The expressions ‘(M)minzu-zhuyi’ and ‘Nationalism’

A contrastive pragmatic analysis

Bibliographic Data

ID12022945
AuthorsFengguang Liu (0009-0005-3153-8756, Dalian University of Foreign Languages), Dan Han (0000-0001-8710-2218, Dalian University of Foreign Languages), Dániel Z Kádár (0000-0002-7238-730X, Dalian University of Foreign Languages, corresponding author), J House (0000-0003-2650-1404, Dalian University of Foreign Languages)
Year2021
Volume174
Pages168-178
Publication date2021-02-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Pragmatics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0378-2166 • E-ISSN: 1879-1387
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.pragma.2020.12.013
OpenAlexW3127080644
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited26

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 assumption. We argue that nationalism has no direct equivalent in Chinese because the Chinese expression minzu-zhuyi, the counterpart of nationalism, is used in two entirely different ways: a) as a common noun (minzu-zhuyi) in a (usually) negative way to refer to nationalism in a 'foreign' sense and b) as a proper noun (Minzu-zhuyi) in a positive way to refer primarily to domestic politics. Our inquiry is divided into two parts. Firstly, we conduct a two-fold diachronic discourse analytic investigation of the development of (M)minzu-zhuyi and nationalism by examining two different corpora: political speeches and print media texts. Secondly, we check the validity of the findings of our contrastive diachronic analysis, by examining interviews which we conducted with speakers of Mandarin Chinese and American English. The results of our study indicate that the automatic projection of 'Western' interpretations of notions such as nationalism onto other linguacultures is problematic

Contrastive analysis · Linguistics · Nationalism · Political science · Sociology · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access