Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Editors
Monica Heller
Richard J. Watts
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin New York
Mouton de Gruyter
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ISBN 3-11-018267-X hb
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Contents
Acknowledgements
ix
Chapter 2
Communication theory and the Western bias
Denis McQuail
21
Chapter 3
Towards multiculturalism in discourse studies
Shi-xu and Robert Maier
33
Chapter 4
Beyond differences in cultural values and modes of communication
Jan Servaes
49
73
89
103
viii
Contents
119
139
165
177
197
211
Contributors
239
Index
243
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere thanks to the series editor, Monica
Heller, for her continued interest in and invaluable suggestions for the book. We
also want to thank Lut Lams for her enthusiastic help and support in the initial
stage of the project. Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner are grateful to the editor
of Pragmatics for allowing them to reproduce part of their paper (2001, 11 [3])
in Chapter 6. Finally, all of us wish to thank Wendy Zhao as well as Xiao Yang
and Hu Rong for their meticulous work in the last stage of editing.
Chapter 1
The study of non-Western discourse
Shi-xu
The present volume offers studies of non-Western discourse. It has two interrelated aims. First, it will argue that non-Western discourse cannot be contained in a
universal, general or integrated theory of linguistic communication or discourse but must be understood in a culturally pluralist perspective. To that end,
the book will critically examine the dominant universalist discourse in the profession in terms of its theoretical inadequacy and political consequences. Further,
it will explore the thoroughly cultural nature of discourse, scientic language included, as it outlines a culturally pluralist vision. In addition, it will present empirical research to show the incommensurable difference and contrast between
the Western and non-Western discourses on the same and different issues. In
this way, the book makes for a case of non-Western, non-White and Third-World
discourse as a legitimate, necessary and normal part of discourse research.
To take the proposed pluralist view of discourse seriously, secondly, the present
book will also study the case of China and Hong Kongs public and mediated discourses on the latters historic transition from colonialism. In particular, as a way
of reclaiming non-Western discourse, it will attempt to highlight the complexity,
diversity and forms of otherness of those discourses. To achieve these purposes,
it will focus on the discourses which have been marginalized in their Western
counterparts and seek to identify and document the Chinese and Hong Kongs
specic ways of speaking their concepts, concerns, aspirations, resistance, verbal strategies, etc. with reference to similar or different issues. In the process, it
will draw upon culturally different methods and local specic context.
Let me make explicit the problems that have motivated the present book; this
will make clear the relevance and urgency of our endeavor here. On the one hand,
there seems to be a dominant universalistic ideology operating in the mainstream
discourse scholarship. That is, here linguistic communication or discourse is often assumed to be an independently given and neutral means of representation
and, furthermore, to have universal properties and therefore function universally. So, (inter-/multidisciplinary) models of language, discourse and communication are frequently presented as more or less comprehensive and valid across all
cultures, implicitly or explicitly. Think of the familiar grand narratives of human language, interpersonal/intercultural/mass communication, discourse,
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etc. Issues, questions and data in empirical research, too, are routinely proffered
as universally interesting and replicable. Think of English data as the normal,
questions of self and identity as the central, or the issue of politeness as
the natural. On closer inspection, however, theoretical notions more often than
not turn out to derive from Western traditions, Western Weltanschauung and Western realities; in many cases they can be traced to the Western projects of Structuralism and the Enlightenment (Carey 1992; McQuail this volume; Shi-xu 2000).
Empirical questions, too, often embody Western phenomena, experiences, interests and concerns. When Western theoretical discourse totalizes, non-Western,
non-White and Third-Word metadiscourses are effectively excluded or marginalized. Further, when Western phenomena are privileged as the central, general or standard object of enquiry, discourses from Non-Western, non-White
and Third-World cultures, including the constituent outlooks, perspectives, concerns and aspirations, etc., are relegated to a local, particular or other position in (or, one might even argue, outside) the international scholarship. To reclaim non-Western discourse, at both theoretical and empirical levels, then is urgently called for.
On the other hand, as we enter the new millennium, the division and alienation among the worlds populations are being deepened (Bauman 1998; Huntington 1998). The erstwhile Cold War is now replaced by the new world (dis)order:
neocolonial repression and anti-imperialist resistance occur simultaneously between groups, nation states, regions, blocs and so on. Indeed, the global animosity, coupled with world capitalism and neo-colonial expansion, has made cultural
coexistence and common progress more difcult than ever before. The irony of
this international antagonism and fragmentation is that the global village is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent at the same time, in nance and trade, the environment and health, and regional and international affairs, through accelerated advancement in communication technologies, human
migration and international travel. Time and again, we have seen that what we
say or do here can impact upon, change, even eliminate, lives there; problems there can quickly become problems here. To pay more attention to nonWestern discourses, then, is also badly needed for the survival of the human cultural world.
The situation is almost desperate, but not hopeless. In fact, we believe that a
cultural-political approach to discourse research can intervene and make a difference. In particular, we want to advocate as a most timely and effective strategy a radical cultural turn to non-Western discourse, hence the titular imperative,
Read the Cultural Other.
In drawing critical attention to the domination over and marginalization of nonWestern discourses in the discourse scholarship, we have no intention of course
to deny or overshadow the work already existing in the eld (e.g. Dissanayake
1988; Gumperz and Levinson 1996; Ngg 1986; Shen 1999; Silverstein and Urban 1996; Young 1994). But endeavors such as these are few and far between
and rather weak under the West-dominated, universalizing aura. Given the current international cultural imbalance and disorder in the social sciences and humanities, the struggle against cultural imperialism in general and universalism
in particular will be a long and arduous process. To resist the rampant universalist discourse and to combat the continued marginalization of non-Western, nonWhite and Third-World concerns, materials, methods, theories and worldviews,
more groups and institutions must get involved and more systematic and widerranging research conducted.
Shi-xu
topic, shared or otherwise, that is of some particular interest to the West(ern readership), say the environment, poverty or in the present case, Hong Kongs historic
transition as part of the worlds postcolonial history. That means that non-Western
discourse would be a selected entity, rather than a totality. Third, such discourse
speaks of the same subject matter in different ways or patterns from Western
discourse (Bhabha 1994; Csaire 1972; Lee 1994; Ngg 1986; Said 1978, 1993).
Different cultural symbolic forms construct different worlds and convey different meanings. From Wittgensteins (1968) perspective, these can be said to be
different language games which share a family of resemblances but nothing
in common for all. For example, Asian communication is supposed to maintain
harmonious relationships (e.g. Dissanayake 1988; Heisey 2000) whereas American-Western communication often strives to express individuality (Bellah et al.
1985). Finally, non-Western discourse must be understood from the global historical perspective of colonialism, postcolonialism and neocolonialism. For, nonWestern discourse is not, and has never been, in an equal relationship with Western discourse but remains marginalized (Pennycook 1998; Spivak 1988b); at the
same time, however, it also possesses the agency to reinvent culturally liberating
experience and reality.
The last point deserves some elaboration, as this will have particularly significant implications for our project. In the eld of (mediated) linguistic communication, national cultures and ideologies are often assumed to be the dominant
inuence (e.g. Knight and Nakano 1999; Lee et al. 2002). Accordingly, communicative practice is frequently accounted for in terms of the characteristics
of the individual nations or the nations ideological systems. Consequently, not
only does research result in relativism but the relations and practices of cultural power between the national discourses are smoothed over as well. For example, studies in the international reporting on the Hong Kong transition have usually explained the media discourses as relative to the respective national say,
British, American, Chinese or Hong Kong political economies and ideologies.
But, as much work in postcolonial studies (e.g. Ashcroft et al. 1989; Hutcheon
1989) and, more generally, cultural studies (e.g. Bhabha 1994; Hall 1996; Said
1978, 1993; Spivak 1988a, 1988b) has shown, linguistic communication, including print, broadcasting and digital media, cannot be adequately understood without taking into account the worlds cultural history the long and continued history of cultural imperialism. For the present project, then, the discourses of China, Hong Kong and diaspora and the counterpart discourses of the West cannot
be understood from the respective national perspectives. Crucially and fundamentally, these culturally differentiated discourses must be viewed as steeped in
the worlds cultural-historical context of continued and continuing imperial, hegemonic order through rst colonialism, then post-colonialism to more recent
forms of neocolonialism.
Western and non-Western worlds, including their discourses, are not considered here as essentialized, homogeneous and monolithic entities. Cultural discourses, Eastern and Western, are internally diversied and externally indistinct
and constantly shifting. The same complexity may be said of Chinese discourse
and Hong Kongs discourse. In the present project on non-Western discourse,
what we want to point to is broad Chinese and Hong Kong patterns of discourse
vis--vis the relevant Western discourse. Furthermore, it should be noted that
categories of such discourses, just like those of any other reality, are always contentious. For, cultures or cultural discourses interact with one another and with
speaking individuals, on the one hand and on the other hand speakers categorize
discourses with vested interest. This would suggest that we should speak of nonWestern discourses in the plural. But as a research starting point and culturalpolitical process, non-Western discourse may be used as a form of strategic
essentialism (Bucholtz 2001) to valorize and to empower the non-Western, nonWhite world vis--vis the dominant white Western discourse.
A number of implications for discourse research follow from the above account. To start with, if Western and non-Western discourses are not a matter
of center and periphery, but different ways of constructing and acting upon the
world or different language games offering different worlds of experience,
then Western discourse must not be taken as the sole object worth studying. NonWestern discourse, which has hitherto been marginalized and subordinated, must
also be treated seriously. Local and culturally pluralist theoretical perspectives
should then be adopted to make sense of the culturally relevant issues and data.
More importantly, if the relation between these language games e.g. Eastern
and Western discourses is not symmetrical but saturated with power, then discourse research and the study of non-Western discourse in particular must help
make explicit, highlight and undermine the cultural power relations and practices;
it must help reclaim, valorize and empower the repressed non-Western discourse.
In addition, if non-Western discourse is not autochthonous and monolithic, but
hybridized, diversied and possessed of creative agency, then discourse studies
must explore the complexity, new identities and the possibility of cultural relation building and transformation.
2. Methodological considerations
The empirical focus of the present project is China and Hong Kongs discourses.
The methodological account here will therefore center around this focus. To start
with, it may be observed that we study discourses in various genres (e.g. journalistic, literary, political and historiographic) and modes (e.g. print and digital
media) and do so with a diversity of specic tasks in mind. The methodological
Shi-xu
procedures and techniques to be employed then will vary from case to case. However, given the shared purpose of the present endeavor, we observe two overarching principles of source and data selection.
To understand these principles, it may be useful to make clear a more basic
consideration underlying them. That is, the aim of this project is not to describe
what the discourses of China, Hong Kong and their diaspora are like or do, as
such. Such discourses, or any other, are neither pre-given nor unied, and the
boundaries are in ux rather than clearly marked; therefore, a purely descriptive
account cannot be given. So, in making material selections and analytical claims,
we generally do not try to achieve representativeness. Rather, the present project is meant to introduce, interpret and highlight some aspects of China, Hong
Kong and their diasporic discourses, for a largely Western readership. So the criteria for choice of data and source will have less to do with what is typical of
the Chinese and Hong Kongs media discourses than with what we believe the
Western audience ought to know.
We judge what the Western discourse community should know by what they
already know. To help us determine this background knowledge, we draw chiey
on two broad bodies of reference material as alluded to earlier. On the one hand,
we refer to existing literature on the dominance of the relevant Western media
discourse on the Hong Kong transition (e.g. Cao 2000; Flowerdew and Scollon
1997; Knight and Nakano 1999; Lee et al. 2002). On the other hand, we rely on
rst-hand information such as furnished in Part 2 of the book (i.e. Chapters 5, 6
and 7). From those sources of information, we observe that, around the time of
Hong Kongs historic transition, the Western discourse community is saturated
with a set of interrelated (sub)discourses. On the one hand, Great Britain is portrayed as the cause of Hong Kongs success and as handing over Hong Kong according to an international agreement. On the other hand, China is being doubted, discredited and threatened with sanctions from the West if it fails Western
expectations. At the same time, Hong Kong is stereotyped as unique and having
no real relation with China. Effectively, this string of dominant discourses undermines, dismisses or excludes any possible discourses from China and Hong
Kong and their diaspora.
Considering this Western discourse background, we decide on two major principles in identifying (sources and) data and presenting the resultant discourses.
One principle is that a discourse must reect some form of marginality. That is,
the discourse must be either absent from, or meagerly engaged with or discredited
by the corresponding Western media. So for example, a discourse about why the
return of Hong Kong to China is possible at the time when it occurs qualies as
such marginalized as it is ideologically repressed in the Western media discourse.
Chinese and Hong Kongs expressions of their interrelations, which are frequently
constituted out of metaphors of bodily and familial connections, form an impor-
tant focus in part because these are rarely taken up in the Western understanding
and denition of the interrelation except perhaps as objects of irony.
Alternatively, the other principle is that a discourse must reect difference.
That is, the discourse to be studied and highlighted must embody a version of
events, or a form of action, that is different from that in the relevant Western discourse. For instance, the accounts for Hong Kongs success by the Chinese and
Hong Kongs media constitute signicant exemplars of non-Western discourse,
unfamiliar yet interesting to Western readership, because they provide a great
variety of explanations, whereas the Western media attribute the success virtually exclusively to British colonial rule. Similarly, the rich variety of metaphors
in the Chinese and Hong Kongs media constructing the interconnections and
interdependence of China and Hong Kong is taken up as a topic of interest here
because the Western discourse has insisted on the uniqueness and independent
character of Hong Kong.
In order to deal with the complexity of marginality and difference and the
broader imperial order, we have tried to include a variety of genres, ranging from
journalistic publications, political speeches, magazine articles, web diaries, literature and historical accounts. But there are still other discursive phenomena in
the Chinese and Hong Kong media that are not presented here, revealing and instructive as they may be. As I indicated above, it is not the intention of this book
to present a comprehensive and even-handed survey. For the same reason, we
have not been exhaustive in the selection of sources and data. In that connection,
it may be mentioned that the materials in the Hong Kong media which express
points of view contrary to those in the Chinese media but are close to those in
the Western discourse are not given prominence. This is because they would already be familiar to the Western audience.
In the analysis of media texts, we have pursued a qualitative, discourse analytic approach in most cases (except Chapter 5). This is because, as we indicated above, cultural discourses are neither internally homogeneous nor externally discrete, but diversied and contested and, furthermore, our research objective is precisely to explore discursive subtleties and complexities. In particular,
it may be mentioned that the analytical tools of contemporary theories of metaphor, argumentation, etc., can be useful because they provide insights into the
strategic use of certain metaphorical images (e.g. Chapter 9) and certain argument schemes (e.g. Chapter 6) by the different political agents and social groups
involved in the historic transition.
However, there will surely arise tensions between the standard methods on
the one hand and the local issues and ideas on the other. Existing dominant methods of analysis are often Anglo-American-Western in origin and orientation. China and Hong Kongs discourse materials and questions will require new concepts
and approaches. For instance, identity is not a universal concern; local, particular
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Shi-xu
issues, such as that of harmony or relation (re)building, may be real and pressing.
Inter-/cross-/multidisciplinarity is thus not sufcient for global social science; it
must be coupled with cultural diversity, in worldview, theory, methodology, topics, data and concerns. Thus, under the general principle of ethnographic appropriateness, we draw on methods eclectically and adapt them to non-Western materials and issues as closely as possible.
It may be mentioned, too, that most of the authors here live in between the
East and the West and have direct experience with intercultural difference and
tension. The hybridized, diasporic and living-in-between-East/West cultures position is an advantage and a source of strength, because it not only constitutes a
moral-rational basis for building cultural co-existence, but also provides the best
vantage point and resources to help achieve it.
11
1997; Knight and Nakano 1999; Lee 2000). Namely, the dominant Western media projected the transition to be a dramatic event, or as Lee et al. (2002) call it
global media spectacle, merely in order to attract audience. At the same time,
Western media discourse predominantly doubted the Chinese handling of the return of Hong Kong precisely to satisfy its continued imperialist desire (see Chapters 6 and 7). As soon as Hong Kongs return failed to produce the turbulences
that the West had expected, Western media attention quickly waned.
In addition to this subjugated discursive position of China and Hong Kong, we
must understand the broader colonial history. Hong-Kong-Chinas modern history is a history of Western (British, French and Japanese) imperialist domination
a history that has largely been repressed or conveniently forgotten in Western
(media) discourse. Let us give a brief description. This serves as a general historical framework for the book, but individual chapters will supply further detailed information relevant to their particular data.
Geographically, Hong Kong is composed of three parts, Hong Kong Island,
Kowloon and the New Territories. Historically, they were part of Chinas Guandong province. In the middle of 19th century, however, the British waged two
Opium Wars against China and forced the Qing government to sign the Treaty of
Nanking (1842), whereby Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain, and later the
Treaty of Peking (1860), whereby Kowloon was ceded. In 1898, the British obtained from the Qing government the lease of the New Territories (91% of todays
Hong Kong area) for a term of 99 years; it expired on 30 June 1997.
The aforementioned treaties are not recognized by any of the subsequent Chinese governments. After many failed attempts by the subsequent Chinese governments, in 1984 China succeeded in the negotiations with the British government
and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration. This, as may be noted, occurs in
the context of tremendous economic success at home and enhanced political position abroad. The declaration provides for British withdrawal from Hong Kong
on 30 June 1997, and the restoration of Chinese sovereignty on 1 July 1997. According to the agreement, Hong Kong becomes a Special Administrative Region
of China, to be administered by the people of Hong Kong, with its existing system to remain unchanged for 50 years. When Hong Kong was returned to China
in 1997, 156 years of British colonial control came to an end.
However, there is little mention in the Western media discourse of the economic pressure or considerations of international politics as at least part of the causes
of Hong Kongs decolonization. Further, China has even been called imperialist
or the neocolonizer of Hong Kong. The details and implications of such cultural memory loss and negligence will be revealed in the rest of the book.
12
Shi-xu
13
negotiated form of communication must be worked out and practiced for the survival of the human cultural community. He begins by examining the differences
in thinking, value system and modes of communication between the East/Asia
and West/Europe, with reference to two cases: human rights and Thai culture.
From here arises the question of what human communities have to do with cultural differences in ways of speaking, especially in the current conditions of human suffering, environmental disasters and global risks. In opposition to cultural and national relativism, Servaes suggests that intercultural criticism is necessary, as is the imagination of a shared global community. To achieve these ends,
negotiation and consensus on the ethical principles of communication between
the worlds cultures (e.g. motivation to understand, respect and critique) are required as a prerequisite. The multiculturalist stance taken here further warrants
non-Western discourse as a legitimate topic and the basic ethics for intercultural
communication suggested here provides a moral starting point for the study of
non-Western discourse.
Part 2 examines Western media discourse on Hong Kong and China during the
historical transition; this will serve as both the methodological background for
selecting non-Western, Chinese and Hong Kongs discourses and an important
motivation for studying discourses from non-Western cultures. Thus, in Chapter 5, Jan Servaes and Sankaran Ramanathan, through qualitative and quantitative investigations, reveal huge and alarming imbalances between the European
and Asian presses in cross-cultural representation. Through studying 15 newspapers and magazines in Asia and Europe each, published between 27 June and 6
July 1997, they show how many and what kind of European events were reported
in the Asian media, and, conversely, in the European media. One major nding
is that, despite intense international travel, digital media and the so-called globalization, reporting of Asian events by the European media is signicantly less
than that of European events by the Asian counterpart. Of the total of 3725 news
items studied, 1563 European events and 1413 stories about Hong Kong, respectively, are found in the Asian media, whereas only 749 Asian events are covered
in the European counterpart of which almost half actually relate to the media spectacle of the Hong Kong event. Another major nding is that the coverage of Europe by the Asian press is far more extensive and elaborate than that of
Asia by the European counterpart. In that connection, while Asian publications
tend to be more balanced in their reporting of European events, Asian stories in
the European publications are represented more often than not in a negative light
and frequently from a nationalistic and ethnocentric perspective.
In Chapter 6, Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner offer a critical analysis of the
Western media discourse on Hong Kongs transition. Based on multinational and
multilingual media sources, they identify and highlight two major, recurrent sorts
of discourses of cultural repression. One is that of ad baculum in which China is
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Shi-xu
warned, or its role in Hong Kongs future development threatened, with possible
sanctions by the West. For instance, it predicts or describes the negative consequences that will follow from the West on China if and when the latter fails to act
in the way the West expects. The other is a discourse in which the West (media)
denes the identities for Hong Kong and China, instead of letting them have an
opportunity to do it themselves and, further, in which it uses these identity denitions to prescribe what Hong Kong and China must and must not do. For example, they characterize Hong Kong as an international city and then use it as a
reason to caution against Chinas attempt to change it. In conclusion, the authors
place these discourses in the broader historical and cultural context to reveal the
underlying, continued Western pattern of colonialist desires.
In Chapter 7, Junhao Hong critically examines the Western view of press freedom in Hong Kong with a view to showing the need to understand the latters
press from its own cultural perspective. Here he proceeds from the standpoint
that freedom of the press is not universal but culturally dened and provides a
contrastive analysis of the Western discourse on freedom of the press and the local peoples own. He shows that in the Western media the Western perspective
and criteria are used in evaluating freedom of press issues in Hong Kong, whereby the views of the people of Hong Kong, a population of seven million, are ignored. And yet, not only does the Western view of Hong Kongs freedom of the
press not necessarily reect the experience of the Hong Kong people, but also
their strong criticism of Hong Kongs press freedom has reected the Western
hegemonic tendency to use Western models for other countries as the universal standards. In addition, he explores the reasons for these differences in perspectives and their implications.
Part 3 presents empirical studies of Hong Kong and Chinas discourses and
highlights a range of discursive, historical and political issues for the Western
as well as non-Western discourse communities. In Chapter 8, Shi-xu examines
Chinese and Hong Kong print media discourses and tries to characterize certain
forms of difference or Otherness compared with the sorts of dominant, Western
discourses considered in Part 2. Based on contrastively selected data and through
general and specic accounts of their textual and contextual properties, he highlights a range of discourses unfamiliar yet signicant to the Western audience.
One such discourse is a series of statements formulating a variety of kinds of
symbolic signicance of Hong Kongs return to China, a topic at best minimally
treated by any Western media. Another is a discourse which gives prominence to
the reasons why the return of Hong Kong has become possible at all, which are
left almost completely implicit in the Western discourse. Still another important
kind of Hong Kong and Chinas discourses is a construction of the relations and
interconnections between Hong Kong and China against the backdrop of the
Western insistent discourse of Hong Kongs unique identity. Equally meaningful
15
is the discourse that accounts for Hong Kongs success in ways that oppose Western attributions to British colonial administration. These discourses effectively
reclaim the new identity and relationship, the agency, and hence the Otherness,
of the Hong Kong and Chinese people. At the same time, these discourses are
culturally rhetorical in the sense that they serve to argue against the dominant
Western discourses of Hong Kong (e.g. the implicit discourse that Hong Kong is
being handed over according to an international agreement).
In Chapter 9, Lee Cher Leng scrutinizes media political discourses in Hong
Kong and China and documents the cultural, linguistic and rhetorical ways that
they represent Hong Kongs history and future. It is thus an attempt to detail local, non-Western discourses in terms of their form, meaning and complexity.
Here she focuses on the metaphors that politicians as well as other media actors
use in the formulation of Chinese identity, Hong Kongs identity and their interrelationships. Thus she observes such metaphors as homecoming, becoming
ones own master, a bridge between China and rest of the world, being protected by a shield, esh and blood, root and shoot and lips and teeth. This
string of metaphors from both sides reproduce and maintain strong links and relationships between China and Hong Kong, despite or as opposed to the Western discourse of Hong Kongs uniqueness and autonomy. Within this metaphorical discourse, further, she also nds differences of use between China and Hong
Kongs metaphorical language. For instance, the Chinese media tend to favor some
kinds of metaphors (e.g. return to the fatherland) whereas the Hong Kong media favors others (e.g. reunion of the big family); they sometimes also use the
same metaphors in different ways. Lee shows how these metaphorical uses reect particular political interests and specic cultural circumstances. For example, the metaphor of Hong Kong as its true master realizes Chinas commitment to Hong Kongs freedom as well as its declaration of the ending of colonial
rule. Hong Kong medias metaphor of China and Hong Kong as a big family
serves to stress the equality between China and Hong Kong.
In Chapter 10, Kwok-kan Tam studies Hong Kongs identity from the perspective of Hong Kongs recent literature. Here Tam offers a complex account of
identity construction in the ctional, dramatic and poetic genres from the 1950s
through the 1990s. Here he shows a variety of forms of identity discourse that
are caught up in a web of local historical, cultural, socio-economical and political contexts. Further, he shows how such discourses appear, disappear and reappear. In particular, he points out that these discourses of identity are not stable
and not restricted by any particular temporal and spatial boundaries as conceptualized in Western theory of post-coloniality. They do not build cultural identity by accumulation or upon tradition. Rather, Hong Kongs literary identities
form a discursive space where everything oats and nothing settles. The fact that
Hong Kongs recent literature has continually engaged with the issue of identity
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Shi-xu
and transformed its shape and meaning is a reection of Hong Kongs persistent
search for new identities that may adapt the people of Hong Kong to the new realities facing Hong Kong. In this sense, the important question is not what identities the Hong Kong people have, but rather how they quest for them.
In Hong Cheng and Guofang Wans contribution, Chapter 11, we see an exploration in the Hong Kong diasporas attempt to construct identity through the new
media. McQuail, Servaes, Shi-xu and Maier earlier argued for the need for theories of communication and culture to take account of new experiences, new contexts, and new modes of communication. Here, Cheng and Wan focus on some
dozens of diaries contributed by twenty individuals from the Hong Kong diaspora to the Public Broadcasting Services Web site < http://www.pbs.com >, during
a six-month period before and after the transition ceremony. They not only offer
a discursive perspective on the construction of identity by the local people themselves amidst global media attention, but also explore the intricate and dynamic interconnections between identity development and Internet mediation. They show
that the Hong Kong diasporas identication with China is not uniform but varied
with different social or cultural aspects of China. Further, the discourse of
identity is not constant but changes in the digital mode through time. This study
raises new questions about the relationship between identity and hypermedia: it
has to do with crosslinguistic translation, with the audience, with other information sites, with the interactivity of the web page, and further aeld.
Finally, in Chapter 12, Lawrence Wang-chi Wong presents penetrating and reective analyses of historical discourses of Hong Kong by Mainland China and
Hong Kong historians. Through historical and rhetorical analysis, Wong identies a number of specic narrative strategies which modern Mainland China and
Hong Kong historians use to suit specic historical, political circumstances. Further, he suggests that these narrative strategies also reect the broader colonial
history and, consequently, forms of cultural struggle and resistance in it. For instance, he shows that due to the British colonial authority, Hong Kong scholars
took care not to write about Hong Kongs history after the arrival of the British. Modern Chinese historians, on the other hand, in order to reduce British inuence and reclaim the historical links with Hong Kong as the decolonization
was approaching, almost without exception begin with a preferred ancient
point in history, when Hong Kong was undeniably part of China. In addition, he
shows that, before the Opium War, Chinese historians had showed little interest
in Hong Kong.
We have saved the most important for the last and here we want to highlight
a number of benets that may be derived from the present undertaking. First of
all, by promoting, practicing and publishing a study of non-Western discourse
within the mainstream language scholarship, we contribute to rendering marginalized and differentiated cultural discourses as a normal, legitimate and nec-
17
essary object of enquiry. In doing so, we also realize one important form of intellectual cultural politics, which I outlined at the beginning of this chapter. If
we take this exercise to be part of the broader, ordinary world, cultural politics,
then it may be said that we are giving a turn to the non-Western Other to let them
speak. Such a cultural and ethnographic turn, badly needed in our times of domination and conict, provides for more informed and deeper intercultural dialogue and understanding and, consequently, increases chances of cultural cohesion. At the same time, it may be observed that listening to local cultural voices enables us to see instructive aspects of the cultural Other(s discourse). The
Chinese view of discourse as maintenance of harmony, for example, beyond the
Western notion of discourse as expression of individual identity, makes it possible to reveal interesting ways of relation building in the Chinese and Hong Kong
discourses, a research topic much needed for the contemporary antagonistic international community.
Second, when we take a culturally contrastive approach to studying non-Western discourse, a new, refreshing and complex picture emerges, not just of the unfamiliar non-Western Other, but the Western Self as well. New topics, narratives, explanations and arguments are revealed, which the Western media has denied its community. For instance, where the Western media remain reticent, the
Chinese discourse frequently brings up the topic of why the decolonization occurs at the time it does and maintains that the British colonizer would not have
given up (the whole of) Hong Kong at the time it did, had it not been for the
great economic, political and international position that China had gained. Further, alternative or even contrary accounts, other than those which the Western
community had been led to believe, are made available. For example, different
from the recurring Western attribution of Hong Kongs success to British colonial rule, the Chinese discourse offers a comprehensive account, linking up historical, cultural, social, geographical and economic factors. Research ndings
such as these may compel readers to become more reexive upon familiar and
taken-for-granted regimes of truth, assumptions and versions implicit or explicit
in the Western Self discourse.
Thirdly, our cultural perspective on discourse has revealed the plurality, complexity and forms of opposition of non-Western discourses, beyond nationalistic
notions of human discourses. The variety of studies above shows that Hong Kongs
discourse of identity is not static but shifts and changes with local historical circumstances, not homogeneous but multivoiced through different genres and media. More importantly, the Chinese and Hong Kong discourses identied are not
merely new or different, but embody cultural power struggle with opposing
Western discourses. Specically, whereas the Western discourse on Hong Kong
and China appears culturally repressive and hegemonic with its ideological assumptions, exclusive denitions of the Other, incredulity, warnings and threats,
18
Shi-xu
China and Hong Kongs discourses put up cultural resistance by providing otherwise missing accounts, reclaiming identities and rebuilding relationships. Results and insights such as these highlight the marginal and marginalized nature
of non-Western discourse on the international scale and hence the need, interest
and urgency to read it in terms of cultural power relation and practice.
From this limited study, it will become clear that cross-cultural reading and
research should be a continuous and expanding process. In particular, similar and
parallel studies of other cultural discourses, from the Arab world, Africa, Latin
America and so on should all be taken more seriously in the mainstream scholarship. When the study of non-Western, non-White and Third-World discourses
is accepted as normal, legitimate and routine in language, discourse and communication research, the cultural Self may hope to become so open and free as
to include the cultural Other.
References
Ashcroft, B., G. Grifths and H. Tifn
1989 The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures.
London: Routledge.
Bauman, Z.
1998 Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bellah, R. N., R. Madsen, W. M. Swindler and S. M. Tipton
1985 Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bhabha, H. K.
1994 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Bucholtz, M.
2001 Reexivity and critique in discourse analysis. Critique of Anthropology 21
(2), 168183.
Cao, Q.
2000
Carey, J. W.
1992 Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New York:
Routledge.
Csaire, A.
1972 Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
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Chow, R.
1992 Between colonizers: Hong Kongs postcolonial self-writing in the 1990s. Diaspora 2 (2), 152170.
Dissanayake, W. (ed.)
1988 Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective. Singapore: Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Centre.
Flowerdew, J. and R. Scollon
1997 Public discourse in Hong Kong and the change of sovereignty. Journal of
Pragmatics 28, 417426.
Gumperz, J. J. and S. Levinson (eds.)
1996 Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University
Press.
Hall, S.
1996 Cultural studies: Two paradigms. In J. Storey (ed.), What is Cultural Studies:
A Reader. London: Arnold, 3148.
Heisey, D. R. (ed.)
2000 Chinese Perspectives in Rhetoric and Communication. Stamford, CT:
Ablex.
Huntington, S. P.
1998 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. London: Touchstone Books.
Hutcheon, L.
1989 Circulating the downspout of the Empire: Post-colonialism and postmodernism. Ariel 20 (4): 4065.
Knight, A. and Y. Nakano (eds.)
1999 Reporting Hong Kong: Foreign Media and the Handover. London: Curzon.
Lee, C.-C. (ed.)
1994 Chinas Media, Medias China. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
2000 The paradox of political economy: Media structure, press freedom and regime
change in Hong Kong. In C. Lee (ed.), Power, Money and Media: Communication Patterns and Bureaucratic Control in Cultural China.
Lee, C.-C., J. M. Chan, Z.-D. Pan and C. Y. K. So
2002 Global Media Spectacle: News War over Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press.
Ngg, W. T.
1986 Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African literature. London: James Currey.
Pennycook, A.
1998 English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge.
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Shi-xu
Said, E.
1978
Shen, X.-L.
1999 Shen Xiaolong Zi Xuan Ji [Collected Essays by Shen Xiaolong]. Guangxi shi
fan da xue chu ban she [Guangxi Normal University Press, China].
Shi-xu
2000
Chapter 2
Communication theory and the Western bias
Denis McQuail
1. Origins
Much of contemporary communication and media theory has its origins in the
general body of the Western social sciences, including history, anthropology, economics, psychology and sociology that originated mainly in Western Europe in
the latter 19th and early 20th century. These disciplines were then further developed and amplied in the United States. Despite their aim of universality as sciences of human behavior and their claim to generality, there is little doubt that
they were indelibly marked by their own cultural context and circumstances of
time and place. This showed itself in the values that were assumed or expressed
in the principles and methods of the disciplines and also in the way social life
was problematized.
The Western social sciences were themselves children of the Enlightenment
and were underpinned by a more or less axiomatic belief in progress, with reason
both as method and as ideal. They were dedicated to the advancement of material welfare and the conquest of problems of society. They followed the model of
science and engineering that was applied to the control of the environment, improvement of health and increase in productivity. There was little or no room for
doubt in the new sciences of society about the desirability of progress nor about
its main manifestations. Even so, the tensions of change were recognized, not
least that between the individualism and community.
The good society envisaged as an outcome of scientic progress would require cooperation and lawfulness, but with individuals equally free in principle
to pursue their own welfare, with benets accruing to the whole society or community. The governance of such a society would be carried out by consent and in
a civilized and rational manner. The culture of the more economically advanced
(in practice the most commercialized or industrialized) societies was favorable
to innovation and change. The past was often viewed as steeped in ignorance,
superstition and primitive ways. In religion the bias of the times was towards the
Protestant form of Christianity, that was associated with capitalism and modernity. In this context, modernity meant rationality, objectivity, science, the oper-
22
Denis McQuail
ation of the free market, individualism, hard work and an ethical emphasis on
good deeds rather than ritual.
Attitudes towards other forms of culture, society and religion had their complexities, but the predominant attitude seems to have been one of superiority, justied by the wonders of industrialism, the power of capitalism, benets of bureaucracy and the rule of law. Without this sense of superiority, it is hard to explain how the Western worlds projects of global colonization could be regarded
as legitimate. The best known work of the master sociologist, Max Weber (The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1904/1985) accounted for the rise
of capitalism in the West and not the East, primarily in terms of its more appropriate Western philosophical orientation to the material world or greater worldliness. Similarly, it occurred earlier in Northern rather than Southern Europe because of the easier cultural accommodation of Protestantism than Catholicism to
the spirit and practice of capitalist enterprise.
23
dividual will and creativity (Mills 1955). Dystopian visions of modern society,
such as that of Orwells 1984, reversed the role of the media into the all-seeing
eye of Big Brother, with no place to hide for the deviant.
What these remarks underline is that the mass media were almost exclusively
viewed by early theorists in the light of current preoccupations of actual societies, most of them geographically or culturally Western. Much the same could
be said of the large exception represented by the long experiment of communism.
Mass media were equally or even more strongly identied with economic and
material progress and treated as instruments of social and cultural change and
of control in the new order. Soviet theory integrated the work of media into the
larger project of transforming society, with little attention to the dysfunctional
elements, as perceived in capitalist society.
24
Denis McQuail
tacular rise of Asian economies from the 1970s onwards. Nevertheless, the mass
media vehicles for carrying the revised message of modernity were not divested
of certain characteristically Western features in their institutional forms and
professional ideologies, nor was the general direction of ow of inuence from
West to East fundamentally changed. The instructional kits for material development were still packaged in various forms of social implementation that reected the originating cultural and social context (McQuail 2000).
4. Critical dependency
From the 1970s onwards, attention shifted to a new critical paradigm for analyzing the mediation of East-West relationships. This was variously identied as
the cultural- or media- imperialism thesis, or as one of imbalanced ow of
global communication, understood as a result of structured and exported underdevelopment and dependency (McQuail 2002). The components would be very familiar to people from earlier generations, although perhaps absent or fading from
younger memories as they are replaced with more recent debates about globalization and the information society. The empirical contents of the then new critical
paradigm were actually not very new, but, of its very nature, the new paradigm
was dedicated to exposing the Western bias of global information and cultural
ow. What is less clear is whether or not the theory itself could be considered, by
virtue of its critical orientation, as thereby being free from Western bias. Probably not, since many strong advocates of the theory were certainly Western by
origin (even if the Latin American inuence was strong) and in their manner of
thinking and in varying degrees drew on elements of Marxism and other Western theories of capitalism.
