Reconstructing Eastern paradigms of discourse studies

Abstract

Current scholarship on language and communication has largely been culturally monological rather than dialogical and diversified. In this paper, I respond to this sorry state by arguing for the reconstruction of Eastern paradigms in favour of multiculturalism in discourse research. To that end, I first critique the ethnocentrism of Discourse Analysis, then point to the cultural realities of the Eastern discourses, i.e. the discourses of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and finally demonstrate the unique cultural legacies and intellectual accomplishments of the Eastern world useful for the study of their discourses. In conclusion, I outline the basic principles of the new paradigms and the corresponding action strategies for their reconstruction.

Keywords:

• disciplinary discourse
• ethnocentrism
• multiculturalism
• Third World
• Eastern wisdoms

This is an expanded version of a keynote speech made at 15th Congress of the International Association for Applied Linguistics (AILA), Essen, Germany, Aug 24-29, 2008.

This is an expanded version of a keynote speech made at 15th Congress of the International Association for Applied Linguistics (AILA), Essen, Germany, Aug 24-29, 2008.

Notes

This is an expanded version of a keynote speech made at 15th Congress of the International Association for Applied Linguistics (AILA), Essen, Germany, Aug 24-29, 2008.

1. Further, Asian, African and Latin American scholars study less each other's languages and communication – if at all – than Western scholars do them. Nearly, every institution has a department, college or other division on English or English language-and-culture-related subject; but there are far fewer programmes, departments or sections thereof that are devoted to Asian, African or Latino Studies.

2. The functionalist view of language can be traced, via MAK Halliday, at least to Malinowsky, who believed that individuals have needs and social institutions develop to meet those needs.

3. But notice, I do not mean that every Westerner speaks only for him/herself and every Chinese speaks only for the other. There are individual differences and people usually speak for a variety of purposes but at morally different levels. Notice also that my stress is on the moral values or ideals of communication which are differentiated between the Westerners and Chinese. This means that people may break or ‘play with’ their cultural rules.

4. Derrida uses this term frequently to refer to the western cultural way of understanding that, he argues, was instituted by Plato. Western logocentrism privileges language over non-verbal communication and speech over writing with a metaphysics of presence. (http://users.california.com/∼rathbone/local4.htm accessed 042707)

5. Traditional Chinese discourse is required first and foremost to advance the moral-political project of the state and society (‘ming bu zheng ze yan bu shun…’) and the particular nature of the requirement or principle is to achieve and maintain equilibrium in human society (‘zhiguo, ping tianxia’) (cf. Chen 2004; Lu 1998, 28–9). This highest principle may be seen as based on two lower-level values: the first is He, meaning harmony out of diversity (originally: harmony of different sounds and replying in conversation; ‘junzi he er butong’); and the second Zhongyong (zhongyong), meaning moderation through choosing the middle point and/or keeping balance. This accounts, for example, for the fact that China increasingly resists to the American government's hegemonic practice of using ‘the human right issue’ to contain China, on the one side, and, on the other side, tries to improve its human right situation at home, e.g. by writing the human right into law in 2004 and the party constitution in 2007, thereby keeping the international order of communication less unbalanced and at the same time the domestic situation of human rights more attended to.

6. There are other unique categories in Chinese literary criticism such as yjing, fenggu, shenyun and wenqi. Take yijing for example. It does not refer to cognitive or affective aspect of meaning of language, but to the indefinite and dynamic mixture of subjective feelings and objective circumstances, strategic alignment of absence and substance.