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Li Yang's Chinese Pragmatics

Information for Researchers

This website explicitly teaches students how to appropriately communicate in Chinese and offers students various awareness-raising exercises/activities to practice. Particular attention is given to how to appropriately perform everyday speech acts, such as express gratitude, make requests, and make apologies, in Chinese. This section presents the instructional guidelines for developing the instructional materials and includes a bibliography of references that this website cites.


Instructional Guidelines


The development of this website was guided by a) the instructional principles proposed by Ishihara and Cohen (2010), b) the key components included in the web-based pragmatics curriculum designed by Ishihara (2007), and c) the combined teaching approaches of explicit instruction and pragmatic consciousness-raising (PCR) approach. Six instructional guidelines shaped the design of the instructional materials and exercises/activities: a) overtly stating the goal of instruction; b) explicitly describing and explaining L2 pragmatic norms; c) utilizing empirically based research results and data; d) directing participants’ attention to target pragmatic features and raising their pragmatic awareness; e) providing controlled language-focused exercises as well as output practice; and f) facilitating participants’ reflective thoughts and metapragmatic assessments.


Bibliography


Bi, J. W. (1996a). The study of cultural characteristics of “politeness.” Chinese Teaching in the World, 35, 51–59.
Bi, J. W. (1996b). The difference between Chinese and English in expressing Gratitude. Chinese Planning, 7, 38–40.
Bodman, J., & Eisenstein, M. (1988). My God increase your bounty: The expressions of gratitude in English by native and non-native speakers. Cross Currents, 15, 1–21.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eisenstein, M., & Bodman, J. (1986). “I very appreciate”: Expressions of gratitude by native and non-native speakers of American English. Applied Linguistics, 7, 167–185.
Fukushima, S. (2000). Requests and culture: Politeness in British English and Japanese. Berlin: Peter Lang.
Gu, Y.G. (1990). Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 237–257.
Guo, M. (2002). Gender differences in apology strategies in Chinese. Unpublished master’s thesis, Southwest Jiaotong University, China.
Holmes, J. (1990). Apologies in New Zealand English: Language in society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ishihara, N. (2007). Web-based curriculum for pragmatics instruction in Japanese as a foreign language: An explicit awareness-raising approach. Language Awareness, 16, 21–40.
Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Langman: Pearson Education Limited.
Kang, H. X. (2008). A study of the speech act of apology in Modern Chinese. Unpublished master’s thesis, Tianjin Normal University, China.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman.
Li, L. N. (2004). Study on the speech act of Chinese gratitude and its teaching discussion. Unpublished master's dissertation, Jinan University, China.
Liu, W. S. (2004). Expressing Gratitude in Chinese and English: A Pragmatic Study. Journal of Nantong Vocational College, 18, 97–100.
Miao, L. B. (2012). Analysis of the differences between Chinese and English request speech act. Unpublished master’s thesis, Changchun Industrial University, China.
Owen, M. (1983). Apologies and remedial exchanges. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pan, X. Y. (2001). Speech act of apology in Chinese and American English: A cross-cultural study. Unpublished master’s thesis, Southwest Jiaotong University, China.
Searle, J. (1979). Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shen, Z. (2006). A cross-cultural contrastive study on the speech act of request in Chinese and English. Unpublished master’s thesis, Liaoning University, China.
Tateyama, Y. (2008). Learning to request in Japanese through foreign language classroom instruction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
Trosborg, A. (1987). Apology strategies in native/non-natives. Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 147–167.
Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints and apologies. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Wang, H. P. (2003). Is apology a scarcity in China? A study on the speech act apologizing in Chinese. Unpublished master’s thesis, Shanghai International Studies University, China.
Wang, L. Y. (2007). The speech act of “thanking” in Chinese. Unpublished master’s thesis, Guangxi Normal University, China.
Wang, X. T. (2012). A study of social variables affecting requests in Chinese. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Northeast Normal University, China.
Yang, L. (2009). A study of interlanguage development of expressing gratitude by American learners of Chinese. Unpublished master's thesis, Beijing Language and Culture University, China.
Zhang, S. J., & Wang, X. T. (1997). A contrastive study of the speech act of request. Modern Foreign Languages, 3, 63–72.
Zhang, X. J. (2012). Gender differences in apologies in Chinese by college students. Unpublished master’s thesis, Zhejiang University, China.
Zhao, L. L. (2006). Pragmatic study of Chinese requests. Unpublished master’s thesis, Shanghai International Studies University, China.