Fengguang Liu

Biographic Data

ID3591929
NAMEFengguang Liu
GIVEN NAMESFengguang
FAMILY NAMELiu
SIGNATURELIU F
AFFILIATIONSDalian University of Foreign Languages
ORCID0009-0005-3153-8756
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS30
TOTAL CITATIONS21
AUTHOR COUNT30
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2018
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX3

  • Self-praising, praise-seeking, and other-praising: Motivations and strategies of the Kuakua genre

    Open AccessLi Zhang, Rong Chen et al.ARTICLEJournal of Politeness Research2026

    In this study, we investigate the Kuakua (夸夸 ‘praise’) genre, an innovative internet linguistic phenomenon found on Chinese social media, using data collected from various social media platforms. We demonstrate that, different from similar speech acts of compliment/praise on English social media such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), the Kuakua genre, which takes place within internet communities, includes praise-seeking in addition to self-p…

  • Exploring poetic effects through the lens of conversational implicature in Seamus Heaney’s poetry

    Open AccessFengguang Liu, Mengyao Liu et al.ARTICLEChinese Semiotic Studies2026

    Based on the classical and neo-Gricean theories of conversational implicature, this study explores the ways in which different types of conversational implicature achieve their poetic effects. Viewing literary communication as an interactive process between poets and readers, we take some poems by Seamus Heaney from his mid-career collection The Haw Lantern and his late-period publication Electric Light as examples. Based on Chen’s inferential me…

  • Interpreting literalised rituals as a genre: The case of Shijing (‘ The Book of Odes ’)

    Open AccessDániel Z Kádár, Yafeng Liu et al.ARTICLEJournal of Historical Pragmatics2026

    The aim of this article is to systematically describe the genre of literalised rituals from a historical pragmatic perspective. The study is based on a corpus drawn from the archaic Chinese source Shijing 詩經 (‘ The Book of Odes ’), which is a renowned collection of poetic texts written between the eleventh and sixth centuries bc . We examine a particular section of Shijing as an example par excellence for the genre of literalised rituals. Charact…

  • Unsolicited advice in mediatised Chinese New Year celebrations: An interaction ritual approach

    Open AccessWenrui Shi, Dániel Z Kádár et al.ARTICLEPragmatics Quarterly Publication…2026

    This study investigates advice-giving during Chinese New Year family celebrations when older relatives tend to provide unsolicited advice for younger family members. First, we consider New Year advice featured in social media recordings through the lens of interaction ritual, using a corpus of TikTok videos. Second, we investigate how older and younger evaluators assess behaviours in such mediatised events. We found that the behaviour of older fa…

  • On the Problematic Use of ‘don’t worry’ by Chinese Learners of English

    Open AccessJ House, Dániel Z Kádár et al.ARTICLEApplied Linguistics2025

    In this paper, we examine uses of ‘don’t worry’ by Chinese speakers of English, which may trigger intercultural irritations. We investigate such problematic uses from a contrastive angle, by considering whether they relate to the fact that in Chinese there are two expressions which may be equivalents of English ‘don’t worry’: fangxin 放心 (lit. ‘ease your heart’) and bie-danxin 别担心 (lit. ‘don’t burden your heart’). First, we present uses of ‘don’t …

  • Refusing gifts in Chinese: A linguistic analysis integrating interaction ritual, expressions and speech acts

    Dániel Z Kádár, J House et al.ARTICLEApplied Linguistics Review2025

    In this study, we examine patterns of gift-refusing in Chinese. Exchanging gifts is a fundamental part of Chinese social interaction which follows ostensible ritual conventions: a gift is often expected to be refused before it can be accepted. We focus on conventionalised expressions through which speech acts realising genuine gift-refusing are indicated. Such expressions have an important interactional function because Chinese ritual gift-exchan…

  • Crazy literature: A case of mock self-impoliteness

    Open AccessShiyu Liu, Rong Chen et al.ARTICLEPragmatics Quarterly Publication…2025

    In this paper, we investigate crazy literature, a newly emerged genre on Chinese Internet in which posters portray themselves as being mentally instable or, simply, insane. Based on data collected from the Internet and findings from a survey of college students, we argue that the image created by crazy literature is best captured by the notion of mock self-impoliteness. That is, although the image of insanity is damaging to the self-face of the p…