Moreover, the imbalanced-ow critics tended to assume that the contents of
global media, especially international news, ction and entertainment, with their
strong American imprint, would have powerful ideological and cultural effects on
their audiences. This assumption implicitly overvalues the appeal, potency and
persuasiveness of the message of Western media. It also underestimates the vitality and exibility of the receiving cultures and ignores the cultural and intellectual poverty, superciality and ephemerality of much of the new global media culture.
In this breathless sprint through some decades, we have now arrived in the
1980s, with McBride et al. (1980) behind us and new geopolitical scenarios on
the way, as well as potentially revolutionary technological developments. During the period just described, it was possible and convenient to use approximations such as modern versus traditionalist, East versus West, North versus
South, capitalist versus communist without attending very closely to the re-
25
alities referred to in particular situations. The world was really more complicated and it has become more so in the post-Soviet era. The point to underline for
present purposes is that for most of the time period that has been discussed, there
was some consistency about what was general understood by the term Western.
This coincided essentially with the communications media of the United States
and Western Europe, especially of the ex-colonial powers.
But there was no clear x on what might be meant by the non-Western, a
term that is in fact hard to nd in any theory. Such a concept, where it lurked,
could cover communist regimes and their distinctive media cultures, the Islamic world, the underdeveloped world (mainly much of Africa and various parts of
Asia). Latin America gured prominently in the applications of dependency theory, but was in no way Eastern. The term South was also in use to designate
the general state of lower development of the Southern Hemisphere, despite the
disparate causes of underdevelopment. In addition, the category of non-Western covered a large part of the worlds population in China, Japan and South East
Asia that was certainly Eastern in Western eyes, but not at all homogeneous in
cultural, social, economic or political terms, or in the eyes of those referred to.
In itself, this lack of specicity about the other constitutes a bias and it also reects an unacceptable lack of interest and often of ignorance, as if it were really
not necessary to know about the real cultural attributes of those at the receiving
end of Western globalizing inuences. It is not just a question of bias in media
theory, but also of fundamental deciencies in the epistemological and methodological stance that still persist (McQuail 2000, 2002).
5. Beyond confession
In order to make some progress beyond simply exposing or confessing to the ethnocentrism that has quite evidently characterized media theory from the beginning, we need to break the issue down into a number of subquestions. Firstly, it is
useful to inquire a bit more deeply into the sources of Western bias. Secondly,
we should look at different forms and levels of its expression (not just at what is
meant by the idea, but at what points it is manifested). Thirdly, we need to consider some possible solutions to what has been recognized as a problem for any
serious claim to media theorizing.
On the question of origins, a rst cause has already been identied in a general way in the Western social scientic tradition that emerged as part of the transformation to modern industrial forms of society. Secondly, it is hard to ignore
the fact that most media theorizing has been done by Western scholars, living
in and observing the media of their own countries, and inevitably inuenced by
their own familiar social cultural context and its typical values. It does not matter
26
Denis McQuail
much if the scholars in question openly espouse the values of their own society
(as some have done in advocating such goals as libertarianism, modernization
or repression of moral deviance), or take a stand against them (as critical theorists have done). A condition of value neutrality is not to be attained. But these
things are at least out in the open, and some allowance made for them by nonWestern scholars, as a result, alternative paths can be consciously chosen.
More difcult to expose and deal with is the problem posed by the object of
theorizing itself the mass media. It is arguable that the mass media institution
in its main features is a distinctive product of the original Western industrial society and the process of mass communication along with it. This proposition is
complex and has itself to be examined by reference to one or more of the following: the technology; the production process; institutional forms taken by media;
and the various applications and uses, on the part of audiences and other agencies. The same degree and kind of Westernness is unlikely to reside in or derive equally from each of these elements.
The ghost of media technological determinism, rst theorized by Innis (1951),
McLuhan (1964) and others, has never been exorcised. Early versions of medium theory presupposed that technologies of reproduction and transmission of
meaning would in themselves be culture-free. However, the same technology
might be applied differently in different cultural contexts, and the original technological invention and its application are bound to be conditioned by the cultural
context. The consequences of use of particular forms of media (e.g. printing) then
interact with the culture to have long-term consequences in use that become intimately associated with the medium in question. Media develop certain requirements for effective application and become dened as appropriate for particular
purposes. To this extent, they acquire specic cultural meanings and associated
values that are not easy to disregard or avoid.
It is arguable that the mass media, as they developed in their 20th century
northern industrial society contexts and were applied to characteristic purposes of public entertainment, information and propaganda, carried with them an
indelible stamp of modern, therefore Western, society. These uses (and the
institutionalized means for achieving them) are, in turn, characterized by certain values and appropriate attitudes. These include hedonism, moral relativism, secularism, materialism and individualism in various manifestations, on
the part of both media communicators and audiences. The public and universal
features associated with broadcasting in particular make it even more difcult,
for instance, to compartmentalize their contents or their audiences than was the
case with printing.
The mass media, so characterized, are, arguably, most appropriate for open
and uid societies without strong or unitary religious belief systems or communal
and patriarchal family systems. The values and attitudes embedded in much con-
27
temporary mass media production still tend to be those mentioned above. While
it is true that quite different cultures have succeeded in developing somewhat
different versions of mass media, and in governing the experience of audiences,
this has not been achieved without some struggle, without restrictions on freedom or with any certainty of continuance. The theory of globalization (e.g. Bauman 1998; Ferguson 1992) stresses the continuing pressure towards synchronization of systems and lifestyles. It seems as if media underdevelopment is some
defense in the short term, but in the long term, the logic of the media branch of
the information revolution receives little effective resistance.
A familiar example of the imperialism of Western values comes from research into the one-sidedness of international news ow and into the nature
of news in general. It was established that what we call news is largely selected and presented according to certain news values which reect the conditions
and cultural outlook of Western news audiences, as perceived at least by Western news media. In Galtung and Ruges (1965) famous analysis of bias in foreign
news, factors of a sociocultural kind were identied as shaping news selection,
especially negativism and personalization. In short bad news about (especially famous) individuals is likely to get privileged treatment in the news ow
process. Abstract ideas, slow developments and benecial (or just normal) processes in distant places are not news. Other theories about the powerful inuence
of a particular media logic were later developed to explain selection. The demand in Western media for news to t its values is bound to have an inuence
on journalism in other parts of the world.
In any case, in dealing with the issue of the moment, it is hard to resist the
proposition that media as we know them carry many Western attributes and
that any theory about media will have to recognize and deal with this fact even
if it does not have to do so in the same way as in the West itself. This opens
the way to the possibility of a critical theory of media that does not take as its
guiding values the same principles that have characterized Western critical theory in the past.
28
Denis McQuail
29
the one hand, and empirical propositions about the communication process on
the other (for instance, about the effects of media in behavioral terms). In the former instance, the particular society to be considered in some theoretical proposition can be replaced by another (e.g. non-Western) society. In respect of the latter,
quite a lot of middle-range propositions about processes of media use or certain
kinds of effects are based on general features of human behavior and are open
to testing in a variety of cultural contexts. However, very few of the more familiar general propositions of media effects can be claimed to be culture free, and
they generally involve some built-in assumptions about typical uses of media and
patterns of social behavior that are familiar in Western society. This applies
for instance to theories of personal inuence, agenda-setting, the spiral of silence, framing, etc. We may also take the view, however, that this is less a case
of Western bias, but one of intercultural differences in communication and social life. Quite a lot of variation can also be expected within supposed Western
societies themselves. It is also possible for non-Western theorists to take certain
elements from such theory in order to construct different and more appropriate
hypotheses about basic processes of communication that are more or less common to a wide spectrum of human societies.
The branch of media theory usually labeled as normative (McQuail 1992)
is in some ways easier to deal with, because the origin and nature of bias is quite
transparent in the values that are adduced to guide, advocate or assess the performance of media in respect of many possible responsibilities and expectations.
A good deal of extant normative theory, especially in relation to the supposed
social functions of media does depend on Western social theory about society as well as media. Much is based on sometimes implicit assumptions about
the nature of democracy that are built into the political procedures of liberal developed societies (competing political parties, elections, etc.). Although we may
have shaken off our mantle of subordination to the famous four theories of the
press (Siebert et al. 1956), we are still struggling to diversify the basis of normative thinking about media. Professional journalism globally, for instance, still
adheres to very much the same codes of ethics and practice that were rst advocated in the 1920s, which, to a large extent, still privilege certain forms of objectivity that are dened in the legal-rational tradition. On the other hand, there
has been a signicant growth in awareness of aspects of media performance that
have implications for human rights, especially on the international arena and in
relation to challenges posed by new media. However, there is not much recognition of the restricted and ritualistic character of the Western electoral process.
The point to underline is that there is considerable scope for rewriting normative media theory to take more account of non-Western value priorities, or even
to write it quite differently and to openly challenge the ethnocentric versions that
we have today. In practice, such theory, whether Western or not, has to be contin-
30
Denis McQuail
ually adapted to changing social norms and interpretations of human rights. The
collection of writings on communication ethics edited by Christians and Traber
(1997) records, for instance, a wide range of ideas about culture society and communication, drawing on non-Western traditions. The moral and ethical values of
Islam, the communalism of Africa, the philosophic traditions of India, the communication values of China and Japan, with their stress on harmony, solidarity
and empathy, are reminders of alternative prescriptions for judging media performance and guiding media practice. Insofar as normative theory has a critical
and prescriptive rather than just descriptive role, there is much potential for innovation and much to be done.
It is worth pointing out that not all existing theory is equally limited by its biases, leaving aside the varying personal capacities and awareness of theorists. For
instance, much of the theory about small scale, participatory, local, community
or alternative media that has not gured much in my account (perhaps because
of another unfortunate bias towards big media) has much to offer and can apply in diverse social and cultural contexts (McQuail 2002). Work of this kind is
expanding and has a more universal range perhaps than theory of dominant mass
media. Western theorists can learn as much from non-Western models of smallscale communication principle and practice as from cases close to home, and the
same applies in reverse to non-Western theorists. Such forms of communication
have a promising future in the real world. The arrival of new media such as the
Internet opens up new opportunities for small-scale interactive communication
and for investigating their communicative potential in a range of different settings. Although again, and inevitably, economic and technological forces mean
that development of these media will move faster in some parts of the world than
others, it will not inevitably be the West that leads the way.
The availability of alternative normative perspectives is also a reminder that
there are different routes towards formulating an agenda of research issues than
that which has dominated communication research until now. In the nature of
scientic disciplines, there is a strong conservative tendency, since new research
is usually contextualized within existing literature. The wish to publish in existing international journals (thus mainly Western in this case) reinforces this trend.
This privileges earlier and dominant paradigms and makes it difcult to launch
research in new directions. It is easier to escape from the connes of old problem denitions than it is to escape from existing methodologies, and this freedom could be more widely used. With problems chosen from non-Western contexts, the way is open for new hypotheses, new concepts and, ultimately, the possibility of new theory.
31
8. What is to be done?
The picture of communication and media theory and research may not be as
gloomy as I have rendered here. Firstly, the story of media, of theory and of human society does not stand still, and we are now confronted with new issues of
communication media, technology and information, many of which pose the same
challenges for societies across the globe. Secondly, the body of available theory
may not be as inadequate as my discussion has suggested and, as I have indicated, a number of alternative paths have been opened up that have simply not been
adequately explored. Thirdly, there is an ever-widening range of input, in cultural terms, into the enterprise of media theory, including that of many non-Western scholars, and there is a wider range of actual media experience to draw upon
than was the case in what might be called the formative stages.
However, that is not to underestimate the task. The task for the future is not to
achieve a body of unbiased theory, since this is not humanly possible or even
desirable. But we need to construct theory that is not vitiated by its (inevitable)
cultural and value bias and not simply a branch of ideology. More importantly,
we need to embrace a diversity of (better) theories to cope with the increasingly
complex interactions between the seeming imperatives of communication technology and the many different cultural situations and value systems. Most importantly of all, proceeding from the assumption of the cultural diversity of communication theory and practice, we must begin to learn from and interact with
media and communication practice from other cultures, which is just what this
book sets out to do.
References
Bauman, Z.
1998 Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Christians, C. and M. Traber (eds.)
1997 Communication Ethics and Universal Values. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications.
Ferguson, M.
1992 The mythology of globalization. European Journal of Communication 7, 69
93.
Galtung, J. and M. Ruge
1965 The structure of foreign news. Journal of Peace Research 1, 6490.
Innis, H.
1951 The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
32
Denis McQuail
Lerner, D. et al.
1958 The Passing of Traditional Society. New York: Free Press.
McBride, S. et al.
1980 Many Voices, One World: Report by the International Commission for the
Study of Communication Problems. Paris: UNESCO; London: Kogan Page.
McLuhan, M.
1964 Understanding Media. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
McQuail, D.
1992 Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public Interest. London
and Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
2000 Mass Communication Theory. 4th edition. London: Sage Publications.
McQuail, D. (ed.)
2002 Reader in Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage Publications.
Mills, C. W.
1955 The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rogers, E. M. and P. Shoemaker
1973 Communication of Innovations. New York: Free Press.
Siebert, F., T. Peterson, and W. Schramm
1956 Four Theories of the Press. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Weber, M.
1904/1985 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. [Trans. P. A. Talcotta].
London: Unwin.
Chapter 3
Towards multiculturalism in discourse studies
Shi-xu and Robert Maier
The issue of culture, including that of ethnocentrism, has been raised for quite
some time in social science. A range of disciplines has sought to reect critically
on their cultural origins, ethnocentric tendencies as well as universalizing constructions of acts and truths of their disciplines (e.g. Bloor 1976; Clifford
1986; Gilbert and Mulkay 1984; Mulkay 1979; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Shweder and
LeVine 1984; Woolgar 1988). As a result, new cultural initiatives (sometimes
called a cultural turn) have been taken to redress intellectual Eurocentrism,
racism and cultural imperialism more generally (e.g. Eagleton 1983, 1991; Gergen 1999; Giroux 1992; Hall 1996a, 1996b; Simons and Billig 1994).
In the scholarship of discourse or linguistic communication, this reexive consciousness has seemed rather slow in awakening. The eld of language studies is
still largely shrouded in what Taylor (1999) has called aculturalism. By this notion, we refer especially to the views held of both the subject matter and the professional practice itself. Thus, on the one hand, language and communication, or
discourse, are supposed to function universally and to be objectively describable.
Let us call it the universalist view. Consistent with this concept of discourse itself,
on the other hand, the academic metadiscourse about it i.e. its notions, methodologies, research practices and so on is thought to proceed from universal reason and evidence, at least potentially so, and to describe or explain its object accurately, at least possibly so. We shall call this the representationalist view.
In this chapter, we want to argue that discourse, including scientic, metadiscourse, is thoroughly cultural. That is, culture is not external but central to individual and social life. Because a prevailing part of individual, social and hence
cultural life is discourse, the latter may be said to be culture par excellence. Culture penetrates and saturates discourse, popular and professional alike. So discourse should be seen as a form of cultural production and constituent part, or
embodiment, of culture. We shall discuss and dene what we mean by culture
and cultural in the next section.
Proceeding from the cultural perspective, we shall suggest that discourse is
neither universally organized nor objectively given. Rather, it should be seen as
a set of divergent, competing and dynamic patterns of constructing and acting
upon reality through linguistic and contextual means. In this sense, language and
34
35
course, as the expected norm or the standard starting point. In addition, many
forms of language and communication analysis have remained largely preoccupied with their conventional, perennial aims and concerns underlying or abstract rules, structures and processes and continue to make ever more valid
and more reliable descriptions and explanations.
Underlying such practices, as may be pointed out, is a deeply rooted and widespread discourse that leaves the constitution of knowledge and critical self-understanding out of the question. Here, on the one hand, the object of enquiry be it
language, discourse or communication (mediated or otherwise) is assumed to
be given and, moreover, reducible to abstract, stable, universal categories, structures, processes, rules, etc. These theoretical perspectives are of course not meant
as reecting merely the structures, categories, levels and rules of the English language or of some Western ways of speaking, but rather true of all human linguistic, discursive or communicative phenomena. For instance, in the theory of
Universal Grammar, human language is isolated as a minimum set of universal
categories and rules. In Functional Grammar, much the same way, language is assumed to consist in an unconscious code or system of structures and functions. In
cross-cultural semantics, although cultural linguistic differences are recognized,
the meanings of languages are usually accounted for in terms of universal concepts. And yet these universal concepts are themselves constructed through a
particular language, usually English (Shi-xu 2000b). In Speech Act Theory, too,
language is conceived of as types of action realized by appropriate types of sentence under idealized sets of conditions of speech (e.g. promise, threat, question).
In Discourse Analysis, too, text or talk is often analyzed into levels, structures
and processes (e.g. particle, cohesion, argument structure, narrative structure, macro speech act). The list can go on.
On the other hand, consistent with this objectivist discourse is a more covert
discourse about scientic knowledge making itself. In this discourse, scientic activity is portrayed as somehow mirroring reality. It proceeds from universal reason
and natural evidence; its discursive description is a transparent, neutral vehicle
in which knowledge and facts are contained. Professional, academic, scholarly or
scientic thought and talk can and are supposed to be dispassionate, objective and
independent of history and culture. They are therefore themselves unproblematic
for, perhaps even irrelevant to, language and communication inquiry.
If we pause and reect where the practitioners concepts and theories come
from, how their methods are derived, or whose data they are analyzing and how
they are marketed globally then, we shall realize, however, that the universalist discourse is misleading at best. It has been shown that the current dominant
theories of language and communication can be traced to a set of distinct Western-European values and desires, ideas and discourses (McQuail this volume).
The notion of human language in modern Western linguistics is inltrated by
36
preferred metaphors (Shi-xu 2000a). The idea of language as neutral representation is constructed by the powerful elite to serve particular ideological purposes
(Shi-xu and Wilson 2001). Western theoretical and applied linguistics has been
trying to isolate language from historical and cultural context, with a view to
achieving a universal science, but their technological innovations of succession
and duration, spatial structure of tree diagrams and so on, reect only Western
perspectives (Barron, Bruce and Nunan 2002).
Attempts such as these are rather marginalized and there remain many aspects
unexplored, however. There has been little systematic investigation into the relationship between cultures on the one hand, and the ideas and activities in linguistics, discourse analysis or media communication studies on the other. In this
chapter, therefore, we shall try to show that one of the central, possible causes or
conditions for the universalizing discourse is a peculiar notion of culture.
Historically, the notion of culture is associated with the times of European imperialist expansion and colonization; then it was used to refer to the exotic, alien
and barbarian. Since then, it has evolved through numerous lines of thoughts
and discourses, including those of Anglo-Saxon anthropology, literary criticism
and cross-cultural psychology (Williams 1976: 8793; see also Bauman 1973;
Sarangi 1995). But generally speaking, culture has been categorized in Western
language studies according to language, place and time (e.g. Blum-Kulka et al.
1989; Hofstede 1980). In this view, Irish culture, Dutch culture or ancient
Chinese culture, for example, would be determined and dened according to the
language that is spoken, the geographic location and the time frame that the culture in question can be associated with.
There are a number of interrelated properties assumed here that need to be
made explicit. Firstly, it is objective in that it is a given, such that it can be objectively dened and described. It is recognizable in, for example, human perceptions, patterns of behavior, symbols, values and artistic expressions (and even scientic facts as in a post-positivist perspective). Given this essentialistic notion,
it would be possible to compare (and contrast for that matter) Irish culture, for
example, with other such cultures. By the same token, culture could be transmitted and unlearned through upbringing and education (e.g. high culture). Secondly, consistent with the essentialist assumption, culture is also thought to be
originary in that it has a pure, primordial form and content originating in some
space and some time. According to this version, there would be some such thing
as pure Irish culture that is distinct and uncontaminated by other cultures.
Because of this unique quality, culture is externally distinct and so can be easily
distinguished from other cultures. Thirdly, culture is considered as homogeneous
in that it is a property shared by all its members. As such it shapes the behavior
of the individual but is not affected by it. In this sense, culture is extra-psychological or secondary to psychology: it is outside the individual and, therefore, be-
37
yond individual control. In this view, all Irish people for example would be the
same kind of beings and expected to do the same kinds of things. Last but by no
means least, culture is treated as negatively opposed to rationality, evidence and
science and, therefore, as something to be overcome or transcended through the
latter. Thus culture is seen as derived from local conditions, historical traditions
and, for some at least, specic human languages. They are a drawback or error:
they prevent individuals and societies from seeing the inevitable true and the
natural, hindering communication and understanding, and worse still, retarding modernity and globalization (a special but different case here, however, is
the notion of culture as a higher form of aesthetic creation). However, such difculties can and will be eliminated, or at least reduced, when, with the inevitable, ultimate enlightenment of scientic progress, cultural idiosyncrasies are detected and defeated (Taylor 1999; see Shweder and LeVine 1984 for a contrast of
the Enlightenment and Romantic views of culture). It is not surprising, then, that
Western professional, academic, scholarly, scientic thoughts and texts are often
presented as, implicitly or explicitly, dispassionate, neutral, objective and therefore universal, at least more or less so (think of Universal Grammar, Cross-cultural Linguistics, Communication Theory, Discourse Analysis, etc.). They are
capable of transcending cultures. The two perspectives in modern Western linguistics, which Montgomery (1995: 224225) calls universalist and relativist positions, are, too, manifestations of this acultural discourse. The universalist view holds that mankind has the same basic mental concepts which determine
that their particular languages will represent the world in basically the same way.
The relativist position, in contrast, holds that individual languages that constrain
worldviews represent the world more or less the same or slightly differently. Either variant presupposes that culture can be isolated and excluded.
It is a paradox that, while certain quarters in society and social movements
outside the academia recognize cultural diversity as worth promoting, professional, academic and scholarly circles in language and communication continue
to make rigorous attempts to exclude cultural elements.
38
and social life. Individuals and groups interact with cultural patterns (e.g. norms
and values) of ideas and practices in their everyday affairs and also reproduce
them (e.g. recurring ideas and practices).
We must add here that cultural patterns of individual, communal and institutional life have a subjective, personal dimension in that they are perceived,
(re)produced and drawn upon by individuals and groups, adults and children (e.g.
I think of and describe Irish peoples attitudes towards people of a different religious background). Thus, culture and the person are interconnected (Sapir 1949).
Following from this, further, culture as patterns of constructing life is itself a construction; there can be any number of constructions. Cultures, as different and
diversied ways of seeing, understanding, evaluating and acting upon the world
are not objectively given. And there can be any number of constructions.
Cultural patterns are not merely different from each other. Viewed from a
left-wing, Marxist tradition, culture is characterized by social division and asymmetry of power (see also Barker 1999; Johnson 1996). Culture is a site of struggle par excellence. In other words, the different ways of cultural life are not in
harmony but tension, both within and without. Where cultural differences are
perceived, they are not understood in the cultural-others perspective (and cannot be!), but often from ones own and often as deviations, deciencies, and so,
sources of trouble. More specically, cultures are sites of power struggle and to
study culture is to study cultural domination, exploitation and exclusion as well
as resistance.
Culture is not passive or xed but has the self-critical consciousness to change
and change for the better at that. That is, on the one hand, human cultures have
a profound historical sense to seek continuously to change the status quo by abandoning the old ways of thinking and doing things and creating new ones. This
sensibility of historical destination I call the rational motivation (see also Giddens 1984; cf. Habermas 1984). On the other hand, more importantly, the criterion for new creations or changes lies in the cultures capacity to identify the new
values with respect to their own traditions (Taylor 1999). In other words, they are
able to make, and do make, distinctions between good and bad, right and
wrong, true and false and such like, based on their own history. Thus, for
example, common freedom might be chosen as such a candidate from within
the Western tradition; indeed, it might be said that that has been at the heart of
Western forms of feminism, anti-racism and anti-capitalism. This does not mean
that there will be no setbacks in cultural development, but at least it is a hopeful
view of human cultures.
Finally, and very importantly, culture is embodied in concrete social semiotic especially discursive practices. For, cultural patterns of constructing and
acting upon reality are accomplished and constituted primarily through situated linguistic texts. Linguistic communication or discourse is the most pervasive
39
and quintessential part of such practice. Other symbolic activities, such as art,
music and sport, are also important part of the life of society, but their meaning,
value and emotional charge would be overshadowed if no discourse were mobilized to describe, explain, sustain, promote, sensationalize and coordinate them.
Similarly, it would be hard to imagine how science, religion, education or other
such symbolic activities can proceed and succeed without discourses to embody,
maintain and execute them. Conventional and new media, too, which now literally inundate peoples lives, would lose their functionality without discourses to
partake of them. Indeed, people spend most of their daily, and hourly, life, reading, writing, speaking or listening to each other. As McQuail (2000: 93) puts it,
Perhaps the most general and essential attribute of culture is communication,
since cultures could not develop, survive, extend and generally succeed without
communication. Similarly, Duranti and Goodwin (1992: 23) have expressed
the centrality of discourse in the organization of culture vociferously when they
say, [I]t would be blatantly absurd to propose that one could provide a comprehensive analysis of human social organization without paying close attention to
the details of how human beings employ language to build the social and cultural worlds that they inhabit. Culture can then be seen as inhabiting especially a
discursive space. From another perspective, discourse is the pervasive mode, and
medium, in and through which human cultures are maintained and developed.
To study culture, then, is to study discourse.
Despite its linguistic turn or the (re)discovery of textuality, cultural studies
has, however, been less than explicit in its analysis of discourse, even less about
creating and promoting new forms of discourses. In particular, there has been
little systematic and explicit study of how culture may be discursively constituted (Barker and Galasinski 2001: 1, 21, 62). Although a lot of attempts have been
made from various intellectual traditions contemplating the discursive constitutive nature of culture (e.g. Bakhtin 1981; Blommaert and Verschueren 1998; Cassirer 1944; Duranti 1997; Geertz 1973; Gumperz 1982; Kluver 2000; Lutz 1988;
Voloinov 1986; Wittgenstein 1968), a more specic and explicit formulation in
terms of discourse remains to be made.
40
ture and scientic discourse are related and then suggesting new ways of discourse research.
Scientic discourse is not free from individual, social and, hence, cultural life.
On the one hand, scientic constructions are intermeshed with cultural history,
assumptions, interests as well as personal preferences. They are therefore particular ways of seeing, describing, explaining and acting upon the world (Berger and
Luckmann 1966; Pearce 1995; Stewart 1995). As such they are not in symmetrical relation of power with one another, but, rather, contested from both within and
without. Indeed, it can be argued and shown that current paradigms in language,
discourse and communication research are largely Western in origin and/or in
orientation. On the other hand, culturally oriented discourses of science, knowledge and truth have cultural consequences as well. When the Western scientic
discourse its worldviews, theories, methods, questions, data and conclusions
dominate the international academic world, non-Western intellectual discourses their concerns and their voices become excluded, silenced or discredited.
Theorists and practitioners of language, communication and discourse studies do
have a cultural responsibility then and should take it up.
In the remainder of the chapter, we shall accordingly suggest a form of cultural politics for discourse research. On the one hand, we propose that discourse
research pursue two interrelated aims. First, it should facilitate cultural co-existence. This aim can involve enhancing harmony or solidarity between cultures.
Second, it should help with mutual benet between different cultures. That means
that discourse research should not benet one culture at the expense of another, but should seek to assist in common cultural progress. To accomplish these
goals, on the other hand, we suggest two broad types of research tactics: 1) the
deconstructive method: undermining the discourses that researchers perceive to
be detrimental to those cultural groups that are already underprivileged, marginalized, excluded or otherwise subjugated, especially on basis of race, gender
and class, and 2) the transformative method: helping promote new discourses in
the interests of those groups just mentioned.
41
groups and, hence, their discourses that oppose the very order of cultural domination, repression and exclusion. Such discourses do not just emerge and existed
in history as well. Therefore, an important strategy is to rediscover and describe
them, so that they can be emulated, expanded or even reconstructed in order to
reach the intended cultural political objectives.
The second broad type of strategies we propose here is to undermine or deconstruct discourses of cultural discrimination and prejudice. To some it may seem
that any discourse can be interesting and worth studying, but in our view, discourse researchers can usefully focus on discourses that reproduce sociocultural
problems. One may think of discourses surrounding such pressing issues as race,
ethnicity, gender, and ultimately issues of cultural power. In this respect, to those
of us who see the division and conict between (especially American) West and
the Rest, between the majority and minorities, between the rich and poor, between different genders, it would be crucially important to study the ways that
powerful groups construct if at all less powerful ones. Such discourses of the
cultural Other so to speak can be found in various discursive forms, as in the
media, ction, politics and everyday conversations. In examining the discourse
of the powerful, further, we may pay attention to how the powerful negate, discredit, deny, marginalize, exclude or simply silence the powerless. In relation to
that, one may also try to identify what discourses or voices are absent, repressed
or discriminated against. In this case, it would be equally important to highlight
which groups discourses or perspectives are being excluded or ignored. In so
doing, researchers prioritize their tasks and concentrate themselves on the more
urgent issues of contemporary culture.
A related procedure of cultural discourse research here may be to uncover the
verbal (textual and contextual) structures and processes whereby cultural domination, exploitation or exclusion are realized. Discourses of cultural power are not
merely meanings that may be expressed by just any form; nor are they always
direct, obvious and indisputable. Moreover, such discourses are often rendered
natural, to be taken-for-granted or as if there were not there. An effective tactic in uncovering culturally harmful meanings is to shed light on the strategies
through which those meanings become possible. Such meanings often result from
subtle management of contextual knowledge, assumptions, inferences, and the
like, on the one hand, and verbal or rhetorical ploys on the other. One can, for instance, look into the ways that in the media groups of people are dominated, excluded, marginalized, etc. and the ways that the thus oppressed people are then
further problematized. One special area where this method can be particularly
useful is the problem of monopoly of truths in academic as well as everyday life.
What is important in this case then is to illuminate how the authority of objectivity/truth is established; how objectivity is achieved, who is monopolizing the
truth, for what purposes and with what consequences. All in all, it is vitally im-
42
portant for researchers to identify, characterize and highlight the concrete forms
and the specic circumstances whereby those discourses take shape, even if this
may mean they have to do so in a tentative and suggestive manner.
Still another related strategy of cultural discourse research that we want to
advocate is to directly confront and challenge those discourses of cultural domination, discrimination and exclusion by interrogating and subverting them. The
interrogation and subversion here may take the form of disclosing the realities
that the discourses of cultural domination fail to describe or smooth over, highlighting their purposes and consequences, drawing attention to alternative forms
of description and action. A most effective way of interrogation and subversion
perhaps is to make explicit the self-contradictory, other-contradictory or inconsistent ways of formulating reality and experience. The latter, as may be pointed
out, can occur either between ones own versions, or between socially and culturally differential versions, for example, those between the underprivileged and
the powerful. They can also occur between different levels of discourse, for example, between explicit statements and underlying assumptions.
To deconstruct discourses of cultural hegemony to render them invalid and
undesirable is basic to our cultural politics. But it is insufcient and incomplete; cultural freedom and prosperity will not automatically come about from
the deconstruction of those discourses. New forms of discourses need to be created and warranted. Discourse research should become a catalyst in this process.
It should help create what Bhabha (1994: 57) suggests as modes of political and
cultural agency that are commensurate with historical conjunctures where populations are culturally diverse, racially and ethnically divided the objects of social, racial, and sexual discrimination.
Thus, the third broad type of methodological strategy is cultural reconstruction or transformation. That is, discourse research offers new and more helpful
versions of reality and ways of acting upon it. In this sense, our approach has a
higher expectation of discourse practitioners. Such creative and argumentative
attempts will of course require the power of imagination on the part of researchers and educationalists. But it can draw on prior studies, either of a deconstructive kind, as sketched above, or of an investigative one in which members own
experiences are collected. At a more basic level, this step will have to depend on
prior studies to a greater or lesser extent, as indicated above. Here it will be useful to broaden ones perspectives as much as possible. To this end, researchers
can try to solicit information from different people and from different contexts.
This strategy can also be put to another use. Culture can be considered as a form
of creative and self-reexive discourse, as argued earlier. It would then be interesting to examine the unnoticed ways that situated texts are interconnected and,
for that matter, discontinued in order to understand the conditions of possibility,
continuity and ruptures of cultural development and so to reveal or highlight the
43
agency, and hope, of human cultural progress. Whereas the rst method of deconstruction has its focus on the existing versions of events or ways of speaking,
reconstruction is forward-looking: it explores new ways of speaking and thereby
new experience (see also Shi-xu 2001).
An investigative and so preparatory strategy is to look into the views and experiences of the cultural Other. Here researchers can use various ethnographic
methods in order to gain insights into the lifeworld of those cultural groups and
communities whose cause researchers wish to advance. For instance, researchers
can nd ways to understand the opinions and wishes of non-Western, non-White
and Third-World immigrants or sojourners about their intercultural experience.
A more directly interventionalist strategy is to proffer constructions, or types
of discourse, of cultural realities and consciousness that are different from existing ones and, therefore, will change the status quo and bring about new action and relationship, either in the scientic community or in sections of society at large. Such new kinds of discourse may include new concepts, new perspectives, and new bases or arguments for creating new or alternative versions
or concepts or ways of speaking of ones own cultures and others. For, changing ways of speaking and writing is to change peoples ways of doing things and
hence ways of living.
A variation of this strategy would be to advocate those discourses that favor
equal cultural dialogue and genuine intercultural communication as those found
by using the rst type of strategies. Such promotional discourses may, for example, spell out the needs and benets of equal communication between different cultures. As certain discourses are dominant; certain others are absent or repressed. And yet human cultures are becoming increasingly inter-linked. From
the present political stance, it is imperative for the dominant culture to reach out
to listen to its others, whose discourses have been discredited, distorted or dismissed. Even from a practical point of view, the latters discourses may contain
not merely dissenting or different opinions, but also fresh perspectives that can
enrich ones own culture.
In addition to constructing new concepts, new versions of reality, new ways
of speaking, etc., as ways of creating new discourse, there is another area where
discourse researchers can contribute toward a new and better society. Namely,
they can try to devise ways to enhance human communication between groups
of various backgrounds and traditions, or, in the words of Geertz (1973: 14), the
enlargement of the universe of human discourse. For example, they can create
contexts for such contact and communication. In this regard, they can show the
uidity, diversity and variation of cultural, national, ethnic boundaries and
categories.
For instance, we can help with highlighting the needs, creating the conditions
and formulating commonly acceptable rules for intercultural communication and
44
interaction. They can encourage such intercultural contact and relation to take
place at not only everyday level but also between scientic disciplines. As argued
earlier, discourse is culturally organized as different ways of seeing, evaluating
and speaking about reality. Further, these different discourses are characterized
by domination, repression, prejudice and exclusion. We can then try to identify
the reasons for intercultural contact and to facilitate it by locating discursive resources and working with cultural members to negotiate common rules of engagement and common goals.
The late-modern world is saturated with capitalist, colonial, racist, sexist, sectarian and other oppressive kinds of discourse. And yet this does not mean that
this cannot be changed; in fact, they are constantly under moral pressures that
develop in particular societies, for example in the form of subversive or deconstructive discourse I advocated in the previous section. However, changing the
(discourse) status quo can be difcult because, for instance, it may be against
ones immediate interests. Here, discourse researchers can play an active role by
formulating and advocating a moral motivation or willpower among members of
society to construct nonrepressive and shared discourses. This can be carried out,
for example, in the context of education and training.
4. Conclusion
In this chapter, we have tried to rationalize and justify a cultural turn in the academic disciplines of language, discourse and media communication and furthermore, drawing upon the critical developments from both Cultural Studies and
certain quarters of language scholarship, outlined a likely version of a culturalist
project in the eld. To this end, we rst critiqued aculturalism in language, discourse and communication theory and research by accessing the inadequacies
of their notion of culture and the scholarly and social consequences of scientic
aculturalism. With the help of Cultural Studies notion of culture, we argued that
scientic discourse is cultural through and through. In particular, we pointed out
that current theory and research in language, discourse and media communication are still too West-oriented in terms of their assumptions, practices and the
marginalization of non-Western data and perspectives.
Accordingly, we proposed that a more self-reexive, culturalist program in
language, discourse and media communication dene itself in terms of an explicit political goal: to achieve co-existence and freedom for all human cultures.
Furthermore, we suggested relevant research strategies, which are deconstructive
and transformative, respectively. These are designed not only to resist tendencies
of theoretical imperialism and empirical ethnocentrism within Western scholarship on language, discourse and communication and so to transform it for the
45
new era of a globalized world, but also to directly engage with the contemporary
realities of cultural domination, prejudice and exclusion. The criterion for judging these ways of speaking is whether and to what extent they are helpful to the
cultural group who discourse researchers feel has already been disadvantaged,
and are potentially acceptable to the cultural groups involved.
