Chinese Discourse and Interaction ─ Theory and Practice

The aim of this volume is to fill a knowledge-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. In spite of the fact that Chinese is one of the most thoroughly studied languages in pragmatics, and that it has a pivotal role in intercultural communication studies due to the increasing cultural and economic interaction between China and other countries, no large-scale study has been devoted to this topic so far. Therefore, the present edited volume, which introduces the reader into the different layers of Chinese discourse and interaction, has a groundbreaking nature, and it not only contributes to Chinese studies but also other fields, such as intercultural as well as discourse studies. The two main approaches to Chinese discourse and interaction are Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis. The team of contributors include the most renowned experts within the field who present their arguments in a reader-friendly manner, which makes the present work accessible to both experts of Chinese and discourse studies, as well as advanced students with 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).