Asian Languages and Literatures

This study synthesizes longitudinal studies on development of L2 pragmatic competence in the study abroad (SA) context. The purpose is twofold: to describe pragmatic features investigated in the SA context and to find whether L2 learners improve their pragmatic competence over time. Two synthesis questions guides this investigation: 1) What pragmatic features have been examined in the SA context, and how have they been measured? and 2) Do adult L2 learners improve their pragmatic competence in the SA context over time? In response to the first question, speech acts, conversational implicatures, sociolinguistic forms (e.g., address forms, colloquial words, modal expressions, and listeners’ response forms) have been investigated in the SA context. Pragmatic competence has been examined in three modalities (comprehension, production and perception) by using various measures, such as discourse completion task (production), multimedia elicitation task (production), role-play (production), multiple-choice test (comprehension), and Language Awareness Interview (perception). In response to the second question, the findings have revealed that the SA context does not necessarily play a facilitative role in pragmatic development, and pragmatic development in the SA context is affected by the interplay of many variables at both individual and contextual levels, such as the nature of target pragmatic features (e.g., degree of directness and conventionality, accuracy and speed), exposure to target language, opportunities for practice, and engagement in interaction. As such, not all pragmatic features develop to the same degree or at the same pace, and not all learners can achieve equal pragmatic gains over the same SA time period.

This paper synthesizes cross-sectional studies of the effect of proficiency on second language (L2) pragmatics to answer the synthesis question: Does proficiency affect adult learners' pragmatic competence? Findings have revealed an overall positive proficiency effect on pragmatic competence, and in most cases higher proficiency learners have higher pragmatic competence. However, increased proficiency does not guarantee a native-like pragmatic performance because proficiency effect varies depending on the nature of target pragmatic features such as types of speech acts (degrees of directness and conventionality) (e.g., , modalities of pragmatic performance (comprehension and production) (e.g., Bradovi-Harlig

This study investigated changes in the use of mitigation and face negotiation in interaction in two advanced-level Chinese learners over eight weeks in China. Data included video-recordings of semi-structured interviews between the learners and a Chinese native speaker as well as their stimulated recalls with the recorded interviews. Sequential analysis of their use of mitiga-tion showed that, at the beginning of their study abroad (SA), the learners used the dànshì /kěshì ('but') clause but did not use the four mitigation forms identified as common sentential mitigation devices in Chinese corpora (redupli-cation of verbs, verb + yīxià, the sentence final particle ba, and a/ya). Eight weeks later, they started using the sentence final particle ba, but not the other three common sentential mitigation forms. At the discourse level, they used single pre-and post-expansions at the beginning of SA; eight weeks later, they started using multiple pre-and post-expansions. The stimulated recall data revealed that the learners' use of mitigation in both the pre-and post-interviews was based on their face (i.e., pubic self-image) consideration in interaction.

This chapter reviewed 29 existing instructional studies on pragmatic competence of high-proficiency learners and found that target pragmatic features in these studies included speech acts, conversational implicatures, pragmatic routines, gambits, epistemic stance, and hedging devices. In general, explicit instruction was more effective than implicit instruction. In a more effective instructional condition (e.g., an explicit condition), high-proficiency learners’ pragmatic gains were less affected by types of pragmatic features but were modulated on modality (i.e., awareness, comprehension, and production), while in a less effective instructional condition (e.g., an implicit condition with no input enhancement or recast), high-proficiency leaners were still able to learn some complex pragmalinguistic forms (e.g., bi-clausal request forms). In light of these findings, three future directions were offered at the end of this chapter.

Study abroad has proven to be greatly beneficial for second language acquisition and gaining intercultural competency. The COVID-19 pandemic affected study abroad significantly, cancelling programs and forcing programs to go online. As universities and colleges organize the return of study abroad, major/minor requirements, travel policy of study abroad countries, and university-affiliated programs are the most important factors to American undergraduate students. Going forward, universities need to accommodate study abroad programs to be more affordable and accessible for U.S. college students.