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Chapter 4
Beyond differences in cultural values and modes of
communication
Jan Servaes
50
Jan Servaes
51
has access to the details, the outsider has to rely on limited rst-hand experience
and secondary sources. However, the horizon can be wider with a more distant
view.
3. Value dimensions
Let us look at a general denition of values: the moral principles and beliefs
or accepted standards of a person or social group (Collins English Dictionary
1991). This denition is very broad, encompassing not only virtues and ideals,
but also convictions and models followed individually or collectively. One of the
scholars who have been trying to nd value patterns in different cultures is Geert
Hofstede (1980, 1991, 1995). He surveyed over a hundred thousand workers in
multinational organizations in more than fty countries, and identied four value dimensions that are inuenced and modied by culture: (a) individualismcollectivism, (b) uncertainty avoidance, (c) power distance and (d) masculinity and femininity. (In earlier work he also added the time orientation and activity orientation.) His theory of cultural variability attempts to assess the range in
which countries differ in cultural values on a continuum.
Though his categorization is obviously more detailed and sophisticated than
those of others (e.g. Kluckhohn and Kluckhohn 1960; Hall and Hall 1990), his
work has also been criticized on methodological and theoretical grounds (see Gudykunst 1994; Samovar and Porter 1998; Shadid 1998). Gudykunst (1994: 40),
for instance, claims that the individualism-collectivism dimension is more important than the other dimensions, especially when one wants to understand crosscultural behavioral differences.
An essential difference between Western and Asian society is the position of
the individual, and, consequently, the conception of Self. The Self is composed
of both individual and group identications. The individual and group components are complements in a whole Self rather than dialectical opposites. What
gets stressed in each culture differs, but this doesnt suggest an either/or choice.
While Western culture is characterized by a strong individualistic self-image, in
the Asian context, group consciousness plays a much bigger part. Clifford Geertz
(1973), for instance, in his inuential essay on Bali, describes how Balinese act
as if persons were impersonal sets of roles, in which all individuality and emotional volatility are systematically repressed.
That notion of Self is quite different from the one described by Sigmund Freud.
Freud (1951) demonstrated that one can trace out systematic interrelationships between conscious understandings of social relations, unconscious dynamics, and
the ways ambiguous, exible symbols are turned into almost deterministic patterns of cultural logic. Therefore, Westerners are I-orientated: Their behavior is
52
Jan Servaes
53
stedes work that one could speak of regional or (sub)continental clusters of cultures, such as the Asian or European cultures. If one would go across the European and Asian countries from Hofstedes survey (1995), one would see that
some Western European countries on the one hand and Asian countries on the
other hand would differ considerably internally as well as externally on some of
the researched value dimensions. Therefore, the most rational conclusion should
be that one has to be extremely careful when speaking about Asian or European cultures. In the patterning of their social existence, people continually make
principally unconscious choices that are directed by the applicable intracultural values and options. Social reality can then be seen as a reality constituted and
cultivated on the basis of particular values, a reality in which the value system
and the social system are completely interwoven and imbued with the activity
of each other.
4. Ways of thinking
Hajime Nakamura (1985) starts from a similar observation. Though he claims
that research into the cultural contributions of various nations as seen from the
viewpoint of their interrelationship is necessary, he advocates the hypothesis that
there is no such thing as a single fundamental principle which determines the
characteristic ways of thinking of a people. Various factors, related in manifold
ways, each exerting its inuence, enter into the ways of thinking of a people. If
we deal with the question of the existential basis which brings about differences of ways of thinking, we see no way left for us to take the standpoint of pluralism (Nakamura 1985: 37). Nevertheless, after a comprehensive overview of all
the distinct positions, he agrees that there are some characteristic differences in
the ways of thinking of East Asian nations. In the second place, with regard to
all people, there is a certain logical and human connection among these characteristics (Nakamura 1985: 38). Together with others (e.g. Cauquelin, Lim and
Mayer-Knig 1998; Weggel 1989), he makes distinctions on the basis of ontological and epistemological considerations. Therefore, one could contrast the Asian
way of thinking with the European way of thinking.
Oskar Weggel (1989: 38) sees holism as the key to understanding Asians. This
holistic attitude is expressed both in ways of thinking and behaving and in the
structure of society. Everything is seen as interconnected, overlapping, inseparable, every part is held together by every other part or aspect. The three basic
principles of Buddhism, such as Anijjang (everything is perpetually changing),
Dukhkang (life is full of suffering) and Anatta (everything is relative; certainty does not exist), differ greatly from the static, optimistic and ideal-utopian principles on which the Western way of thinking is built.
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Jan Servaes
55
jection of values, institutions and forms that destroy social cohesion, and the adaptation of forms of production so that they favor the specicity of human and
local social development. On the other hand, a negative-dominating interpretation of cultural identity may include the use of so-called traditional values and
norms, or arguments emphasizing the cultural uniqueness to legitimize marginalization or the existing status quo.
5. Modes of communication
Let me attempt to point out a few characteristics of what can be called a European versus an Asian mode of communication. Such an attempt, however, cannot
be undertaken without an explicit warning: as has been argued above, to bring
European and Asian culture face-to-face is not only ambitious, but also can give
a very simplistic impression. These risks are particularly high in condensed versions of cross-cultural comparison, such as this text. Therefore, both modes of
communication should be perceived as ideal-typical examples of which the extremes are underlined in order to accentuate the typicality of each mode of communication.
While outlining the European mode of communication, I have the Anglo-Saxon culture, to which I belong, in mind as the framework of reference. My appreciation of the dened Asian mode of communication is based upon experiences
in their cultures where Confucian and Buddhist inuences play a major part. In
each culture, I have been trying to search for the archetypes rather than for the
formal and often ofcially propagated manifestations of a culture. More than in
the West and because of the Western inuences, one can observe in Asia a pronounced difference between the so-called written and unwritten culture (Hsiung 1985; Terwiel 1984).
In many Asian languages there is a distinction made between so-called levels of speech according to age, social status and patterns of social interaction.
One has to use particular titles and forms of addressing when one approaches a
younger or elder, a higher or lower ranked person. This kind of hierarchical language use has gradually disappeared in the West.
In different cultures the same words or concepts can have different connotative,
contextual or gurative meanings and evoke idiomatic or metaphoric expressions.
The word fat, for instance, has a positive connotation in most Asian societies, as
it indexes the persons well-being and wealth. In the West, however, the word is
mainly interpreted in a negative way. O-Young Lee (1967) concludes that Asian
languages have developed on the basis of auditive interpretation (listening) and
emotion (pathos) and take into account the so-called aura of things. Because of
this, Asian languages are more colorful and poetic than Indo-European languag-
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Jan Servaes
57
of discourse in negotiations between Japanese and U.S. companies. They arrived at the conclusion that the negotiation is complicated and dependent upon
several constructs unique to the homogeneous Japanese people and culture and
that three constructs are particularly crucial: amae (a social hierarchy of dependency relationships), haragei (a culturally based set of paralinguistic cues coupled with supercially misleading verbal arguments with multiple semantic readings) and the pragmatics of formal negotiation which concerns special patterns
of discourse in regard to speaking versus writing, colloquial versus formal language, responsibility in decision making and translation/interpretation difculties. They conclude that: Phatic communication, the communication and buildup of personal trust, must be included from negotiating day one. Conversation,
seemingly about nothing of consequence, that is, family backgrounds, likes and
dislikes, and employment history, tests the foreign negotiators trustworthiness,
how much respect and credibility is due him, and how much he is committed to
a long-term outlook (McCreary 1986: 156). Because of this difference, less importance is attached to a number of values which in the Western world are considered very important, such as the equality of men and women or democracy. On
the other hand, other values and norms, such as respect for ones elders or loyalty
to the group, are given a more important place in the East. Therefore, some argue that the Western concept of parliamentary democracy is incompatible with
a Hindu society, while others claim that Marxism is more closely related to Buddhism than to Western liberal principles. Franois Perroux (1983: 121), however, doubts the relevance of this sort of comparison and puts forward a so-called
Weberian and anti-Weberian model: At most and at best, Webers model is
a sociological construct of little real benet even in the investigation of cultures
that differ from our own. What do we gain by labeling an Oriental or African
culture as charismatic or traditional when it stems from a living faith? And
he adds that the new and another development movement in the North and the
South, if it is not to lead to the worlds going up in ames, must at least adopt a
line of research, a guiding principle and, basing itself on the anti-Weber model, a
course of slow, patient and cumulative advance (Perroux 1983: 12). Similar arguments are put forward by Roland Robertson (1992) and Bryan Turner (1994),
who examine the recent debate about orientalism in relation to postmodernism
and the process of globalization.
Further, the Asian mode of communication is indirect and implicit, the Western direct and explicit. In Asian communication processes, a lot is supposed and
implicitly said. Westerners insist on making very explicit arrangements and have
almost no ear for non-verbal forms of expression. Therefore, Westerners use language in an instrumental way and emphasize herewith the exchange of ideas and
thoughts. The more emotionally involved and poetical Asian is less direct. In an
instrumental pattern of communication, one defends ones opinion in an assertive
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Jan Servaes
way. Westerners attempt to convince their listeners by way of rational, Aristotelian argumentation (in his Rhetoric, however, Aristotle is open to the idea that
not only rational, but also merely plausible and emotional types of argumentation are to be included within the available means of proof). The end product,
the message is the most important part of the communication process. The communication is considered a success if the public has understood the message.
Whether or not the public agrees to the underlying viewpoint in the message is
for a Western communicator of second importance.
While Westerners start a conversation with a denite goal (i.e. they want to
state or obtain something material or immaterial), for Asians the emotional exchange, the being together, the pleasure of communicating are equally important.
In interpersonal communication, Asians will try to assess the feelings and state
of mind of those present. They do not want to bring the harmony of the group
into danger and thus will give their opinion in an indirect way. Not the product,
or the message, but the process is of importance. Hence, those are also the totally different perceptions with regard to work and leisure time. In the West, they
are regarded as two separate aspects of life; but not so in the East. So the Asian
mode of communication can be labeled rather as defensive and situational. The
conversation is often abruptly stopped, or the subject changed without any obvious reason, as soon as the speaker feels that his/her listener does not totally
agree with his point of view or that his feelings might have been hurt. Asians attempt to reach a total or holistic communication. If this is not possible, they prefer no communication to the Western compromise of partial or Cartesian communication.
Where the Western mode of communication concentrates on the encoding of
issues, and is, as such, sender- or communicator-orientated, the Asian mode of
communication attaches more attention to the decoding problems of messages
and is, as such, receiver- or public-orientated. Whereas the Westerner does actively look for the truth and is convinced that this can be achieved on the basis of
a logical argumentation, the Asian accepts that the truth will be revealed when
s/he is ready for it, or, in other words, when enough knowledge and insight has
been accumulated. The attitude is passive; data collection and argumentation
two essential elements in a Western mode of communication are often missing. On the other hand, the action orientation of Westerners dictates their attitude with regards to nature and technology, they want to command and control
these, while Asians try to achieve a harmonious relationship with both. Therefore, in more general terms, the vision on intuition, rationalism, and empiricism
is in both modes of communication totally different.
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Jan Servaes
61
itself). These are the major value orientations registered in the cognitive world of
the Thai, and serve as criteria for guiding behavior, or as the blueprint that helps
to make decisions at the behavioral levels (Komin 1988: 172). She argues that
these value orientations have to be taken into consideration in any development
program as they often prove to be stumbling blocks to social change.
The mention of particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds is sometimes interpreted as a sort of escape clause, as an argument for not
[yet] complying with human rights standards (Bomert and Genugten 1995: 44).
This understanding of paragraph 5 does not take into account the last part of the
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Jan Servaes
formulation which underlines that States are duty-bound, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights.
In line with this formulation, cultural specicities should be taken into account in
the promotion and protection of human rights, therefore they should rather help
to determine the most effective modalities and ways and means to overcome difculties in the implementation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. This
is important not only for the debate concerning the universality of human rights,
but also in a more general context for international relations. Rejecting cultural
relativism and recognizing at the same time the signicance of cultural specicities, the Vienna Conference intensied the discussion concerning relations between cultural values and human rights. This has been, in particular, articulated
in the debate concerning the so-called Asian values.
Are Asian values such as respect for tradition and the elderly, strong family ties and communitarianism, emphasis on duties and responsibilities, compatible with human rights? The answer can be only positive. There is no contradiction between them. If so, what are then those specic elements of Western human rights tradition which, from an Asian point of view, should not be a part of
the universal concept of human rights? The West is accused of eccentric individualism, consumerism, drug addiction and violent crimes. However, neither human rights nor democracy may be blamed or are responsible for these ills, resulting from excessive liberalism and the erosive forces of the market economy
and industrialization.
Based on this relativist theory, some governments have argued that the cultural contract between individuals and the state is fundamentally different in Asia.
The assumption is that Asian societies stress the interests of the community and
Western societies stress the importance of the individual. Ravindran (1998) observes that the argument supporting community rights against individual rights,
in practice, is used against communities by denying them their rights. While
Asian states stress the importance of community values, they fail to respect the
freedom of expression and organization that invigorates community life. Asian
governments incorrectly conate state and community. Consequently, they impose severe restrictions on the social and political activities of citizen groups on
the pretext that these groups pose a threat to the state (Ravindran 1998: 51).
Therefore, Yash Ghai (1995) argues that the debate on universalism would be
sterile and repetitious if no effort is made to understand the conditions that generate challenges for universalism. He points at the following paradox: those Asian
governments contesting universality are precisely those having strong links with
global capitalism. Ghai concludes that these Asian leaders debate universality to
undermine the importance of human rights in the eyes of their own people and
not the West.
Tommy Koh (1999), the executive director of the Asia-Europe Foundation,
63
takes another position. He asks himself why the West reacts in such a negative
way when Asians profess their belief in Asian values and nds three possible reasons: (a) the West does not accept Asia as an equal: Most people in the West,
including its intellectuals, still regard Asia and Asians as inferior. A detailed
analysis of fteen Western newspapers and weeklies on Asia in general and the
Hong Kong take-over in particular conrm this statement (see Ramanathan and
Servaes 1997); (b) a potential challenge to Western hegemony; (c) giving Asian
values a bad name: Some of East Asias political leaders have given Asian values a bad name by seeking to justify their abuses of power and the inequities of
their societies in the name of Asian values. For example, corruption, collusion
and nepotism should be condemned by all Asians. They have nothing to do with
Asian values. To put it more accurately, they have everything to do with bad Asian
values but nothing with good Asian values. This leads me to my point that it is
essential to distinguish between good Asian values and bad Asian values. Not
all Asian values are good values, just as not all Western values are good values.
There are good Asian values and bad Asian values, just as there are good Western values and bad Western values (Koh 1999: 10). I cannot say it better.
Therefore, the existence of cultural differences should not lead to the rejection of any part of universal human rights. They cannot justify the rejection or
non-observance of such fundamental principles like the principle of equality between women and men. Traditional practices which contradict human rights of
women and children have to be changed. Nevertheless, all cultures can contribute to the general discussion concerning the human rights concept. The establishment of a proper balance between rights and responsibilities, between individual rights and their collective dimension, between individuals and groups, is
far from being achieved, not only in the Asian region but also in Western societies. It is not accidental that in recent years, such attention is given to the preparation of various declarations of human duties or responsibilities and the elaboration of a global ethics which are seen not as a rejection but as a reinforcement
of universal human rights (Symonides 2000).
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Chapter 5
Reporting the Hong Kong transition:
A comparative analysis of news coverage in Europe
and Asia
Jan Servaes and Sankaran Ramanathan
1. Introduction
The process of communication is sometimes likened to a two-sided mirror, wherein both sides of an issue can be viewed. More often than not, however, communication is mostly one-sided, like the special-effect mirror, which results in images
that contain distortions, inaccuracies and stereotyping. These images that audiences receive affect their perceptions, attitudes and behavior. In fact, despite the
increasing ow of intercultural communication, there are still serious misunderstandings and misperceptions among the peoples of the world. Hence, the global village seems to suffer from intra-village communication difculties and obstacles (Kato 1977). What are possible causes of the problems, especially in the
case of Western media representations of the non-Western Other?
In this contribution, we present and discuss ndings from our research project entitled Asia Reporting Europe and Europe Reporting Asia: A Study of News
Coverage (1997). The study was commissioned by the Asia-Europe Foundation
(ASEF). Through quantitative and qualitative studies of 30 some newspapers
and magazines, 15 in Asia and 15 in Europe respectively, published between 27
June and 6 July 1997, we try to determine how many and what kind of European events were reported in Asia, and, conversely, how many and what kind of
Asian events were reported in Europe. It will be seen that, despite the increased
international travel, hypermedia, and above all the so-called globalization, there
are alarming imbalances in cross-cultural communication and representation between Europe and Asia. The major quantitative nding is that reporting of Asian
events by the European media is signicantly less than that of European events
by the Asian counterpart. Of the 3725 news items studied, 1563 are European
events reported in the Asian media, 1413 items are stories about the Hong Kong
handover reported in the Asian media, whereas only 749 items are Asian events
reported in the European counterpart. This latter gure is all the more striking
when it reveals that almost half of those articles relate to the largely internation-
74
al, historic event of the Hong Kong handover. Qualitatively, they nd that coverage of Europe in the Asian press is more extensive than that of Asia in the European counterpart. Whereas European publications obtain more than half of their
stories from their own sources/correspondents, Asian publications rely heavily
on Western news agencies. While Asian publications tend to be more balanced in
their reporting of European events, there are more instances of negative reports
about Asian events in the European publications, the majority of which emanate
from their own correspondents. Moreover, the handover of Hong Kong is covered by European publications from a nationalistic and to some extent ethnocentric perspective. In contrast, few or no examples of a comprehensive Asian perspective are found in the European media.
3. Studies on image-creating
Writing in 1983, Will Teichert et al. found that images of Germany as portrayed
by foreign media affected peoples perceptions of that country. Starting from the
MacBride Report (1981), statements about the inadequate reporting on the Third
World, preferences for negatively-assessed events and dependency of Third World
75
76
the world as well as practical frameworks which stipulate how to assemble stories to report on perceived happenings (Dahlgren 1984: 6).
The news production process is believed to contribute to the societal ideation
process. By that, we mean the manner in which not only the rational or cognitive, but also the irrational or intuitive elements of knowledge, ideas and information are passed on. In this case, ideation is not only to be seen as a distribution of specic facts or events, but rather as a generalized angle of vision on social reality with strong affective and subjective components.
Thus, Davis and Walton (1983), in their analysis of the Aldo Moro Story,
found that the visual and verbal content of the news about the death of the murdered Italian Christian-democrat more distinctly stated how the media contributed to the preservation of an ideological consensus rather than via a study of
the events which constitute the news: There is a universally assumed consensus (in Western media) within which, with some cross-cultural variation, complex causes and impact of armed opposition and revolutionary violence are reduced by the inferential frameworks of law and (dis)order, the violent society,
the threat to democracy, and international terror, to a simple picture of a temporary and unprovoked outbreak of irrational violence in an otherwise ordered and
peaceful society (Davis and Walton 1983: 48). An analysis of the international news coverage about the assassination of Lebanese president-elect Beshir Gemayel arrives at the same kind of observations (Van Dijk 1984).
One classic study on the implicit news structure rules was published in 1965
by Johann Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge of the Peace Research Institute in
Oslo. Their study on The structure of foreign news (1965) analyzed how the
Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises of the early 1960s had been reported in four newspapers in the Norwegian capital. They found that the vast majority of spot news
items originated from a very limited number of international news agencies. They
also identied a dozen factors that seemed to mark an event as newsworthy:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
the time-span needed for an event to unfold itself and acquire meaning;
the scale and intensity of an event (both in absolute and in relative terms);
the clarity of an event;
the meaningfulness (meaning both cultural proximity and relevance);
the consonance;
unexpectedness;
continuity;
composition (balance) of the available news.
77
Galtung and Ruge formulated a number of hypotheses concerning the interrelationships of these news values. The hypotheses of selection (the more events
satisfy the criteria mentioned, the more likely that they will be registered as
news), of distortion (Once a news item has been selected what makes it newsworthy according to the factors will be accentuated), and of replication (both
the process of selection and the process of distortion will take place at all steps
in the chain from event to reader) have been tested by several researchers since
(for an elaboration and overview, see Boone and Servaes 1982; McQuail 1994;
Mowlana 1997).
Other studies have found that the impact of news may well lie beyond the rationalistic dimension and may well be of a subjective dimension from a rather
ideological or mythical nature. According to Roland Barthes (cited in Joseph
Campbell 1988: 10), A myth has a double function: it points out and it noties,
it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us. Campbell adds: A
dream is a personal myth; a myth is the public dream of a society. Myths are
generally expressed through the narrative form of storytelling. Myths are human
phenomena (creations of the human mind and spirit); at the same time they are
cultural phenomena (they effectively organize the way we, as a group, view portions of our world).
Some scholars see the invasion of Grenada in February 1982 as a period wherein myths are strongly emphasized (see Servaes and Drijvers 1986; Servaes 1991).
The handover of Hong Kong by Britain to China seems to provide another opportunity for such an approach.
What precedes here seems to justify the thesis that news is a myth-maker.
Dahlgren (1984) suggests that the mythic domain of (TV-)news performs four
basic operations on a regular basis:
1. It establishes and cements the social order as part of our cognition.
2. It legitimates and celebrates the basic and dominant structures, functions
and leadership of the social order.
3. It serves to explain and interpret that which transpires which is of relevance
for the social order.
4. For the viewer or media consumers in general, the mythic domain evokes
identication and loyalty to the social order.
These observations should not lead to the conclusion that the mythic domain denies or camouages social tensions. On the contrary, tensions are brought out
and are part of the social orders dynamics. The point is, however, that they are
rendered safe for the social order as a whole: the boundaries and limits of the issues, their signicance, the stakes involved, the array of perceived and reasonable options, etc. are presented, interpreted and (usually) resolved such that the
contours of the social order remains intact (Dahlgren 1984: 77).
78
This review of relevant studies testies that the area of news selection and
production has been investigated by communication scholars in all parts of the
world. They constitute much of the theoretical framework upon which this study
is based. These and other studies of African and Latin American media point to
the universality of the need for media to remember their role in affecting perceptions of, and attitudes to, people living in faraway places who practice different cultures.
We must also mention the broader issue of whether the media can be guided
and told what to report and what not to report. The Western journalistic tradition
(as exemplied in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) holds that the
press must be absolutely free. Whereas Asian leaders such as Malaysian Prime
Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad have repeatedly called for the press to be more
responsible, not only in reporting about national affairs but also in reporting
about foreign countries. Thus, there is a bipolar division with regard to freedom
of the press, with one end representing the libertarian philosophy and the other,
the authoritarian philosophy.
79
tions selected were in English. However, we also included publications in German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin and Japanese.
The study was also designed to nd out how the handover of Hong Kong from
Britain to China in July 1997 was reported in the Asian and European media.
The outlining of a new study methodology has to be based upon an interdisciplinary approach. A fundamental problem, however, is how to combine a variety of methodologies in the same research design so that these mutually reinforce and complement each other (White 1985: 23). That is precisely what we
accomplished by combining normally separately used research methodologies,
namely, the quantitative and qualitative content analysis.
Based on the quantitatively standardized, international inventory and encoding agreements which will give us an idea about the content and organizational structure of Asia/Europe reporting, we had to build on these ndings in
our own research design.
Hence, a three-stage content analysis technique was utilized. In the rst stage,
we translated and compiled news reports, inclusive of listing, classication and
determination of typology. The typology utilized was the standard typology used
for content analysis studies (Schramm and Atwood 1981). Stage 2 comprised data
entry and statistical analysis, using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program. In Stage 3, we undertook an in-depth analysis, including a
qualitative analysis. At this stage, specic news items were selected, and headlines and content were read again to determine the direction of the stories. Direction here is determined with regard to whether a story is positive, negative or
neutral, based upon the reading of headlines and text and interpretation of photographs/illustrations (if any). In all cases, there had to be agreement between
two researchers vis--vis direction of stories.
The study initially set out to select categories and analyze stories about Europe
appearing in the selected Asian publications, and stories about Asia appearing in
the selected European publications. Since the time period chosen coincided with
the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, we also included all stories
about the handover appearing in both sets of publications.
Thus, the total number of stories studied was:
Asia reporting Europe
Europe reporting Asia
Hong Kong handover stories in Asian publications
Total
1565 Stories
749 Stories
1411 Stories
3725 Stories
Therefore, the basic nding is that Asian publications have greater coverage of
European events, as compared to the coverage of Asian events by European publications.
80
Looking more closely, it can be observed that the total number of stories for
the South China Morning Post was 699 items, this included both coverage of
European events as well as a large number of stories on the Hong Kong handover. This was expected, as the newspaper is based in Hong Kong. Newspapers in
neighboring countries (Bangkok Post 410 items, Straits Times 377 items and
Jakarta Post 307 items) also had considerable coverage of both the handover
as well as European events.
The newspapers which had the least coverage were the Peoples Daily (44
items) and Asahi Shimbun (116 items). In the case of the Peoples Daily, it can
be postulated that low coverage of Hong Kong may have been in line with the ofcial policy of treating the handover as a low-key event.
The International Herald Tribune led the European-based publications in coverage of Asia (85 items). It was followed by The Times, Le Monde (66 items),
Neue Zrcher Zeitung (62 items), Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (54 items)
and El Pais (56 items). Discounting the handover stories, it can be said that the
coverage by European publications of Asian events was minimal.
These gures support one of the common hypotheses of many international
comparative studies, namely that one can still speak of a historically rooted news
dependency relationship between Europe (the former center) and Asia (the former periphery) (see, e.g., Golding and Harris 1997).
Asian publications carried a signicant amount of sports/recreation stories
(609 stories, or 39.0%) about Europe. The primary focus was on the Wimbledon tennis championship, wherein Pete Sampras and Martina Hingis emerged
as champions. The second most important category was Economy/Business/
Labor/Finance (218 stories, or 13.9%), followed by political stories (154 stories, or 9.9%) and international relations (138, or 8.8%) stories. The least mentioned categories of news were religion (7 stories) and extraordinary/strange/bizarre (8 stories).
With regard to Europe reporting Asia, there were 141 stories (18.8%) in the
Economy/Business/Labor/Finance category. The most prominent events were
effects of the Hong Kong handover, the declining value of the Thai baht and its
implications for Asia, Europe and the rest of the world. The second most important category was political stories, and the third was international relations.
The majority of Hong Kong handover stories were of the political category
(640 stories, or 38.4%). This was to be expected. The next category was international relations (301 stories, or 18.1%), and here the emphasis was on the future of China-Taiwan relations, the future of Portuguese Macaw and the implications of the handover for the rest of Asia.
In other words, our ndings show that the Hong Kong handover was covered
by each European newspaper from a nationalistic and to some extent also ethnocentric perspective. Almost half of the articles give a description of the handover.
81
A second general conclusion is that the broad political framework in which the
newspapers covered the conict is a dependency axis. This dependency axis has
two major components: rstly, stories that assess the changes which may occur
on a geo-strategic and political-economic level; secondly, the domino-effect of
the handover on other neighboring countries and regions (especially Taiwan).
Almost exclusively, the Hong Kong handover stories were assessing the consequences of this dependency axis from a Western (including U.S.) or European
perspective in general or a nation-specic perspective for those countries with
historical, political or economic interests in Hong Kong. In most instances, European newspapers which, as shown in the quantitative analysis, have a strong
interest in the region, such as the IHT and The Economist, leave the Asian perspective under-illuminated. Few or no examples of an Asian perspective have
been found in stories about the handover.
The British newspapers coverage deserves a special mention, for it reected the British colonial perspective. The majority of the articles referred (somewhat nostalgically) to the British colonial past and covered the events related to
the handover from the perspective of the major British players involved (Governor Patten, Prince Charles etc.). The tone of the articles was pessimistic as regards the future of Hong Kong on the one hand, and romantic regarding the
colonial past on the other hand.
The United Kingdom was by far the most frequently mentioned in the Asian
publications (646 stories, or 41.3%). This was due primarily to the reportage of
the Wimbledon tennis tournament, nancial/economic stories emanating from
London.
The second European country mentioned was France (148 stories, or 9.5%)
mostly in connection with motor racing and French reaction to the European
Union and NATO talks.
The third European country was Russia (111 stories, or 7.1%), mostly with regard to political stories, (e.g. Yeltsin sacks minister, appoints daughter as adviser) and the crash at the MIR station. The fourth European country was Germany
(103 stories, or 6.6%), mostly with regard to nancial/economic stories, German
reaction to NATO talks and to European Union proposals.
Hong Kong was the state most frequently mentioned in the European publications (188 times, or 25.1%). This was followed by China (119 times, or 15.9%)
and Hong Kong related stories emanating from the UK or mentioning the UK
(112 times, or 15.0%). The UK felt closest to Hong Kong for historical, political and economic reasons. Asian countries mentioned were Japan (52 times, or
6.9%), Thailand, India and Cambodia (21 times, or 2.8% each).
London was the city from which the most number of stories (383 stories, or
24.5%) were led in the Asian publications. This was followed by Wimbledon
(191 stories, or 12.2%), Paris (122 stories, or 7.8%) and Moscow (88 stories, or
82
5.6%). With regard to Europe reporting Asia, the largest number was datelined
Hong Kong (276 stories, or 36.8%), with the second being London (again, these
were stories about the handover; 100 stories, or 13.4%) and the third being Tokyo (52 stories, or 6.9%).
Reuters was the main source for Asian publications which reported on European events (604 stories, or 38.6%). The second most important source was
Agence France Presse (384 stories, or 24.6%), the third was the Asian publications own correspondents stationed in European countries (164 stories, 10.5%)
and the fourth was Associated Press (140 stories, 9.0%). The number of stories
emanating from Asian news agencies such as Bernama, Jiji Press, Kyodo, Press
Trust of India, United News of India and Xinhua was relatively small.
The publications own correspondents accounted for nearly two-thirds of all
Asian stories (466 stories, or 62.2%). The European publications studied deployed their own correspondents stationed in Asia to cover the handover and related events such as U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albrights visit to Vietnam
and Prince Charles visit to the Philippines.
The physical presence of these correspondents in Asia can be considered as
ordinary. We assume that European publications coverage of Asian events would
be far less if not for the Hong Kong handover and allied stories.
With regard to international news agencies, Reuters again emerged as the
main source of news (88 stories, 11.7%), followed by Associated Press (45 stories, 6.0%), New York Times News Service (26 stories, 3.5%) and Agence France
Press (22 stories, 2.9%).
This study therefore shows that the dependence of Asian publications on international news agencies as the prime sources of news, a phenomenon noticed
in the 1970s and 1980s, is still prevalent in the 1990s.
European personalities most often mentioned in Asian publications were Russian President Boris Yeltsin (33 times, or 2.1%), tennis players Martina Hingis
(32 times, or 2.0%), Boris Becker (31 times, or 2.0%), Pete Sampras (28 times,
or 1.8%) and Monica Seles (28 times, or 1.8%). Apart from these, former Albanian President Sali Berisha (26 times, or 1.7%) and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair (25 times, or 1.6%) were also mentioned in the Asian publications.
With regard to Asian personalities mentioned in European publications, former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten (38 stories, or 5.1%), Chinese President
Jiang Zemin (35 stories, or 4.7%) and Hong Kongs administrator Tung Chee
Hwa (28 stories, or 3.7%) were the most frequently mentioned personalities, almost exclusively in handover stories. Prince Charles received a signicant number of mentions also in connection with the handover and his visit to the Philippines (20 stories, or 2.7%).
Besides the coverage given to the handover (which peaked on 30 June and 1
July), there were 18 other Asian stories on the front pages of European publica-
83
tions. With regard to Asian publications, there were 24 front-page stories about
European events. Therefore, it can be stated that in terms of treatment, Asian publications gave more prominence to European events when compared to prominence given by European publications to Asian events.
Taking into consideration the scripts of various languages studied, the size
of stories was measured in square centimeters, as this would provide a uniform
measurement. In analyzing the size of stories, we divided it into four categories
as follows: llers 100 sq. cm and less; small stories between 101 to 500 sq.
cm; major stories between 501 to 1000 sq. cm; and in-depth stories 1001 sq.
cm and more. This study shows that for both Asia and Europe, the largest number was small stories (1238 stories out of 2312, or 54%). However, when we compare both categories of stories, it can be seen that stories about Europe published
in Asian publications were longer.
To summarize, the main nding of the quantitative study was that reporting/
coverage of Asian events by European media was less than reporting/coverage
of European events by Asian media. Of the 3725 news items studied, 1563 were
European events reported in Asian media, 1413 items were stories about the Hong
Kong handover reported in Asian media, and only 749 items were Asian events
(including stories of the Hong Kong handover) reported in the European media.
Other ndings of the study were:
The United Kingdom was the country most frequently mentioned in Asian
publications, followed by France, Russia and Germany. Regions and countries most frequently mentioned in European publications were Hong Kong,
China, Japan, Thailand, India and Cambodia.
While European publications obtained more than half of their stories from
their own sources/correspondents, Asian publications still rely heavily on
international news agencies, particularly Reuters.
London was the only city from which the most number of stories were led
for Asian publications, followed by Wimbledon, Paris and Moscow. For European publications, Hong Kong, London and Tokyo were the cities from
which the most number of stories emanated.
Stories about the Hong Kong handover dominated the front pages of publications studied.
There were few illustrations/cartoons supporting European stories in Asian
publication. Cartoons/illustrations in European publications were mostly
political and about the handover.
While Asian publications generally tended to be neutral in their reporting
of European events, there were more instances of negative reports about
Asian events in European publications.
Wimbledon tennis players such as Hingis, Becker and Sampras were the
84
6. Qualitative analysis
The qualitative analysis involved selection of specic news items, an in-depth
reading of headlines and text. The main purpose was to determine their direction positive, negative or neutral. At this stage, llers and short news stories
were excluded, as they were basically factual reports. We concentrated on the
longer news stories, editorials and in-depth articles.
For this purpose, the researchers zeroed in on the Hong Kong handover stories.
As expected, Asian media gave considerable coverage to this event, with the South
China Morning Post leading the way, followed by newspapers from neighboring
countries such as Bangkok Post, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Jakarta Post, Straits
Times and the New Straits Times. This nding is consistent with the proximity
value of news, that is, the closer the scene of a news event is to the place of publication, the greater is its news value. In the case of Hong Kong-UK relations, we
must also recognize that there is a cultural/historical proximity.
85
With regard to European media, while reporting of this event by The Times
was neutral/positive, The Guardian concentrated on less positive aspects, including British ofcials unhappiness at the handover, Hong Kongs sex trade,
and negative predictions about the economic future of Hong Kong under Chinas administration. Other European publications highlighted the arrival of PLA
troops, bleak future for Hong Kong dissidents and even a call for Gibraltar to be
returned to Spain (in El Pais newspaper). Deeper analysis of articles in El Pais
revealed that while the slant of the handover stories was positive towards China,
there were reservations about maintenance of democracy, future nancial status
of Hong Kong and the fate of the dissidents.
Negative Asian stories published in European media were the Japanese payoff scandals, political instability in India, accidents/disaster in Pakistan and the
unstable political situation in Cambodia. There were also a signicant number
of commentaries and opinion pieces about the unstable Indian and Cambodian
political situations.
With regard to European stories published in Asian media, the majority was
positive or neutral such as sports stories and economic/business stories. Among
the stories that can be categorized as negative were the MIR crash and failed
NATO talks. Nevertheless, many Asian publications published these as straight
news reports that were credited to one or more of the international news agencies. These stories were usually carried in the inside pages devoted to world/international news.
Overall, the study found that there was less reporting of Asia in Europe than of
Europe in Asia. While the reporting of Europe by Asia was more positive, prominence in the reporting of Asia by Europe was given to negative news and human right stories. Also political issues dominated the news category.
The handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China was given considerable
coverage by both Asian and European newspapers/magazines in general. However, the kind of coverage and the perspective taken differed considerably from
newspaper to newspaper, and from country to country.
In summary, therefore, the following statements can be made:
(1) Coverage of Asia reporting Europe was greater and more extensive than Europe reporting Asia.
(2) While European publications obtained more than half their stories from
their own sources/correspondents, Asian publications still rely heavily on
international news agencies, particularly Reuters.
(3) While Asian publications generally tended to be neutral in their reporting
of European events, there were more instances of negative reports about
Asian events in European publications.
86
The study found that reporting of Asian events by European publications was
less than reporting of European events by Asian publications. Further, coverage
of European events by Asian publications was more extensive and accompanied
more often by illustrations as compared with coverage of Asian events by European media. As was to be expected, the Hong Kong handover was covered more
extensively by Asian publications, especially those from Hong Kong itself and
the neighboring countries.
