Blurb:

This edited volume has two closely related goals: first, to contribute to the field of discourse and interaction, and secondly, to fill a knowledge gap in Chinese discourse studies by providing a series of empirical research on Chinese language use in various social contexts.It should be noted that the present work fills an important knowledge gap in the field. Although many studies have been published, which describe certain aspects of Chinese discourse, no work to date has attempted to describe Chinese discourse and interaction in a wider sense. This is supposedly due to the fact that ‘discourse and interaction’ refers to a complex set of linguistic forms and practices – including both the micro and macro features of situated language use – and so there is not any single analytical methodology that could inquire into them in a comprehensive way. This problem manifests itself in the fact that, while many papers have been published on the various aspects of Chinese discourse,1 few books have been devoted to this topic. Furthermore, volumes addressing Chinese discourse deal with its fairly specialised aspects, such as politeness (Pan 2000) or institutional communication (Sun and Kádár 2008). In other words, no attempt has been made to study Chinese discourse in a comprehensive way. This trend is quite different from sociological inquiries into Chinese discourse (e.g. Dikötter 1992; Li 2008). This volume hopes to fill this gap in linguistic studies by providing a series of contributions, applying a wide array of approaches and methodologies