and Anime showcases fourteen essays by scholars trained or based in Japan, the United States, Australia, and Europe. The authors represent fields including comparative literature, modern art, comics, religion, visual culture, East Asian studies, literature, philosophy, popular culture, and linguistics, and their contributions encompass a similarly wide array of topics and approaches. Editor Mark W. MacWilliams's instructive introduction situates the essays in anime and manga studies, but also contextualizes them within present-day Japanese culture and beyond. Manga and anime, according to MacWilliams, are "a key part of contemporary Japanese visual culture. .. [but also]. .. play an increasingly important role in the global mediascape of electronics and print media that is shaping the collective imaginations, experiences, and feelings of people throughout the world" (MacWilliams, p. 5). MacWilliams also argues that first and foremost manga and anime are products of an "urban, industrial, capitalistic society. .. reproduced and distributed by mechanical and digital reproduction technologies. .. [and] intentionally designed to attract a mass audience"-thus making them "mass art" rather than "ahistoric" popular culture (MacWilliams, p. 6). Finally-in conjunction with Japanese fashion, pop music, and TV dramas-both are central players in Japan's "soft power/soft nationalism," and both have effectively displaced Disney and Americanization as the new "dominant transnational economic and cultural force" (MacWilliams, pp. 15, 13). Lauding his contributors for avoiding the "Orientalist trap" of anointing Japan as the exotic other or of touting Japan and its culture as unique, while nonetheless acknowledging that manga and anime are not "culturally odorless" simply because they have global appeal (MacWilliams, p. 18), MacWilliams concludes his introduction with succinct, informative summaries of the essays, suggesting that they "be read in light of [the] criticisms [of manga and anime studies]" that Jaqueline Berndt raises in the book's closing chapter (MacWilliams, p. 23). That being the case, I now turn to Jaqueline Berndt's essay, which informatively summarizes manga scholarship in Japanese, maps the evolution of the term manga, and situates manga globally as "one of the three main comic cultures of the world along with American comics and Franco-Belgian bande dessinée" (Berndt, p. 299). The majority of her essay, however, critiques both Western and Japanese manga (and anime) scholarship. She notes, for example, that Western scholars tend to know either manga and Japan/Japanese on the one hand or Western comics on the other hand, but not both; that they uncritically view manga and anime as "mirrors of Japanese culture"; that they "neglect the aesthetic and cultural ambiguity of manga" as well as its historical and cultural hybridity; and that they ascribe manga's international acclaim to the uniqueness of Japanese culture and not to conditions of production, distribution, and consumption (Berndt, p. 296). Berndt also faults Japanese scholarship for tending to overprivilege the story manga and seeking manga's roots in premodern painting.

In the seventies and eighties literary canons in the United States came under attack for being too exclusionary, 1 but in Japanese studies we have only begun to look at issues of canonicity-at how the Japanese canon 2 has been constructed, especially in the United States, at what role translation has played in that formation, and why our canon differs from that of the French or Germans. 3 Many assume, as have writings and essays on translations from at least two symposia on Japanese translation, 4 that the principal issue is equivalence. Accuracy, faithfulness to the "original" texts-in other words, 1 As a result, English literature now includes works by Asian, Chicano/Latino, and African America authors, while Spanish considers Latin American literature standard. Works written by Spanish-speaking residents or recent immigrants to the U.S. are less acceptable, as is francophone (African or Caribbean) literature in some French departments. 2 The question as to who constitutes a Japanese writeris an intriguing one. Are birth and citizenship essential? What about having to write in Japanese? In their conference presentations both Faye Kleeman and one keynote speaker, Keiko Yoneha, brought this issue to the fore, as do Ian Levy, an American writing in Japanese, and Foumiko Kometani ,who resides in Los Angeles but writes and publishes in Japanese and in Japan. 3 My thanks to Robert Khan for this insight.

In Chinese literary scholarship in the U.S., the literary and cultural achievements made by China's ethnic minority groups (shaoshu minzu) remain a largely uncharted territory in clear need of more serious investigation. Some recent scholarship on ethnic minority literatures in China includes Mark Bender's edited ethnic poetry anthology The Borderlands of Asia: Culture, Place, Poetry (Cambria Press 2017) and the chapters on Tibetan literature and the ethnic concerns of the prominent modern writer Lao She () in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (Columbia University Press 2013). Despite the wonderful insights on minority literatures developed in these studies, single-authored monographs on non-Han literatures are severely lacking in our field, and Chinese literary studies in the U.S. as a whole seems to be dominated by a Han-focused perspective. Yuqing Yang's 2018 monograph, Mystifying China's Southwest Ethnic Borderlands: Harmonious Heterotopia contributes to enriching the research on Chinese shaoshu minzu literatures. An ethnic Bai scholar trained at the University of Oregon and currently teaching at Minzu University of China, Yang charts the cultural myths and fantasies surrounding three minority regions in southwest China,