  • Flattery in historical China: A pragmatic perspective

    Open AccessFengguang Liu, Li Zhang et al.ARTICLEPragmatics Quarterly Publication…2025

    In this study we examine how flattery was realised in historical Chinese interactions. We bring together ritual, speech acts and interaction, studying a corpus of interactions drawn from the late imperial satirical novel Guanchang Xianxing Ji 官场现形记 (‘Officialdom Unmasked’). Many claims have been made about the prevalence of flattery in Chinese social interaction, in particular in historical China. Since little language-anchored research has been …

  • Ostensible invitations in Chinese – A pragmatic perspective

    Open AccessDániel Z Kádár, Jihong Zhao et al.ARTICLELanguage Sciences2025

    In this study, we examine ostensible invitations in Chinese, i.e. cases where an interactant invites the addressee to an event when both participants are aware of the fact that the invitation is not a real one. In order to identify pragmatic similarities and differences between ostensible and genuine invitations, we compare two corpora of naturally-occurring online exchanges on WeChat, including 70 ostensible and 70 genuine invitations. Our analy…

  • The diachrony of honorification in Chinese: Stability and change

    Open AccessRong Chen, Fengguang Liu et al.ARTICLEJournal of Politeness Research2025

    In this paper, we study honorification in Chinese from a diachronic perspective. Classical Chinese is found to exhibit a large number of lexical items used to elevate other in discourse. The aspects that are elevated are specific titles, positions/statuses, knowledge/expertise, age/generation, taste/appearance and addressee in general. In contemporary Chinese, we find that some of these lexemes have disappeared, some have remained, and others hav…

  • Complaining in historical Chinese criminal trials

    Open AccessDan Han, J House et al.ARTICLEJournal of Historical Pragmatics2025References: 5

    This study examines late-imperial Chinese criminal trials, starting from the observation that, in historical Chinese criminal trials, the speech act Complain is not only surprisingly frequent but is also often realised by the magistrate conducting the trial. We examine Complains in a corpus drawn from late imperial Chinese gong’an 公案 (literally, ‘criminal case’) novels. Whilst fictive in nature, such novels feature courtroom interactions in a tur…

  • Offering gifts in Chinese: An interaction ritual approach

    Open AccessDániel Z Kádár, J House et al.ARTICLEJournal of Pragmatics2025Cited by: 2References: 14

  • Communicating change: A multimodal critical discourse analysis of China’s poverty reduction posters

    Open AccessWenyu Liu, Chengcheng Du et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Communication2024

    This study conducts a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis guided content analysis of 56 Chinese government-sponsored poverty reduction posters across three historical stages since the founding of the People’s Republic of China to understand visual strategies, represented participants, and thematic shifts. Initially, visual strategies focus on action-oriented, collective agricultural activities. Over time, they shift to highlighting technologic…

  • Sympathising with patients in historical China: An interaction ritual approach

    Open AccessHe Cang, J House et al.ARTICLELanguage Sciences2024

    In this study, we examine how family members expressed sympathy when visiting patients in mid-eighteenth-century China, by studying a corpus of patient visits drawn from the renowned Chinese novel Hongloumeng 红楼梦 (Dream of the Red Chamber). The study of such visits is methodologically challenging because these visits were less scripted than many other ritual interactions, operating with many seemingly ad hoc elements. We approach patient visits i…

  • Deliberate ambiguity as motivated strategy

    Open AccessRong Chen, Fengguang LiuARTICLELanguage & Communication2024References: 21

  • Also on humblebragging: An evaluation of self-image in Versailles literature

    Open AccessDan Han, Rong Chen et al.ARTICLEJournal of Pragmatics2024Cited by: 4References: 21

  • Greeting in English as a Foreign Language: A Problem for Speakers of Chinese

    Open AccessJ House, Dániel Z Kádár et al.ARTICLEApplied Linguistics2023

    This paper investigates the phenomenon of greeting in English, which can be surprisingly challenging for speakers of other languages, such as Chinese. By ‘greeting’ we mean the seemingly ‘simple’ act of choosing conventionalized expressions at the opening of an encounter. Following pilot interviews with Chinese learners of English who reported puzzlement concerning greeting in English, we pursue a two-fold approach to explore conventions of greet…

