Description
Professor Xiaolu Wang from Zhejiang University was invited to visit the School of Humanities and Languages, University of Western Sydney from 1 to 31 August 2011.Dr Wang is Professor of Linguistics at the School of International Studies (SIS), Zhejiang University, China. She is Dean of the School of Foreign Languages (SFL), Ningbo Institute of Technology (NIT), Zhejiang University and Adjunct Professor of the University of Western Sydney (UWS), Australia. She completed two major projects funded by China's National Philosophy and Social Sciences Foundation. She is the author of several academic books, has published over 40 research papers, and won important prizes. She is a board member of CASLAR, and a peer-reviewer for Chinese and international peer-reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Bilingualism, Intercultural Pragmatics, Acta Psychologica Sinica, and so on.
Dr Wang gave a talk on the following topic.
Analysis of Pragmatic Functions of Chinese Cultural Markers
Abstract: Although a discourse marker does not have semantic truth-value and can only generate meanings in the pragmatic category, it can indicate the implicit meaning in the context and contribute to the deduction of the speaker’s intention. If the listener does not know the psychological, social and cultural background implied in the speaker’s utterance, it is hard for him/her to get the true emotion and intention the speaker conveys in the discourse since discourse markers sometimes bear cultural features of the particular language. Those which may trigger Chinese cultural association and distinctive Chinese way to respond are termed as Chinese cultural markers (CCMs) in this paper. In Chinese conversation, CCMs have strong pragmatic complexity because their pragmatic functions are implicit rather than explicit. In order to assist the mastery of Chinese language for foreign students, this paper has probed into the pragmatic functions by New Intention and New Common Ground Theory. After the analysis, we have found that in daily conversation CCMs usually play the roles as follows: ① promoting mutual reciprocity between interlocutors; ② softening the strong tones in speech; ③ hiding interlocutor’s true feelings; ④ alleviating negative expressions; and ⑤ smoothening the progress of discourse.
Keywords: Chinese cultural markers (CCMs); new intention and new common ground; pragmatic functions; logical analysis
| Period | 1 Aug 2011 → 31 Aug 2011 |
|---|---|
| Visiting from | Zhejiang University (China) |
| Visitor degree | PhD |
| Degree of Recognition | International |