The qualitative analysis revealed that there were instances of negative Asian
stories published in European media, the majority of which emanated from their
own correspondents. By contrast, in Asian publications, which relied heavily on
the international news agencies, stories about Europe were largely neutral.
Earlier in this chapter, we had alluded to differing perceptions about what
makes news and what are the news values that editors and reporters look for. As
the general dictum states, No news is good news. This has been interpreted to
mean that news by its very denition is negative in nature. Herein lies the justication propounded by most journalists for doing what they do. We feel that while
such perceptions may help journalists to justify what they do (or do not do), journalists still have a duty to present fair and accurate reports of the days events in
a meaningful context, as recommended by the British Hutchins Commission on
the Press more that 50 years ago. Our study shows that the Hong Kong handover was not presented in a fair and meaningful context, particularly by the European media studied.
Another dimension of the discussion is whether news is a commodity to be
bought and sold to the highest bidder. As our study substantiates, stories about
Wimbledon (including sexy pictures of women players), Prince Charles exploits,
political instability in India and Cambodia, Hong Kongs sex trade and its uncertain future, and other such stories seem to be what the media of both regions
want. While the Hong Kong handover was adequately reported and highlighted
in the media coverage in both Asia and Europe prior to the event itself, the coverage tapered off dramatically very soon after 1 July 1997. Four years later, it has
become part of contemporary history and may soon be relegated to the realms
of ancient history.
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Chapter 6
The contest over Hong Kong:
Revealing the power practices of the Western media
Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner
1. Introduction
To take a radical cultural turn in the West-dominated language and communication studies can assume many different forms, as the rest of the book will demonstrate. In the present chapter, we want to suggest that the discipline of discourse
studies can and should take a cultural-critical approach by studying how the
West itself represents and acts upon non-Western others. For, such an approach
may not only highlight and undermine everyday ethnocentric practice and prejudice of Western discourse as a whole, but also, at both a theoretical and empirical level, draw attention to the Western discourse of the Other, beyond perennial
western discourses of self-identity or whatever its other concerns. Further, such
work is complimentary to the understanding of non-Western discourse, which is
the central concern of this book and the object of enquiry of Part 3. Western and
non-Western discourses are dialectically dened primarily through the notion
of cultural power (Chapter 1).
As a contribution to this cultural-critical move in discourse studies, we shall
take up the Western media discourse on Hong Kongs transition in 1997. In particular we shall identify some discursive patterns of cultural domination in the
respect of cross-cultural representations and relations. For purposes of generality
about the Western media discourse, we have based our research on data selected
from newspapers and magazines published in the UK, the Netherlands, Austria,
Germany, Australia and America.
A largely qualitative analysis, this study will highlight two main discursive
patterns in the media. Firstly, the Western media take Hong Kongs identity as
an object of Western warnings or threats and as such also an object of Western
wishes or desires. For instance, when the Western media apparently ask questions about Hong Kongs future, they do not simply give an answer. Instead,
they issue warnings or threats, implying what the future of Hong Kong ought to
be like. Secondly, the Western media categorize and dene the identity for Hong
Kong, instead of letting Hong Kong speak, and then use the descriptions as rhe-
90
torical and ideological strategies to constrain the action of Hong Kong and, in
that connection, of China. In this sense, it may be said that the Western media
determine the nature of Hong Kong in order to suit their own desires and objectives. For example, the Western media attribute Hong Kongs economic success
almost exclusively to British colonial rule, in contrast to the competing and undesirable accounts by Hong Kong and China themselves.
It should be pointed out that our choice and arrangement of data material
and research methods are motivated by our cultural-political approach. One of
its central methodological strategies is to expose recurring culturally repressive
discourses in order to raise awareness for cultural equality (see also Chapter 1).
Therefore, our data analysis is designed, not to be representative, but to be revealing. In this way, hopefully more detailed and critical attention will be paid to the
sorts of discourse in question and others (see also Chow 1992, 1993; Flowerdew
and Scollon 1997; Knight and Nakano 1999).
91
as Van Eemeren et al. point out (1996: 22), is to develop criteria for determining the validity of argumentation in view of its points of departure and presentational layout and to implement the application of these criteria in the production, analysis and evaluation of argumentative discourse. Thus, we shall specifically apply the notion of argumentative scheme to the argumentative discourse
in question, drawing on the rich literature on argument schemes (e.g. PerelmanOlbrechts-Tyteca 1971; Schellens 1985; Kienpointner 1992; Walton 1996; Grennan 1997). Argumentative schemes (or structures, norms) are relationships between claims and arguments that are widely but roughly shared in a cultural-linguistic community. As minimal elements of a prototypical argument scheme we
distinguish warrant, ground and conclusion (cf. Toulmin 1958), to which sometimes further elements are added, for example, premises which deal with potential rebuttals.
92
so on. Everyday media discourse such as these instances can be a powerful form
of intercultural communication and have signicant consequences on human cultural development as a whole. In this study, accordingly, the Western journalistic
communication will be seen from the perspective of its intercultural framing.
93
ing acts of patronizing and intimidation. Seen from another perspective, the future identity of Hong Kong has less to do with the Wests genuine interest in Hong
Kongs possible cultural development than to do with the Wests own self-interest
and desire to regiment the cultural Others behavior accordingly.
Let us look at a few examples to see how such coercive mediation of the future identity of Hong Kong is exercised in various Western media.
Example [1]
[...] the most fascinating question is not how China will change Hong Kong but
how Hong Kong will change China and the world.
Human rights in Hong Kong are already emerging as another focal point for China-American relations, and any kind of crackdown in the territory could trigger a
serious downward spiral in relations between Washington and Beijing. Big change
is coming to whom and how? International Herald Tribune, 01/07/97
In this example from the American newspaper, apparently, an inquisitive question is raised what Hong Kong will turn into after its return to China; N.B. the
most fascinating question. And yet, far from being a cultural development to be
speculated about or predicted, Hong Kongs future is already being fashioned by
external desires and concerns. First, it is pointed out to China that human rights
in Hong Kong have already emerged as an issue. The paper alerts China, too,
that this is becoming central to its relation with the United States. Further, it issues a more stern warning to the Chinese governments leaders (N.B. Beijing
and Washington): they may be given a punishment of a serious downward spiral in relations between Washington and Beijing if they dare to attempt any
kind of crackdown in the territory. Of course one of the basic premises underlying these statements regarding the Sino-American relations is that China needs
a good relationship with the U.S. Thus, it may not be an exaggeration to say that
Big change is coming to whom and how? (the title of the article) is a local
cultural development for the American media, and the American Administration
whose interest it represents, to prescribe and engineer.
Example [2]
This is why all the rhetoric about Hong Kongs future has a far larger purpose; it
is really about Chinas future.
[...]
Will the Hong Kong handover advance or retard US-China relations? It depends
upon two factors. First, China must ensure that one country, two systems works,
which means honoring the Basic Law it has endorsed to secure Hong Kongs
guarantees.
[...]
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But if one country, two systems has this design tension, it contains its reward.
[...] Once China shows the concept works in practice, then it has the perfect argument to put the incorporation of Taiwan on the agenda. Whose values will
prevail? The Australian, 02/07/97
This Australian text at the historic time would be expected to be in the same natural context of questioning about what Hong Kong will become. However, the
question posed here is a preformulated and designed one: it is linked specically
with the make or break of the Sino-American relations (advance or retard);
in addition, it is concerned with [w]hose values prevail? More importantly, the
answer given to it is not a prediction or description, but an injunction to China.
It is an injunction because it tells China what it must do (must ensure); it is an
injunction also because it species or stipulates for China (the meaning of) what
it must do (which means). Although this imperative is issued by different (viz.
Australian) media, they reect the same concern or desire: namely, China does
what the media require.
Hong Kongs future identity (in that connection what China must [not] do to
it) is not only an object of discursive coercion, but it may be an object for American-Western reward as well, if certain conditions are met. Thus, in this text, what
China will do and what Hong Kong will be are not just a matter for threatening
and warning, but are placed in a moral order which the media, and the Western interests they represent, set for them as well. Here it may be recalled that it
is widely understood that China needs a good relationship with Washington, not
least with regard to the issue of Taiwan.
In the following two Austrian examples, the course of future is laid out forcefully for the Chinese government and Hong Kong by stressing the international norm as well as their own interest:
Example [3]
Ein Satz sollte unauslschlich in das Gedchtnis der Beijinger Fhrung sowie in
das von Tung Chee-hwa, des Regierungschefs der chinesischen Sonderverwaltungszone Hong Kong, eingeschrieben sein: Die Augen der Welt sind auf Hong
Kong gerichtet [...]. Beijing sollte schon im eigenen Interesse Hong Kong Hong
Kong sein lassen. Nicht nur, weil es die vielzitierte Gans ist, die goldene Eier legt.
China wird doch, sollte man hoffen drfen, auf die Tilgung der einen Schmach
nicht eine neue folgen lassen: die Zerstrung des wiedererlangten Territoriums.
(One sentence should be irreversibly engraved on the memory of both Beijings
leaders and Tung Chee-hwa, the chief executive of the Chinese Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong: The eyes of the world are directed at Hong Kong
[...]. In its own interest, Beijing should let Hong Kong remain Hong Kong. Not
just because it is the much-quoted goose which lays golden eggs, but also be-
95
cause, after the elimination of one humiliation, China will not let a new one follow (at least, we may hope so): the destruction of the regained territory.) Ein
Land, zwei Systeme (One country, two systems), DER STANDARD [An Austrian newspaper], 01/07/97
Example [4]
Machte Peking das Vertrauen in die Finanz- und Handelsmetropole zunichte,
gingen ihm unschtzbare wirtschaftliche Mglichkeiten verloren. Damit wrde
aber auch das Vertrauen des Auslandes in Chinas Politik der ffnung schwer erschttert. (If Beijing destroyed the condence in the nancial and commercial
metropolis [Hong Kong], then it would lose invaluable nancial opportunities.
At the same time, the condence abroad in Chinas policy of opening would be
seriously shaken) Helmut L. Mller: Hong Kong wird zum Testfall (Hong Kong
will be a testcase), SALZBURGER NACHRICHTEN [An Austrian newspaper], 28/06/97
Like the previous two texts, these two are also concerned, implicitly, with the
question of the future of Hong Kong, with special reference to the role of China in the process. Just as in the previous examples, the future development of
Hong Kong is woven into the argumentative discourse. Especially the text in Example [3] strongly reminds China and Hong Kong (leaders) that they should remember the rule and expectation of the world: N.B. should be irreversibly engraved on the memory and the eyes of the world are directed at Hong Kong.
Formulated in this way, this reminder also sends an explicit injunction and warning: the the world the Big Brother is watching and you should never forget it. (In this text, the threat comes from a broader agent the world, instead
of Washington.)
In addition, slightly different from the external reward argument in Example [2], the self-interest strategy is used in these two texts: that is, the argumentative discourse appeals to the Chinas own stake in Hong Kong. The two texts
analyze for China its stake into two kinds: one positive (the much-quoted goose
which lays golden eggs) and one negative (let a new one [humiliation] follow
[...]: the destruction of the regained territory; lose invaluable nancial opportunities and the condence abroad in Chinas policy of opening would be seriously shaken). However, it might be pointed out that what China is persuaded
to do here dovetails precisely with what the world requires, namely, let Hong
Kong remain Hong Kong, or in other words, keeping the status quo. A similar
restrictive kind of way of prescribing the cultural Others future may be seen in
the next Dutch example:
96
Example [5]
Succes van Hongkongs experiment zal blijken uit degrag locale grootheden. (The
success of Hong Kongs experiment is yet to be seen from the behavior of the local gures.) De Volkskrant, 02/07/97
Here the statement strategically links the Others preferred future outcome of
Hong Kongs transition to the behavior of one particular group of people. By
the same act, it excludes other factors. In this way, it places the responsibility, and
possible blame, on the named group of people.
97
resources, look at its laws. Does it have laws which encourage people and help
people to thrive and excel? And thats precisely what Hong Kong has had. We
did a pretty good job, [interview with Christopher Patten] Newsweek Special
Issue, 05/07/97
It should be noted that in the background of this argument there were many different kinds of explanations of Hong Kongs success, especially Chinas and Hong
Kongs among them. It may be observed in this text that plausible causal candidates for Hong Kongs success are ruled out one by one (N.B. the alliteration of
donts) and the one singled out is highlighted as a result. The negations here effectively invoke but undermine alternative accounts, potential or real. The construction of auto-question-and-answer (Does it have laws which encourage ...
to excel? And thats precisely what Hong Kong has had), which might be interpreted as the output of a rhetorical strategy which renders the premises of an
argument more evident (a gure called subiectio in ancient rhetoric, Quintilianus 1953: 9.2.14f.), has a similar effect. More importantly, the recourse to the
authority of de Tocqueville most effectively warrants the preferred explanation.
In this perspective, it becomes clear that it is the laws established by the British
government that caused the actions that led to Hong Kongs success, though such
an understanding would be based on the presupposed knowledge about the role
of the British administration in the laws. It may be argued, therefore, that the reality of how Hong Kong has achieved economical success is associated with an
argumentative and sociocultural motive, viz. excluding alternative claims of the
causes and thereby glorifying British colonial rule (its laws). This may also be
evidenced by Pattens quotation in the title.
It is in this context of seeing Hong Kongs success as the result of British rule
that Patten categorizes and denes the current Hong Kong:
Example [7]
Christopher Patten: [...] It [Hong Kong ...] is a very international city. And I think
that anything which detracts from that in the future would be very damaging.
We did a pretty good job, Newsweek Special Issue, 05/07/97
In this instance, the former Governor of Hong Kong categorizes Hong Kong in
a particular way (i.e. very international), against possible others. (Here it may
be added that Patten talks about this also in the context of his daughters having many international friends there.) Further, he denes that particular quality of Hong Kong as valuable and something that Hong Kong and China must
keep. That this denition is also presented as a warning is marked by calling
other kinds of identity as negative (note very damaging). Thus, this authoritarian way of characterizing Hong Kong as very international, in the context
98
of its return to China, not only ignores or excludes a possible alternative, native
perspective, but also, with the warning, has the effect of restraining the cultural
Others sphere of action.
A similar Other-denying way of dening the Others situation may be seen in
the following German text:
Example [8]
Martin Lee kann jedoch einen berzeugenderen Trumpf ausspielen, fr den es
kein Gegenargument gibt: Hong Kong verdankt seinen ungeheuren Erfolg allein seinen Freiheiten. (Martin Lee, however, can play a more convincing trump
card, against which there is no counter argument: Hong Kong owes its huge success exclusively to its political liberties.) Gabriele Venzky: Recht muss Recht
bleiben (The laws the law), ZEIT Punkte 3 (1997), p. 77.
Here the newspaper articles author denes an argument about Hong Kong as exclusive and overwhelming (note a more convincing trump card, against which
there is no counter argument). Importantly, it should be realized that in the
background of the German authors favored argument, there have been numerous very different and even contrary arguments, from Hong Kong, from China
and elsewhere. Such universalist and repressive practice constitutes again a relationship of domination, or specically what might be called that of the West
speaks for its Other.
Example [9]
At dawn today, China stamped its authority on its new possession, when 4,000
troops backed by armored cars and helicopters crossed into the territory. [...]
[...]
At the formal handover ceremony, Prince Charles bequeathed Britains last big
overseas domain to Jiang Zemin, a former trainee at the Stalin Auto Works in
Moscow and now head of the worlds last major, albeit zealously capitalist, Communist Party.
[...]
The substitute legislature immediately began its rst formal session, ready to pass
an omnibus law activating a string of legislation, including curbs on protests and
the funding of political parties, which had been approved before the handover.
Last hurrah and empire that covered a quarter of the globe closes down, The
Guardian, 01/07/97
There are several features worth noting here. For one thing, the Guardian article still refuses to recognize the historical fact of British aggression and colonization (new possession, Prince Charles bequeathed Britains last big overseas
99
4. Conclusion
We began this study with the observation that a cultural turn to discourse also requires a look at ones own cultural discourse of the Other. A critical self-reection
is particularly relevant to Western culture and communication research in particular because it has historically and continues to speak ethnocentrically of the
Other (Said 1978, 1993). In this case, it will be interesting to examine how acts
and relations of domination are reproduced, especially in the now cross-culturally oriented media discourse. Further, we suggest that while the role of discourse
in the construction of culture(s) is now well recognized in cultural, media, linguistic and communication studies, the detailed discursive complexities and dynamics of cultural (re)production, remain to be explored. So in an inward look
such as this, we should pay attention to the strategic ways through which crosscultural repression is achieved. Finally, since repressive discourse is contentious,
we surmised that argumentation would be an important device in the denition,
100
References
Bauman, R. and J. Sherzer (eds.)
1996 Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Billig, M.
1995 Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications.
Carbaugh, D. A.
1988 Talking American: Cultural Discourses on Donahue. London: Ablex.
Chow, R.
1992 Between colonizers: Hong Kongs postcolonial self-writing in the 1990s. Diaspora. 2 (2), 152170.
1993 Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
Flowerdew, J. and R. Scollon
1997 Public discourse in Hong Kong and the change of sovereignty. Journal of
Pragmatics. 28, 417426.
Grennan, W.
1997 Informal Logic. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
Grodin, D. and T. R. Lindlof (eds.)
1996 Constructing the self in a mediated world. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Kienpointner, M.
1983 Argumentationsanalyse. Innsbruck: Verlag des Instituts fur Sprachwissenschaft.
101
1997
Concepts of language in discourse: An interactional resource in troubled intercultural contexts. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 122,
4772.
Cultural Representations: Analyzing the Discourse of the Other. New York:
Peter Lang.
Thompson, J.
1995 The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Toulmin, S.
1958 The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tracy, K.
1995 Action-implicative discourse analysis. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 14 (12): 195215.
Van Eemeren, F. H., R. Grootendorst and F. S. Henkemans
1996 Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory. A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Walton, D.
1996 Argumentation Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum.
102
Wu, D.
2001
Chapter 7
Hong Kongs press freedom:
A comparative sociology of Western and Hong
Kongs views
Junhao Hong
1. Introduction
The historic return of Hong Kong to China in July 1997 has been one of the focal points in the international media. This is partly because the event has a great
deal to do with not just the Asian-Pacic region, but also the rest of the world.
Economically, Hong Kong is one of the worlds most important trade and nancial centers; politically, Hong Kongs future is a showcase to Taiwan, which is in
a very complicated and uncertain process of reunication with mainland China;
and culturally, Hong Kong is the media and culture production center in Asia, as
well as one of the worlds major media and culture exporters.
Since Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, much attention from both inside and outside Hong Kong has been paid to the situation of Hong Kongs press
freedom. For many years, press freedom has been seen as one of the cornerstones
of Hong Kongs capitalist society and its democratic system. In particular, it has
been regarded as crucial to Hong Kongs economic prosperity and political stability, as well as a vital part of the lives of millions of people in Hong Kong. It
has also been feared, however, that, after its return to China, Hong Kong would
no longer have press freedom. Thus, one intriguing question would be what happens to Hong Kongs press freedom after Hong Kongs transition.
Indeed, press freedom is a crucial issue in any society. For one thing, the degree of press freedom reects the sociopolitical framework that a media system is
embedded, for example, an authoritarian system, a totalitarian system, a libertarian or democratic system. As Siebert, Peterson and Schramm (1956) state, a media system is a mirror of a social system and political structure: the press always
takes on the form and coloration of the social system and the political structure
within which it operates. Thus, the situation of Hong Kongs press freedom is one
of the most important and useful indices to measure the situation of Hong Kongs
social system and political structure after its handover. For another, in any society, regardless of its social system and political structure, media and communi-
104
Junhao Hong
cation issues are never merely professional and institutional matters; they always
manifest, overtly or covertly, political, ideological, social, cultural and economic desires and concerns. Therefore, a study of the views of a societys freedoms,
especially that of the press, as in the present case of Hong Kongs press freedom,
may shed light on what a society is like and what it will aspire to become.
An even more fundamental issue here is how press freedom is dened, and
whose and what criteria are used to determine the degree of press freedom. There
are two, apparently contradictory aspects to this issue. On the one hand, the differences in social structures, political systems and ideologies are often manifested in their views, or discourses, of press freedom. On the other hand, these very
discourses can also be managed in such a way that they conceal those structural
and ideological differences. Further a crucial point to emphasize here the differences in the views of press freedom may result in divergence in the implementation of press freedom, with regard to, for example, what kind of press freedom
would be allowed and to what extent the press can enjoy freedom.
Before and after Hong Kongs return to China, Western countries have been
using their own perspectives and criteria in evaluating press freedom issues in
Hong Kong. The views of the people of Hong Kong, a population of seven million, on the other hand, are largely neglected or ignored in the Western media.
More crucially, the very notion of press freedom is a Western historical product.
One may thus ask: Is the Western model of press freedom the only correct one?
Should that be used for the case of Hong Kong? For what purposes and with what
consequences? Shouldnt the issue of press freedom be judged by the people of
Hong Kong and of China as well? And how should it be evaluated anyway?
Based on primary sources obtained through my several research trips to Hong
Kong before, during and after the islands turnover to China, I shall rst examine the situation of Hong Kongs press freedom since its return to China in 1997.
Then, I shall compare the Western discourse of press freedom in Hong Kong and
Hong Kongs own view of the situation. Finally, I shall try to account for the differences between these views and explore the implications of these for cultural
studies and discourse studies. In the process, it will be shown that the Western
view of Hong Kongs press freedom does not necessarily reect the experience of
the Hong Kong people. In fact, it will be seen that the Western countries' strong
criticism of Hong Kongs press freedom since 1997 has reected clear attributes
of a Western hegemony: using Western models and standards for other countries
as the universal standards.
105
106
Junhao Hong
Therefore, the majority people in Hong Kong were afraid that Hong Kongs
free media and communication system may be crushed by the communist media
system and consequently the press in Hong Kong may be in danger.4 According
to a public survey conducted one year before Hong Kongs return to China, among
the twelve most serious concerns after 1997, the majority people in Hong Kong
pointed to press freedom, which topped corruption, ination, and other issues.5
They believed that China will present the press with many challenges to remain
free.6 Also, most journalists in Hong Kong were very concerned with the possibly shriveled press freedom.7 Even the World Journalists Association was worried
that after Chinas takeover of Hong Kong press freedom in Hong Kong would be
reduced.8 Press freedom in Hong Kong has thus become an issue of worldwide
attention and carries much more implications than many other things.
With the knowledge of this, long before Hong Kongs return to China, Chinese ofcials started reassuring the Hong Kong residents about a few concerns
in an effort to ease fears over the future of Hong Kong.9 Among the concerns,
China was very well aware of the importance of Hong Kongs press freedom to
the societys political stability and economic prosperity. Therefore, on many occasions the Chinese Communist Partys topmost leaders pledged that China will
enact a specic law for Hong Kong and that the law will insert some articles to
protect press freedom and to keep the press independent from the central governments interference.
As early as in 1994, Chinese President Jiang Zemin promised the owners of
Hong Kongs six largest newspapers and magazines that China will rmly implement Deng Xiaoping-set One Country, Two Systems policy and will keep
the press in Hong Kong free and independent after 1997.10 At a conference on
Hong Kongs journalism in 1995, Zhang Junsheng, Vice Director of Xinhua News
Agency Hong Kong Branch, the representative of the central government in Hong
Kong before 1997, gave a speech in which he said that after Hong Kongs return
to China, Hong Kongs press freedom will be protected by the specially established Basic Law for Hong Kong, and Hong Kongs press freedom after 1997
will only be increased, not decreased.11 Just before the takeover, Zheng Jianzheng, Minister of Information Ofce of Chinas State Council, once again told
reporters that after 1997, Hong Kong will be guaranteed a full press freedom
by the Basic Law.12 The central government also explicitly told Hong Kongs media that after 1997 the central government will not practice censorship for Hong
Kongs media.
Moreover, pledge of press freedom in Hong Kong by the Chinese authorities
is documented in the Basic Law, which was drafted by representatives from all
parts across China and passed by the National Peoples Congress in 1990 and
put into effect as of 1 July 1997. This special law was a product of Chinas One
Country, Two Systems principle for Hong Kong and that principle was enshrined
107
in The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, the main document under which
Hong Kong is to revert to China. The Basic Law is intended to be the constitution for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the ofcial name for Hong Kong after 1997. In the Basic Law, Article 27 is specically about press freedom, which reads: Hong Kong residents shall have freedom
of speech, of the press and of publication; freedom of association, of assembly,
of procession and of demonstration; and the right and freedom to form and join
trade unions, and to strike.13
Under these pledges, since Hong Kong returned to China, Hong Kong has continued to enjoy freedom of speech and of the press, and the press has remained
free and so far so good, because no journalist has been arrested, no media and
communication organization has been shut down, and democratic activists have
been demonstrating.14 China has been claiming that the press in Hong Kong after 1997 has been enjoying as much political freedom as they did before 1997.
108
Junhao Hong
and international political situations do not, the Communist Party takes it away
from the press. In the view of the West, therefore, it is the Communist Party and
the central government that owns press freedom and decides when and whether
or not to give freedom to Hong Kongs press.
Some Western critics further argued that, although the Basic Law guarantees
Hong Kong press freedom one the one hand, it also limits the freedom on the
other (Schidlovsky 1996). While Article 27 of the Basic Law provides the press
freedom, Article 23 sets restrictions to press freedom, for Article 23 stipulates:
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to
prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central
Peoples Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with
foreign political organizations or bodies.15
To Western countries, Article 23 has little to do with press freedom; instead,
it has opened the door to press restrictions and given Hong Kongs current proBeijing government broad power to curb free expression (Cohen, 1997). According to a UPI report, Article 23 actually gives pause to every journalist in Hong
Kong, regardless of nationality, for, the article does not, nevertheless, delineate
what constitutes political activities.16 That means that Chinas communist leadership has a broader power in interpretation.
Particularly, Western observers used two events to support their criticisms.
One, in an interview with the inuential Asian Wall Street Journal on 16 October 1996, Qian Qichen, Chinas Vice Premier in charge of foreign affairs, conrmed that future commemorations of the Tiananmen killings would be banned
in Hong Kong, as would personal attacks on the Chinese leaders, however
dened.17 Qian later again stressed that press freedom should not include and
does not protect rumor-making and personal attacks, emphasizing that anti-Chinese leader slogans such as Down with Deng Xiaoping will be illegal in Hong
Kong after 1997.18 Two, Lu Ping, Director of the Hong Kong Affairs Ofce of
Chinas central government at that time, also warned the Hong Kong press that
its all right if reporters objectively report, but if they advocate, its an act; it
has nothing to do with freedom of the press.19 As some Western reports commented, these discourses of press freedom were not only vague but also arbitrary there were so many questions unanswered. What is personal attack and
what is criticism? And, what is objective report and what is advocacy? The answers to these questions can only be open-ended, and only the Communist Party leadership and the central government have a nal say. They concluded that
these remarks and discourse of press freedom made by Qian and Lu greatly increased the growing sense of unease among the people in Hong Kong as well
as journalists and news organizations across the world, reeling from a series of
109
body punches delivered by senior Beijing ofcials over the future of press freedom (Sung 1997).
110
Junhao Hong
leadership, long accustomed to press coverage that supports its own policies, now
is also seeking to rein in Hong Kongs free-wheeling journalism.22
However, most people and media organizations in Hong Kong are not so critical
or pessimistic about Hong Kongs press freedom after its return to China. On the
contrary, while some people and media organizations are critical of Hong Kongs
press freedom since the 1997 transition, the majority people and media organizations hold a generally positive, or approving, view. A survey about the health situation of Hong Kongs press freedom and the society conducted in the summer
of 2001 found that four years after Hong Kongs return to China, on a one to ten
scale where ten means the highest, the publics opinion of the degree of freedom
and the credibility of Hong Kongs press is 6.54. This nding is very important,
because, according to a similar survey which was conducted in 1997, the publics
opinion towards the freedom degree and the believable degree of Hong Kongs
press was 6.44 (So and Chan 2001). The difference between these two numbers
is not mathematically signicant, but it is critically meaningful.
First, the nding in 2001 means that in the view of the majority people the
health situation of Hong Kongs society in general and press freedom in particular after the 1997 transition has not been deteriorating or eroding. And second, moreover, the improved rating on the scale actually demonstrates that the
overall situation of Hong Kongs society and press freedom in 2001 is even better
than that before the 1997 transition. More importantly, based on the surveyors
interview with the media practitioners in Hong Kong, although many reporters
did have some concerns, worries, and fears about the future of press freedom in
Hong Kong around the time of the 1997 transition, and some of them may still
have some uncertainties for the future, for the past several years they felt at least
things didnt get worse or probably even slightly get better (So and Chan 2001).
Especially, in the view of Hong Kongs media practitioners, they were afraid that
the Chinese communist regime would bit by bit take away freedom from Hong
Kongs press after Hong Kong became part of China, but surprisingly, the central authorities have behaved very tolerantly towards Hong Kongs press and
kept their pledges of press freedom in Hong Kong (So and Chan 2001). Even the
Hong Kong government-owned Radio Hong Kong has always been very critical
of the new government in Hong Kong established with the transition.23 Therefore,
although it is not predictive of the future of Hong Kongs press freedom, so far,
in the view of the majority people and most media organizations in Hong Kong,
press freedom on the island has been healthy and in general has not received
negative effects by the 1997 transition (So 2001). Moreover, according to an interview with W. Chan, Political Editor of Apple Daily, the representative right
wing newspaper in Hong Kong and the only Hong Kong newspaper that has been
forbidden by the Chinese central authorities to come to China for political news
coverage and to be circulated in China due to its strong advocating position for
111
democracy, freedom, and human rights, the situation of press freedom in Hong
Kong in general and for the newspaper itself after 1997 has been much better than
it was expected.24 In the view of W. Chan, press in Hong Kong is still enjoying the
same freedom as it did before 1997 and no deterioration has been felt.
One more interesting nding of the above-mentioned survey is that the social status of Hong Kong media practitioners has been declining (Chan and So
2002).25 Many people now are dissatised with the performance of Hong Kongs
media, saying that there is too much sensational stuff in the media and the morality and self-discipline of the media has been declining. These phenomena have
been attributed mainly to the pervasive inuence of the Western model of the
media (Chan and So 2002).
Hong Kongs continuing press freedom after 1997 is not an isolated social phenomenon. The results of the survey about Hong Kongs press freedom are matched
by the ndings of a recent survey about the publics opinion of Hong Kongs new
government and new governor. According to this survey conducted in January
2002, the publics condence indexes of Hong Kongs new governor and new
government have all reached the highest since 1997, with the index of the new
government being 92.3% and the index of the new governor being 105.3%. Given this, not surprisingly, the new governor was the only candidate for the second
election held in February 2002 and won a second term as the governor of Hong
Kong. Moreover, even the publics condence index of Hong Kongs future political prospect has also shown a steady increase. Compared to the number one
year ago, the index has increased by 9.2%.26 In fact, the publics condence in
Hong Kongs press freedom, Hong Kongs new government, new governor and
future political prospects are interrelated and interactive. Thus, it might be said
that the more condent the public of Hong Kong is in the new government, new
governor and future political prospect, the more they are in Hong Kongs press
freedom and vice versa.
112
Junhao Hong
Systems policy and the Basic Law, both of which were set by Chinas late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, which warrant Hong Kong continued freedoms,
including press freedom. Second, the international community has pressured
China to implement its specially designed policy on Hong Kong. Before and after Hong Kongs handover, state leaders of many countries asked Chinese leaders
to keep their pledges about Hong Kongs political freedom and economic prosperity, saying that after Hong Kongs handover, China not only needs to respect
Hong Kong peoples economic freedom, but also needs to respect Hong Kong
peoples political freedom, including juridical freedom, press freedom, and other
civil rights, emphasizing that these were promises made by China in the 1984
Sino-British Declaration and that was an international agreement.27 Third, the
central government wanted to exchange press freedom for Hong Kongs political
stability and economic prosperity, the central governments popularity in Hong
Kong, and Hong Kong peoples loyalty to the Communist Party and the central
government. And fourth, China has intended to use Hong Kongs handover as a
showcase to Taiwan. The continued press freedom in Hong Kong has been presented as a good example of the Communist Partys sincerity about One Country, Two Systems.
Western countries, on the other hand, have been critical of the situation of
Hong Kongs press freedom and have strongly criticized Chinas handling of Hong
Kongs press freedom since 1997. One of their central arguments has been that the
present press freedom in Hong Kong is no longer the same as that before Hong
Kongs handover. Now press freedom in Hong Kong is something that is given
and owned by the central authorities and does not belong to Hong Kongs press.
In their view, press freedom should belong to and should be owned by the press,
and it should not be given to the press by the authorities as their mercy.
Although Western countries have often attempted to act as a proxy for Hong
Kong, as when criticizing China for its handling of Hong Kongs press freedom,
the view of the public and most media organizations in Hong Kong towards press
freedom is quite different from that of the West. In fact, people in Hong Kong have
their own standards, choices, preferences and judgments. In the view of Q. Chan,
President of Hong Kong Newspapers Evaluation Committee, for example, the
press in Hong Kong should make efforts to balance freedom of the press and responsibility of the press; the West-advocated absolute press freedom may not be a
good choice for Hong Kong.28 Chan further points out that true press freedom will
never be without responsibility, and no press can be said to be a truly free press if
it is to be responsible; the society should have some mechanisms to supervise the
press, check the power of the press, avoid the abuse of press freedom, and make
sure that the publics interests be ahead of the interests of the press. Recent survey results have clearly shown that, to Western countries surprise, Chans view
is widely shared by the majority of people in Hong Kong. Moreover, some peo-
113
ple in Hong Kong have questioned Western-styled press freedom, calling it the
freedom of few social elites, economic riches, and people in power.29 The implications of these survey results and the criticism from the people in Hong Kong
ought to make Western countries to reconsider their position.
Based on these newly selected readings, let me attempt a few critical observations, with special reference to the current project of reading cultural others.
First, it may be noted that, through reading the cultural Other comparatively, it becomes clear that even the basic notions and hence the referents, as in the
current case of the constitution of press freedom, can be different. These differences not just reect culturally different interests or concerns, but also have
important implications for reading the cultural Other. They point to the need to
read the Other; and they also render questionable the values that we invoke in
making sense of the Other. This leads to my next point.
Secondly, the normative judgments made without regard to those by the Others own can be not only misleading but also repressive in effect. For, different
assumptions and values are used, and erasure or marginalization of other perspectives universalizes ones own ethnocentric standpoint. In the present case,
the Western criticism, on the one side, has reected a hegemonic tendency: it uses
Western models, approaches, and ideologies as the authentic and universal
standards. On the other side, Hong Kong and China attach, in fact, different and
new values to their notion of press freedom, for example, social responsibility
and the interest of the public over and above that of the press.
In the present particular case, thirdly, the Western critics who impose their
own standards in evaluating Hong Kongs press freedom express an imperialist
desire. Their argument that Hong Kongs press freedom is no longer the same as
before is essentially an ahistorical reading regarding the Other and an expression against change. As I explained at the outset, press freedom is not an isolated
phenomenon, but embedded in social, political, cultural and institutional settings.
When Hong Kong returns to China as a new historical condition, press freedom
will reorient itself inevitably.
6. Epilogue
Even though sharp differences between Hong Kong and China unavoidably exist, according to an interview with X. Yu (journalism professor and chairman of
journalism department, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, and a leading researcher on the press of Hong Kong), most people and press organizations
in Hong Kong are satised with the present situation of press freedom and are
optimistic about the future of press freedom in Hong Kong. They believe that
Hong Kong will continue to be the center for free speech for the Chinese media
114
Junhao Hong
and the center for political and international exchanges between China, Taiwan
and overseas Chinese communities, for this is one of the foundations for Hong
Kongs prosperity, democracy, human rights and rule of law.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
W. Liu and D. Yin, Asian Media Poll Puts Hong Kong on Top in Media Quality,
Mainland Near Bottom. China News Digest, 14 June 1998.
C. Henderson et al. A new era in Hong Kong could mean a new challenge to the
freedom of the press. CNN Newsroom Worldview, 29 April 1998.
C. Patten, Standing up for press freedom. Media Asia. 1994, 21(1), 4344.
Wang, J. One hundred days after the transition. China Times, 18 April 1997, p.
11.
Z. Tan, The gloomy prospect of Hong Kongs press freedom. China Times, 28 Jan.
1997, p. 10.
Will Hong Kongs Press Remain Free? Heres What To Watch For. American
Journalism Review, Sep. 1997, Vol. 19, No. 7, p. 16.
Y. Liu, The freedom of press. World Journal, 1996, 20, A18.
Z. Tan, Poll shows the majority people in Hong Kong are concerned with the future of the freedom of the press. China Times, 28 Oct. 1997, p. 12.
F. Wu and D. Yin, Beijing eases over the future of Hong Kong after handover. China News Digest, 4 April 1997.
Jiang Meets Hong Kong Media Tycoons. Peoples Daily, 31 March 1994, p.3.