The recent debate among Stanford's undergraduate student body regarding the revival of a "Western civilization" humanities requirement has propelled me, a Ph.D. candidate in East Asian Languages and Cultures, to reflect on the value of a humanistic education. As a native of China and a sixth-year humanities Ph.D. student at Stanford, I have the "unusual" path of having studied as an English and French literature major in a liberal arts college in the Midwest before my graduate career in Chinese studies on the Farm. The core of the debate -whether or not the restoration of a Westfocused curriculum is the best way to enhance the humanities education at Stanford -has made me reflect on how my own educational trajectory that encompasses many traditions has contributed to my unwavering empathy for humanity and curiosity of the world.

This paper discusses how authenticity is understood and negotiated in the context of the preservation of urban historic heritage in China today. In the age of rapid economic development and social change, how to safeguard the historic identity and memories embedded in urban districts while encouraging economic growth has been a perennial problem concerning late-developing countries like China. The contested notion of authenticity lies at the heart of the debate between urban historic preservation and economic growth, as this fluid term merits a myriad of interpretations and contemporary re-workings. This study combines theoretical examinations, field research and interviews to reveal the inner logic behind Chinese cities' current practice of transforming urban historic districts into iconic tourist destinations. It probes how authenticity is understood differently by local residents and urban planners by using the example of the famous transformation project of the Kuan and Zhai Alleys (Kuanzhai xiangzi) in Chengdu. This study reveals the intrinsic tensions between urban cultural preservation and economic growth in China and how the "growth coalition" (Zhang, Jingxiang, and Fulong Wu. 2008. "Mega-event Marketing and Urban Growth Coalitions-A Case Study of Nanjing Olympic New Town." The Town Planning Review 79 (2-3): 209-226.) formed by local governments and developers impose elite ideals of "authenticity" on urban historic districts. In response, the author proposes a historically aware and community-focused approach in preserving urban historic heritage and safeguarding cultural memories in late-developing countries like China.

This essay investigates how Chinese immigrants were imagined and represented in American political discourses, news media, and photography at the turn of the twentieth century. At a time when Asian immigrants were regarded as both racial others and cultural aliens, San Francisco's Old Chinatown became a geographical embodiment of the poignant experiences of Chinese, who were making a home in the "Oriental quarters" in a foreign land. Simultaneously exoticized and condemned, Chinese immigrants inspired heated discussions on race in turn-of-the-century America. Photography lent itself to the visualization of a racial other, who eventually came to be represented in a humanizing light in the lens of California-based photographer Arnold Genthe. Probing social, political discourses and visual politics, this essay uses many precious historical sources and images housed at Stanford University to examine the history of Chinese immigrants and their stories in America.

This article discusses how Chinese cities are transforming in visually radical ways to reconfigure their historic memories. In the midst of ‘creative city campaigns’ sweeping over China, which emphasize the discovery and exploitation of the creative-historic-cultural elements of urban pasts, Chengdu, one of China’s ‘New First-tier Cities’, epitomizes the pivotal role that visual culture plays in facilitating urban change. Grounded in critical analysis of both indigenous urban-making strategies within China and Chinese cities’ borrowing of western visual practices, this article investigates how Chengdu, as an emerging metropolis in globalizing China, introduces trompe l’oeil-style photographic installations on the site of its famous Kuanzhai Alleys (Kuanzhai xiangzi) transformation project.

Urban planners in Chengdu take advantage of trompe l’oeil (‘trick-the-eye’), a post-Renaissance Western artistic innovation, to blur the boundaries between memory and reality. By transforming a vernacular architectural heritage site in Chengdu into a modern interactive cultural Disneyland, urban planners create embodied interactivity on the current tourist site of the Kuanzhai Alleys. While tourists indulge in the enchanting pleasure of a bygone urban past revived through visual tricks on the site, the people of Chengdu criticize the transformed district for failing to represent the authentic memories of the city. By revealing how the Kuanzhai Alleys becomes a site of contested urban experiences, the article probes the role of artistic creations in mediating memory and reality, the past and the present in fast-changing Chinese cities.

