Politics of Chinese Language and Culture

Politics of Chinese Language and Culture
Author: Bob Hodge
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2012-11-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134691637

An innovative text which adopts the tools of cultural studies to provide a fresh approach to the study of Chinese language, culture and society. The book tackles areas such as grammar, language, gender, popular culture, film and the Chinese diaspora and employs the concepts of social semiotics to extend the ideas of language and reading. Covering a range of cultural texts, it will help to break down the boundaries around the ideas and identities of East and West and provide a more relevant analysis of the Chinese and China.

Learning Chinese Language and Culture

Learning Chinese Language and Culture
Author: Weijia Huang
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2020-03-15
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9882370608

Learning Chinese Language and Culture is an intermediate level textbook, which was intended to be used throughout the entire school year and designed mainly for students who have completed introductory courses of Chinese as a foreign language. Written in English, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, this book illustrates Chinese language knowledge and introduces Chinese culture in twentytwo lessons, covering a variety of cultural content, including customs and manners, holidays and festivals, poems and idioms, calligraphy and couplets, myths and legends, feng shui and superstitions, and historical relics and sceneries and many others. In every lesson, the authors have strived to maintain a clear topic and a coherent structure. They have also endeavored to keep the contents lively and achieve a fluent writing style while closely controlling the structure and grammar of every lesson.

The Chinese Language

The Chinese Language
Author: John DeFrancis
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1986-03-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780824810689

"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York "Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

Speaking of Chinese

Speaking of Chinese
Author: Raymond Chang
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2001
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780393321876

"This pleasant, unpretentious account [is] a small stream leading to the ocean of the culture of China."--Scientific American

A Cultural History of the Chinese Language

A Cultural History of the Chinese Language
Author: Sharron Gu
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011-12-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786488271

Chinese, one of the oldest active languages, evolved over 5,000 years. As such, it makes for a fascinating case study in the development of language. This cultural history of Chinese demonstrates that the language grew and responded to its music and visual expression in a manner very similar to contemporary English and other Western languages. Within Chinese cultural history lie the answers to numerous questions that have haunted scholars for decades: How does language relate to worldview? What would happen to law after its language loses absolute binding power? How do music, visual, and theatrical images influence literature? By presenting Chinese not as a system of signs but as the history of a community, this study shows how language has expanded the scope of Chinese imagination and offers a glimpse into the future of younger languages throughout the world.

Chinese Under Globalization

Chinese Under Globalization
Author: Hongyin Tao
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2012
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9814350699

The nine papers collected in this volume examine recent trends in language use in mainland China, and the associated social, economic, political, and cultural manifestations.

Understanding the Chinese Language

Understanding the Chinese Language
Author: Chris Shei
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2014-10-03
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1317662806

Understanding the Chinese Language provides a vibrant and comprehensive introduction to contemporary Chinese linguistics. Combining an accessible style with an in-depth treatment of the topics at hand, it uses clear, full descriptions and vivid, modern examples to systematically take students through the phonology, vocabulary, grammar, discourse structures and pragmatics of modern Chinese. No prior knowledge of Chinese or linguistics is required. Features include: Six detailed chapters covering the core linguistic aspects of the modern Chinese language, such as words, content units, sentences, speech acts, sentence-final particles and neologisms User-friendly comparisons and contrasts between English and Chinese throughout the text, helping to clearly explain important complexities and nuances of the Chinese language Clear, accessible explanations and insightful analysis of topics and linguistic devices, supported by many helpful examples, diagrams and tables Vivid and relevant examples drawn from real-life contemporary sources such as internet news reports, social networks like Sino Weibo, online forums and TV reality shows, offering fascinating perspectives on modern Chinese media, culture and society Pioneering coverage of Chinese new words and the social phenomena they reveal Additional exercises and four supplementary chapters covering Chinese syllables, idioms, discourse and culture available for free download at http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415634885/ Written by a highly experienced instructor, researcher and linguist, Understanding the Chinese Language will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in Chinese linguistics. It will also be of interest to anyone interested in learning more about Chinese language and culture.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
Author: Jing Tsu
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0735214743

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Performed Culture in Chinese Language Education

Performed Culture in Chinese Language Education
Author: Guangyan Chen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-06-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1498584969

Performed Culture in Chinese Language Education: A Culture-Based Approach for U.S. Collegiate Contexts elaborates on a cultural awareness-oriented, cultural performance-based, and cross-cultural communication-focused foreign language pedagogical paradigm—Performed Culture Approach — in the context of U.S. collegiate Chinese language education. Guangyan Chen draws on the data collected through questionnaires, comparisons between this pedagogy and mainstream pedagogical frameworks, and analyses of curricular development, lesson plans, and classroom discourses. Chen promotes the performed culture approach by delineating the theoretical framework of this pedagogy, reporting studies that empirically support cultural primacy in Chinese language education, and illustrating this pedagogy through analyses of a curricular structure, a lesson plan, and classroom discourses. Chen shows how this pedagogy addresses the gaps between the social need for global citizens and the insufficient integration of culture into foreign language education. The performed culture approach also addresses the overall drop in U.S. collegiate foreign language enrollment as this pedagogy connects foreign language programs to university missions and social needs.

Warp and Weft

Warp and Weft
Author: Keekok Lee
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2008
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1606932470

This book attempts to deconstruct certain key clusters of Chinese characters and words to make them yield fascinating tales about the country's culture and history.