriculum design, admission of students, faculty evaluation/promotion and executive appointment (Wu, 2007). This institutional reality, plus the ‘tightness’ of Chinese culture (Triandis, 1989), determines the dominating position of authority discourse. Faculty members are more interested in imposing behavioral, ethical and ideological norms on students, and less in serving their social, emotional and physical needs. Individual’s intellectual development is stressed, but largely for the purpose of meeting expectations, and stands pre-established by the state, universities, parents and even the general public (Winfield et al., 2000). Insufficient attention is paid to students’ individual differences and potentials, their whole person development and their pursuit of personal achievements.

On the other hand, the identities of students and faculty members experience significant changes. As revealed in this research, the authority relationships among different stakeholders, for example, supervising bodies, presidents, faculty members, students, and parents, are being restructured. The past subordinate students become confident consumers of higher education services, and the almighty laoshi of the Confucius tradition become salesmen and agents of academic programs supplied by universities. As a result, the monopoly of authority discourse is loosened and the hierarchical authority relationship becomes an equal one (Kress, 2010: 21). University presidents, in their parting speeches, strive to acquire a higher level of consumer satisfaction by appealing to graduates’ emotional needs and expectations and by bringing substance to their otherwise generalized authoritative and ideological discourse. As can be seen, graduates’ actual participation helps to raise their decreasing sensitivity towards the often de-contextualized and formalized lectures and speeches and helps to convert their affection towards the alma mater into a ‘religious sentiment’ (Vogel, 2007), which is crucial for the creating and maintaining of an alumni network and the promoting of the academic profile of universities. The conclusion is that the conversationalized speeches reflect presidents’ rhetorical strategies of balancing the steadiness of the Chinese centralized and instrumental operation of universities and the challenges of their increasingly marketized identity and academic restructuring.

Footnotes

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of the People’s Republic of China (Jinan University, Guangzhou, China, grant number NO.12JNQM016).

Author biography

Zhengrui Han acquired his PhD from the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong and now is an English lecturer in the College of Foreign Studies, Jinan University (Guangzhou, China). His research interests include genre analysis, language and law, and professional discourse studies. He publishes in the Journal of Pragmatics, Discourse & Society, and International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law (IJSLL).

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