Hong Kongs Press Freedom Will Be Protected by the Basic Law. Peoples Daily,
29 Nov. 1995, p.5.
State Council Stresses Hong Kongs Press Freedom After 1997. American Liberty
Times, 5 April 1997, p. 25.
The Basic Law (1997), Beijing: Peoples Publishing House.
K. Liu, Hong Kong Press Wears Gag. Windsor Star, 4 Oct. 1997, p. A9.
The Basic Law (1997), Beijing: Peoples Publishing House.
Hong Kong Press Chilled by Self-Censorship. UPI, 24 June 1997.
Qian Qichen On Hong Kongs Press Freedom, China Times, 4 Nov. 1996, p. 11.
G. Xie and D. Jia, Anti-Chinese leader slogans Illegal in Hong Kong after July 1.
China News Digest, 26 Feb. 1997.
Lu Talks about Hong Kongs Media Practice. China Times, 28 Dec. 1996, p. 12.
C. So and J. Chan, The believable degree of Hong Kongs media obviously come
back. Ming Bao, 15 Nov. 2001, C16.
C. Ligible, Hong Kong after the Handover. Metro Connections, 16 Nov. 6 Dec.
2000, p. 8.
J. Mann, Chinese slowly eroding freedom in Hong Kong. Los Angeles Times, 12
Nov. 2000, p. H-5.
C. So, The ecology of Hong Kongs media in 2001. Media Perspective, 46 August
2001.
W. Chan, Interview with W. Y. Chan, Political Editor of Apple Daily, Apple Daily,
28 January 2002.
115
J. Chan and C. So, The social status of Hong Kongs media practitioners declines.
Ming Bao, 3 January 2002, B15.
Governors Condence Index Sharply Increased. Ming Bao, 18 January 2002,
A10.
W. Wang, Clinton pressures China to maintain Hong Kongs political freedom.
Central News Agency, 21 April 1997.
Q. Chan, Try to Balance Freedom of the Press and Responsibility of the Press. Ming
Bao, 26 January 2002, B12.
S. Cavallini, Watchful calm in Hong Kong. IPI Report, Oct. Nov. 1997, 25.
References
Chen, C. and G. Chaudhary
1995 Asia and the Pacic. In J. Merrill (ed.), Global Journalism. 3rd ed. New York:
Longman.
Cheung, M.
1998 Hong Kong and the media: One year after the handover. Paper presented at
the International Symposium Hong Kong: One Year After Transition, July
68, Vienna, Austria.
Cohen, E.
1997 Hong Kong: The future of press freedom. Columbia Journalism Review, May
June, 2226.
Mu, Z.
1987
Schidlovsky, J.
1996 Grim prospects for Hong Kong. Media Studies Journal 10(4), 4552.
Siebert, F., T. Peterson and W. Schramm
1956 Four Theories of the Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Chapter 8
Unfamiliar voices from the Other:
Exploring forms of Otherness in the media
discourses of China and Hong Kong
Shi-xu
1. Introduction
In the last three chapters, we saw that the Western discourse on Hong Kongs decolonization systematically repressed Chinas and Hong Kongs voices, as part of
the continued imperialist processes and tendencies. On the one hand, it often subjected Hong Kong and China to warnings, threats and injunctions. On the other
hand, it kept silence about certain issues, or offered contrary views about other
issues. In this chapter, I want to make a cultural turn towards the cultural Other and highlight some of the mainland China and Hong Kongs discourses or
voices on the same or similar issues that have been marginalized in the Western media. My purpose will be twofold. On the one hand, I want to show how
incommensurably different the Others discourse is from the relevant Western
counterpart. This will effectively help deconstruct the Western truths and centrality. And this will have theoretical implications, too: non-Western discourses,
including their particular concerns, hopes and circumstances cannot be encaged
or restrained within a universal, integrated or whatever other imperialist master narratives. On the other hand, I want to reveal that that very particularity of
non-Western discourse, or in this case the Chinese discourse, does not, however, consist in some consistency or identity of linguistic structures and functions,
but some kind of family resemblances and even divergences (see also Wu 1999,
2001; Wu and Hui 2001).
Such discourse of difference cannot, in my view (Chapter 1), be understood
merely from a nationalistic point of view (cf. Lee et al. 2002). Rather, it should
be seen from a historical and cultural point of view. This means in particular that
non-Western discourse be considered from the standpoint of its embedding in the
broader international order of historically-derived colonialism and cultural imperialism (Fanon 1967: Chapter 4; Young 2001). It will be particularly interesting
then to examine how the apparently Chinese and Hong Kong texts operate in
the broader cultural-power network and exert their forms of cultural Otherness.
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Shi-xu
The new discourse of difference may obviously take many forms, but I shall
conne the present research to a few areas. Thus, I shall try to classify and characterize the various texts in terms of particular topics, themes and actions constructed therein and with special reference to the textual and contextual means
employed to realize them.
In the analytic process, for example, I shall pay close attention to how China
and Hong Kongs discourses put up a postcolonial, anti-imperialist stance on the
one hand, and voice China and Hong Kongs sentiments, concerns and aspirations
on the other. At the same time, I shall try to tease out how the Chinese and Hong
Kongs texts diverge from each other within the broad sweep of non-Western
discourse. Because these new discourses (as will be seen later) differ from the
relevant Western discourse in signicant ways and constitute unfamiliar voices,
their study can prove instructive to the Western (scholarly) community.
2. Methodological preliminaries
The general methodological principles for the current volume have been spelled
out in Chapter 1. Here I will only mention a few more particular procedures relevant to the task in this chapter. To start with, it may be asserted that the aim of
this study is not to achieve accurate or representative description of China and
Hong Kongs discourses. Rather, it mainly attempts to draw attention to, highlight
and so tendentiously rearticulate some elements and properties of these discourses, especially those that have been marginalized or excluded by the West media.
Therefore, the approach to data and analysis will be qualitative in orientation.
Guided by this methodological orientation, I have adhered to two particular
criteria of data collection. One is that the texts to be taken up must have been
generally ignored or dismissed in the Western media. Another is that they must
be different in terms of the version of events or nature of action from the relevant
Western discourse. In either case, furthermore, the data must reect a recurrent
discourse (i.e. not represented by singular or incidental texts) in the mainstream
Hong Kong and Chinese media. The media material I have chosen to study appeared between May and July 1997 (see Primary Sources)*.
It should be noted that in this study, I have avoided direct and obvious products
of political parties as I am concerned with public media discourse. In that connection, it may be mentioned that Hong Kongs media are more diversied than
the Chinese media, which are largely state-controlled (Lee 1994; Hong this volume). Not infrequently there have been texts in negative terms and perspectives
vis--vis China (e.g. Apple Daily and the Hong Kong Economic Journal). There
is no point for me, however, to repeat or reect those voices critical or skeptical
of China and the reunication with it, since the Western media have already pre-
121
122
Shi-xu
about it. Then to illustrate such a discourse, I shall examine a couple of concrete
texts with special reference to the textual and contextual devices that contribute
to the construction of the discourse being studied. (The bold used in the sample
texts highlights the formal properties of the discourse under discussion).
The English translation of the Chinese examples examined below is mine.
Here I have tried to render the translation as literal as possible partly to reect
the differences in ways of thinking and speaking across the languages and cultures. It should be cautioned that some of the English translations carry different
meanings in the Chinese language: for example, the Chinese nation, patriotism, the motherland carry positive cultural values in this historical context
of decolonization and the reunion of China and Hong Kong.
3. Forms of Otherness
3.1. How did the return of Hong Kong become possible?
Reading between the Western discourse and that of China and Hong Kong on the
question of the decolonization and return of Hong Kong, one would nd the most
conspicuous and incommensurable difference is perhaps in the treatment of the
question of why and how the return of Hong Kong became possible at the time it
did. The British and the Western media as a whole are nearly completely reticent
about it. By frequent reference to the 99-year lease, which expires on 30 June 1997,
they make the inference available that the British government is handing over
Hong Kong at the time according to a historical document. The very persistent
use of the term handover is a case in point. In contrast, the Chinese and Hong
Kongs media insist that the latters decolonization and return to China are the results of oppositional, anti-colonial efforts by China and Hong Kong. The broader
contrast here reects and reveals, more importantly, not a nationalistic difference,
but rather the underlying cultural power competition and resistance.
In the Hong Kong media, there is a sizeable consensus that Hong Kong should
be decolonized from British rule and
that Hong Kong should be returned to
China. There are expressions of concern over the manner and aftermath of
the return, which is sometimes offered
as the reason for ensuring a smooth
transfer. But on the inevitability of the
return, it is generally understood that
In the Chinese media, there is an elaborate discourse on what makes the return of Hong Kong to China possible.
It stresses that all the previous Chinese
governments rejected the unfair treaties signed between Britain and the
Qing government and that they tried,
though in vain, to reclaim Hong Kong
from the imperial Britain. More significantly perhaps, it suggests that, at the
123
Example [1]
>@
[]
Example [2]
>@
(Imperialism and colonial-
ism have re-constructed many societies; anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and de-colonialization then are a
rather natural result. [...] Hong Kongs
colonial history has not been completely separated from her mothers body,
so the mothers blood and emotional
bond have long been implanted in her
own body. [...] In the second half of the
80s, with Chinas reforms and opening-door, Hong Kongs economic forces spread to South China and gradually Hong Kong has become merged
into the mothers body. Such histori-
[]
>@
>@
>@
(For this day [...] our countrys government has repeatedly solemnly declared that Hong Kong has been an inextricable part of the Chinese territory since ancient times, that it does not
recognize the three unequal treaties
that the British imperialists imposed
124
Shi-xu
125
the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and hence its achievements
(N.B. the last sentence).
The text proper then displays a
host of causes for Hong Kongs return. These can be distinguished into
different types. The formal distinctions of these constructed causes may
be recognized from a set of different
form(ulation)s:
The construction of the objective
of an action, (for this
day ...)
The construction of the necessary
condition of a change or effect,
126
Shi-xu
movements of
(anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism
and de-colonization); another is
(the mothers emotional and blood bond) and still another the actual connections with China already formed:
(gradually Hong Kong has become merged into the mothers body).
While these causal explanations partially overlap with those offered in the
Chinese media, they run counter to the
Western notions that Britain is honoring a historical agreement with China
and that Hong Kong is a separate entity and identity from China.
Finally, it may be stressed that these
causal accounts of Hong Kongs return are not merely descriptive, narrative and, for that matter, explanatory regarding the return of Hong Kong.
Rather, they are argumentatively motivated and rhetorically oriented. That
is, this piece of accounting discourse
refutes the implicit Western discourse
referred above and offers a different version of events and, at the same
time, constitutes an attempt to persuade doubters of HKs reunication
with China that this is inevitable. The
characterization of the causal link in
terms of certainty and inevitability in
the last sentence is a clear indication of
the rhetorical and persuasive nature of
the account.
127
3.2. What does the return mean to Hong Kong, China and the world?
A second, very much suppressed theme in the Western media discourse regards
the question of the meaning or signicance of Hong Kongs return. As suggested
in the preceding chapters as well as earlier in this chapter, while there is occasional mention in the Western media of Hong Kongs handover as signifying the
end of one of the last British overseas possessions, it is predominantly concerned
with the uncertainty of the political and economic future of Hong Kong.
That means that it is essentially more interested in what the handover means
to the former empire itself and the Western world as a whole, rather than in what
it means to the peoples of Hong Kong, of China and of the rest of the world, especially as far as the world colonial history is concerned. The Hong Kong and
Chinese media, in contrast, are overtly and eminently elaborate about the various symbolic meanings, that is, beyond the inherent meanings of the geopolitical transition. In particular, as may be pointed out here, they construct the return, including the ceremony thereof, as signifying the triumph of the local and
international struggle against colonialism. At this juncture, it may be suggested,
too, that, after all, if the media saw prior rational reasons for Hong Kong to return to China, as we witnessed above, then it might be natural that they also saw
special, symbolic signicance when the return does occur.
A number of relevant symbolic meanings and their forms may be highlighted here. Firstly, the prevailing term of reference for the historical event as used
in the Hong Kongs and Chinese media sources is (return) or less frequently (take back), as opposed to the British/American Western handover. (I have already pointed out that, in the West[ern media], the event is formulated as handover and that handover does not connote any ownership and,
therefore, denies the basic fact of colonial history.) Secondly, there is a cluster of
interrelated verbal expressions of joy, national pride, new beginning, new
opportunities and human justice in the wake of the decolonization of Hong
Kong (though in the Hong Kong media sometimes mixed with trepidation). These
motifs are consistent with the nding above of the central theme that Hong Kong
should be returned to China, but contrasts with the Western discourse that regularly voices concerns over Chinas role in Hong Kongs future. Thirdly and more
importantly, there is a prominent assertion in the data under study that the return
of Hong Kong to China marks, paradoxically, Hong Kongs self-government for
the rst time in the entire history of China and Hong Kong (N.B. the democratic reforms did not occur until after the Sino-British negotiations had started). In
that connection, it should be noted that the historical change is also interpreted
as signifying the beginning of the reunication of Greater China. Let us look at
some concrete details.
128
Shi-xu
Example [3]
(Today is
the beginning of a new era for Hong
Kong. The founding of the PRC Hong
Kong Special Administrative Region
marks the de-colonization of the most
modernized Chinese community in the
world and her return to the motherland.
Further, it injects new vitality into the
modernization drive by the motherland with a population of 1.2 billion
people and opens up a new space for
East-West exchanges. Editorial: Twosystems should feature both separation and integration, Hong Kong people should be neither humble nor arrogant. Ming Bao, 01/07/97)
It may be noticed that in this fragment,
the return of Hong Kong and its ceremony are not described as what those
words or the events that they represent
would conventionally mean. Rather, a
variety of symbolic, often metaphoric,
meanings of the whole event are projected. Thus for example, today is
assigned such meanings as 1) the beginning of a new era, 2) historic freedom from colonial rule, 3) return to
the mothers embrace, 4) new vitality being injected in the mother countrys modernization drive and 5) opening up of new ground for East-West
exchanges. Very few of these appear
Example [4]
(The
129
130
Shi-xu
3.3. How are Hong Kong, China and the world related?
Earlier I suggested that the Western popular and scholarly discourse regarding
Hong Kong tended to emphasize the uniqueness of Hong Kong, hence its independent identity, through the rhetoric of either hybridity or colonial blend
(see also Chapters 1 and 6). I also argued that this discourse used the uniqueness as a strategy to de-link Hong Kong from China in particular. Consistent
with this discourse was also the recurring notion that Hong Kong is taken over
by another colonizer, China (see, for example, Chow 1992).
What is usually ignored or, rather, suppressed in the Western discourse, however, is the possibility of relations of Hong Kong with China and the wider world.
It is therefore important to highlight here the prominent discourses in the Hong
Kong and Chinese media that formulate relations of Hong Kong. The relations
are of various types, contrary to the Western discourse as well as the discourse
in Hong Kong that opposes reunication. From the postcolonial, multicultural
framework of discourse I outlined earlier, it would be realized that these new discourses (re)articulate and maintain relations of Hong Kong with China and the
rest of the world, beyond identity and separatism. Let us compare these two
subdiscourses of relation-building.
Example [5]
>@
>@
(Hong
Kong has become not only the capitalist worlds pioneer into mainland Chinas market, but also mainland Chinas guide for joining tracks with
the international community. [...] In
the past over ten years, Hong Kongs
interests have begun to emerge with
those of Mainland China. After 97,
Hong Kongs prospects will become
even more inseparable from the broader background and the greater cause of
China. [...] In the new millennium, the
world will need China more and China will also need the rest of the world
more. Hong Kong, as Chinas most important meeting point with the world,
will become not only more Chinese,
but also more international and more
pluralistic. Bi Feng: Hong Kong is the
meeting point between China and the
world. Asia Weekly, 0208/06/97)
Here connections and interconnections
are made between Hong Kong, China
and the rest of the world through multiple levels of textual structures. A most
obvious type is the lexicogrammatical
constructions such as
131
that the Chinese people and the previous and present governments have never accepted the unjust treaties severing
Hong Kong and China, nor have they
stopped trying to reclaim Hong Kong.
Further, the historical connections between China and Hong Kong are, in
turn, rendered through the shared social, moral and psychological experience. Thus, a variety of psychological
bonds are invoked: for example, emotion and memory between the Chinese
and Hong Kong compatriots. Similarly,
future relations are rendered through
the expression of political and institutional support, cooperation and the rationalization of these forces. For example, an eminent way of relating to Hong
Kong in this regard is the elaboration
of the judicial notion of one-countrytwo-systems. It should be mentioned
here, too, that the use of metaphor plays
an important role in forming and maintaining links between China and Hong
Kong: the mother-child relationship, a
bridge between China and the rest of
the world, a window for exchange between the two, etc. Look at the following example for an illustration of the
discourse of connections.
Example [6]
132
Shi-xu
(Mainland
In this text, the interconnections between China, Hong Kong and the rest
of the world are created through several levels of textual properties. Firstly, a semantics of economical benets
of one entity for the other is created
through descriptions of economical
advantages which China brings to
Hong Kong on the one hand, and descriptions of the economical links that
Hong Kong offers to China as well as
the rest of the world on the other. In
this way a functional relationship is
generated. Secondly, particular lexical-metaphorical constructions that
project different forms of linkage are
presented (e.g. (center),
(bridge) and (window) and
133
134
Shi-xu
Hong Kongs media generally explicitly emphasizes the role of the Hong
Kong people themselves. In the accounts undermining Chinas role, however, there is a good measure of acknowledgement of Western, especially
British, inuence in terms of administration and law. Nevertheless, it should
be mentioned that there is a background story in the media that counters that view. Namely, Hong Kongs
economic rise did not begin until in the
nal decades of Britains one and half
centuries rule (since the 1970s). Hong
Kong was more backward than Shanghai until 50 years ago and its economic
growth parallels with the economic reform and open door policy in China.
Example [7]
[]
" []
(Some people say that the reason
Especially Chinas media and its media actors consistently offer diverse
causes to Hong Kongs economic development and success. The fullest account I have found in the data is the
speech in the English language newspaper South China Morning Post by
Chinas president, Jiang Zemin. Fragments of this are cited below:
Example [8]
Hong Kongs success today is, in the
nal analysis, the work of the Hong
Kong compatriots. [...] Hong Kongs
success today is inseparable from
Chinas development and the support
of the people from the mainland. [...]
Hong Kongs success today is also attributable to a number of other factors.
Its advantageous geographical location, its free port policy of complete
openness, its well-developed legal system and highly efcient team of civil servants, and its effective economic management and civic administration, have all facilitated Hong Kongs
economic development. [...] A shining
page in the annals of the Chinese nation [speech by Jiang Zemin], South
China Morning Post, 02/07/97
Here a number of attributions are made
that involve not only particular agents
the Hong Kong people, but also to situational factors the development and
support of the mainland Chinese people as well as a range of other items.
This personal and situational distinction of the causal explanations offered here (Shi-xu 1999) gives clear indication that the speech/speaker rec-
135
136
Shi-xu
4. Conclusion
In turning to culturally-marginalized discourses, I have identied and characterized a number of new and different patterns in the China and Hong Kongs media
on the issue of the latters historic transition. In order to illustrate their details, I
have also analyzed some sample texts and highlighted their textual properties and
contextual functions. My emphasis has been on the various forms of Otherness of
these Chinese discourses as a whole, as opposed to the Western discourse in the
background, but I have also indicated their internal nuances and complexities.
Firstly, from a cultural perspective, beyond national relativism, I showed that
China and Hong Kongs media display forms of Otherness unseen in the Western media. Other than the taken-for-granted and recurrent notions of China as the
repressive Other or Hong Kong as the unique Other in the Western media,
China and Hong Kongs media projected new meanings, introduced new narratives, built up new relations between Hong Kong and China as well as the rest of
the world, and proffered new explanations. These unfamiliar discourses contradict and refute some of the most prevalent notions in the Western media, albeit
often implicitly and indirectly, and bring into sharper relief the myth of the imperial truths and the reality of cultural plurality of discourses.
137
Secondly, I showed that the Other, Chinese discourses represented here consist not so much in formal linguistic differences as in the social actions of anti-colonial resistance that they perform. That is, they contradict, refute or undermine
the existing relevant Western discourse. This action dimension, as it may be noted, too, constitutes the broader cultural-discursive order or relationship between
the West and its non-Western Other. In other words, the present analysis rearticulates what the Western discourse has ignored, marginalized or dismissed.
In addition, I revealed the diversity and complexity of the non-Western, postcolonial Chinese discourse. Although China and Hong Kongs discourses on the
latters transition share important concerns (e.g. symbolic signicance of the return of Hong Kong and the causes of Hong Kongs return) and perform reciprocal actions (e.g. relationship [re]building), it is also true that differences between
China and Hong Kongs media discourses exist. In the recuperative work of rebuilding relations between Hong Kong, China and the rest of the world, for example, the Hong Kong discourse seems to take a more assertive stance and presents Hong Kong as the major player in the relationship, whereas the Chinese discourse tends to emphasize its support for Hong Kong, the notion of Hong Kong
as a bridge between China and the world and the economically complementary
relationship between China and Hong Kong.
Note
*
I would like to thank Lee Cherleng for providing me with some of the data for this
research.
Primary sources
(Peoples Daily), (Wen Hui Bao), (Bi-Monthly), China Today, South China Morning Post, (Ming Bao), Asiaweek,
(Asia Weekly), (Wen Hui Bao).
References
Chow, R.
1992 Between colonizers: Hong Kongs postcolonial self-writing in the 1990s. Diaspora 2 (2), 152170.
Fanon, F.
1967 The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books.
138
Shi-xu
Wu, D.
1999
2001
Chapter 9
Media and metaphor:
Exploring the rhetoric in Chinas and Hong Kongs
public discourses on Hong Kong and China
Lee Cher-Leng
The return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 is a historic event to Hong Kong, China, as well as the rest of the world. And yet the meaning of the whole event has
been represented variously in the international media. In this contribution, we
want to take up media discourses from the Hong Kong and Chinas press on Hong
Kongs transition. Our aim is to document and examine how Chinese and Hong
Kong media discourses have represented China, Hong Kong and their relations.
In the study presented below, we show how metaphors are used to construct identities and relations, and how they are used differently in China and Hong Kongs
media discourses, respectively, with special reference to the relevant cultural circumstances and ideological preferences. Through such an exercise, we hope not
only to amplify the local cultural voices, that is, the voices of the people themselves, against the backdrop of the dominant Western media discourses on Hong
Kong and China, but also to identify the complexity and plurality of voices within China and Hong Kongs media discourses.
Plowing through the leading newspapers in China and Hong Kong (see below),
we have found that there are ve dominant sets of metaphors: 1) The Homecoming metaphors referring to the handover (which include Embrace of the Fatherland, Coming Home to a Big Family, the Mother-Child Metaphor); 2) the Master metaphor referring to Hong Kongs identity (which includes the metaphors of
Own Master, the True Master and Controlling Own Destiny); 3) the Bridge metaphor referring to Hong Kongs position (including the Bridge, Window, Channel, Door and Floodgate); 4) the Backing metaphor referring to Chinas role; and
5) metaphors of relationship between Hong Kong and China (which include the
metaphors of Shoot and Root, the Lips-Teeth and the Flesh and Blood).
140
Lee Cher-Leng
141
same metaphor can be used by different parties to achieve their own goals, we
shall cite the metaphor of a ship employed by Tung Chee Hwa, Chief Executive
of HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region), in contrast with that
by Li Yi, Chief Editor of Nineties. Tung Chee Hwa says that from now on, Hong
Kong will be like a ship sailing into its bright future. Li Yi, on the other hand,
says that Hong Kong is like a ship sailing towards a volcano island, where volcanoes are not dead but alive. When the volcano erupts, the freedom and prosperity will all be burnt away. This contrasting difference between the two ways in
which the same metaphor is used explains how the same metaphor may be used
as a vehicle for conicting arguments.
Text 1
With the bright rays of respect, trust, love from the land of the forefathers, Hong
Kong a large ship in a new era will sail with full condence towards the goal
of rejuvenation and national reunication.
(Speech made by Tung Chee Hwa, the rst Chief Executive of HKSAR, at the
ceremony for the inauguration of the HKSAR and the swearing-in of the HKSAR
government on 1 July 1997. Peoples Daily, 2 July 1997) 1
Text 2
Hong Kong is like a ship sailing towards a volcanic island, and 1997 is the year
it reaches the island ... The live volcanoes are not dead yet; they can erupt any
time and endanger the lives, freedom, properties, and dignity of the residents living at the foot of the mountain.
(Li Yi Nineties July 1997)
2. The data
In our selection of data, we have used Chinese texts mostly produced by the politicians and news actors themselves, as reported in the press. In addition, we have
also included, where relevant, comments in editorials. The main sources of data
for this paper are shown in Table 1.
142
Lee Cher-Leng
Sources
1. Peoples Daily
(21/612/7,1997)
2. Ming Pao
(26/62/7,1997)
3. Wen Wei Po
(23/68/7, 1997)
4. Mr. Tungs speeches
(17/420/12, 1997)
5. Zhao and Zhang ed.
(1997)
PRC
69
24
Hong
Kong
49
15
Hong
Kong
28
16
22
14
221
33
Under the discussion of each set of metaphors, the similarities and differences of
the same metaphor used by the various parties, namely, the Chinese government,
the Hong Kong government and Hong Kong press will be examined. The data
shows that the Chinese government has only one united voice. In Hong Kong,
the situation is quite different: there is the Hong Kong government, followed by
the voice of different parties, and the voice represented by the different newspapers. For the purpose of this study, we will concentrate on contrasting the metaphors used by the Chinese government and those by the Hong Kong government.
When relevant, we will show the third voice represented by the press in general.
Since the information on the historical background of the return of Hong Kong
to China provided in the Introduction of the volume is already sufcient for the
current analysis, I will not go into that any more (see also Lau 1997; Lo 1997;
Zhao and Zhang 1997).
3. The handover
One dominant motif in China and Hong Kongs discourses over the latters return is, naturally, the handover. Over this there is a prominent set of metaphors
that expresses such notions as embrace of the fatherland, coming home to a big
family and the mother and child reunion. Rhetorically, these metaphors appeal to
the emotions involved in returning home after long separation. At the same time,
they reect the colonial times of forced national separation. There are, however,
143
internal differences in the use of these metaphors between the Chinese government, the Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong press use which we want
to treat in some detail.
I wish to extend cordial greetings and best wishes to more than 6 million Hong
Kong compatriots who have now returned to the embrace of the fatherland.
(Speech made by Chinese President Jiang Zemin, at the ceremony for the handover of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997. Peoples Daily, 2 July 1997)
Text 4
Now, I would like to propose a toast: To the return of Hong Kong to the embrace
of the fatherland and to its long-term prosperity and stability ...
(Speech made by Li Peng, Premier of Chinas State Council, at a reception celebrating the Hong Kongs return to China. Peoples Daily, 2 July 1997)
It may be noted, moreover, that the embrace of the fatherland is often coupled
with the theme that Hong Kong had suffered much hardship under British rule,
being half colonial and half conservative by nature, living under the nose
of others, being second class citizens and the notion that China itself had been
bullied, abused, and shamed by imperialism.
Text 5
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Lee Cher-Leng
Hong Kong, which has gone through countless vicissitudes, has nally returned
to the embrace of the fatherland.
(Speech made by Li Peng, Premier of Chinas State Council, at a reception celebrating the return of Hong Kong to the land of the forefathers. Peoples Daily,
2 July 1997)
Text 6
Hong Kong, after more than one hundred years of vicissitudes, has nally returned to the embrace of the fatherland.
(Qian Qichen, Peoples Daily, 18 June 1997)
Text 7
Our land of the forefathers had been bullied and humiliated by imperial power
and had fallen into the half-colonial, half-feudal situation gradually ... Hong Kong
now has shaken off the shame of being ruled by British colonials and come back to
the embrace of the fatherland ... Hong Kong people are no longer Second Class
Citizens living under the others roof, but the true masters of our own country.
(Speech made by Li Ruihuan, Chairman of the National Political Consultative
Conference and the standing member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, when he had a discussion with Hong
Kong and Macao representatives on 13 March 1995.)
Although pro-Chinese Hong Kong leaders have also used the metaphor of returning to the embrace of the fatherland, the difference is that there is no criticism of the British rule.
Text 8
As the wheel of time rolls forward, history has turned a new page: Hong Kong
has returned to the embrace of land of the forefathers.
(Lei Jaak-tim, member of Hong Kong Trade Unions Association, Wen Wei Po,
30 June 1997)
145
Text 9
As the 1st@@0kof July 1997 approaches, Hong Kongs return to the embrace of
the land of the forefathers is just around corner ... all people of our nation are in
great jubilation.
(Siu Wai-wan, member of the Preparatory Committee of HKSAR, Wen Wei Po,
29 June 1997)
On behalf of the central government and people of all ethnic groups, [...] I would
like to extend a warm welcome to the 6 million Hong Kong compatriots who have
returned to the big family of the land of the forefathers.
(Speech made by Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the ceremony for the Handover of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997. Peoples Daily, 2 July 1997)
The subtle difference in the use of this metaphor is seen in Mr. Tung carefully
stressing on a family reunion, which implies that all parties are equal, rather than
returning to the family, which implies that Hong Kong is the child returning to
the family. In Text 11, Mr. Tung uses a somewhat more neutral phrase, stepping
into the warmth of home, again showing that there is no hierarchical difference
and, in Text 12, a family reunion after 156 years of separation.
Text 11
After 156 years of long journey, Hong Kong has nally stepped into the warmth
of home.
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Lee Cher-Leng
(Speech made by Tung Chee Hwa, the rst Chief Executive of HKSAR, at the
ceremony for the inauguration of the HKSAR and the swearing-in of the HKSAR government on 1 July 1997. Peoples Daily, 2 July 1997)
Text 12
It was a joyful and proud day for all Chinese in the world when Hong Kong reunited with Peoples Republic of China after a separation of 156 years.
(Speech delivered by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at a banquet for International Forums of Higher Education Leaders on 3 July 1997)
Some important spokesmen in the Hong Kong society also used the phrase become a family, in which there is again no hierarchical difference (as compared
to saying that one party is returning to the big family).
Text 13
147
The primary students in Yuen Long district are to act out a play with the theme
of baby swallows returning to their nests in turns in every hall of their district;
while the festooned vehicles parade noisily through the indifferent crowds and
murmuring tramps. And dozens of celebrities chorused Song of Returning: Day
and night, generations by generations we look forward to returning.
(Leung Sai-yung, Ming Po [Forum page], 23 June 1997)
Text 16
2.
In order to celebrate the reunion with long-lost mother, my friends have arranged
in advance all kinds of Hong-Kong-style festival activities, such as playing cards,
eating buffets and singing karaoke ...
(Ng Jun-hung, a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Hong Kong University.
Ming Po [Forum page], 29 June 1997)
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Lee Cher-Leng
In an attempt to summarize Hong Kongs political history and its conicting relationship with China, a journalist said that (Text 17) Hong Kongs colonial history has never been detached from that of land of the forefathers. The mothers
blood is buried in it. Ironically, Hong Kongs social facade is lled with feelings
of anti-communism and anti-mother ... Hong Kong has been absorbed into the
land of the forefathers gradually.
(Gwok Siu-tong Ming Po (Forum page), 30 June 1997)
Text 17
In another Forum page of the Ming Po (Text 18), it says that people talk about
the handover as a wandering child returning home, while in actual fact, what is
happening is, as the government ofcials would say: It is China regaining authority over Hong Kong.
Text 18
Hong Kong has nally returned, and everyone says so. There is nothing wrong
with the expression home coming for the wandering child. However, it is an
expression used by ordinary people. The formal and ofcial version is that China resumes the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong.
(Loh Foo Ming Po [Forum page], 30 June 1997)
Table 2 summarizes the discussion in this section.
Table 2. Metaphors of handover as homecoming used by Chinese and Hong Kong
leaders and the Hong Kong press
Embrace of the
fatherland
Family/home
Mother-child
China
21
From the data, we have found that although both the Chinese and the Hong Kong
leaders use similar metaphors, there are subtle differences. The metaphors used
149
by Tung are those that avoid the difference between one party being the major
one while the other being the minor. Instead, the metaphors he uses slants towards both parties being equal. Embrace of the fatherland is the most popular metaphor among the Chinese leaders. It has however, from our sources, not
been used by Tung. This could be due to the jargon being very typically that of
the mainland Chinese expression. As for the family metaphor, China says that
Hong Kong is returning to a big family, while Tung says that Hong Kong and
China belong to one big family; Tung also says that Hong Kong nally stepped
into the warmth of home, and that the handover is indeed a reunion an important, happy event for the Chinese family during the eve of Chinese New Year. A
reunion focuses on the togetherness of a family without indications of hierarchy
within the family. Ironically, it is the non-ofcial reports that used the motherchild metaphor, although it is mainly used in a sarcastic way.
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Lee Cher-Leng
governor of Hong Kong, Tung Chee Hwa (hereafter, Tung) as well as the speeches
of other important ofcials in Hong Kong. In a conference with Hong Kong and
Macaw representatives on 28 February 1997, Jiang emphasizes that, for the rst
time in history, the Hong Kong people will be their own masters:
Text 19
After a hundred days, Hong Kong will return to her land of the forefathers and
six million Hong Kong people will be able to exercise the rights of being their
own masters ... It is for the rst time in the history that Hong Kong compatriots
are entitled to such democratic rights.
At the closing ceremony of the second plenary meeting of the preparatory committee of the HKSAR on 25 March 1997, Qian Qichen stressed that only after
the colonial rule and its return to China, can Hong Kong truly be her own master and truly democratic. Here he is obviously contrasting Hong Kong as a British colony and a decolonized Hong Kong after the return:
Text 20
To Hong Kong people, real democracy means that they can be their own masters. This will be achieved only after colonial rule ends and Hong Kong returns
to land of the forefathers. At that time, the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region will be established on the basis of the One Country, Two Systems principle and Hong Kong will be administered by Hong Kong People with a high
degree of autonomy.
During his address at the competition for the best news writing and best photos
held by Hong Kong Newspaper Association on 17 April 1997, Mr. Tung said that
soon they would be their own masters:
Text 21
151
Text 22
Due to historical reasons, Hong Kong people never had a chance to be their own
masters and to manage their own affairs. But things will be totally different after Hong Kongs return to China.
Similarly, soon after the handover, a spokesman for the Wen Wei Po, Ms. Choi
So-yuk, said on 7 July 1997 that history has never permitted Hong Kong to be her
own master, but after the handover, life will be very different for Hong Kong.
With the Hong Kongs return to China, Hong Kong compatriots have become the
true masters of this land.
(Speech made by Li Peng, Premier of Chinas State Council, at a reception celebrating the return of Hong Kong to the land of the forefathers. Peoples Daily,
2 July 1997)
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Lee Cher-Leng
able using this metaphor since, in actual fact, Hong Kong is now part of China.
At the swearing-in ceremony on 1 July 1997 and on a celebration two days after, Mr. Tung said that Hong Kong people will be able to control their own destiny. Herein lies the subtle difference between Hong Kong being the true master and Hong Kong being able to control her own destiny. The former metaphor puts things in very absolute terms, that others are not true masters except
Hong Kong herself, whereas the latter takes a step back to say that she can now
have the ability to control her own destiny (thus metaphorically extending the
ability to control concrete objects to abstract entities like destiny). This is seen
in Texts 25 and 26.
Text 25
It is most precious that a people can grasp its own destiny. For the rst time in
history, we, the people of Hong Kong, will shape our own destiny.
(Speech made by Tung Chee Hwa, the rst Chief Executive of HKSAR, at the
ceremony for the inauguration of the HKSAR and the swearing-in of the HKSAR government. Peoples Daily, 1 July 1997)
Text 26
For the rst time in history, Hong Kong is administered by the Hong Kong people. We have nally been able to control our own destiny and be responsible for
our own decisions and the corresponding consequences.
(Speech by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at International Gathering to Celebrate Hong Kongs return on 3 July 1997)
Table 3 summarizes the ndings in this section.
Table 3. The master metaphor used by Chinese and Hong Kong leaders
China
Hong Kong
Own master
True master
Own destiny
18
From this table, we can notice that although both Hong Kong and Chinese leaders use own master to describe Hong Kongs position, China goes a step further to say that Hong Kong is the true master. Obviously, it is not easy to decide
153
who is the true master, since Hong Kong is still under Chinas rule. Thus, it is
no surprise that Hong Kong should steer clear from such metaphors and instead
stress more on being able to control her own destiny.
Hong Kong, as an important bridge linking China and the rest of the world in
economic, scientic, technological and cultural exchanges, has beneted from it
immensely. With the continuous advance of Chinas modernization drive, Hong
Kongs economic link with the mainland will become even closer and its role as
a bridge will be increasingly enhanced. This in turn will give a stronger impetus
to Hong Kongs economic growth.