Article can be accessed here: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jucs/2019/00000006/00000001/art00001;jsessionid=2dod21sel3ig8.x-ic-live-01

The phrase “Virtuous wife” is a loaded gender term common to many patriarchal societies and can help us understand the social expectations and identities of women in pre-modern times. The ancient Near East and traditional China, two of the world’s longest enduring patriarchal civilizations, shared crucial aspects of their assumptions and requirements for the “virtuous wife.” Literature was the major vehicle to articulate society’s expectations for women, and such literary canons as the biblical wisdom literature and (both elite and folk) Chinese sayings address strikingly similar concerns for the life and role of women. This study, combining literary studies and socio-economic analysis, reveals the “double identity” of women in those two ancient societies. On the one hand, women were seen as subservient to and ranked lower than men due to a rigid gender hierarchy in marriage and labor division. On the other hand, women exercised a considerable amount of power at home and acted as the man’s indispensable advisor and pillar of the family. Well-praised women of virtue were even regarded as highly as respectable senior males in the two ancient societies, and many similar literary devices existed in the depiction of the life-giving wife and mother. By presenting an innovative comparative study of two pre-modern societies, this paper strives to demystify the “woman of virtue” and historicize our outlook of gender issues by arguing that, when trying to understand women’s identity in patriarchal cultures, we should acknowledge the importance society assigns to them under specific circumstances and reveal the subtle power relation between men and women.

This article probes a long‐overlooked concept in modern China—ethnic indigeneity—to propose new ways of looking at the relationship between the Chinese nation and its multiethnic minority groups. The Western scholarly community has long held that because the Chinese state uses the Marxist‐tainted term shaoshu minzu (ethnic minorities) as the official designation for the non‐Han people, the concept of indigeneity is irrelevant to understanding China and its ethnic diversity. This article investigates how reform‐era China has witnessed the emergence of an indigenous cultural consciousness exhibited by the non‐Han people such as the Qiang people from southwest China. The article argues that minority groups like the Qiang are enthusiastic about “enterprising” their ethnic identities by writing minority histories into the foundational myths of a multiethnic, unified China and challenging the historical hierarchy of the “civilized” Han center and its “uncultured” non‐Han peripheries. By analyzing locally produced scholarly and touristic discourses, ethnocultural writing, and filming efforts in southwest China, the article proposes that “indigeneity” entails the interactive processes for a minority group to carve out its cultural, economic, and political spaces of creative belonging within the state by conversing with national narratives and contending for the epistemological authority to represent itself in multiethnic China.

This is the newest and most comprehensive collection of global Chinese-language poetry edited by Jiayan Mi, a renowned poet and professor. It includes poetry written by Chinese-language poets from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, North America, and beyond. We believe that poetry has the power of healing, inspiring, and reconstructing communities in the age of the pandemic.

This paper discusses how authenticity is understood and negotiated in the context of the preservation of urban historic heritage in China today. In the age of rapid economic development and social change, how to safeguard the historic identity and memories embedded in urban districts while encouraging economic growth has been a perennial problem concerning late-developing countries like China. The contested notion of authenticity lies at the heart of the debate between urban historic preservation and economic growth, as this fluid term merits a myriad of interpretations and contemporary re-workings. This study combines theoretical examinations, field research and interviews to reveal the inner logic behind Chinese cities' current practice of transforming urban historic districts into iconic tourist destinations. It probes how authenticity is understood differently by local residents and urban planners by using the example of the famous transformation project of the Kuan and Zhai Alleys (Kuanzhai xiangzi) in Chengdu. This study reveals the intrinsic tensions between urban cultural preservation and economic growth in China and how the "growth coalition" (Zhang, Jingxiang, and Fulong Wu. 2008. "Mega-event Marketing and Urban Growth Coalitions-A Case Study of Nanjing Olympic New Town." The Town Planning Review 79 (2-3): 209-226.) formed by local governments and developers impose elite ideals of "authenticity" on urban historic districts. In response, the author proposes a historically aware and community-focused approach in preserving urban historic heritage and safeguarding cultural memories in late-developing countries like China.