Exploring Identity Work in Chinese Communication


Book Description

There is growing acceptance among pragmaticians that identity is often (de)constructed and negotiated in communication in order to impact the outcome of the interaction. Filling an important gap in current research, this book offers the first systematic, pragmatic theory to account for the generative mechanisms of identity in communication. Using data drawn from real-life communicative contexts in China, Xinren Chen examines why identity strategies are adopted, how and why identities are constructed and what factors determine their appropriateness and effectiveness. In answering these questions, this book argues that identity is an essential communicative resource, present across various domains and able to be exploited to facilitate the realization of communicative needs. Demonstrating that communication in Chinese involves the dynamic choice and shift of identity by discursive means, Exploring Identity Work in Chinese Communication suggests that identity is intersubjective in communication in all languages and that it can be accepted, challenged, or even deconstructed.




Social Identity and Discourses in Chinese Digital Communication


Book Description

Examining how diverse social identities are constructed in digital communication in China, this edited collection provides a multidimensional exploration of the diverse, discursive forms and practices used to construct and present the “self” online. Contributing authors provide analyses of China’s digital communication platforms, such as social media platforms, news websites and short video applications, drawing from a wealth of data to study daily practices of digital performance of identity and maintenance of social bonds. Comprised of nine chapters, this essential volume is divided into three distinct sections, taking a hierarchical approach to analysing social identities within Chinese digital communication at the micro, meso and macro levels. Diverse methodologies are applied throughout, incorporating insights from both linguistic theories and semiotic or textually oriented analyses, while also considering the wider societal contexts. Readers are encouraged to analyse the main features of this digital culture and to investigate how language and discourse are encountered through media. This book will be of value to a wide variety of scholars and students in sociolinguistics, communication studies and Asian studies.




Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents


Book Description

Based on culture-related themes derived from the author's psychotherapeutic work with young Chinese-American professionals, this important book relates personal problems and conditions to specific sources in Chinese and American cultures and the immigration experience. Unique and practical, this is a nonclinical work that will help Asian Americans connect historical and cultural meanings to their Chinese roots. It will also give educators, mental health professionals, and those working with Chinese populations firsthand insight into the lives and identities of Chinese-American immigrants. Exploring the meaning and arrangement of Chinese family names, the bonds among family members, and the different contexts of “self” to Chinese Americans, this valuable book offers you insight into the dilemma between “self” and “family” that both the younger and older generations must face in American society. In order to help you understand Chinese immigrants or help your clients, Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents provides you with information about several differences found between the two cultures, such as: understanding that words and concepts may not relate to the same emotions or translate exactly between languages realizing that strong family bonds of the Chinese fosters interdependence, unlike Americans who admire self-assertiveness and independence recognizing the fear that Chinese immigrant parents have of losing their strong family ties and seeing their children forsake customs because they do not want to be seen as “different” discovering why risk-taking and adventurous acts are discouraged by many Chinese parents comprehending the great importance to Chinese parents of continuing their family and raising successful children acknowledging the different roles of men and women within several different contexts in American and Chinese societiesWith personal vignettes, humor, and interesting insights, Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents: Conflict, Identity, and Values demonstrates how some Chinese Americans are connecting historical and cultural meanings to their Chinese roots and bridging generational gaps between themselves and their parents to create a truly cross-cultural identity.




Chinese Television and National Identity Construction


Book Description

This book examines music entertainment programmes on China Central Television, China’s only national level television network, as well as on nationally-available provincial channels, exploring how such programmes project a nuanced image of China’s identity and position in the world. It shows how the images presented - primarily to domestic audiences - are in step with China’s party-state nationalism, and at the same time flexible and open to change as China’s circumstances change. The book contextualises identity construction in the media by examining the development of television in China and the political struggles between provincial and national television stations, as well as by foregrounding the historical and contemporary role of musical culture in China's nation-building project. It discusses the portrayal of the majority Han Chinese, and of ethnic minorities and their music, which, the author argues, are shown as fitting with the party-state rhetoric of “a unitary multi-ethnic state”. It also outlines how the Chinese of Greater China – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao and the overseas Chinese – are incorporated into a mainland centred Chinese identity. In addition, it shows how the performances of foreign personalities on the Chinese television stage emphasise foreigners' attraction to China, the uniqueness of the Chinese nation and Chinese civilisation, and the revitalised role of China in the world. Overall, the book demonstrates how the variations of Chinese identity fit with prevailing political ideologies in China and with the emerging theme of a China-centred world.







