Reflections 4 (Written Discourse)

There is a saying chinese grow up in a heroic world. Indeed, can you believe hundreds of books we read are about heros and all of them with a moral value behind. Well, this is the point mentioned in written discourse lesson, chinese writing are usually indrective. They do not write down the moral values directly but inspired you using examples. And in primary schools, teachers are starting to ask students to think about the moral values of the short stories and when you move up your academic level, the level of interpretation is growing higher too. For example, when we look at a poem, we no only look at the meaning literally, but also the background, the purpose of this poem.Many mates said they do not know how to interpret the meaning of chinese essay. Maybe i can share some tips.

A the front of my bed moonlight shines, (qi)

I think there is frost on the ground, (cheng)

Raising my head, I look at the moon, (zhuan)

Lowering my head, I think of home. (he)

Use the example in the lecture note, usually the last sentence or last paragraph of a simple chinese essay will indicate the true meaning of this essay. In heroic stories, usually the last paragraph will indicate something like "This story tell us xxxx". Ok, you may ask if no indication then how to know? Well, first, you need to read more, second, try to extract the relavant parts.

I am not an economic policy maker, but I have a dream of tractors singing in the fields and trucks roaring effortlessly on roads ( easy working ->trucks->technology ). I am not an agricultural technical program planner, but I have a dream of seeing farmers studying science and technology and working comfortable with machinery ( machinery, science -> technology ).

So after all, this proposal is about agricultural technology ( mostly machinery ) proposal. So next time, when you a chinese classmate write some strange sms to you, start guess :)

Reflections 3 (Spoken Discourse)

I do have some disagreement with SUN's reasearch on chinese telephone opening. I think the sequence should be "greeting, identifying, then addressing". Maybe because we are in different culture group ( China each place has its own local culture ). Let me give one example, for the long distance call my friend and i make usually comes with beginning like ( W refer to we stay in singapore, R stand for relative in China.)

W: Hello
W: Mum? ( Dad? Elder Sister?)
R: Ei, XXX?

You see Mum? Dad? Elder Sister? could not be under addressing, it has question mark, the tone is asking. Indeed, when you call somebody in long distance, you are unsure whether he/she is the correct one you are reaching, especially when you calling the house phone. Sometimes i call my uncle, aunt pick up or my cousin pick up may even be picked up by a friend visiting the house. Thus identifying is more important and must come first before addressing, must address differently according to different people. However, i do agree with SUNS other points. Chinese do have a lot of question after you. For example, how are you recently? How is your study? How is parents' health? etc. It is asian culture to show concerns and bond between family members.

Living in Singapore, i also received quite a number of calls everyday. Never noticed before, but now after this lesson, when i think it through. Singapore commercial calls usually comes with "Greeting, addressing, then identifying", for example, i receive a credit cart marketing call like

A: Good Evening(greeting), sir(addressing)!
A: Can i speak to Mr Dai(identifying)?
ME: Hi

which is quite exactly same as the SUN'S research. Anyway, this is a fun lesson.

Reflections 2 (Speech Events)

Second lesson :) I kinda like the conduct of lessons. Everybody sit in a round circle, no staring of classmates' back in the front. Lecturer throwing questions frequently, seeking the response of students. Everything is nice and easy going. Yes, this is one example of the speech events too.

Speech events are all around all of us e.g. friends' meeting, buying fish etc, because the topic is relatively easy and as long as you apply
Genre, Topic, Purpose or Function, Setting, Key, Participants, Message Form, Act Sequence, Rules for Interaction, and Norms of Interpretation, you can analize it already.

However, i do want to share some interesting China-style marketing. Let us look at the two videos below, sorry for those who does not understand chinese. I just cant find english version, maybe next time i can come out one if i back to China to do some business.




China marketers usually talk very long time, continous and fast talk which is very different from the examples given in the lecture notes. There are one more things in their speech, they used an art of speech called "顺口溜“ which is "jingle" in english. These jingles are often written by marketers themselves for their specific products. Jingles' usages are able to make customers remember their products easily because jingles are fun and easy to remember( you can see customers are laughing). By the way, i think it does not involve turn-taking, but do have many overlap phenomena.

Reflections 1 (Speech Acts)

According to the lecture note, speech act is “an utterance conceived as an act by which the speaker does something.” (Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics). Quite a chim( or power) explanation. By looking at the examples, i think i can interpret it as a series action of delivering + response. During a speech, you have a subject, you do something to other people like complimenting or insulting and other people response.

Lecture notes present difference in American and Chinese in speech act like complimenting. Well, i don't surprise at all they have difference. However i never thought they can be categorized under some categories. In particular, chinese have the behaviors of rejecting, thanks and denigrating and accepting. I think through my life, indeed, there are many situations chinese do respond in this way. So this is amazing, i must admit.

However, since China opened her gates and chinese started to under the impact of various cultures, chinese new age teenagers who are branded as 80s and 90s are behaving differently, i mean some actions may not be able to categorized so easily. Firstly, rejecting and thanking and denigrating are becoming lesser involving in the conversation. Acceptings are become more obvious. It is common to address girls like "美女" - beauty even the girls are not really beautiful, and you must note that they accepted immediately without hesitating and carry on the conversation, i don't think they will say "thank you for calling me 美女". Teenagers nowadays are full of confidence. Here pushed my point to second part. There is a word in chinese called "臭美". what this means is actually, you feel you are better although other people do not think you are better. so sometimes, people complimenting you just because of face-saving or courtesy, but you take it as guarranteed. I give some examples.

A: "Yo, you look good in that suit"
B: "Oh, really? i know that, a beautiful angel fit everything"
A : start vomitting

I think we categorize sunch actions under accepting, but accept in a strange ways right? i am sure some of our singaporean classmates also have such behaviors. Since modesty still the main stream of our society, sometimes this kind of extreme speech acts are not accepted, let us look at this video for ending.