Entry 4: Linear Oriental Writings?

Week 5: Written Discourse

This week’s lecture on written discourse has enabled me to understand the cultural-specific ways of writing by selected cultural group, particularly the Chinese. Kaplan (1972) pointed out that the “oriental” written discourse takes a circular form whereby the writer often looks at a topic from a variety of angles, adopting an indirect approach and only coming to the topic sentence at the end.

Having received my entire Chinese Education in Singapore, I had been taught to write in a slightly different manner. I could still recall how my Higher Mother Tongue teacher taught me to tackle writing a Chinese argumentative essay at O Levels, or what some of us know as “ 报章报道”.

The entire essay would usually be written in this typical format:

1. Brief Introduction of the topic
2. State your stand for the subject matter
3. Topic Sentence 1 with substantiation in relation to your stand
4. Topic Sentence 2 with substantiation in relation to your stand
5. Recommendations to rectify/improve the current situation
6. Conclusion

As one would be quick to pick out, this style of writing seems to coincide with the style of writing that we were taught at A Levels to tackle the General Paper. Also, this format follows a typical expository discourse in English beginning with a topic statement, followed by subdivisions supported by examples and illustrations.

However, Kaplan (1966) highlighted that “Oriental” writing is usually indirect, and the indirectness could be the influence of the “eight-legged essay”, an essay form that has been the standard device of the civil service examinations from the middle of 15^th century to early 20^th century. His conclusion can seem somewhat over simplistic, as I feel that he fails to consider his observation along side with the social-pragmatic factors that surrounded China in that era.

Bearing in mind that Kaplan study was done in 1966, most of his respondents could have been brought up in the post Civil War Era (1949 – present). At that time, many sensitive political issues could not be discussed openly by the media and educational institutions. This could have inadvertently led to the formation of an indirect style of writing, so that the journalists and scholars could use various rhetorical questions, analogies and anecdotes to reveal their intention in an indirect way.

This leads me to ponder if we were to compare the paragraph development of current local Singaporean Chinese writers and Mainland Chinese writers, would we pick a vast difference in their written discourse?

With the process of globalization taking place and the assortment of westernized media/literature that are hurl at the Chinese people, it could impact of their style of written discourse in a huge way and this could result in a “blurring” of writing style amongst the various language groups.

Entry 3: The Other End of The Line

Week 4: Spoken Discourse

Let me first amuse my readers with a comic strip about a telephone conversation between 2 animals.

The focus of this week’s lecture is on understanding speech events involving a broad-spectrum use of spoken discourse in areas like narratives, telephone openings and use of listener responses in conversation.

My entry would focus on the Singaporean Phone Opening.

My family usually has our reunion dinner at my grandfather’s place. However, we decided to have it at our house this year and my mother wanted me to drop a phone call to my grandfather on Friday to remind him about the dinner before Saturday.

The telephone conversation below was translated from mandarin.

Opening of the phone call:

(Ring)

GP: Hello

Me: Hello, Ah-Gong ah?

GP: Guangyi! Have you eaten?

Me: Yes I have Ah-Gong. What about you?

GP: I have already eaten. What are you doing now?

Me: Oh I am watching TV. My mother wants me to remind you…

Based on Sun (2004), the above conversation would be classified as other-orientated inquires. This is because the above telephone conversation focuses on the addressee’s general state and current activities.

My phone conversation with my grandfather might not be truly representative for all phone conversation that takes place between all grandfathers and grandchildren, but I feel that the general pattern is pretty similar to the eight moves that Sun (2004) identified in his study.

I shall now attempt to break down my phone conversation using Sun’s interactional moves framework.

(1) Greeting: Hello?/Hello, Ah-Gong ah

(2) Addressing: Hello, Ah-Gong ah

(3) Identification: Guangyi!

(4) Question-after-you: Have you eaten?

Like pointed out in Sun’s study, this demonstrates the phatic nature of the inquiry and these inquiries indicate to the addressee that the speaker is ‘‘favorably disposed to him’’. Like in my case, I would believe that my grandfather is favourably disposed to me.

(5) Affirmation of reconnecting: Yes, I have Ah-Gong. What about you?

