Language, Power, and Social Process #14: Read the Cultural Other: Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong's Decolonization

These studies presented here by Shi-xu (director, Institute of Discourse and Cultural Studies, Zhejiang U., China), Kienpointner (general and applied linguistics, U. of Innsbruck, Austria), and Servaes (journalism and communication, U. of Queensland, Australia) are put forward in defense of a proposed culturally pluralist view discourse and in opposition to any "universal," "general," or "integrated" theory of linguistic communication. After opening chapters explain the rationale and general framework for the pluralist cultural-political project on discourse and communication, Western media discourse on Hong Kong and China during the transition to Chinese rule is compared to discourse actually from Hong Kong and China in order to reveal the plurality, complexity, and forms of opposition of non-Western discourses.
Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A ground-breaking work, Read the Cultural Other argues that non-Western discourses cannot be contained in a 'general', 'universal', or 'integrated' model of linguistic communication or discourse, but must be understood from a culturally pluralist perspective. Proceeding from this standpoint, it offers a variety of innovative analyses of China and Hong Kong's discourses on the decolonization of the latter. Drawing on culturally different methods and local cultural context, these studies reveal the discursive complexity, diversity, and forms of otherness of Hong Kong and China.