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The Ferment and Future of Communication Studies in Asia: Chinese and Japanese Perspectives |
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Author(s): Guo-Ming Chen and Yoshitaka Miike |
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This article is a dialogue between Chinese and Japanese scholars on the ferment and future of communication studies in Asia. Questions addressed in the dialogue include: What is the fermenting situation of communication studies in Asia? Why haven't Asian communication researchers discontinued the dominance of Eurocentric communication paradigms yet? What should be the purpose and significance of Asian communication studies? What are those indigenous cultural concepts that can contribute to the development of Asian communication theories? And how should communication studies in Asia be evaluated? |
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Complementing Contemporary Intercultural Communication Research with East Asian Sociocultural Perspectives and Practices |
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Author(s): Satoshi Ishii |
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In this age of global paradigm shifts, perhaps like most other fields of research in the social sciences and humanities, the validity and equivalency of contemporary intercultural communication research, which have for decades been uncritically and one-sidedly diffused by Euro-U.S.-centered paradigms as etic, pancultural, and universal, have come to be academically questioned and criticized by an increasing number of non-Western, particularly East Asian, issue-conscious scholars, educators, and practioners. Under such circumstances of scholarly paradigm shifts, the present study attempts to make three kinds of professionally constructive proposals to complement contemporary Euro-U.S.-centered intercultural communication research with East Asian sociocultural perspectives and practices. These critical proposals will serve as a new signpost for complementing contemporary Euro-U.S.-centered intercultural communication research with East Asian perspectives and practices. |
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Western Theory and Nonwestern Practice: Friendship Dialectics for Chinese in Hong Kong |
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Author(s): Ling Chen |
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Theories abound on communication for development of interpersonal relationships, and most are developed in the West. This paper explores the cross-cultural applicability of the dialectic perspective on interpersonal relationships, focusing on friendship. The discussion starts with conceptualization, interpreting and elaborating friendship dialectics in terms of the Chinese cultural tradition. A preliminary comparative conceptualization is followed with a report of an interview study of young people in Hong Kong. Qualitative analyses confirm the cross-cultural applicability of friendship dialects in a Chinese society. |
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Cultural Influences on Public Relations Practices in Multicultural Societies: A Study of Multinational Organizations in Singapore |
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Author(s): Nanditha Raman and Kavita Karan |
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The increasing pervasiveness of television in the United States has provided audiences with a wide range of programming, thus forcing networks to be strategic in the way that they entice viewers to their network. The importance of on-air promotions for regular shows and/or upcoming schedules has become a necessity since most networks depend heavily upon Nielsen ratings to set their advertising rates. Subsequently, the relationship between the need for networks to acquire audiences and profit from advertising sales has led to the creation of two unique and specific departments within the network: promotions and advertising sales. This article will discuss the general structure of television networks in the United States and how the specific functions of promotions translate audiences into revenue. In addition, CNBC (owned by General Electric and part of the NBC family) will be discussed as an example of their basic strategies of national advertising sales and marketing. |
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Effect of Link-Pin Channels in International Business Communication |
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Author(s): Richard D. Babcock and Bertha Du-Babcock |
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This paper discusses issues relating to link-pin communication channels within language-based communication zones. In a dual translation process, messages coded in professional genres and national languages are transmitted through the link-pin channels. To illustrate various issues arising from communication via link-pin channels, six case studies are developed. It is hoped that our illustrations and discussions of these issues can guide further research and communication practices. |
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A Pragmatic Analysis of Address Forms in Chinese Family and Non-family Letters |
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Author(s): Xianghong Cao |
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This paper reports some major findings from an analysis of address forms in Chinese family and non-family letters. A total of 259 personal letters were collected from 1998 through 2000 in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, and both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to examine the linguistic and pragmatic features of Chinese written addressing behaviour with regard to addressers' social roles and the cultural constraints. Findings reveal: there is a variety of address forms that Chinese use in personal letters, which is a reflection of the diversity and elaborateness of this behaviour in Chinese written interaction; Chinese people tend to use the kinship term to address non-kin for the sake of establishing and maintaining solidarity and closeness; the choices and distribution of address forms vary with writers of different roles and with their relationship towards recipients; and the influence of Chinese culture has a considerable impact on Chinese people's use of address forms in personal letters. |
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Visualizing the World Through Chinese Characters: The Process of the Creation of Chinese Characters as a Process of Bodily Metaphoricalization of the World |
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Author(s): YuXin Jia |
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This paper argues that the Chinese character is an embodied and metaphorical conceptual system. The function of the creation and formation of Chinese characters, structurally and semantically, is to iconically characterize and reconstruct the Chinese culture, the Chinese mind, Chinese social reality, and the world. As such, the process of the creation, structuring, and composing of the Chinese characters provide evidence for the assumption that the Chinese ancestors' experiencing, understanding and conceptualizing of the world is largely embodied and metaphorical. The process of the creation and formation of the Chinese pictographs, which are the prototypes of the Chinese characters, demonstrates that human beings first and foremost experienced, understood, and conceptualized the world through visual metaphoricalization. Hence, primarily and fundamentally, the conceptualization of the world is all a matter of visual metaphor. |
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Cultural Orientations as Expressed in the Public Statements of Political Leaders |
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Author(s): D. Ray Heisey |
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The paper examines the public discourses presented by President Hu Jintao during a selected period of time through the calendar year 2005. Each text in English translation of the major addresses was read for the purpose of identifying whether or not he used the narrative form to build his arguments on the selected issues and whether there was a unique Chinese cultural metaphor that he seemed to rely upon to convey his vision for China's contribution to the world community. The paper first provides a review of previous research on the rhetoric of world leaders. It then gives appropriate definitions of narrative and metaphor and cultural arguments. The next section identifies the kinds of narratives President Hu describes and the characteristic metaphors he uses. Finally, the paper concludes with several observations regarding Hu's rhetorical constructions and how they emerge from the cultural assumptions and characteristics seen in contemporary China. |
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Systematic Models of Interactions between Local and Global Cultures |
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Author(s): Victor Lux Tonn |
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This paper presents two models of cultural interactions developed on the basis of the philosophical system of self-masterism. The method employed is that of systematics by which is meant a qualitative, structural, and systemic studies of physical and human entities. These models address the structural and operational proto-type systems based on the cultures of the West and East-Asia. |
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Four Images of China: The Imagined 'Other' in British Television Documentaries |
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Author(s): Qing Cao |
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Despite increasing literature on the study of western mages of China, insufficient attention has been given to the way in which such images are constructed in the mass media. This paper aims to examine the role of language in the television representation of China, and contrasting images portrayed in television through an in-depth analysis of four British television documentaries. |
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Perspectives on Asian Cultures and Communication: An Updated Bibliography |
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Author(s): Yoshitaka Miike and Guo-Ming Chen |
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This updated bibliography lists 232 items that provide alternative perspectives on Asian cultures and communication. |
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Focusing on the African American Experience |
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Author(s): Shuhua Zhou and Yinjiao Ye |
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This interview was conducted via telephone in the summer of 2004 when Professor Dates was still the President of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Professor Dates had been given a questionnaire before the interview, but she was inundated with daily operations of her school and organizing AEJMC's annual meeting in Toronto. Anyway, she was graceful and generous enough to offer a telephone interview. The following was based on a transcript approved by Dr. Dates. Shuhua Zhou is an assistant professor and Yinjiao Ye a doctoral candidate at the College of Communication & Information Sciences, the University of Alabama. |
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