I believe my reply constitutes to what Sun mentioned in his article that when that both participants appreciate their relationship and any efforts at maintaining the bond can be picked out in (5). He also mentioned that these comments also legitimized the foregrounding of such remarks at the beginning of their interaction prior to phatic inquiries such as ‘Have you eaten’, given the equal relationship between these conversational partners.

(6) Voice recognition comments: Not applicable.

Although the caller (me) did not offered self-identification, the callee (my grandpa) made it clear that he had actually know who was calling him by acknowledging my name in (3).

(7) Disturbance Check: What are you doing now?

In Chinese culture, asking what the caller could be one of the means of starting telephone conversations between familiar counterparts. Or in my grandfather’s case, he might just want to find out if I any other important things to attend to. If not, he could chat a little more with me on the phone.

(8) Prioritized communicative acts: My mother wants me to remind you…

Overall, I agree with Sun that small talk in Chinese discourse is both constitutive and reflective: through linguistic choices, callers and callees project their perceptions of the relationships between them and construct discourse interactions accordingly, like in the case of my telephone conversation with me and my grandfather.

Now let me end my entry, with a movie trailer from this 2008 movie called "The Other End of The Line".

I watched this movie quite a while ago (on YouTube... and it's still on YouTube!). I was not particularly inspired by the movie, but I thought the inter-cultural relationship concept that transpired based on a telephone call was a interesting one, though unconvincing in real life. Well for anyone who might be suffering a writer's block after the festive holidays, maybe watching this movie might give you some inspiration. Ha Ha!

Happy Lunar New Year to all!

Entry 2: Yearly Lunar Episodes

Week 3: Speech Events

Following Mary Fong’s (2000) study of the ‘Luck Talk’ in celebrating the Chinese New Year, I was inspired to write a follow-up piece examining Singaporean Chinese people’s ways of speaking during the New Year event.

To conduct my study, I roped in my sister’s (Age: 19) and mother’s (Age: 49) help. I interviewed them separately on areas mentioned by Fong in her article. Though my study is not meant to be exhaustive, it suggests that some ‘Luck Talk’ does permeate conversations during the Lunar New Year, and it happens more so during the festive season than in everyday talk.

I focussed on the 2 research questions that Mary Fong highlighted:

1. What is the meaning of bad luck and good luck?
2. What are the speech acts of 'Luck Talk' related to the beliefs of good and bad luck of the Singaporean people during our Chinese New Year celebration?

Below are their responses (edited for succinctness):

Question 1:

Overall, both my sister and mother responded in a similar fashion saying bad luck is when things do not go your way all the time. Typical examples would include misfortunes in life, like loss of money, sudden lost of loved ones and inability to reach certain goals at work. Good luck is the opposite of bad luck. It happens when things seemingly go your way and you meet good fortunes in most of the things you set out to do.

However, my mother added that bad luck and good luck changes from year to year for a person and one can carry out certain acts to improve one’s luck.

Question 2:

Generally, both participants agreed with Fong’s findings that greeting and well wishes are exchanged to express good wishes and greetings for the purpose of creating a happy ambience and sharing hopes of good luck with one another to start off the Lunar New Year.

On the portion about positive conversation, my sister highlighted that a proto-typical positive conversation that follows after exchanging greetings would include questions like:

• Are you still studying?
• What are you majoring in?
• Which year of study are you in?
• Do you have any boyfriends?

What is interesting in that she mentioned that she is usually asked similar questions yearly by the same relatives.

This leads me to ponder if this constitutes to a positive conversation after all? Yes, you can view it as your relative being concerned about what’s going on in your life and he/she is trying to be positive by asking you seemingly forward-looking questions. However, if he/she has truly paid attention, would he/she still be asking you the same questions yearly?

No doubt, this situation usually takes place more often between distant relatives, it has become a speech event that never fails to occur take between my sister and some of my relatives during the festive season.

My stand is that I deem these speech events to be somewhat positive in nature, and it could also be a way to avoid saying words that signify death, sickness, poverty, or anything else unlucky so as not to invite bad luck for the coming year.

To my fellow GEK 1036 peer(s) who have encountered similar situations before, what is your take on it?