(Speech by Chinese president Jiang Zemin at the ceremony marking the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [HKSAR] of the Peoples Republic of China. Peoples Daily, 2 July 1997)
Text 28
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Lee Cher-Leng
The sustained, rapid and sound development of national economy in the mainland areas as a result of the reform and opening policy has provided the economy
of Hong Kong with strong support. An enhanced role of Hong Kong as a bridge
and linkage between the mainland economy and the international economy will
facilitate the modernization drive of the mainland.
(Speech by Li Peng, premier of Chinas State Council, at a reception celebrating
the return of Hong Kong to the land of the forefathers on 1 July 1997. Peoples
Daily, 2 July 1997)
The bridge metaphor was also used widely by Hong Kong politicians and entrepreneurs:
Text 29
As before, Hong Kong is still a safe tourist spot; it still has an open society and
its economy stays prosperous. You can see that the idea of one country, two systems has been materialized. Hong Kong is the bridge linking China and all parts
of the world. As such a role becomes increasingly important, I believe Hong Kong
should enjoy continual development and improvement.
(Speech by Mr. Donald Tsang, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Government, at the Fourth Asia-Pacic Life Insurance Conference on 22 August 1997)
155
Hong Kong, as a window facing the West and a bridge leading the West into Chinas market ...
(Speech made by Director of the Ofce of Hong Kong and Macaw Affairs, the
State Council of the PRC, Lu Ping, on 6 May 1994)
Text 32
Our Hong Kong will be ... a window for exchanges between China and the rest
of the world;
(Speech delivered by Tung Chee Hwa, the rst Chief Executive of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region [HKSAR], at a grand celebration party marking
the establishment of the HKSAR on 1 July 1997)
Text 33
Make Hong Kong a window and let it play an important role in the modernization drive of mainland.
(Speech by Yang Ti-liang, a member of the Executive Meeting of HKSAR. Wen
Wei Po, 28 June 1997)
S
China needs Hong Kong to continue its role as a window for her reform and opening to the outside world and as a channel leading China to the world trades.
(Speech entitled Chinas Development and Sino-British relations given by Qian
Qichen, Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister of PRC in British Royal International Institute on 3 October 1995)
Text 35
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Lee Cher-Leng
In the future, Hong Kong, either as a main investor or as a channel-like middleman, will to a great extent thrive on the close tie with the mainland China.
(Speech entitled The Importance to Maintain Hong Kongs Economic System
delivered by Zhou Nan, Director of Xin Hua News Agency, Hong Kong Branch,
on 16 November 1994 at an anniversary banquet of the Hong Kong Management
Professional Association)
In a couple of decades, as China becomes the biggest economic system in the
world, unlimited opportunities will come ... there is no place more suitable than
Hong Kong to be a natural oodgate of China.
(Speech by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at International Gathering to Celebrate Hong Kongs Return on 3 July 1997)
A summary of the use of these metaphors of structure are shown in Table 4.
Table 4. The structure metaphor used by only the Chinese and Hong Kong leaders
Bridge
China
Hong Kong
Window
Floodgate
Channel
Door
13
11
The table above shows that structural metaphors, such as bridge, windows,
channels and doors, are commonly used by the Chinese and Hong Kong political leaders to show that Hong Kong is geographically very strategic and has
great nancial value to China. These metaphors assure the Hong Kong people
that since Hong Kong is of great value, China will denitely continue to ensure
its prosperity; Hong Kong is constructed as important to the nancial and international well being of China.
157
With the powerful backing of the land of the forefathers, Hong Kong will enjoy
a stronger status in international activities.
(Speech made by Li Peng, Premier of Chinas State Council, at a reception celebrating the return of Hong Kong to the land of the forefathers. Peoples Daily,
2 July 1997)
Text 39 shows the use of the metaphor by a Hong Kong politician, but not by
Tung. The backing implies protection. If Tung says that China is a backing for
Hong Kong, he would be seen as suggesting that China protects Hong Kong,
and to say so would be taken as implying that Hong Kong is lesser than China.
To avoid dening a hierarchical relationship between Hong Kong and China,
Tung avoids the metaphor.
Text 39
With the land of the forefathers as a powerful backing, Hong Kong is able to
maintain a long-term prosperity and stability.
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Lee Cher-Leng
Without a land of the forefathers as a powerful backing, no diplomat will be able
to attempt and accomplish anything.
(Ling Qing, the former Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations, grandson of
Lin Zexu, a national hero known for his attempts to ght against British invasion
in 1890s. Wen Wei Po, 30 June 1997)
Table 5 summarizes the use of the backing metaphor.
Table 5. The backing metaphor used by Chinese leaders and Hong Kong spokesmen
Backing
China
12
We are proud of our new identity after the return and our Chinese roots.
159
(Speech delivered by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at a Best News Writing
and Pictures Competition held by the Hong Kong Newspaper Association on 17
April 1997)
Text 42
Hong Kong is an indispensable part of China and we share the same birth and
same roots ... On the basis of the mutual respects, we can move forward together, shoulder to shoulder.
(Speech made by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at an International Gathering to Celebrate Hong Kongs return on 3 July 1997)
Hong Kong is not only economically interdependent with mainland like lips and
teeth, but also shares the same heritage and culture with the mainland compatriots ... I hope Hong Kong citizens understand and treasure such relationship, and
work together for the new future of Hong Kong.
(Comments made by Tung Chee Hwa in a dialogue titled Stepping towards the
Month of Returning on 2 June 1997)
Text 44
The relationship between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province is like that of
lips and teeth. I believe in the future there will be cooperation in many economic elds, especially in infrastructure.
(Comments made by Tung Chee Hwa at a news conference Wen Wei Po, 3 July
1997)
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Lee Cher-Leng
Notwithstanding the prolonged separation, the esh-and-blood bond between the
people on the mainland and Hong Kong compatriots had never been severed.
(Speech by Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the ceremony marking the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China. Peoples Daily, 2 July 1997)
Table 6 summarizes the ndings in this section.
Table 6. Metaphors to show interdependence
Flesh and blood
China
Hong Kong
From the table, we understand that Tung clearly prefers the metaphors of root
and shoot and lips and teeth relationship over the esh and blood relationship. This is apparently because the root-shoot and lips-teeth relationships show
the interdependence of Hong Kong and China without necessarily showing difference in hierarchy and authority.
8. Conclusion
In this study, we looked at a range of largely political media discourses found
in Hong Kong and China, respectively, and focused on how they both represent
Hong Kongs historic transition through the use of metaphors. In particular, we
examined how politicians as well as other news actors metaphorically formulat-
161
162
Lee Cher-Leng
Finally, it can be argued that, generally, the metaphors found dominant in the
Hong Kong and China press construct a shared identity between Hong Kong and
China and a mutually benecial relationship and serve effectively to mobilize
feelings of reunication. This image of relationship is largely absent from the
Western media. For example, on the relationship between Hong Kong and China, the Chinese press tends to choose metaphors that are rooted in Chinese conventions, for example, esh and blood, whereas the Hong Kong media usually
use shoot and root and lips and teeth. But on the whole, they all serve to produce a close and rm identication.
Note
1.
Only the ofcial speeches by Chinese and Hong Kong political leaders are translated in Peoples Daily. Most of the English translations in this paper are my own.
References
Chilton, P. and C. Schaffner
1997 Discourse and politics. In A. T. Van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction. London: Sage Publications, 206230.
Kitis, E. and M. Milapides
1997 Read it and believe it: How metaphor constructs ideology in news discourse.
A case study. Journal of Pragmatics 28, 557590.
Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson
1980 Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G.
1992 Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the gulf. In
Martin Putz (ed.), Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution: Studies in Honour
of Rene Dirven on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 463481.
1996 Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Do Not. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
Lau, C. K.
1997 Hong Kongs Colonial Legacy: A Hong Kong Chineses View of the British
Heritage. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Lee, D.
1992
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Wei, J. M.
2000 An analysis of the metaphorical usage of campaign slogans in the 1996 presidential campaign in Taiwan. Journal of Asian Pacic Communication 10 (1),
93114.
Wilson, J.
1990 Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
Zhao, R. and M. Zhang (eds.)
1997 Zhongguo lingdao ren tan xianggang [Chinese Leaders on Hong Kong]. Hong
Kong: Ming Pao Publications.
Chapter 10
Voices of missing identity:
A study of contemporary Hong Kong literary
writings
Kwok-kan Tam
1. Introduction
The political, economic and cultural development of Hong Kong in the last quarter of the past century has presented a theoretical problem to all critics and politicians. All existing discourses of colonialism and postcolonialism are concerned
about a colony which faces the rise of nationalism after it has gained independence. In the case of Hong Kong, the problem is not a future of independence after its decolonization from the British colonial center. But rather, it is a merger
with China, an Oriental power in experiment with the transition from a planned
economy to a market economy and to a culture of globalization. Chinas plan has
been to include Hong Kong in its practical politics of a Greater China of one
country, two systems, which is intended to put an end to the political split of the
country. In contrast to all other postcolonial societies, Hong Kong has neither
a precolonial past, a postcolonial future, according to postcolonial theory. The
anomaly of Hong Kong is marked by a double absence of a past and a future, but
exists only in its present.
Hong Kong presents an anomaly, a counterargument against all existing theories of colonialism.1 When Britain as a colonizer ruled Hong Kong before 1997,
Hong Kong had already become a nancial and cultural center in the region of
East and Southeast Asia. This fact alone serves as a marker of Hong Kong in its
development beyond the control of the British colonial empire. Thus the theories
of colonialism that hinge on relations of a center-periphery power structure do not
apply to Hong Kong. In fact, Hong Kong had become a postcolonial entity caught
in the political and economic tug-of-war between Britain and China. The causes
behind such an anomalous development of Hong Kong are many. The riots in
1967 shook the foundation of the century-old British rule. Beginning in the 1970s,
the old British pillars in the nancial structure, particularly Hong Kong Bank
and Jardine and Swire, found their positions threatened by the newly risen local
Chinese tycoons. Since the 1980s when China opened its doors, Hong Kong has
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Kwok-kan Tam
expanded beyond its geographical territory into China and, thus, become part of
the expanding Chinese economy. In the two decades before its reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, Hong Kong remained a British colony more in name
than in fact. Put another way, Hong Kong was colonial in political structure, but
postcolonial in economy and in many other aspects of social life.
What is of interest to political scientists and cultural critics is the anomalous identity of Hong Kong people which is negotiated in discourses of the public sphere. In Habermas theory (1984, 1987), the public sphere is a social institution, which makes possible the negotiation of power and opinions between the
ruling class and the ruled. The public sphere serves as the rudimentary form of
modern democracy. In Hong Kong, as well as in many other Asian societies, the
theater and journalistic literary writings have been functioning as political domains in the public sphere, in the sense that they circulate in society in distinct
forms of ideology which have powerful discursive effects in shaping the subject.
Hong Kong shares with many other Southeast Asian societies in its quest for a
postcolonial identity. Theories of postcoloniality derived from the experience of
Southeast Asia, Africa and the Caribbean have postulated nationalism as the new
identity after independence. Hong Kong, however, is faced with reunication with
China, from which it was forcibly separated by a colonial power.
Following the 1997 return of Hong Kong to China, many Hong Kong people,
who previously considered themselves as passengers on a bridge (an image that
Homi Bhabha [1994: 5] has created for the rootless and unhomed people), have
now decided to stay on the bridge, rather than to go either ends. In the contemporary journalistic literary writings of Hong Kong, there is the representation of
the dilemmas, uncertainties, disillusionment, and the feeling of frustration among
the Hong Kong people in the 19701990s, which can be analyzed as discourses
of cultural anomaly. In this unique situation, the people of Hong Kong are forced
to redene and reconstruct themselves.
167
on the cultural issues of East-West encounters. In the 1970s, in many literary and
popular magazines as well as in Chinese newspapers published in Hong Kong,
there were debates on whether there is Hong Kong literature and, if there is, how
it should be dened. The general opinion at that time was that Hong Kong literature was a misnomer, in the sense that Hong Kong literature should be considered as part of Chinese literature, as it was written in Chinese, and it is almost
impossible to dene who was qualied to be called a Hong Kong writer. However, since the 1980s, there is a growing tendency for writers, Chinese or English, in Hong Kong to call themselves Hong Kong writers. This is a tendency
that shows a growing consciousness of Hong Kong identity. At the same time,
the rise of localism in Taiwan and on the mainland forces the Hong Kong people, especially the younger generation, to rethink who they are, if they are not the
same as mainlanders or Taiwanese. The 1997 handover of sovereignty is an immediate issue that put in front of the Hong Kong people the question of how they
should redene themselves in relation to China. And hence, in the literary writings, newspaper essays, dramatic productions and public debates in Hong Kong
since the second half of the 1980s, there are voices that show a belated postcolonial space in which the subaltern speaks. The texts that I examine below are all
originally in Chinese.
In many novels published in recent years, the general image used to describe
Hong Kong is that of either a oating city, or a crazy city.2 Such an image is illuminating not only in its reection of the geopolitical reality of Hong Kong, but
also in its function as a discourse to describe how Hong Kong people reconstruct
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Kwok-kan Tam
themselves. In actual truth, Hong Kong does not build its culture by accumulation
and does not rely on tradition. It is a place where everything oats and nothing
seems to have been built on solid ground. The phenomenon that people in Hong
Kong have to continually talk about their identity is a reection of an attempt to
search for and forge new identities that can reassure themselves of their relation
to the new realities in Hong Kong. In this sense, what is important does not lie
in what identity the Hong Kong people have, but in the process of questing for
new identities. For the Hong Kong people identities are not something xed, but
something that appears, disappears and reappears.
In his memoirs essay, Ji dao chunqiu guangying zhong [Films in My Youth,
1995], Gu Cangwu, the noted Hong Kong poet and journalist, has the following
observation about the youth in the 1960s:
For us people growing up in a oating city, we were born with a sense of anxiety and uncertainty. . . . We were worried about the Cultural Revolution that occurred in China. The 1967 Riot was only a small-scale re-enactment of the Cultural Revolution, yet many people were so frightened that they ed Hong Kong.
The people of the oating city were brought back to face history squarely for
the rst time since the 1950s. For our generation, we also for the rst time seriously thought about our identity and our situation as Hong Kong Chinese. In the
journals we edited, we began to explore issues of our Chinese identity and organized many seminars in the style of the Free University. But the more we explored, the more we felt puzzled.3 (Gu 1995: 59)
The image of a oating life and a oating identity marks the discourse that Hong
Kong people in the 1960s used to construct themselves in relation to their Chinese identity. It reects the lack of condence among the Hong Kong Chinese,
not only in China, but also in themselves.
169
The disillusionment with China urged many Hong Kong writers to look back to
Hong Kong and seek their identity in the immediate present of the reality. Hong
Kong in the late 1970s was marked by its rapid and large-scale sociocultural development, with the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) 4 being built as a signpost of
urban transformation from a oating city to a highly modernized society beyond the imagination of colonialism:
What Hong Kong most powerfully suggests is that it is no longer possible to dene a culture by the presence or absence of any or all of these markings. For the
rst time anywhere a vibrant culture has emerged almost entirely from within the
elements of mass consumerism. The vast bulk of Hong Kongs population may
have come from China bringing language, lore and learning with it. But what is
going back to China is patently not what was extracted. It is something else altogether an identity forged through popular culture. (OToole 1997: 18)
In the midst of this urban transformation was the rise of consumerism and popular culture, which is a sign of the emergence of many Asian cities as regional
beyond the cultural boundaries of colonialism. In his critique of Hong Kong, Gu
Cangwu has the following to say in his poem Taiping Shan shang, Taiping Shan
xia [Over Victoria Peak]:
Oh!
Is this the city in which I have lived
For thirty years?
Were it not that someone mentioned:
We should thank Emperor Dao Guang5
I would have forgotten:
This harbor
Has a name
The British Queen
Victoria Victory!
The weight of a hundred years history
Crushes on my long-numbed brain
Thunder clapping
My stubborn illness that was healed a long time ago
Is made to re-surge
In the pain:
I see that on an island and on a peninsula
Numerous
Golden poles
have been forced in
Between golden poles
Underneath the golden poles
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Kwok-kan Tam
Spilling blood
The harbour
Dyed shy red6
(Gu 1980b: 6870)
The world here that the clown J talks about is of course the location that the
Hong Kong people associate with in their construction of their identity. This existentialist view of an absurd world, in which one is not ones own master, fully expresses the sense of helplessness in Hong Kong peoples uncertainty about
their identity and their future.
171
A look at Hong Kong drama presented in the year 1997 will also show that
there is the quest for a postcolonial identity, as distinguished from that of mainland China and Taiwan. In the play, Fei ba! Lin liu niao, fei ba! [Archaeological
bird 1997] by Chen Bingzhao (Chan Ping Chiu), there is the description of Hong
Kong in its quest for a postcolonial identity, which is not the colonial British, nor
is it Chinese (mainland and Taiwan), but distinctively Hong Kong:
D: The songs of the Che7 people attracted many, many more boats to this seaport. But when more and more people came to this place, the Che people suddenly disappeared with reasons unknown. It is like deleting a le in the computer,
and no one knows what happened.
E: The whereabouts of the Che people has become a riddle since. Some people say they had gone to the sea; but the shermens descendants think otherwise
and say that the Che people could not have been their ancestors: it should be that
the shermen had relocated themselves on the land and then later on they became
the Che people. (Chen 1999: 210)
By tracing the origin of the Hong Kong people as descendants from the Che clan,
which had been deleted from the collective memory of the Chinese in recorded history, the play attempts to redene Hong Kong people as distinct from the
mainland Chinese or Taiwanese. The redenition of Hong Kong people can thus
be seen as an effort in constructing a new Hong Kong subjectivity. Yet, in the
midst of the process of redenition, there is a tone of sadness and helplessness in
the face of Chinas takeover in 1997:
Father:
....
Da . . .da . . . da . . . da . . . da . . . da! Listen, this is the sound of burial. Let the
gigantic wheels of the bulldozer rush toward us. Let them run over your ancestors, smash your homes and crush all empty memories.
Time is up. A great monument is going to be set up on our dead bodies.
Time is up. What are you digging here?
Time is up, except for my body, what have you excavated? (Chen 1999: 164)
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Kwok-kan Tam
more thorough perspective on the complex interplay not only of politics, but also
of cultures between the East and the West, the colonizer and the colonized, the
Rightist and the Leftist, and the colonial and the postcolonial in the emergence
of a Hong Kong identity since the mid-1980s. The writers search for identity is
actually a process of decolonization, in which the poet nds dissatisfaction with
the British Hong Kong, the old exploitative colonizer. This pattern of identity quest
has a strong personal tone in many Hong Kong writers, but it can also be seen as a
general pattern in Hong Kong peoples collective search for identity. In the Hong
Kong play, Archaeological Bird, such a pattern of identity quest at the levels of
Personal-National-Cultural can also be discerned. Through the process of archaeological excavation, the play attempts to show the complex relations among personal identity, location, family history, ethnicity and nation. In the scene, Family Heredity: My Tail, which parodies the history lesson typical of Hong Kong
education, there is an exercise in the form of lling in the blanks:
Im in my ________, Im about ________ tall, and quite ________ built, but I have
rather ________ shoulders.
I have _______ hair. My eyes are ________ . Ive got a rather ________ face, with
a _______ chin, a _______ nose. I have _______ lips, and I usually have a _____
expression. My face changes a lot when I ________. I have a ______ forehead: I
like to think it looks ________.
I have a Chinese tail, the most special thing on my body that Ive got from the
Chinese heritage. (Chen 1999: 247)
The blanks that need to be lled in are the missing links between personal identity and ethnicity in contemporary Hong Kong. The linkage with Chinese heritage is seen in the play as a tail, which not only appears to be redundant, but
also makes Hong Kong people feel uneasy about themselves. In another scene, A
Game of the Tail, the quest for identity is parodied in the style of an absurd play
as a game of children chasing after their tails (Chen 1999: 244). In this sense, the
quest for identity in the 19601990s generation of Hong Kong people is seen as
a sad, futile game. The use of English in this section of the play has the effect of
lamenting not only the lack of a native language, but also ridiculing the reliance
on English, the language borrowed from the colonial master, in the construction
of identity. It points out the reality of Hong Kong peoples being situated, linguistically and culturally, in between the Chinese and English languages.
In many Hong Kong writers search for identity, there is also a shift of perspective from seeing the self as the unhomed drifting in the oating city of a
colonial Hong Kong to considering the self as the homely living in the local
bridging culture of a postcolonial Hong Kong (see Bhabha 1994: 518). When
173
Hong Kong is considered as home and when the boundary becomes the place
from which something begins its presencing (Bhabha 1994: 5), Hong Kong
writers have found their own position in the emergence of a Hong Kong identity which, according to Homi Bhabha, is a bridge that gathers as a passage that
crosses (Bhabha 1994: 5). In the history of Hong Kong, the city has also been
represented as a bridge between the East and the West. Now this is a bridge that
gathers, and not just crosses. That is, Hong Kong has also become a place to form
an identity of its own.
Discourse does not just represent the social reality reected in peoples mind; it
serves more importantly an instrumental function in shaping ideologies. As Teun
A. Van Dijk has pointed out,
Within the framework of a multidisciplinary project on discourse and ideology, a
new conception of ideology is being developed in which ideologies are conceived
of as the basis of the social representations shared by (the members of) a group.
The social position, interests and other vital properties of a group, and its relations to other groups, are thus socio-cognitively represented in such a way that
the ideologies shared by its members may monitor the social representations underlying discourse and other social practices. (Van Dijk 1996: 7)
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Kwok-kan Tam
Viewed from such a perspective, the images of Hong Kong around the 1997 issue
are reective of a discourse that attempts to monitor the social representations, in
which process the most obvious is the desire to reconstruct the subject. Ideology
is thus also a matter of discursive formation. In the study of identity, what is interesting is how identity as a psychological process can be discussed in terms of
discourse. Ian Parker has offered his view in this respect, as he says,
The object that a discourse refers to may have an independent reality outside discourse, but is given another reality by discourse. An example of such an object
is the subject who speaks, writes, hears or reads the texts discourses inhabit. . .
a subject, a sense of self, is a location constructed within the expressive sphere
which nds its voice through the cluster of attributes and responsibilities assigned
to it as a variety of object. (Parker 1992: 9)
8. Conclusion
Through the construction of a discourse on the 1997 issue, the writers discussed
in this chapter, be they poets or dramatists, have actually voiced their desire to
reconstruct the Hong Kong people as subjects caught in the envisioning of a postcoloniality that is threatened in its very lack of a sense of subjecthood. This lack
of a subjecthood results from language mix that points at the in-betweenness of
contemporary Hong Kong identity. The year 1997 marks the end of a colonial
Hong Kong, but it is not just a discourse about the social reality of Hong Kong.
What marks the changes in Hong Kong has a long lasting effect upon the nostalgic memory of its people in their identity construction.
In Western theories, postcoloniality entails two concepts, as well as two sociopolitical conditions, which are complimentary to each other. The rst concept,
which describes postcoloniality as a historical development of a society after colonialism, is temporal in its denition. The second concept, which considers postcoloniality as the emergence of new cultural spaces beyond the connes of colonialism, is spatial in its theoretical orientation. The case of Hong Kong presents
an example that counter-argues that postcolonial cultural spaces can emerge even
in a colonial society prior to its return to China in the year 1997. The labelling of
Hong Kong as an anomaly of postcoloniality thus addresses the cultural development of a modern society beyond its colonial space. Yet, this cultural space is
not a space of certainty; nor is it a space that can be dened in any single tradition of the West or the East. It is not entirely Chinese, nor is it entirely Western.
It is something that is forever re-imagining itself in its disappearance and reconstruction. In Homi Bhabhas terms, the postcoloniality of Hong Kong lies exactly in its in-betweenness of cultural anomaly. This cultural in-betweenness in the
case of Hong Kong has been vividly represented as voices of missing.
175
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
References
Bhabha, H.
1994 The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge.
Chen, B.-Z. [Chen Ping Chiu]
1999 Fei ba! lin liu niao, fei ba! In K-k. Tam (ed.), Xianggang de shengyin: Xianggang huaju 1997 [Voice of Hong Kong: Drama 1997]. Hong Kong: International Association of Theatre Critics, 218270.
176
Kwok-kan Tam
Chow, R.
1992 Between colonizers: Hong Kongs postcolonial self-writing in the 1990s. Diaspora 2 (2), 151170.
OToole, F.
1997 A singular territory. London Review of Books 3 July 1997, 1819.
Gu, C.-w.
1980 Taiping Shan shang, Taiping Shan xia [Over victoria peak]. In C.-w. Gu Tong
lian [Bronze lotus]. Hong Kong: Suye Press, 6870.
1988 Yimu yishi [Wood and stones]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing.
1995 Ji dao chunqiu guangying zhong [Films in my youth]. In C.-w. Gu Beiwanglu
[Memorandum]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 5860.
Habermas, J.
1984 The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization
of Society. (Trans. T. McCarthy.) Boston: Beacon Press.
1987 The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. II: Lifeword and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. (Trans. T. McCarthy.) Oxford: Polity Press.
Mo, X. [Mok Hei]
1999 Long qing hua bu kai [An unresolved China complex]. In K.-k. Tam (ed.)
Xianggang de shengyin: Xianggang huaju 1997 [Voice of Hong Kong: Drama
1997]. Hong Kong: International Association of Theatre Critics, 104217.
Parker, I.
1992 Discourse Dynamics. London: Routledge.
Van Dijk, T. A.
1996 Discourse, opinions and ideologies. In C. Schaffner and H. Kelly-Holmes
(eds.), Discourse and Ideologies. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 3652.
Zhan, R.-w. (Tsim Sui Man) and S.-r. Deng (Tang Shu Wing)
1999 Wu ren di dai [No mans land]. In K.-k. Tam (ed.), Xianggang de shengyin:
Xianggang huaju 1997 [Voice of Hong Kong: Drama 1997]. Hong Kong: International Association of Theatre Critics, 74102.
Chapter 11
Identity and interactive hypermedia:
A discourse analysis of web diaries
Hong Cheng and Guofang Wan
178
site to see the news and naturally indicates the priority a news item is given on
the site (Cheng 2000).
In the meantime, many news Web sites experimented with new techniques in
their coverage. Almost a quarter of the countries that had English-language news
sites in mid-1997 had at least one site offering a special project on Hong Kongs
handover (Cheng 2000). Sites with such a special project carried far more information on Hong Kong than the sites without such a project.
In this chapter, we shall focus on some dozens of diaries contributed by twenty individuals from Hong Kong to the U.S.-based Public Broadcasting Services
Web site < http://www.pbs.com > during a six-month period before and after the
handover. Our purpose is not only to provide a discursive perspective on the construction of identity by the local people themselves amidst global media attention,
but also to explore the intricate and dynamic interconnections between identity
development and Internet mediation.
179
Some of the diarists chose to contribute under pseudonyms for fear of reprisals.
Once the project got rolling, a few Web users joined on after sending e-mail to the
PBS production team. One of them even wrote the most frequent entries (Clark
2000; Klotz 2000).
The diarists could not post their entries directly on the Web. They rst sent
their entries via e-mail, fax or, occasionally, regular mail to the PBS team, who
then posted for them because some of them did not have Web access at that time.
For those diarists who only spoke Cantonese, a graduate student at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong translated their entries into English. Again, PBS wanted to make sure we had both English and non-English speakers as well as [the]
young, old, wealthy, non-wealthy, etc. (Klotz 2000: 1).
When PBS stopped actively publishing diaries to its site in late 1997 (remember, the Internet population was relatively small then), the number of the Web
users who had visited this special project was already more than 250,000. These
visitors were virtually from all of over the world (Clark 2000).
Although Lives in Transition was not solely designed by PBS to collect
Hong Kong citizens views on their identities, it provided an ideal and unique
venue for us to examine such identities, which had, in fact, no shortage of expression there.
180
181
182
As a major purpose of this study is to examine how Hong Kong people looked at
themselves before and after the historic handover, the term identity is operationalized primarily as the way the Hong Kong diarists looked at China regarding, in
particular, its culture, social and economic systems, and the sovereignty transfer.
When they admitted their cultural associations with China, they would be regarded as identifying with their motherland culturally. In the meantime, their attitudes toward the social, political differences and the different levels of economic
development between Hong Kong and the mainland will be used as an indicator
of their willingness or unwillingness to identify with China socially.
183
thing; they refer to (real or imagined) facts and to components of facts, such as
objects, persons, properties, actions, or events. (1983: 2526)
In this chapter, we chose to focus on the cultural and social identities-related thematic topics that emerged from the diaries posted on PBSs website by various
individuals in Hong Kong during the historic transition. To identify such thematic topics, we treated each diary as a complete discourse, paying particular attention to its explicit linguistic features while uncovering its implied meanings with
the help of contextual information. Through an examination of how these diarists associated with or detached from China culturally and socially, we hope to
add to the literature of how ideology inuences ones cultural and social identities, and how language, culture, and ideology interact with one another in a particular context like Hong Kongs handover.
184
full of reminiscences of life back in China, as well as forlorn poems and serial
knight-errant stories. In a nutshell, the greater part of my life seemed to have
gone on as if there had been no Brits in town. (Cat-Lover, 6 May 1997) 7
Using narration of her personal experience as a communication strategy, this diarist distinctly identied with the Chinese culture, which as she mentioned, includes food, customs, herb medicines, legends and literature. On the contrary, the
diarist clearly expressed her indifference about the British ruling. Since her family life and her personal life had little to do with the British directly, the greater
part of her life could go on after the handover as if there had been no Brits in
town. To express such indifference and dislike for the British, the diarist even
resorted to some highly derogatory words like Brits and gweilos in her writing. This diary suggests that ones personal experience with the British could, to
a large extent, determine ones attitude toward the colonial ruling and the handover. As Wong (1999) noted, family experiences contribute to political values
and identity formation (1999: 188).
[2] At present, nearly 30 percent of the capital owing into Hong Kong is from
mainland China. Many mainland investors and capitalists have established their
companies here, issuing stocks and shares in Hong Kong. This kind of development will strengthen the economy of the territory. It also demonstrated that China understands the importance of Hong Kong as a center of international trade;
to damage the strategic importance of Hong Kongs status in the world economy is not in Chinas interest. Subsequently, Chinese interference in the political administration of Hong Kong has decreased over these last two months. It
seems that their attitude toward Hong Kong is getting more liberal. They have
started to act more, say less. This is really a good phenomenon ....
As for me, my capital is invested in the Hong Kong property market, where
the picture is currently quite rosy. Just since May, property values have increased up to ve percent. Speculation abounds that the price will continue to
rise through October. By that time, according to my plans, I will have sold some
of my properties. (Seek the opportunity!)
I have condence that when the leaders of the central government in Beijing turn their attention to Shanghai, the future will be quite positive. Shanghai
people are generally pretty open-minded, and are willing to accept the ways
of newcomers that superior to their own. I think they will be able to grasp the
essence of the existing philosophy of management in Hong Kong and use our
model to catch up with the world. (Einna, 1 June 1997) 8
Although this diarist did not give any emphasis on her cultural identity in this
piece, she socially identied with the Chinese governments Hong Kong policy.
185
Using a mix of reasoning and personal account as her communication strategy, the
diarist expressed her optimism about the handover with little reservation. When
she was reasoning, she selected such facts as the capital ow from China and the
open-mindedness of the Shanghai people to support her argument. One thing is
also obvious from this excerpt that the diarists positive view toward the Chinese
governments Hong Kong policy was based on the personal economic gains she
had obtained in the new sociocultural ecology during the territorys transition.
[3] Today, I am living and working in Hong Kong, enjoying every minute of it.
The new SAR [Special Administrative Region] government is doing a pretty
good job, and most people in Hong Kong are pretty happy with how things
are turning out. Yes, there will always be opposition, but that is inevitable.
Hopefully, the prosperity and peace in Hong Kong will continue, and gradually a system will evolve that everybody likes. (Chu, 10 October 1997) 9
Although the diarist did not mention anything related to Chinese culture here,
his writing was permeated with positiveness about the new Hong Kong government, which represents Beijings policy toward this returned land. He was satised with what the Chinese government had done in Hong Kong. This diary excerpt is another example that when one is willing to identify with China socially, one would be positive about the transition in Hong Kong.
186
The cultural identity as Chinese and the social detachment from China are both
explicitly indicated in this diary. By calling himself a Chinese and China his
mother country, and by saying he is proud of Chinas reclaiming its sovereignty, the diarist clearly indicated his Chinese identity. In the meantime, by using the words sorry to see the British go and so to speak, and the phrase our
ourishing colony, he also indicated that he was socially more attached to the
British than to the Chinese system. This diary excerpt is an example that discrepancy between ones cultural and social identities could give rise to ones mixed
feelings about Hong Kongs handover.
[5] It can be said without doubt that the British government transformed Hong
Kong from a primitive place into a bright and well-known city. Invariably, everyone hopes the success can and will continue. The British government has
given us the largest degree of freedom we have ever known, both in our community and in trade. Under the British, the rights of the Hong Kong people
have been respected. I do hope China will use the British system as a blueprint for rectifying the weaknesses in her own plan. (Lau, 15 May 1997) 11
Although the diarist did not deal with cultural identity directly here, his use of
the word her when referring to China suggested his emotional attachment to
his mother country. Meanwhile, his nostalgia for the British social system and
his reservation about the Chinese social system were fully expressed by his hope
that China will use the British system as a blueprint for rectifying the weaknesses in her own plan.
[6] For myself, the end of the colonial rule is certainly great. Even though Hong
Kong has been ruled by Britain [for] more than 150 years[,] I have strong feelings of connection to my motherland. When my family and I were watching
the Olympic Games, we concerned ourselves with the performance of Chinas teams and were proud of their victories. Few Hong Kong people, I believe, would deny their Chinese identities. In this sense, we are eager to see
the reunication. But there are doubts as well. (Kwok, June 27 1997) 12
This diarists Chinese cultural identity was so self-explanatory in his writing.
The example of watching the Olympic Games was very forceful because it is a
typical situation in which one would distinctively and forcefully express ones
cultural identity. But there are doubts as well. What doubts? Doubts concerning the social impact of the sovereignty transfer on Hong Kong. Since the diarist
could not identify with China socially, his enthusiasm about the reunication of
the two parts of China was expressed with reservation.
187
[7] As a Chinese, I ought to be happy about the reunication of Hong Kong with
mainland China. However, my happiness has yet to sweep away my paradoxical feelings about the future of Hong Kong. Why? Because just a few decades ago, the Chinese government was very conservative and stubborn. In
1949, China had just broken with a feudalistic dynasty to become a real unied modern nation. But it wasnt until the 1980s that she opened herself up.
The Chinese government is still developing advanced technologies while
learning from the West a more democratic political system. However, Hong Kong
has already been fully developed as a civilian and capitalistic society for quite
some time. Our political system is now mature enough for greater democratization. Between these two places, China and Hong Kong, there exists a gap left to
be bridged between two political and economic systems. We are worried whether
our reinstated sovereign will or can catch up with us, and whether she will permit a greater pace of democratization. Or will it be the case that Hong Kong will
need to step backwards for a little while and wait until our motherland is ready
for greater political change? I really dont know. (Einna, 10 July 1997) 13
In this diary, the author expressed her social detachment from China frankly while
admitting her Chinese cultural identity candidly. Her detachment came from her
pessimistic view about China, which was seemingly based on an analysis of the
discrepancies in social and economic situations between mainland China and
Hong Kong. Through a brief review of Chinese modern history, the diarist compared the mainland with Hong Kong one aspect at a time. This diary excerpt is a
perfect example to support the theory that a major reason for many Hong Kong
citizens hesitation about reunication with China is that they had commonly
regarded our motherland as backward and oppressive (Ho 1998: 40).
Here, the use of a why question has demonstrated an important difference
between writing a Web diary and writing a traditional diary. A traditional diarys
reader is usually the diarist, whereas a Web diary is apparently written for others most likely, for other Web surfers. When admitting that her happiness has
yet to sweep away her paradoxical feelings about the future of Hong Kong, this
diarist had predicted that her readers would ask her why, so she raised the question for them in her writing and then answered it clearly by herself.
188
a space that cannot simply be collapsed into the latter even as resistance to the
former remains foremost (1992: 158).
[8] Suddenly I was gripped by the feeling of how quickly 1997 was approaching. I then took note of the changes I expected to happen in our daily life after June 30, 1997, when governance of my hometown would be assumed by
China. (Chi, 6 June 1997) 14
This excerpt indicates that the diarist identied with China neither culturally nor
socially. Her unwillingness to identify with the Chinese culture was revealed by
the adverbial clause, ... when governance of my hometown would be assumed
by China. Here, China sounded like a foreign country while Hong Kong was
called my hometown. The diarists social detachment from China was also evident. The verb grip used to describe her feelings about the handover strongly revealed that.