  • Terms of address in Chinese

    Dániel Z Kádár, Fengguang LiuARTICLEEast Asian Pragmatics2023

    In this paper, we first present the rationale behind editing the present Special Issue dedicated to Chinese terms of address. We argue that conventionally speakers of Chinese prefer using terms of address in many interactional contexts, while personal pronouns – in particular the standard second person ni used without an accompanying term of address – are often perceived as face-threatening. We also argue that, while historical Chinese terms of a…

  • The problem of translating Chinese policy-related expressions: A case study of wenming (‘civilised’)

    Open AccessJ House, Dániel Z Kádár et al.ARTICLEText and Talk2023

    This paper explores the difficulties of translating Chinese expressions frequently used in communicating governmental policies to the public. In particular, we focus on the expression wenming 文明, a term with manifold meanings and uses, which often ends up being translated into English simply as ‘civilised’. This translational convention is problematic because wenming in Chinese tends to be used in many collocations where the English civilised sou…

  • Historical language use in Europe from a contrastive pragmatic perspective: An exploratory case study of letter closings

    Open AccessJ House, Dániel Z Kádár et al.ARTICLEJournal of Historical Pragmatics2023References: 7

    This paper presents a case study which brings together the fields of contrastive pragmatics and historical pragmatics. Specifically, we contrastively investigate the ways in which the speech act set of “farewell” – representing the closing phase of an interaction – was realised in nineteenth-century historical letters in different linguacultures, including the English, German and Chinese ones. We argue that contrastive pragmatics provides a fruit…

  • Criticising as a disciplinary action: A problem for learners of Chinese as a foreign language

    Open AccessFengguang Liu, Wenrui Shi et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of Applied…2023References: 5

    In this study, we examine how criticising as a disciplinary action is conventionally realised in Chinese classroom contexts. By so doing, we provide a two‐fold contribution to the current special issue dedicated to Willis Edmondson. First, we examine criticising in an innovative way, by going beyond its traditional interpretation as a speech act, that is, we approach it as an interactional phenomenon which is conventionally realised by a cluster …

  • Self-denigration in Chinese: An interactional speech act approach

    Open AccessDániel Z Kádár, J House et al.ARTICLELanguage & Communication2023Cited by: 4References: 25

    In this study, we investigate self-denigration in Chinese by applying a strictly language-based interactional speech act approach. Previous research has often zeroed in on Chinese self-denigration by studying the pragmatic function of expressions selected beforehand by the researcher. As an alternative, we propose a bottom-up approach through which self-denigration can be captured in phases of interaction and expressions speech acts and expressio…

  • Aggression in diplomatic notes – a pragmatic analysis of a Chinese-American conflict in times of colonisation

    Open AccessJ House, Dániel Z Kádár et al.ARTICLEText and Talk2022

    This study examines veiled aggression in diplomatic language use from the point of view of speech acts. More specifically, we examine how the speech act of ‘Tell’ is used to realise aggression in a small corpus of diplomatic notes written between February and May 1844, exchanged between a US American and a Chinese diplomat. Tell, by default, presents a ‘neutral’ informative illocution. However, in contexts of diplomatic conflicts, particularly wh…

  • Admonishing: A paradoxical pragmatic behaviour in ancient China

    Open AccessDániel Z Kádár, J House et al.ARTICLEPragmatics Quarterly Publication…2021

    This paper examines the pragmatic properties of what we define as a ritual act of ‘admonishing’. We argue that admonishing represents a historically embedded realisation type of the speech act Suggest. We explore admonishing in ancient Chinese political and governance texts dated before the 2nd century BC. The results of our analysis show that admonishing often not only affords but even triggers paradoxical pragmatic behaviour. This paradox stems…

  • The expressions ‘(M)minzu-zhuyi’ and ‘Nationalism’: A contrastive pragmatic analysis

    Open AccessFengguang Liu, Dan Han et al.ARTICLEJournal of Pragmatics2021References: 9

    This paper presents a contrastive pragmatic analysis of the use of the expressions (M)minzu-zhuyi 民族主义 and nationalism in the Chinese and U.S. American linguacultures. In research informed by 'Western' interpretations of nationalism, it has often been assumed that nationalism is an essentially negative phenomenon. The present paper argues that any contrastive pragmatic analysis involving the term nationalism needs to critically revisit this assum…