China in the Era of Social Media


Book Description

China in the Era of Social Media discusses how social media is changing the world in an unprecedented way through speed, scope, and depth. In the last decade or so, social media in China has witnessed the most explosive growth in the world. Being the most populous nation in the world, it has the most social media users in the world as well. This book examines the current situation and unique characteristics of Chinese social media, the significance of social media in the country’s social transformation, and particularly its influences on political change in the nation. The main goal of this book is to explore how social media has been affecting and thus changing China’s political system, the ruling communist ideology, and the state-run media, as well as its public discourse and public opinions. Scholars of Asian studies, political science, and communications will find this book particularly interesting.




Engaging Social Media in China


Book Description

Introducing the concept of state-sponsored platformization, this volume shows the complexity behind the central role the party-state plays in shaping social media platforms. The party-state increasingly penetrates commercial social media while aspiring to turn its own media agencies into platforms. Yet state-sponsored platformization does not necessarily produce the Chinese Communist Party’s desired outcomes. Citizens continue to appropriate social media for creative public engagement at the same time that more people are managing their online settings to reduce or refuse connection, inducing new forms of crafted resistance to hyper-social media connectivity. The wide-ranging essays presented here explore the mobile radio service Ximalaya.FM, Alibaba’s evolution into a multi-platform ecosystem, livestreaming platforms in the United States and China, the role of Twitter in Trump’s North Korea diplomacy, user-generated content in the news media, the emergence of new social agents mediating between state and society, social media art projects, Chinese and US scientists’ use of social media, and reluctance to engage with WeChat. Ultimately, readers will find that the ten chapters in this volume contribute significant new research and insights to the fast-growing scholarship on social media in China at a time when online communication is increasingly constrained by international struggles over political control and privacy issues.




Communicating Ethnic and Cultural Identity


Book Description

This intercultural communication text reader brings together the many dimensions of ethnic and cultural identity and shows how they are communicated in everyday life. Introducing and applying key concepts, theories, and approaches--from empirical to ethnographic--a wide variety of essays look at the experiences of African Americans, Asians, Asian Americans, Latino/as, and Native Americans, as well as many cultural groups. The authors also explore issues such as gender, race, class, spirituality, alternative lifestyles, and inter- and intra-ethnic identity. Sites of analysis range from movies and photo albums to beauty salons and Deadhead concerts. Visit our website for sample chapters!




Identity and Language Learning


Book Description

Identity and Language Learning draws on a longitudinal case study of immigrant women in Canada to develop new ideas about identity, investment, and imagined communities in the field of language learning and teaching. Bonny Norton demonstrates that a poststructuralist conception of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, and subject to change across time and place is highly productive for understanding language learning. Her sociological construct of investment is an important complement to psychological theories of motivation. The implications for language teaching and teacher education are profound. Now including a new, comprehensive Introduction as well as an Afterword by Claire Kramsch, this second edition addresses the following central questions: - Under what conditions do language learners speak, listen, read and write? - How are relations of power implicated in the negotiation of identity? - How can teachers address the investments and imagined identities of learners? The book integrates research, theory, and classroom practice, and is essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the fields of language learning and teaching, TESOL, applied linguistics and literacy.




Exploring Leadership


Book Description

This is the thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the best-selling book Exploring Leadership. The book is designed to help college students understand that they are capable of being effective leaders and to guide them in developing their leadership potential. Exploring Leadership incorporates new insights and material developed in the course of the authors’ work in the field. The second edition contains expanded and new chapters and also includes the relational leadership model, uses a more global context and examples that relate to a wide variety of disciplines, contains a new section which emphasizes ways to work to accomplish change, and concludes with concrete strategies for activism.




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