Journal of Asian Pacific Communication - Volume 22, Issue 1, 2012

China’s image in the Western media has long been a contentious issue. Many previous studies have focused on what images are constructed but few have examined how those images are generated. This article aims to address this issue by exploring cultural foundations of Western representations of China. The article falls into three parts. Part one traces configurations of modernity discourse, focusing on liberal humanism and industrialism as two important dimensions in reporting Chinese affairs. Part Two examines historical trajectories of Western images of China, highlighting different mix of the two versions of modernity at crucial historical junctures. Part three explores conceptual and methodological issues in relation to Western reporting of China. Based on structuralist narrative theories, an analytical model is proposed that is illustrated with specific examples. The article concludes with a critical assessment of current situations of Western reporting of China.

Confucius Institutes (kongzi xueyuan) are prescribed by Confucius Headquarters in Beijing a cultural educational identity and the prescription implies that the identity construction may resort mainly to the culture- and education-related discourse, avoiding any use of the economy-relevant discourse. This paper uses Fairclough’s interactive perspective toward the relationship between discourse and society, his three-dimensional conception of discourse and the correspondent three-dimensional method of discourse analysis to carry out a detailed analysis of the discourse relevant to Confucius Institutes. The results show that the discourse is overloaded with the marketized languages; it is the final product of the struggle between Confucius Headquarters’ initial drive to build up a cultural educational identity for the new institutes and the prevalent marketization trend in the global context. Further discussion reveals that the discourse seduces people to discuss the organization not from the perspective of cultural exchange or educational cooperation but from the perspective of commodification and, more seriously, ruins the initial drive of the Headquarters to construct it a cultural educational identity and betrays the underlying political motive of the construction; the research instantiates again Fairclough’s observation that any discourse (practice) in the educational field nowadays can not be fully immune from the invasion of the marketized discourse; it also proves that Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of discourse analysis is effective in uncovering the commodified languages embedded in the discourse of various kinds.

This qualitative study investigated the positions of the Thai professional writers towards Thai English. Data was collected from in-depth interviews of 20 Thai bilingual writers. The findings revealed that most of the writers had different ways to distant themselves from Thai English. The majority of the participants expressed a marginalized view toward their English. Their attitudes were greatly influenced by the hegemonic Standard English. Evidently, Thai perceptions of the English language conformed to a colonial, hierarchical standpoint which privileged the types of English spoken and written within the U.S. and Great Britain and denigrated spoken and written Thai English. The study not only reflected the reality of World Englishes but also addressed political aspect of language use related with identity, power, and hierarchical discourse. It clearly indicated the political nature of teaching English and called for a reconsideration of teaching practices in countries where English is not the native language.

The present study sought to examine the content structure of the contemporary anti-drug campaign posters in China through the lens of the Extended Parallel Process Model. Four major factors of the EPPM (severity, susceptibility, response efficacy, and self-efficacy) served as the main coding categories of the content analysis to assess anti-drug posters’ potential persuasiveness. The findings revealed that the severity of drug abuse (n = 130, 87.2%) was communicated significantly more frequently than the other three factors, and response efficacy (n = 10, 6.7%) was significantly less prominent than the other three factors. “Legal punishment” is the most popular severity theme for both verbal (n = 71, 47.7%) and visual (n = 55, 36.9%) threats.

A content analysis was conducted to examine the portrayal of beauty types and occupational roles of female figures in magazine advertisements. A systematic random sample of 215 advertisements from a popular lifestyle magazine in Hong Kong was analyzed. Results provide evidence of gender role stereotypes. Two thirds of the advertisements adopted classic/feminine beauty type. The other two common beauty types were sex kitten and casual. Over-representation of Caucasian models was found as one-third of the female figures were Caucasian and other minorities. Caucasian models were more likely to be portrayed in trendy beauty type. Over half of the advertisements portrayed females in decorative roles and thirty percent portrayed females as celebrities. Recreational roles and professional roles were featured less frequently. Advertisements for products target females were more gender stereotyped than advertisements for products target males and females. The lack of variety in beauty types and occupational roles among female figures were discussed.

This study examines cultural variations in negotiators’ attribution and emotion as a viable means to understand culture’s multiplex influence on goal pursuit when it interacts with situational factors. 277 US Americans and 239 mainland Chinese responded to a hypothetical employment negotiation scenario in two experimental conditions. Findings indicate that given the same set of persuasive messages by a counterpart, American participants judged the counterpart as more personally responsible for perceived negative behavior, felt more anger and less compassion toward the counterpart, and placed greater importance on competitive goals than Chinese participants. Although the paths whereby emotions arise and influence interaction goals are largely similar across cultures, mainland Chinese demonstrated a stronger tendency to compete when they felt angry, whereas US Americans were more likely to pursue cooperative goals across both conditions. Theoretical and practical implications of these seemingly contradictory findings are discussed in this article.

In New Zealand, Bachelor of Nursing (BN) programmes have in recent years attracted large cohorts of students with English as an additional language (EAL). The authors, a lecturer on the BN and a learning development advisor, observed many students successfully achieving both the BN qualification and nursing registration status. Nevertheless the prevailing discourse around EAL students within this programme, elsewhere at the institution and to some extent in the literature seem to be a deficit model in which lacks, gaps, problems and barriers, especially in communication, often have received more attention than acquired skills. This paper reports on a semi-structured retrospective interview-based study which explored the strategies and factors which in their own views helped 8 BN graduates to develop spoken language. We found that the interaction of socio-cultural learning with personal agency and a proactive approach to learning in academic and workplace contexts seem to have helped these graduates successfully develop communication skills. We argue that positively-focused initiatives for staff and students on both socio-cultural and individual contributions to oral communication development could help other EAL students succeed.

Second language (L2) teaching and learning is mediated by imagined community involving positioning learners themselves or being positioned by others in possible worlds. This research explores how Chinese language subject teachers in Hong Kong imagine the possible memberships of the communities in which South Asian learners will participate, and how the imagination makes a difference to their pedagogies and classroom practice. Through classroom observations and interviews with 14 secondary school teachers, research findings illustrate that the teachers treat South Asian learners as legitimate ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, while labeling them as illegitimate Chinese language users and second-class citizens in the host society. This imagination, while reflecting the subordinate position South Asians occupy, has an impact upon the teachers’ pedagogies and classroom practice, which are oriented to the instruction of basic language knowledge, albeit being sensible of South Asian culture and customs. The research results suggest that imagining L2 learners as multilingual individuals and legitimate L2 users is a necessary condition to break the structural constraints on L2 acquisition.