[9] At this very instant, the neon red digits on a clock in the heart of Beijing are
ashing away audaciously, counting down to the second exactly how much
time is left until the historic handover takes place. When I went to Beijing
this summer, I was chilled to the bone as I stared at these incessantly blinking numbers, and realized there was only one year left. Now there is a mere
month left, according to the handover clock installed at the local Regent
Hotel, and I just cant bring myself to believe July 1 is approaching so quickly .... (Wong, 23 June 1997) 15
Although the diarist did not give any indication about her cultural identity here,
it was clear that she had no social attachment with Beijing. Audaciously and
chilled to the bone were two expressions that set the tone for this diary its
16-year-old author did not like the handover at all. This diary excerpt is a typical
example that the Hong Kong-born generations were hesitant about the reunication (Ho 1998: 40).
[10] In our Wednesday morning assembly, the ag of China was raised on the
roof of my school for the rst time. At that moment, my emotions were indeed mixed. The principal declared that as Chinese, we should revel in the
moment.
Nevertheless, some of my classmates were criticizing the Chinese government, saying that a gloomy period was coming. They feel that the [policies] of the Chinese government are ambiguous and hypocritical, and difcult for people to follow. The idea of being a Chinese was not so honorable,
some of them said. Some were even unwilling to sing the national song ....
They are passive. (Lau, 16 July 1997) 16
189
Through description and narration, this diarist showed us how some Hong Kong
high school students had experienced difculty in identifying with China either
culturally or socially. Here, Chinas national ag and national anthem were used
to symbolize China, both culturally and socially. The mixed feelings aroused
by the national ag and the students reluctance to sing the national anthem fully
indicated that they had an emotional resistance toward China. Even though they
admitted that they were Chinese, they did not like their Chinese cultural identity
because being a Chinese was not so honorable to them.
[11] Now, however, we live under the reign of a Chinese-style government. Chinese rulers are accustomed to a system in which political power is centralized. They tend to resist democracy. I am afraid that democrats will nd their
ght for a dominant role in the current Hong Kong polity a difcult one.
Needless to say, Hong Kong should and can sustain her status as an international economic center. However, I am very worried about whether she
will be able to preserve the principle of Rule of Law. Before the handover,
the Privy Council of Great Britain acted as our Court of Final Appeal, setting controversial and complicated legal problems. Soon the Peoples Congress will replace the Privy Council, and will enjoy the divine right to interpret our constitution.
In my view, the Peoples Congress is not a proper and legitimate legal institution. You know, almost none of the members in the Congress possess[es]
a legal degree. For such an ancient society, China hardly has a mature legal concept. Therefore the Congress is, no doubt, going to commit mistakes
when it operates as the supreme body for handling legal issues. (Einna, 18
September 1997) 17
This diarist not only had strong detachment from China socially, but also expressed great reluctance to identify with it culturally. Her social detachment was
clearly shown from her forceful argument about the unlikeliness of a rule of law
in Hong Kong after the handover because to her, the Chinese rulers do not have
a strong sense of law and a legal heritage. She used the fact that almost none of
the members in the [Chinese] Congress possess[es] a legal degree to reinforce
her argument.
The diarists unwillingness to identify with China culturally was revealed by
her diction. While she selected such affective possessive pronouns as her and
our when referring to Hong Kong, she simply used such phrases as a Chinesestyle government and Chinese rulers in her description of China. It sounds
as if the people in Hong Kong were not Chinese (it is true that some of them are
not), and the diarist even forgot that she was originally from mainland China herself.
190
[12] During the handover period I heard a number of speeches and soundbites in
which Hong Kong was described as a place where East meets West. My
personal view is that this is an empty clich that reduced the territory to a
passive and neutral site where forces from elsewhere come into contact. It
wrongly treated local culture as merely the sum of given Chinese and Western components, and thus serves to blind us to that which is unique in the
art or way of life of Hong Kong. In the handover ceremony itself, only Mandarin Chinese and English were used. The local Hong Kong dialect, Cantonese, was not used even to announce to guests when they could sit down.
One of the biggest events of the handover period was the performance
of a specially commissioned piece of music by composer Tan Dun. It was
played during the July 1st rework display. I nd it signicant that a mainland Chinese composer who lives in the West was chosen, rather than a local Hong Kong composer. Im not a musical expert, but the impression Ive
gotten from reviews and other comments is that Tan Duns piece had a kind
of East meets West theme, mixing aspects of Western classical musical
form with things Chinese. (Clarke, 4 August 1997) 18
This excerpt showed the diarists very strong Hong Kong identity by doing three
things. First, such an identity was indicated in the diarists unhappiness about
seeing Hong Kong reduced ... to a passive and neutral site for external powers to interact and dominate, and the Hong Kong locals were blinded to what is
unique in the art or way of life of Hong Kong. Second, the diarist criticized the
widely used but rarely questioned clich that Hong Kong is a place where East
meets West. The diarists unconventional view added much weight to his argument. Third, the diarist used language and music, two important and typical cultural artifacts, to illustrate and reinforce his argument.
191
a people (or an individual ...) needs to strengthen and protect itself from becoming overwhelmed. However, an obsession with dening a singularly distinctive
culture can be devastating, at least in the case of Hong Kong (Ho 1998: 43). To
many people in Hong Kong, the territorys success was built on its ability to accommodate, absorb, adopt, manipulate, and transform anything that can help resolve our problems and enrich our life (Ibid.). So, the rootlessness of Hong Kong
is believed to have given birth to an open, accommodative culture (Ibid.), and
the collective sense of ambivalence, unease, anguish and insecurity in identity
is very much part and parcel of the Hong Kong way of life (Wong 1999: 199),
all essential to the survival as well as success of this longtime trading port and
former refugee center. As Chow (1992) pointed out, in Hong Kong, there exists a
kind of lack of nationality, a nationalessness, that is at once the citys past coloniality, present uncertainty, and (one hopes) future openness (Chow 1992: 167).
The diversied ways in which the diarists under study identied with or detached themselves from China culturally and socially have to do with their attitudes toward Hong Kongs handover. It was not difcult to see that they were
more often than not willing to identify with Chinese culture but reluctant to identify with Chinese society.
In addition to pinpointing the cultural and social identities-related ideological
themes embedded in these Web diaries, this study has also observed interconnections between Hong Kong peoples quest for identity and Internet mediation.
In these Web diaries, two such interconnections were evident. First, the Internet
has extended the traditional diary writing from an intrapersonal communication
mode to a many-to-many mass communication mode. As a channel for intrapersonal communication, traditional diaries are mainly written for self-expression
and self-reection and are usually read by the diarists themselves. Studies on traditional diaries have documented that the form involved in the personal diary
or journal intime concentrates on the life of the individual rather than on largescale events in the outside world (Field 1989: 144).
As a new genre for many-to-many mass communication, however, Web diaries could in theory at least be posted by multiple diarists and read by numerous Web users anytime. The interactivity of this new mass communication genre
led to a reader-centered writing style in the diaries posted on the PBS Web site,
with the writer-centered style in traditional diary writing being avoided. For instance, the diarists often raised and then answered questions that they anticipated from their readers. What was more, when expressing feelings and views on
Hong Kongs handover and seeking for identities, they tended to convince their
readers and evoke the readers empathy by resorting to personal experiences or
reasoning. Such writing techniques are not always necessary in writer-centered
traditional diaries.
Meanwhile, the Webs interactivity feature gave the Hong Kong Web diarists
192
numerous opportunities and great convenience for two-way communication, instead of the one-way communication that dominates traditional mass media. In
Hong Kong 97: Lives in Transition, a message board called Share Your Opinion was provided at the end of each entry. Those who wanted to respond to a
diarist and to reach the general Web public may do so by a simple click to open
the message board. In this board, they may choose to post their comments under
the existing topics or to create a new discussion thread. Currently, ninety such
opinion topics have been listed in the message board, which carries several hundreds of opinion items posted by the Web users who visited this special project
on Hong Kongs handover < http://www.pbs.org/cgi-bin/pov/hongkong/discuss/
discuss.cgi >.
On the other hand, however, some factors may have limited the interconnections between Hong Kong citizens identity search and the Internet mediation.
For one thing, many audience members in the world, including some of the diarists for this PBS special project, did not have Web access and/or did not speak
English. So, the many-to-many mass communication via Web diaries could not
be fully practiced. For another, even those who had Web access and had no language barrier were still unable to provide their insight on the PBS website directly because they had to go through the PBS production team to have their diaries
posted. Such a gate-keeping practice may not have given enough public space
to Hong Kong citizens for a more diversied and more dynamic cyber-quest for
identities. Admittedly, the PBS teams deliberate selection may have already identied a much more diversied and representative group of diarists than passively
waiting for any Web users to post diaries.
In sum, the dozens of Web diary discourses analyzed in this chapter revealed
signicant inuences ideology exerted on Hong Kong peoples searches for cultural and social identities, which in turn determined their attitudes toward Hong
Kongs handover. Such inuences and determination occurred in dynamic and
multifaceted interactions of language, culture and ideology. These Web diaries
also displayed how interconnections between Web users and online mediation
could encourage and facilitate mass audiences participation in civic lives and in
dealing with social and cultural issues. In the meantime, however, the Web diaries still had limited accessibility to general Web users because of the limited
Web access and the language barrier that some Web users had experienced, together with PBSs gate-keeping on diary posting. In other words, these Web
diaries, as a new communication genre, may have empowered the mass audience
who had access to this innovative Web project while widening the knowledge gap
between those who had and who did not have such access.
193
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
194
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Chapter 12
Narrating Hong Kong history:
A critical study of mainland Chinas historical
discourse from a Hong Kong perspective
Lawrence Wang-chi Wong
198
nicant because it was translated into English and published by the Foreign Languages Press as An Outline History of Hong Kong (Liu 1997), probably the only
English version of Hong Kong history published ofcially in mainland China.
Jin Yingxi on the Past and Present of Hong Kong (Jin Yingxi Xianggang jinxitan
), a posthumous collection of articles on Hong Kong histories of Jin, who received his undergraduate education in the British colony, is a
serious academic work (Jin 1996). So is Qi Pengfeis () Sunrise and Sunset: 156 Years (18411997) of the Hong Kong Question (Richu riluo: Xianggang
wenti yibai wushiliu nian ) (Qi 1997), as both
were written in a serious attitude and abound with historical materials. There are,
of course, some less academic works that are targeted at general readers. Apparently, the history of the last colony of Britain in the Far East has all of a sudden
become an attractive topic for mainland historians.
But one question may be asked: why is it that before the appearance of these
books, which, as said, were roughly published all during the same period in the
second half of the 1990s, there had not been a major work by Chinese historians
on Hong Kong history?
Generally speaking, people consider A. J. Eitels Europe in China: The History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882 (Eitel 1895), published in
1895, about half a century after the formal establishment of the Colony, the rst
important Hong Kong history to appear. Of German origin, Eitel was a naturalized British citizen and became, in some eyes, more British than the British
(Jin 1996: 8). Hence it is not surprising that his work has been criticized as heavily colonialist (Fok 1995: 2122). Nevertheless, following his example and quoting extensively his work, other European historians continued to write on Hong
Kong history throughout the twentieth century. G. R. Sayers Hong Kong: Birth,
Adolescence and Coming of Age (18411862) (Sayer 1937), as well as Endacotts
several works, such as A History of Hong Kong (Endacott 1973) and Government
and People in Hong Kong, 18411962 (Endacott 1964), are well known. A more
recent book on Hong Kong history is Frank Welshs A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong (Welsh 1993), rst published in 1993 and revised in 1997 as
A History of Hong Kong (Welsh 1997) to include a new chapter on the nal years
of the colonial days. The general comment, basically a fair one, on these books
is that they write too much on the British and too little on the Chinese residents
in Hong Kong (Jin 1996: 16; Fok 1995: 22).
While Hong Kong histories written by westerners are not lacking, we have not
been able to nd comparable works in Chinese for a long period of time. Traditionally, Hong Kong was in such a peripheral position, geographically and culturally, to mainland China that the Chinese had little interest in its affairs. In fact,
before it was ceded to the British, no one in China ever paid any attention to the
barren island, which was inhibited by mainly the Tanka (), a shing tribe
199
which had long been discriminated against and despised (cf. Chen 1946). When
the Chinese emperor had to inquire about the position of Hong Kong when the
British demanded cessation, his ministers gave confusing replies (cf. Ma 1998 I:
4345). Then upon becoming a colony of the barbarians in 1842, Hong Kong
acquired a double peripheral status: the peripheral of the peripheral (Lee 1995:
76). Well until the 1940s, mainland Chinese writers, if they ever would write on
Hong Kong, would take an extremely critical and negative view (cf. Lo 1983).
We cannot expect that mainland historians would be interested in writing a Hong
Kong history.
But then what about the historians in Hong Kong? It looks inappropriate that
local scholars have no interest in their own history. Yet a paragraph from a report prepared by The Committee on Chinese Studies appointed by the Governor
in 1952 for the purpose of reviewing secondary and primary school textbooks
on Chinese literature and history clearly reveals the difcult position that local
scholars faced in writing a Hong Kong history in the colonial days:
In the Manchu Dynasty, the Chinese people, being under a foreign regime, were
not patriotic. Also, due to lack of political training and enthusiasm, they were like
a mass of loose sand. Since the founding of the Republic, Chinese politicians
have striven hard to unite the nation by appealing to the peoples patriotism, narrow nationalism and racialism. One handy short-cut to this end is to stir up hatred for foreign countries, and History textbooks have been looked upon as a very
convenient tool to serve this purpose. This explains why History textbooks published in China usually contain anti-foreign allusions, comments and propaganda, and are, therefore, not quite suitable for use in Hong Kong. There is indeed
an urgent need to produce History textbooks with an unbiased and local outlook
which will aim to promote international goodwill and understanding rather than
hatred and misunderstanding. ... Objectivity in treatment is, of course, to be strictly observed, especially in connection with such topics as the Boxer Uprising and
the so-called Opium War. (Education Department 1953: 31)
If the Chinese Opium War and the Boxer Uprising against foreign aggressors were sensitive issues to the colonial government, we could not expect any
bold attempt to report and analyze the British colonial rule in Hong Kong from a
Chinese or local perspective. Hence, although Xu Dishan (), a prominent
modern writer and scholar who came to head the Department of Chinese at the
University of Hong Kong in 1935, showed some interest in Hong Kong archaeology and wrote a couple of articles on the process of the cessation of Hong Kong,
he was extremely cautious not to offend the British authorities.3 His colleague in
the department, Luo Xianglin (), was even more tactful. A distinguished
historian who denitely had a very keen interest in local issues, he chose to study
and write on the early history (qiandaishi ) of Hong Kong, that is, the history of Hong Kong before the arrival of the British (Luo 1959).4 This is certain-
200
ly a wise decision, as a serious scholar like him would certainly make ndings
and analyses that would cause embarrassment to the colonial government. This
might in turn put him into unnecessary troubles. It is therefore not surprising to
nd that, for a long time, Hong Kong history has not been included into the primary and secondary school syllabi, and that the students in Hong Kong know
very little about its past.
Under this circumstance, solid studies of Hong Kong history should be most
welcome. The authors of Vicissitudes write in the preface:
At the moment when Hong Kong is returning to the mother country, publishing the narration transcript of The Vicissitudes of Hong Kong can help readers
to understand more precisely and comprehensively the origin of and the solution
to the Hong Kong question. This bears important practical signicance. (CCTV
1997b and 1997c: 23)
Obviously, the key issue was the 1997 return of Hong Kong. When Hong Kong
was going to be returned to mainland China, there was a need to know more about
it. This is understandable, as it is such an important issue in contemporary Chinese history and politics. From this we know why all of a sudden there were so
many histories of Hong Kong by mainland Chinese historians and it further explains why, after 1997, again all of a sudden, there was not any more such narration of Hong Kong histories. But there are other questions. In what ways was the
narration of Hong Kong histories related to the 1997 issue? What is the meaning
of bearing important practical signicance? Why should they think knowing
more about the Hong Kong question bears important practical signicance?
To answer these queries, an essay by one of the editors of Twentieth Century,
Liu Cunkuan, entitled The Return of Hong Kong and Cultural Identity (Xianggang huigui yu wenhua rentong ) is enlightening. He
brought up the issue of return of the heart (renxin huigui ):
We must soberly see that the return of sovereignty is only the rst step of Hong
Kongs return to China, though it is a major step. After China has resumed sovereignty in the Hong Kong district, there are many issues awaiting to be solved.
Since the British have adopted a colonial rule in Hong Kong for over one and a
half century, and because of various other reasons, we cannot deny that there exists a question of return of the heart. (Liu 1998: 216)
To him, this question of return of the heart was more complicated and important than the question of return of sovereignty. If it was not handled well, the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and even the grand venture of national unication would be seriously affected. This was because, he admitted, there were
many who were not eager for or even against the return of Hong Kong to China.
This was a frank and even bold statement from a mainland historian, at a time
201
when others were busy hailing the great historical event.5 The method he suggested to win the hearts of the people of Hong Kong was to establish a cultural identity for them, that was, to teach them to identify themselves with the culture and
history of their motherland. To achieve this aim, a good history lesson of Hong
Kong was needed, one that would help to, on the one hand, break Hong Kongs
tie with the British, and on the other, build up a better link with Chinese history and culture. The following paragraph explains clearly what was meant by the
authors of the Hundred Years when they emphasized the practical signicance
of narrating Hong Kong history:
In this program [Hundred Years of Hong Kong], we will introduce to you the origin of the Hong Kong issue and the process of solving it. We will introduce to you
the esh-and-blood relationship between Hong Kong and the mainland, so that we
can understand better the history of Hong Kong, understand better Hong Kong at
present, and understand better the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China. (CCTV 1997a: 12)
No doubt, the narration of Hong Kong history is not directed to the past, but to
the present and even to the future, because telling the past story of Hong Kong
serves the purpose of educating people to have a better understanding of not only
old Hong Kong, but also Hong Kong at present and in future, because the Basic
Law will rule Hong Kong in the years to come. Another historian was even more
straightforward by relating the study of Hong Kong history to contemporary politics of the Communist Party:
We demand a thorough grasp of the guidelines and policy of the [Chinese Communist] Party Center on Hong Kong. We must re-learn and have a new understanding of the situation of Hong Kong. Here, a study of Hong Kong history is of
prime importance. (Jin 1996: 17)
In the following sections, we will see what kind of a Hong Kong history has been
presented by mainland Chinese historians with the purpose of making history to
serve the present and the future. In the process, we will also examine the strategies adopted to serve such a purpose.
202
203
is that the incident was closely related to contemporary politics in the mainland.
As the riot was started by the extremists who were inuenced by the ultra-leftist
Party line during the Cultural Revolution, Chinese historians nd it difcult to
comment on the issue because there is not yet a nal and denitive evaluation of
the Cultural Revolution in the mainland.
A similar example is the Diaoyutai movement in Hong Kong, which started
in the early 1970s and went on till the turn of the century. Nationalistic as it is,
it has not been dealt with in the Hong Kong histories because the Chinese government does not seem to support such strong actions against the Japanese occupation of the islands. If the history of Hong Kong is presented chronologically,
there would not be a way to avoid these incidents. This shows very clearly that
the writing of Hong Kong history is not aimed at providing a better and more
comprehensive knowledge of what have happened in the past, or else these important and far-reaching events should not have been deliberately omitted. The
omissions reveal the interferences of writing a local history when it is narrated
within the grand discourse of the nation. Practical considerations aside, the major reason for eliminating the thirty odd years after 1949 is that it will probably
help to break the British tie.
We will leave for the moment the argument of whether or not Hong Kong was
a barren island without any value before the arrival of the British. But no doubt,
Hong Kong has turned into one of the major international commercial and nancial centers in the world under the British rule. Great progress was made in
the 1960s and after. For example, the number of factories in Hong Kong in September 1981 was 46,729, with a total 0.95 million employees. Compared to the
gures of 1951, there was a growth of 25 times and 8.6 times respectively (Jin
1996: 3940). Further, there was also a growth of over 20 times in income per
capita: in 1951, it was HK$ 1,117 while in 1979, it stood at HK$ 21,816 (Rao
1997: 378, 392). There are, of course, various reasons for the economic success
of Hong Kong during this period. But the British rule there, with wise political,
nancial and economic policies, is undoubtedly one of them. Unfortunately, on
the Chinese side, there was not much to be boasted of. Ever since the closing of
the Hong Kong Chinese borders in 1951, plus a closed-door policy of the Chinese
government between the 1950s and 1970s, they could make little contribution to
the growth of Hong Kongs economy. Hence, mainland Chinese historians face
a dilemma. On the one hand, they cannot attribute Hong Kongs success to the
Chinese rule. On the other, they do not want to give credit to the British. Skipping the issue altogether is probably the best way out.
More signicantly, the 1960s and 1970s saw a gradual development of a local
identity in Hong Kong, one that, to the disappointment of mainland historians,
does not associate with the mainland Chinese regime. Ever since the establishment of a British colonial rule, Hong Kong has become a refuge for the Chinese
204
at times of chaos in the mainland. But for a long period of time, most of them had
no intention of staying in Hong Kong for good. When the situation in the mainland improved, they moved back to their native places. Under this circumstance,
there was no way to build a Hong Kong identity.
However, the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949 brought
an unprecedented huge number of refugees to Hong Kong. Within the rst six
months of 1950, over 0.7 million arrived at the British colony (Young 1994: 131).
Unlike previous refugee inuxes, they could not return easily this time. First, they
were against the Communist regime and could not go home as long as it was still
there, especially given that the situation in the mainland in the 1950s and 1960s
was chaotic. Second, as said earlier, the Hong Kong-Chinese border was closed
on 16 June 1951. As a result, they had to stay in Hong Kong, no matter how reluctant they were. These people, with their roots and their past in the mainland,
might not be able to identify themselves with the British rule. But the next generation, those who were born in Hong Kong or were brought to Hong Kong during infancy and came of age in the 1960s and 1970s tended to take Hong Kong
as their home. This explains why a Hong Kong identity began to emerge during
this period.
In Hong Kong, unlike Taiwan, there has never been any call for independence.
However, it does not mean that the people there do not develop any special identity. A hundred and fty-ve years of British rule and an overwhelming majority of
Chinese population is a combination that cannot be found elsewhere in the world.
It is therefore not surprising to see that people of Hong Kong take themselves as
a unique group. According to one study done in 1985, 59.5% of the interviewees,
in a choice between I am a Chinese and I am a Hongkongese, picked the latter (Lau and Kuan 1988). This is not a small proportion. Unfortunately, to some
mainland historians, this statistic shows unmistakably that people in Hong Kong
have no afliation to China and lack a cultural identity with the motherland. As
Hong Kong identity grew some time in the 1960s and 1970s, there is every reason to delete the period so that the origin of the identity can be eliminated.
However, this is but a passive tactic. In order to break the tie between the people of Hong Kong and the British rule, something more positive has to be done.
One effective strategy is to take a nationalistic approach to denounce altogether
the British occupation of Hong Kong as illegal.
To many, the colony of Hong Kong was born out of a war between Britain
and China in 1840; China was defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which ceded the island of Hong Kong to the British. But there are different
views on the nature of the war. On the Chinese side, the immediate cause of the
war was the Chinese ban on the illegal opium trade. The British, in great demand
of Chinese tea, imported opium into China from India to offset its trade decit.
China, attempting to save the people and the economy, put a ban on the trade
205
and in the process, the British, eager to protect the great trade benet, started the
war. Hence, the Chinese call it the Opium War. But from the viewpoint of the
British, opium trade was not the main concern. It was rather because the British
merchants were so badly treated in China that a war was needed to force China
to make improvements and open her markets. Thus, western historians, like Eitel and Welsh, insist that it is wrong to call it the Opium War (Eitel 1895: 28;
Welsh 1997: xi). They prefer to call it the First Anglo-Chinese War. It is not
the purpose of this paper to ascertain the causes of the war, though one should
ask the question whether it was right to start a war in the rst place.
What I want to briey analyze here is the way mainland Chinese historians
narrate the war. Expectedly, they would concentrate on the opium issue, accusing the British for importing into China, just for economic reasons, a drug that is
now banned all over the world. This, of course, holds truth and is appealing. But
they mention nothing else. Not a single word can be found in those histories of
Hong Kong on the trading and living conditions of the foreigners in Guangzhou
at that time. This is in great contrast even to many of the histories on early modern China published in the mainland, which, though emphasizing the opium issue, usually agree that one cause of the war was the mistreatment of westerners
imposed by the Qing government and local bureaucrats. I am not at all suggesting that the British were right to resort to force if they were not well treated. But
what should be pointed out is the mainland Chinese historians, in their narration
of Hong Kong history, attempt to make sure that, when people read their works,
they would blame the British for all the evil deeds.
206
Laws of Hong Kong: Hong Kong has been part of the territory of China since
ancient times. ... The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is an inalienable
part of the Peoples Republic of China (http://info.gov.hk/basic_law/fulltext).
The two are so similar that one wonders if these statements are derived from
geography, history or politics.
However, what is the point of putting so much effort in asserting a fact no one
denies, namely, that Hong Kong has long been a part of China? To us, a more signicant issue is: given that Hong Kong has all along been an inalienable part of
China, what role has been played by China in Hong Kong history?
One difference between western and Chinese historians towards Hong Kong
history lies in its origin. In the narration of Western historians, the history of
Hong Kong really begins with the coming of the British in 1841 (Endacott 1973:
4). Before this, to them, Hong Kong was a barren island, with a sparse population and little value. Clearly, this is a tactic often employed in colonialist historical discourses. By asserting that the colony was uninhabited and useless, they
attempt to justify their aggressive act and illegal occupation and exploitation (cf.
Green and Troup 1999: 278). This is rebuked by the Chinese historians. By citing the rst population count made by the British in May 1841, which stated that
Hong Kong then had a population of 7,450, they want to prove that Hong Kong
was prosperous before the arrival of the British. We are not going to argue the
accuracy of the population gures, nor shall we judge if a population of seven
thousand would make a place prosperous. But what we want to point out is: in
all mainland Chinese discourse of Hong Kong history, despite the fact that they
start at the New Stone Age, the part that covers the period before the arrival of
the British is extremely brief. On the other hand, they usually go into great detail
about what happened after the British arrival. This is highly ironic as it would
only fortify the British historians assertion that Hong Kongs history begins after their arrival. Of course, one may argue that materials on Hong Kong before
the nineteenth century are scarce, and it may be difcult to write a detailed history. But if this is the truth, then again, the British assertion should be accepted.
So this argument is not employed by mainland historians. What is more, we have
earlier pointed out that Luo Xianglin has, with his students, written up a whole
book on the pre-British period of Hong Kong history.
4. A brief conclusion
In the above sections, I have briey dealt with the major strategies adopted by
mainland historians in their narration of Hong Kong history. The main problems
they face lie in the constraints from the grand narratives of the Chinese history.
With a clearly set political agenda, they cannot take a more objective stance.
207
Hence, very often they have to avoid some sensitive issues or twist historical materials to suit their purpose. Despite great efforts by some historians to dig into
and consult rst-hand materials, many of their arguments are unconvincing and
self-contradicting.
While we are not suggesting that only the local people can write a good Hong
Kong history, we sincerely hope that the real Hong Kong voice can be heard
and that there can be some works free of imperialistic or colonialist discourses,
no matter where they come from. Some scholars are trying hard, and we have
seen some very different works to achieve this (Chan 1994; Law 1999; Wang
1997; Chan 1999; Ngo 1999; Tsai 2001). Hopefully, there will be more new Hong
Kong histories soon.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
They are The Vicissitudes of Hong Kong, A Hundred Questions on Hong Kong
(Xianggang baiti ) (CCTV 1997d) and The Story of Hong Kong
(Xianggang de gushi). Cf. Zhongyang 1998: 5253.
It bears an English title of its own: The Stories of Hong Kong. But obviously it does
not correspond with the Chinese title at all. For this reason, I intend to give a more
faithful translation of the title of the program in this paper.
For example, he attributed the cause of the Second Anglo-Chinese War to the antiBritish sentiment of the Chinese in Guangzhou (Xu 1941: 194195); and as one
critic points out, he never used such terms as imperialism or invasion in his
essay (cf. Jin 1996: 193).
As far as I am aware, before Luo Xianglin, there was not such a term as Xianggang qiandai shi. It was his book Hong Kong and Its External Communication
Before 1842: A Early History of Hong Kong (Luo 1959) that denes the scope of
the early history of Hong Kong.
The ex-chief of Xinhuashe (Xinhua News Agency) Xu Jiatun () has earlier
said something similar in his memoir: Returning only the land but not the heart
is not a complete return. To him, it is relatively easy to have the land returned,
but the return of the heart in Hong Kong is very difcult (Xu 1993: 9394). But
because he was then in defunct and self-exile, after the 1989 Tiananmen Incident,
such assertion could easily be dismissed as venomously intended.
The two only exceptions are Yuan Bangjians () A Hong Kong History
(Xianggang shilun ) (Yuan 1987) and Liu Shuyongs A Brief History
of Hong Kong (Liu 1998).
Similar sentences can be found in almost all Hong Kong histories published in
the mainland. Cf., CCTV 1997b: 1; Jin 1997: 5; Qi 1997: 2; He 1994:1; Wang
1996: 1.
208
References
CCTV
1997a The Hundred Years of Hong Kong [Xianggang bainian]. Guangdong: Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe.
1997b The Vicissitudes of Hong Kong [Xianggang cansang]: Vol. I. Beijing: Zhonggong Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe.
1997c The Vicissitudes of Hong Kong [Xianggang cansang]: Vol. II. Beijing: Zhonggong Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe.
1997d A Hundred Questions on Hong Kong [Xianggang baiti]. Beijing: Luyou Jiaoyu
Chubanshe.
Chan, L. K-c.
1999 From Nothing to Nothing: The Chinese Communist Movement and Hong
Kong, 19211936. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Chan, M. K. (ed.)
1994 Precarious Balance: Hong Kong Between China and Britain, 18421992.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Chen, X-j.
1946 A Study of the Tankas [Danmin de yanjiu]. Shanghai: Commercial Press.
Education Department
1953 Report of the Chinese Studies Committee. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government.
Eitel, E. J.
1895 Europe in China: The History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year
1882. London: Luzac and Co.
Endacott, G. B.
1964 Government and People in Hong Kong, 18411962: A Constitutional History. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
1973 A History of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Faure, D. (ed.)
1997 Society: A Documentary History of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Fok, K-c.
1995 Hong Kong History Teaching Reference Materials: Vol. I. Hong Kong: Joint
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Green, A. and K. Troup (eds.)
1999 The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-century History and
Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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Jin Yingxi on the Past and Present of Hong Kong [Jin Yingxi Xianggang jinxitan]. Beijing: Longmen Chubanshe.
Luo, X-l.
1959 Hong Kong and Its External Communication Before 1842: An Early History
of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Zhongguo Xueshe.
Ma, J-k. (ed.)
1998 Selection of Research Materials for the Study of Early Hong Kong History
[Caoqi Xianggang shi yanjiu ziliao xuanbian]. Two Vols. Hong Kong: Joint
Publishing House.
Ngo, T-w. (ed.)
1999 Hong Kongs History: State and Society under Colonial Rule. London/New
York: Routledge.
Qi, P-f.
1997
Sunrise and Sunset: The 156 Years of the Hong Kong Question, 18411997
[Richu riluo: Xianggang wenti yibai wushiliu nian]. Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe.
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Rao, M-j.
1997 The historical development of Hong Kong industry [Xianggang gongye fazhan de linshi guiji]. In Wang Gangwu (ed.), Hong Kong Histories [Xianggang shi xinbian]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co. Vol. I, 371416.
Sayer, G. R.
1937 Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tsai, J-f.
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The Hong Kong Peoples History of Hong Kong, 18411945 [Xianggang ren
zhi xianggang shi]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
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Young, J. D.
1994 The building years: Maintaining a China-Hong Kong-British equilibrium,
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Yu, S-w. and C-k. Liu
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Yuan, B-j.
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Chapter 13
A nascent paradigm for non-Western discourse
studies: An epilogue
Narcisa Paredes-Canilao
This volume has explored data, concepts, analytical methods and theories that
carry immense implications for cultural, linguistic, literary and communication
studies. Other elds are implicated, too, which have lately realized the constitutive powers of language and as a result have taken a linguistic turn.1 The linguistic
turn is inspired in a sense by Wittgensteins notion that the limits of my language
means the limits of my world; 2 the textual turn by the more unsettling insight of
Derrida that there is nothing outside of texts (Il ny a pas de hors texte).3
This book has not only developed and employed a paradigm critical of Western
discourse, but provided directions for a nascent paradigm for analyzing and privileging non-Western discourses as well. Nascent here is used in its two senses
as newly born and more aptly in its use in chemistry as newly liberated from a
compound. Thus, the word evokes Alberonis nascent state as the formation
of newer groups in the wake of the disintegration of the center. This systemic tendency where disorder in a larger social eld provokes an attempt to create interpersonal unities in the local, regional levels was later used by Jonathan Friedman (1994). Friedman notes that the declining hegemony of the center logically leads to the liberation, the free play of already extant but suppressed
projects and potential new projects.4
However, rather than leaving the disintegration of the hegemony to systemic
forces, the present studys crucial thesis is that the general critique of Western
domination of academic elds and everyday life liberates local knowledge and
methodologies from cultural imperialism. The ultimate goal is to create a new
paradigm inspired by a more inclusive, cohesive, but more heterogeneous and
culturally pluralist politics. Such a political and cultural project could not have
come at a more timely way. For, as Kristeva pointed out more than twenty years
ago, historical events necessitate a different symbolic system:
The present mutations of capitalism, the political and economic reawakening of
ancient civilizations (India, China), have thrown into crisis the symbolic systems
enclosed in which the Western subject, ofcially dened as a transcendental subject has for two thousand years lived out its life span. (Kristeva 1986c: 31)
212
Narcisa Paredes-Canilao
The following section will attempt to describe the nascent paradigm that poses
a challenge to the hegemony of the monolithic symbolic system. In the process,
attention is called to certain limitations of the deconstructive turn, however, for
motivated engagements such as espoused in this volume.
An epilogue
213
texts, and as spoken by specic speakers (Wittgenstein, 1958). Before this view,
there were other prominent theories of meaning or explanations of what we really mean when we say this or that word means .... But all these previous theories regarded meaning as some form of entity that could be drawn from a mere
analysis of words, abstracted from language at work, or from daily use. These
words were then brought to the mind of the philosopher, who ended up analyzing language on a holiday (Wittgenstein 1958: 19). This is how most, if not
all, of the traditional problems in Western philosophy originated from a linguistic confusion. The urgent problem of philosophers therefore was to analyze and
clarify language in order to determine which problems were genuine and which
ones were only due to language itself. Wittgensteins injunction is: do not look
for the meaning, look for the use. This shifted language studies from a mere
concern with syntax and semantics (the saying of language) to pragmatics (the
doing of language).
Meanwhile, in the French scene in the 1960s, structuralism was beginning to
supplant existentialism as the dominant philosophy. Modern structuralism was
founded on Saussures Course in General Linguistics (Cours de Linguistique
Generale, 1916/1983). For Saussure (1916/1983: 9), the study of linguistic structure is the primary concern of the linguist. Structure is the key term here. It is
used in its ordinary meaning as a set of interconnecting parts of any complex
thing. More importantly, this structure, which is usually common to all things
or events having the same form (isomorphic), can be rendered logically or mathematically and can be used to explain or predict the behavior or changes in the
thing/event.
From a structuralist point of view, a thing or a unit cannot be broken down
into its single elements because the unit is dened not so much by the nature of
the component elements, but by their interrelationships. In the case of language,
its basic structural elements can be identied objectively and general laws can
be derived from them. Structurally, language is a system in which all elements t
together and in which the value of any one element depends on its simultaneous
coexistence with all the others. Thus, no linguistic item can ever be based ultimately upon anything other than its non-coincidence, difference, or non-similarity with the rest. For example, dog has value only because it is different conceptually (in its meaning) and materially (in sound and in spelling) from cat.
This is the characteristic of difference. Likewise, there is neither an internal nor
a natural connection between an idea and the sequence of sounds. The word ele-phant, for example, is unmotivated. It has nothing to do with the looks or an
idea of an elephant. This is the characteristic of arbitrariness. For Saussure, arbitrariness and difference are two correlative properties of the linguistic sign
they are inseparable (1916/1983: 6669).
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Discontentment with the objectivist approach of structuralism led to poststructuralism. The post signals that poststructuralism is both a continuation and a
critique of structuralism. Its critique of structuralism is directed at the possibility
of objective descriptions, particularly the objectivist notion of structure. Structure
is viewed only as a simulacrum (a feigning, a fake resemblance) of linguistics
object of study. It seems legible as a structure, but it erases the aims of structuralism which is to provide objective description (Derrida 1976: 102).
