Genre as social indexicality
A cross-cultural analysis of English and Chinese love poems
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10739103 |
|---|---|
| Authors | H G Ying (0009-0000-9941-5342, Cleveland University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 2009 |
| Issue | 177 |
| Publication date | 2009-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Semiotica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-1998 • E-ISSN: 1613-3692 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/semi.2009.074 |
| OpenAlex | W1998102483 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
This article presents a cross-cultural analysis of English and Chinese love poems. While the English poems are characteristically expository, topic-centered, direct, passionate, abstract, elaborate, infinite, philosophical, religious, reader-based, and repetitive, the Chinese poems are descriptive, correlative, indirect, subtle, concrete, simple, visual, metaphorical, non-religious, writer-based, and non-repetitive. The social and cultural factors accounting for the English poems include (a) a high value on individuality, self-expression, and imagination, (b) Aristotle's rhetorical principle: “State your case and prove it,” and (c) the role of Christianity in the life of western people. The Chinese poems find social and cultural explanations in (a) doctrines of Confucius that deny the importance of individuality and self expression, (b) the rhetorical principle Yi2(“use”) Jing3(“things”) Su2(“express”) Qing1(“feelings”) (i.e., “to express one's feelings in terms of natural things”), (c) the rhetorical tradition of being non-repetitive, and (d) the goal of a man's life that centers on the attainment of official rank rather than belief in religion
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Expression (computer science) · Feeling · Literature · Poetry · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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