There are many possible ways of understanding the deconstructive or textual turn. We can look at how it radicalized Saussures notions of arbitrariness and
difference, the two correlative properties of the linguistic sign. Differance is a
Derridean neologism which plays on two senses of the French verb diffrer (to
differ). First, it means to differ, to be distinct and to be not the same. Its second
meaning is to delay and to defer. These are the two aspects of difference differance as spacing (to differ) and differance as temporcalizing (to defer). Saussure
used only the rst meaning, to differ, in his notion of difference. The neologism also plays on the fact that differance and difference are pronounced the same
way in French (dif-feh-rohns) which indicates its immense subversive potentials.
The a of differance, is not heard; it remains silent, secret and discreet like a
tomb. It is a silence that is not far from signaling the death of the King. Differance is meant to delay the appearance of the King innitely. This is the second
radicalization of Saussure by deconstruction: as distinct from difference, differance points out the irreducibility of temporalizing. The delayed or deferred (traditionally, the real meaning or referent) will never arrive, because it is seduced to
indulge and tarry in the innite play of differences (Derrida 1973: 132).
As to arbitrariness, it can occur only because the system of signs is constituted by the differences between the terms and not by their individual fullness.
The elements of signication are thus functioning not by virtue of the compact
force of their cores or their nuclei, but by the network of oppositions that distinguish them and relate them to one another. From this description of arbitrariness
is drawn the consequence that the signied concept is never present in itself. Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within
which it refers to other concepts by the systematic play of differences. The other
implication of arbitrariness is that these differences, while playing a role in language, are themselves effects. They did not fall from the sky ready made. This
is deconstructions third radicalization of Saussure. Differance in no way implies
that the deferred presence can always be recovered, that it simply amounts to an
investment that only temporarily and without loss delays the presentation of presence (Derrida 1973: 151). Instead, differance, which is neither a word nor a concept, is a strategic note which indicates the closure of presence, a closure that is
affected in the functioning of traces (Derrida 1973: 31).
Presence designates all those traditionally related with fundamentals, prin-
An epilogue
215
ciples, or center, such as essence, existence, substance, subject, truth, transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth (Derrida 1978:
410411). All these have been mustered by Western culture to justify monopoly
of culture. While the term trace is a simulacrum of presence, innitely dislocating and displacing itself by referring beyond itself. To make this clearer, when
do we say that something is a trace? Something is a trace by virtue of an absence
of what it is a trace of. However, trace is radicalized to mean there never was an
original cause of the trace effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace
(Derrida 1973: 156).
Because words are signicant for their difference from other words, they are
no longer a creation or function of a speaking subject; rather, it is the speaking
subject who has been reduced to a function of language thus the term decentered subject. An individual becomes a subject only as a speaking or writing
subject. He or it becomes a signifying subject only by entering into the system of
differences (Derrida 1973: 146). Likewise, as a signifying subject, it is not selfpresent. Even if it is the speaker or author, it cannot dictate on an original or real
meaning of the utterance.
In that connection, language par excellence is not speech but writing where
the author is absent, reduced only to a trace or a simulacrum of presence. Without a home of its own, it is always being effaced in each and every reading, which
is itself writing. This is the meaning of the postmodern expression death of the
author. Understandably, such a view of the subject or author upsets the conventional denition of discourse as the present, living, conscious representation of a text within the experience of a person who writes or reads it (Derrida 1976: 161). Discourse as such is denounced in deconstruction as metaphysical presence: all concepts hitherto proposed in order to think the articulation
of discourse are caught within the metaphysical closure that I question here ...
(Derrida 1976: 160).
We are now in a position to understand the meaning of the textual turn or turn
to textuality. Textuality is the condition where there is primacy of texts, in fact
there are only texts. Nothing comes before no origin, no author, no reality being re-presented; nothing comes after no denite interpretation, no goals, no
appearance of that represented. Instead, texts refer back to other texts in an endless and unresolved game of hide-and-seek. There was never anyone or anything
who/which went in hiding in the rst place. And texts are not supposed to know,
that is why they are absorbed in the game. But texts are not a substantive reality
either. They are so only in so far as they are texts-as-writing. They are in themselves arbitrary, invented and reinvented through writing.
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An epilogue
217
troduced the terms, subject of the enonced (the I who thinks) and the subject
of the enunciation (the I that is constituted as the subject-object of its own reection). In French, these are nonciation referring to the act of making an utterance, and nonc, the verbal statement made. The enunciating subject and the
subject of enunciation the I who speaks and the I who is spoken should
never be confused with each other. The error of Descartes was the conation of
the two. In I think therefore I am, the rst I is the I who speaks, while the
second I is the I who is spoken.
Kristeva (1986b) has taken issue with how grammatology unsettles and disturbs logic and the subject of logic, but nevertheless suffers from a fundamental
incapacity to account for the subject. Precisely this is the reason for semiotics
claim that it outanks deconstruction in its project of inserting agency back
into language, albeit an agency-in-process. Agency or subject-in-process is the
mobile, unxed, subversive writing subject. It is the subject on trial which represents itself in texts. There is a fundamental difference between, on the one
hand, semiology which only focuses on the static phase of language, positing it
as a homogeneous structure, and semiotics, or semanalysis, on the other, which
studies language as a fundamentally heterogeneous discourse enunciated by a
speaking subject.
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and there are sinners because of confession, etc. These discourses acquire legitimation by projecting themselves as based on truths outside human invention, and
thus are assigned the status of objective knowledge. This Foucauldian concept of
discourse has inspired those in movements (women, identity politics) to refocus
their resistance in the discursive realm.
Hence the necessity of contextualizing discourse analysis in colonialism, postcolonialism and neocolonialism. Western discourse and China-Hong Kongs discourses on Hong Kongs transition are best seen, not only against the broader, hegemonic pattern of international communication, but also against a colonial-historical background. The term postcolonial is more elusive and overwhelmingly
dissipated to pin down into a denition. However, the present books operationalization of the concept indicates a general non-controversial understanding of
postcoloniality, as that form of social criticism that bears witness to those unequal and uneven processes of representation, by which the historical experience
of the once-colonized Third World comes to be framed in the West (Bhaba in
Mongia 1997: 1). The post should signal both a cessation, as well as a continuation. There were changes in personalities, maybe in power structures, but colonialism continues in its effects, particularly discursively. Thus the term refers
to both a periodization, as well as a methodological revisionism. This distinction allows for a wholesale critique of Western structures of knowledge and power (Mongia 1997: 2).
An epilogue
219
of discourse as text (form) and context. Texts examined are from different genres
political speeches, magazine articles, web diaries, literature and historical accounts, in different modes spoken, written, the traditional way or through electronic media, and in different languages so as to explore subtleties and complexities. Depending on the human interests of research, gender, class, race, ethnicity and other signicant axes of difference are also considered.
Above all, discourse analysis is exercised as a motivated and purposive enterprise. Discourse analysis is not interested in empirical data, nor in descriptions per se. It does not aim to be representative. Unashamedly, it announces its
knowledge interests and motivations. Its goal obviously is not merely to understand the world, but to change it. These mandates are achieved in many ways: 1)
exposing collusions of power-knowledge, 2) revealing pretensions to truth in the
guise of science or knowledge, 3) returning thought to their historical and libidinal embodiments, and 4) openly acknowledging the values that inspire or affect
knowledge production. The volume followed all these requisites methodologically. Taking issue with how cultural imperialism perniciously continues, and
in fact has deepened, the editors insist that the present undertaking is a cultural and political intervention. They want to make a difference in a situation gone
desperate, though not hopeless. They see the turn to non-Western discourse as a
timely and effective strategy, letting non-Western repressed voices speak for
themselves. Notwithstanding their cognizance of and sensitivity to the postmodern-postcolonial thesis, they provide the position from which the marginalized
and silenced might speak (Spivak 1988, 1997). And they skillfully negotiate this
bothersome concept into a discursive practice, by an eclecticism in methodologies and theoretical frameworks, which are then adapted to Western as well as
non-Western materials.
1.5. Dialogue
An interesting approach of the study is the confrontation of the grand narratives
of Western discourse with a plurality of petits rcits or little stories. This is a crucial feature of the critical approach to discourse analysis resistance of the hegemonic monolithic discourse with a plurality and variety of discourses. In place
of the monologue is a heteroglot, so to speak, of a multitude of voices, sociolects,
dialects, registers and styles. Heteroglossia, would be the right word. It is a term
from Bakhtin (1981) referring to the multiplicity of voices interrelated and dialoguing in a text. Here, every utterance represents coexistences and/or contradictions between spatial, temporal, cultural, and ideological differences. Each word
is inextricably bound up in the dissemination of its social contexts.
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An epilogue
221
sions different from, or opposed to accounts in Western media (Shi-xu, Chapter 1).
To sum up so far, discourse and discourse analysis informed by Bakhtins dialogism offers an alternative paradigm to the reigning binarism in Western communication and language. This is the rst paradigm shift encouraged by the volume. It is best captured in the provocative improvisation: I speak and you hear
me, therefore we are (Ponge in Kristeva 1986a: 45), in place of Descartes I
think, therefore I am.
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An epilogue
223
universal truth, reason and knowledge, concealing desire for economic supremacy and political power. This is the value of the works of meticulous and rigorous
postcolonial scholars relying on Derrida such as Spivak (1988). However, on the
trail of Derrida, she tends to prohibit too much. In the case of the woman subaltern she suggests that even the possibility of collectivity itself is persistently foreclosed inasmuch as female agency has already been predetermined and manipulated. She is pessimistic about the subaltern studies groups project to rethink
Indian colonial historiography, from the perspective of the discontinuous chain
of peasant insurgencies during the colonial occupation. As to Ranajit Guha, who
further developed the term subaltern from Gramsci in his politics of the people,
Spivak says, I cannot entirely endorse this insistence on determinate vigor and
full autonomy, for practical historiographic exigencies will not allow such endorsements to privilege subaltern consciousness (Spivak 1988: 284). Finally in
response to her question, can the subaltern speak, she declares, The subaltern
cannot speak. There is no virtue in global laundry lists with woman as a pious
item (Spivak 1988: 308).
Such excessive prohibitions of deconstructionists, to my mind, fail to remember deconstructions limitations in constructive work, such as privileging the
marginalized and letting her speak. Also it is forgetfulness that deconstructions
prohibitions are directed at Western-contextualized items. The grand narratives
are rationalism, humanism, liberalism, democracy, development, progress, while
the lost origins are Presence, Being, the Greek logos. Lest we forget, in Eastern
philosophies, returning to the original is an integral part of the common Eastern
cyclical concept that both history and reality operate in cycles (Wing-tsit Chan
1963: 153). Lest we forget, grand narratives, even grander than Greek, in the sense
that they were colossal and cosmic in orientation, were in place in the non-West,
prior to their effacement by colonizers. World philosophies did not unanimously
originate in Greece. It is crucial to remember that India and China already had
philosophies when Greek philosophy was just starting to ourish in 600 B.C.
with the pre-Socratics. But historians of Western philosophy, Frederick Copplestone, and Bertrand Russell afrm Hegels Eurocentric bias that eastern thought
systems were not truly philosophical because they were pursued with a practical
end in view liberation from suffering. Both historians claim that knowledge
sought for its own sake, leading to the birth of philosophy and science, was the
distinct contribution of the Greeks.11
The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake led to Western thoughts penchant
for overestimating the value of reason, language and logic (bivalent logic, that
is), at the expense of denying a reality that is plural and dynamically changing.
We nd this trend already in Zenos arguments, defending the Parmenidean position that everything is One and permanent. Zeno came up with 40 dialectical
arguments to prove that motion is impossible. Yet, he was able to do this only by
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An epilogue
225
Stuart Hall (1997) is an example of a cultural theorist who has argued for a
strategic essentialism that might work for anti-colonial struggles as it has been
effective in ghting colonialism in the past. Hall proposes two ways of thinking
about cultural identity which must be worked out together for a balanced sense
of identity. On one hand, cultural identity can be dened in terms of one shared
culture, a sort of collective one true self , beneath the many other, more supercial or articially imposed selves. This type of common identity shared
by people with a common history and ancestry has played a critical role in the
emergence of many of the most important social movements of our time feminist, anti-colonial and anti-racist. More important, it offers a way of imposing an
imaginary coherence on the experience of dispersal and fragmentation, which
is the history of all enforced diasporas. The second sense of cultural identity is
a product of history. It is made up of critical points of deep and signicant difference which constitute what we really are, or what we have become. This
second sense of identity includes the sense constructed by the colonizer and the
sense which through power and manipulations the colonized were made to believe the Other. This sense of identity is important to our understanding of the
traumatic character of colonial experience.
Inasmuch as the second type of identity has already been discussed earlier in
connection with orientalism and postcoloniality, we conclude this epilogue with
an identication, no matter how provisional, of what might constitute an example of a strategic essentialist base for non-Western discourses. Unearthing or reclaiming traditional ways of being and knowing as well as valuations of and attitudes to language, not to mention the actual revival of our non-Western languages would be a viable strategy. In each case the reclaimed heritage will vary from
community to community but this is not foreclosing the idea that when we look
and see carefully there might be family resemblances that compose a non-Western discourse distinct from Western discourse. But where there is obviously no
resemblance we ought to respect particular differences. To the present concern of
the book, let us explore how Taoism might serve as a philosophical context from
which the observations and insights on Chinese and Hong Kong discourses might
be interpreted.13 This is without prejudice against the other thought systems in
China or in the non-Western world as a whole. Relatedly, our aim is to show that
the prohibitions of deconstruction should not unduly be universalized.
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An epilogue
227
and the terms special function as a copula. These capacities of the verb to be
in the Greek language are not found in other languages.15 With more empirical
studies these theories will eventually be corroborated, but for the moment, they
make the project of reviving non-Western languages more urgent. Such ventures,
so to speak, expose into the open the particular embodiments of Western pretensions to truth and universality thus pointing out their limitations.
But going back to non-Western ways of knowing, Taoist metaphysics, logic
and epistemology immediately translate into injunctions that guide the conduct
of human beings (ethics, political and social philosophy). After all that is the
main reason why knowledge of the Tao was sought in the rst place to serve as
a practical guide in life. First, knowing that the universe has a rhythm of its own,
it behooves a person well to know this rhythm and adjust to it, and that no action
runs counter to it. Second, knowing that things eventually become their opposites, there is no preference of one over the other. On the contrary, there is a paradoxical privileging of the yin side, the dark, the feminine, passivity, non-being if
only to exaggerate their unappreciated value. Taoist texts, for instance, point out
that cups and rooms are useful only because they are empty. Furthermore, opting to start with them one invariably arrives at their opposites. Thus if one wants
to be great one has to be small, if strong then one has to be weak, and so forth.
Interestingly, unlike in deconstruction where knowledge of mutually producing
opposites leads to paralysis, in Chinese culture, wu-wei does not mean non-action but only that no action contrary to the cosmic forces of nature is initiated.
To those who remain skeptical about Taoisms capacity for active involvement
and even change, we point to the Art of War of Hsun Tzu, or Maos revolutionary
strategies as basically inspired by yin-yang philosophy.16
Regarding self and agency, the observation on the non-preoccupation of Chinese and Hong Kong discourses with identity but rather with harmony might become more understandable when seen against a notion of self in Chinese thought.
It has been observed that the idea of harmony pervades Chinese philosophy. In
Confucianism, harmony with society or with others is the ideal, whereas in Taoism, it is harmony with nature. From Chuang Tzu we learn that: To be in harmony with men means human happiness, and to be in harmony with Nature means
the happiness of Nature (Wing-Tsit Chan 1963: 209). In Eastern systems, the
self is also a logical construct or a logical ction but this realization is liberatory
rather than problematic. Because it is the self that constrains oneness with Brahman and for as long as one thinks s/he is a separate individual self, one is subjected to the karmic cycle of birth and death and rebirth. The Buddha also pinpointed the self as the root cause of human suffering. In Taoism, the self impedes
one from harmonious blending, and self-so-ness with the Tao.
The culprits in the creation of an illusory self are the mind, and language. The
mind mistakenly believes that there is a self apart from walking, sleeping, or ex-
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periencing sensations or a self separate from the activity of thinking. Also because there are words like I, me, my name, then they must refer to something. It
is when the mind is forgotten that a person has a sense of wholeness, acts smoothly and effortlessly, and achieves enlightenment. Tao te Ching and the writings
of Chang tzu abound with anecdotes and aphorisms on the virtue of selessness
and not feeling that important. Perhaps most liberating is that little story about
Chuang tzu who dreamt that he was a buttery. He got so lost in being a buttery that even when he awoke he couldnt tell whether he was a buttery dreaming
he was a man, or a man dreaming he was a buttery.17 Very similar is the case of
the pre-reexive centipede which could move smoothly in its self-so-ness, until
it was asked how it could move with so many legs.18
Lest we forget, the self which is the target of decentering in deconstruction is
the Western self autonomous, separative, non-relational which is another offshoot of Greek logocentrism,19 because this illusory self appears only in the selfreexive mode of consciousness, that is, when consciousness makes itself its own
object. But not all selves are constituted in the same way as the humanist self or
the self idealized in the enlightenment, as accounted for in traditional Western
psychoanalysis. Here, self and identity constitution is conceived through Freudian drive theory and Oedipal conict. According to this account, self and identity construction develop by means of the realization of otherness or separation of
the individual from environment and relationships. Identity, henceforth, is reinforced by gradual and continuing assertion of independence and self-sufciency
which is further determined by the desire to separate from mother and enter the
Law of the Father. To this narrow and obviously malecentric account of identity
construction, feminist psychoanalysts are offering a different story (Chodorow
1978). Relying on object relations theory they posit that self and identity construction need not be a separative process, but rather that of relation and connection. Likewise, the Oedipal narrative may be true for some males only (those belonging to bourgeois and patriarchal families), and is upset or tipped off-balance
in the identity formation of girls and other boys (those from the working class,
and differently styled families such as the extended family, single-headed households, women-headed families, same-sex partnerships).
In sum, Taoism, and perhaps, Buddhism and Hinduism, are expressive of different forms of life, and different strategies of being-becoming and knowing. In
general we nd forms of life that are biophillic (life-afrming), in harmony with
society and with nature, wholesome concept of the self, preoccupation not with
identity, but on how the individual can achieve harmonious relations with others. For these, Taoism has been, and continues to be an invaluable resource for
universal cultural transformation. Lorenzo Simpson (2001) offers some points
of evaluating how a form of life or practice might be adopted for a universal culture.20 First, the program is particularly edifying to members of society associat-
An epilogue
229
ed primarily or historically with the tradition from which that program emerged
for example, it initiates, enables, and/or sustains processes of self-understanding;
second, the program is edifying and transformative for all members of society,
as are, the wisdom implicit in non-Western religious traditions, or non-Western
assumptions about social life.
But closer home is Maos proposal on how to determine whether or not a cultural heritage should be continued. His guideline is: to select the quintessence of
the past and throw away its dregs. The quintessential parts of a heritage are those
that are democratic, scientic and for the masses, while the dregs are those that
are anti-democratic, anti-scientic, and anti-people or aristocratic.21
Taoism, unlike Western logocentrism is a non-interventionist project. At the
most, it is reected in ones personal life and interrelationships with others and
with the environment. It was a way of life from the margins. Fung Yu-lan reports
that it ourished in the province of Chu a large state on the southern periphery
of civilized China, inhabited by a people largely non-Chinese in origin, and
who were comparatively lacking in culture (Fung Yu-lan 1952: 175176). Its
immense potentials for self-understanding and liberation has made it a recommended method in psychotherapy.22 Its intuitive insights more than two millennia ago have inspired, or coincided with, new paradigms in elds as diverse as
arts, logic, epistemology and quantum physics.23
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guage. Words are mainly for symbolizing reality and should be treated as just that
symbols. The best forms of language then are brief, but very suggestive, not articulate, attempting to say everything hence, the preference for metaphors, aphorism, koans and haikus. These best perform the allotted job of language which
is to directly point at reality. In fact, the less intelligible they are, the better, because they aim not to bring us into words but outside of words. This is the advantage of Chinese ideograms over a writing system of spelled words. The signs
are closer to life in that they are pictures.25
But above all implicit in this view of language is a robust sense of reality that
is the basis of all myticisms. Language just falls apart and is rendered useless in
the face of the ultimate reality. This after all was Wittgensteins point in the Tractatus (1961). After laying down what can be said, and can be said clearly, he proceeds to the mystical which can not be talked about.26 This sense of the mystical
is pursued further in the Philosophical Investigations (1958) where we are encouraged to understand things, words, and practices in their natural home which
is their daily use in actual life. Russell, in his introduction to Tractatus complains
that while the book is about what can be said, Wittgenstein somehow manages to
talk about what cannot be said. Anticipating this comment, Wittgenstein proposes in the penultimate section of Tractatus a way out of the double bind of critical linguistics. His words should be taken like a ladder. After one has climbed
up, it should be discarded.
Much earlier than Wittgenstein, less than three millennia ago, Chuang tzu
taught us the proper role of words through a simple lesson from shing: the purpose of the sh trap is to catch sh once the sh is caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas once the ideas are grasped, the
words are forgotten.27
An epilogue
231
courses from the periphery are thereby encouraged: 1) voices traumatized, distorted and deformed, displaced voices and diasporic voices; 2) Hindu, Arabic,
African, Latin, South East Asian, East European, Filipino and all the other heretofore repressed voices; 3) voices denied mileage on CNN, BBC or Time. Urgently needed is the irruption of an ensemble of polyphonic, heteroglossic discourses so as to block the monopolized communication network. More constructive is
the idea of improvisation after the blocking. Musical improvisation, as in jazz, is
the paragon of creativity and spontaneity. But due to contemporary jazzs appropriation by white artists, we can also summon any musical improvisation from
other cultures that are wont to be practiced in less structured musical genres such
as reggae, Caribbean music, Indian sitar-playing, Chinese music, etc. The main
features of improvisation or jamming which make it an excellent model for multicultural creativity and harmony are: originality and daring to try out the new,
communal creation without collapsing individual contribution, artful handling
of harmonic dissonance and dialogical call and response (antiphony) which requires attentive listening.29
The privileging of sounds and therefore the sense of hearing in jamming or
improvisation is also signicant as it evokes the current philosophical critique of
the dominance of sight the most violent of the senses in traditional Western
thought. Echoing the editors mantra, only in such an ambience can the cultural
Self hope to become so open and free as to include the cultural Other.
Notes
1.
The term linguistic turn was coined by Gustav Bergmann in Logic and Reality,
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964: 350. The linguistic turn is seen as
the latest of the turns taken by philosophy as a result of the realization that it is not
the world per se, nor ideas as such, but rather words that are the more appropriate
objects of philosophical analysis and reection. The history of Western philosophy can roughly be viewed in terms of its main concerns at different periods. In
ancient and medieval philosophy it was the way of the world the rst philosophy
then was metaphysics. This was supplanted by the new way of ideas during the
modern period so the rst philosophy became epistemology. Which, in turn, was
again supplanted with the new way of words making philosophy of language the
rst philosophy, starting form the second half of the twentieth century. See Michael
H. McCarthy, The Crisis of Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press,
1990: 140, 140166. The linguistic turn was initially associated only with Analytic philosophy, but inasmuch as the other major philosophies today phenomenology, hermeneutics, structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism and semiology take language as their primary concern, then we can say that they have all
taken the linguistic turn, while some more radical ones, the textual turn.
232
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
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As will be made clear in my subsequent discussion of Wittgensteins legacy in language studies, I am citing this Tractarian aphorism not in its narrow appropriation
by positivist-empiricist philosophy, but in an interpretation resonant with the position signaled in the last line (line 7.0) of the Tractatus what we cannot speak
about we must pass over in silence (1961).
This apparently spectacular declaration from Derrida has been interpreted to
mean that there is no reality outside of language, which is clearly opposed to realism. Realism is the metaphysical view that there is a reality out there, independent
of our interpretations and representations of it. J. R. Searle in his elaboration of his
own theory of realism, cites Derrida as one example of an anti-realist (in the sense
that for Derrida, there is no truth or reality referred to by words; rather words refer to other words in the network of language). Searle writes: Derrida, as far as I
can tell, does not have an argument. He simply declares that there is nothing outside of texts (Il ny a pas de hors texte. Searle reports, however, that Derrida in
a polemical response to him, takes it all back saying that all he wanted to claim
was the banality that everything exists in some context. See J. R. Searle, The
Construction of Social Reality, London: The Free Press, 1993: 15960.
London: Sage, 1994: 249253.
There is usually a careless interchanging of methods and methodology in some
writings. But as suggested by feminists, methodology signals an approach that has
a whole set of epistemological justications why knowledge achieved through it is
reliable or valid. In contrast methods are simple techniques. See Barbara Di Bois,
Passionate scholarship: Notes on values, knowing and method. In Theories of Womens Studies, Gloria Bowles and Renate Duelli Klein, eds. London and New York:
Routledge, 1989: 105116.
See Chapter 1: Introduction to the volume by Shi Xu.
Kathleen Wales (1991: 184) notes how Bakhtin does hint at a possible procedure
for analyzing dialogism in these words from Bakhtins Discourse typology in
prose(1971:189) and Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics (1973: 197):
Imagine a dialogue between two persons in which the statements of the second person are deleted, but in such a way that the general sense is not disrupted. The second speakers presence is not shown; his actual words are not given, but the deep
impression of these words has a determining effect on all the utterances made by
the only one who does speak.
W.V.O. Quine, Identity, ostension, and hypostasis. In From a Logical Point of View.
New York and Evanston, Harper and Row Publishers, 1953: 7879.
See David Wood, Philosophy at the Limit, London: Unwin Hyman, 1990.
The debate between Levinas and Derrida is a celebrated highlight in the history of
contemporary European philosophy. Derridas position is contained in Violence
and metaphysics: An essay on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas philosophizing of the Other is perhaps more helpful to projects of privileging the Other. For Levinas position on the debate, see his God and philosophy in The Levinas
Reader, Sean Hand, ed. Basil Blackwell.
See Frederick Copplestone, A History of Western Philosophy, Vol. I (1). New York:
Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1946, and Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy. London: Allen and Unwin, 1979.
This technique of critiquing Zenos paradoxes of motion was employed by Morris
An epilogue
13
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
233
Lazerowitz in his article, Zenos paradoxes of motion, in The Structure of Metaphysics, Morris Lazerowitz. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955: 163180.
For this section I rely mostly on my essay, The Taoist concept of freedom, Cogito,
1985. Unless otherwise noted, cited materials from Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu are
found in Wing-tsit Chan, 1963.
Spivak complains that Kristevas approach is not only cavalier but also sometimes
condescending towards Chinese culture and society. In introduction by Toril Moi
to Kristevas About Chinese Women. (Kristeva 1986: 138).
These ideas of Benveniste are the foci of Derridas essay, The supplement of copula: Philosophy before linguistics (1982). Derrida denitely disagrees with these insights of Benveniste, and he gives as an example the case of Chinese thought which
invented categories as the Tao, yin and yang, but is able to assimilate concepts from
dialectical materialism or quantum mechanics without the structure of the Chinese
language acting as a constraint (191). I do not think this Derridean objection holds.
First of all, the Chinese language is not as structured and restrictive of thought as
the Greek and English languages. Citations to this will be mentioned later in this
paper. Secondly, the dynamism and multivalence found in either dialectical materialism (dialectical logic) or quantum mechanics (though rendered mathematically, its theoretical interpretation has led to insights of indeterminacy of knowledge
and the interrelatedness of things in the universe), are very close to the notions of
the Tao, and yin and yang. The latter Chinese notions, too, are not distinct categories, but are rather loose terms that refer to otherwise nameless, uid, realities
(Also, see Note 23.)
Likewise, Benvenistes hypothesis seem applicable on two Filipino languages, Ilokano and Tagalog (better known now as Filipino). The word ay, the counterpart
of to be in Filipino has no nominalization; whereas in Ilokano, there is even no
counterpart of to be. The other insights I derived from an examination of Ilokano,
a native language in Northern Luzon, Philippines, are: Ilokano reects the everyday realities of the traditional Ilokano form of life, and a knowledge system that
is empiricist, concrete, sensual and holistic. In addition, not all forms of communication have become completely verbalized. See my Language, culture, and indigenous knowledge: Reections on Ilokano. In Towards Understanding Peoples
of the Cordillera, Vol. 2. University of the Philippines Baguio: Cordillera Studies
Center, 2001: 186198.
This is most evident in Maos On Contradictions where he discusses dialectical
ideas long discussed by Chinese philosophers throughout the ages such as the law
of reversal, the unity of oppositions, and yin-yang principles. See Wing-tsit Chan
(1963: 781).
In Wing-tsit Chan (1963: 190).
The rhyme about the centipede is as follows:
The centipede was happy, quite
Until a toad in fun
Said, Pray, which leg goes after which?
This worked his mind to such a pitch.
He lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run.
In Alan Watts, The Way of Zen, England, Penguin Books, 1978: 45. Incidentally,
234
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
Narcisa Paredes-Canilao
in Sartre, it is the non-reexive or pre-reexive consciousness, absolutely rid of
ego that encounters others. In reexive consciousness, the ego appears, negating
all others because necessarily consciousness perceives things as not itself. Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, P.A. Schilpp,
ed., La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1981.
I explored this in a paper, Bagi language and other alternative conceptions of self
and identity: Implications for theorizing ethnicity, read during a roundtable discussion on ethnicity, University of the Philippines Baguio, 2425 May 2002. I identied certain scenarios in the Philippines that would render the Oedipal narrative
inapplicable, in cases such as the extended family system, the prevalence of families headed by fathers because mothers have to earn a living in overseas employment, and indigenous child-rearing and socialization practices that are more communitarian rather than individualistic.
The Unnished Project: Towards a Postmetaphysical Humanism. New York and
London: Routledge, 2001: 133.
From Mao tse Tung, On New Democracy, cited in Wing-tsit Chan (1963: 781).
Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East and West. New York: Random House, 1970.
Niels Bohr is an example of a quantum physicist who appreciates the parallelisms
between eastern thought, particularly yin-yang logic with the twin principles of
complementarity and indeterminacy of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
theory which he co-formulated with Werner Heisenberg. Very signicantly, when
he was knighted for his cultural and intellectual contributions to Danish society,
he chose the tai chi tu as a motif for his coat of arms. Mentioned in Fritjof Capra,
The Tao of Physics, Colorado, Shambala Press, 1963: 145146. A very interesting
selection of the mystical writings of modern physicists to include Eddington, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Scroedinger, de Broglie, Jeans, Planck and Pauli, is Ken
Wilburs Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the Worlds Great Physicists,
Boston: Shambala, 2001.
Arthur C. Danto. Mysticism and Morality. Basic Books, 1972: 104.
Alan Watts, The Way of Zen. Thames and Hudson, 1957: 29.
I explored Wittgensteins mysticism and its parallels with Eastern mysticisms in
the paper The meaning of life in Witgensteins Tractatus, read in the international conference on Language Truth and Reality: Science, Religion, and Philosophy,
Ramkrishna Institute, Calcutta, 14 August 2000.
See Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu. New York: New Directions Publishing Corp., 1965. The complete poetic rendition of Merton is:
The purpose of the sh trap is to catch sh, and when the sh is caught the trap is
forgotten.
The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the
snare is forgotten.
The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words
are forgotten.
Where can I nd a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk
to.
The descriptions here are drawn from L. Simpsons Musical interlude: Adorno and
jazz, in his The Unnished Project, 2001: 4260. Simpson tries to disprove Adornos observation that jazz is pseudo-democratic, mechanical, repetitive and static.
An epilogue
29.
235
Jamming is one of the strategies recommended by Irigaray to subvert phallogocentrism the collusion between phallus and logos in mastering the world through
discourse. Her statement reads: ... the issue is not one of elaborating a new theory
of which woman would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical
machinery itself, of suspending its pretension to the production of a truth and of a
meaning that are excessively univocal (Irigaray 1985: 78).
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Contributors
Narcisa Paredes-Canilao is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University
of the Philippines Baguio. Her publications include: The Taoist concept of freedom, Cogito III (9), 1985; Ecofeminism and the future of science and technology,
St. Louis University Journal, XXVI (1), 1995; Language, culture, and indigenous
knowledge, Daluyan, VII (3), 1996; Integration, counter-discourse, irruption. Towards Understanding Peoples of the Cordillera, Vol. 2, UPBaguio: Cordillera
Studies Center, 2001; Ethics in feminist research, Gender-Sensitive and Feminist
Methodologies, Sylvia Guerrero, ed., Quezon City: UP Press, 2002. Her research
interests are philosophy of language, epistemology and gender.
Hong Cheng is Associate Professor at the College of Communication at Ohio
University, U.S.A. His research interests center on cross-social and cross-cultural
studies of mass media, especially advertising. His publications include research
on cultural values reected in advertising, gender portrayals in advertising, and
the World Wide Webs coverage of Hong Kongs handover. He is a co-author of
Media Savvy Students. He received his undergraduate and Masters degrees in
English and international journalism, respectively, in China, and holds a Ph.D.
degree in mass communications from the Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A.
Junhao Hong received a Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Texas
at Austin, U.S.A. Currently, he is Associate Professor at State University of New
York at Buffalo. His research areas include international communication, intercultural communication, and media and social change, with a focus on Asia. He
has published a book entitled, The Internationalization of Chinas Television, and
dozens of book chapters about media, culture and society. His research articles
have appeared in various international journals, including Intercultural Communication Studies; Media, Culture and Society; Asian Journal of Communication;
Asian Survey and American Review of Chinese Studies.
Manfred Kienpointner is Associate Professor for General and Applied Linguistics, University of Innsbruck, Austria. Currently, he is doing research on rhetoric and argumentation, politeness theory and contrastive linguistics. Recent publications include Reproduction of Culture through Argumentative Discourse:
Studying the contested Nature of Hong Kong in the International Media (with
Shi-xu, Pragmatics, 2001, 11(3): 285307), Persuasive Paradoxes in Ciceros
Speeches (Argumentation, 2003, 17(1): 4763) and Sprache und Rationalitt
(In H. Schmidinger and C. Sedmak [eds.], 2004, Vernunft Kognition Intelligenz. Darmstadt, 7197).
240
Contributors
Lee Cher Leng received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. She is currently Associate Professor at the Department of
Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore, where she teaches courses in language and culture, discourse analysis, pragmatics, and rhetoric, and sociolinguistics. Her current research interests include pronouns in discourse, metaphors, and code-switching. Among her recent publications are Motivations of
code-switching in multilingual Singapore published in Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 31(1) (January 2003) and The implications of mismatched personal pronouns in Chinese, published in Text, 1999, 19(3), 345370.
Robert Maier is Professor and Senior Researcher at Utrecht University in the
Netherlands. The general theme of his research is theory of argumentation and
social dynamics. He has analyzed in particular the relevance of identity and of
forms of power-constellations for communication and argumentation (articles in
journals such as in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, and in books),
with empirical studies on new forms of racism in Europe (book chapters and
articles in journals), and on forms of exclusion and inclusion in multicultural
schools (published in journals, such as the Revue Franaise de Pdagogie, and
chapters in books).
Denis McQuail worked in the Television Research Unit at the University of Leeds
before being appointed to the Sociology Department at the University of Southampton. In 1977 he was appointed to the Chair of Mass Communication at the
University of Amsterdam, from which he retired emeritus in 1998. He has held
temporary appointments at other universities, including Pennsylvania, Columbia, Harvard and Moscow. He is currently Visiting Professor at the University
of Southampton. His main research interests concerned audience research, media theory, media policy and political communications. His publications include:
Methuen 1961. Communication as a Social Process. London: Longman, 1975 and
1984. Media Performance. London: Sage, 1992. Mass Communication Theory:
an Introduction. London, Sage, 1983, with new editions 1987, 1993 and 2000.
Audience Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997. Media Accountability and
Freedom of Publication. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Transatlantic
TV ow in A. van Hemel (ed.) Trading Culture, Amsterdam, Boekman Foundation, 1996. The consequences of European cultural policies for cultural diversity in T. Bennett (ed.) Differing Diversities. Strasbourg, COE 2001.
Sankaran Ramanathan is former Associate Professor, University Teknologi
MARA (Malaysia), and former Head, Special Projects, Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, Singapore. Currently, he is Chief Operating Ofcer of Media plus Consultants, a regional media consultancy. He has authored/
Contributors
241
edited more than 150 publications, including seven books. He was principal researcher for the Study on Asia Reporting Europe and Europe Reporting Asia,
commissioned by the Asia-Europe Foundation and tabled in October 1997. This
study focused on how and to what extent the Hong Kong Handover of July 1997
was reported in fteen European and fteen Asian publications.
Jan Servaes received his Ph.D. in 1987 at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Currently, he is Professor and Chair of the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and President
of the European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR). He has
taught International Communication and Development Communication in Belgium (Brussels and Antwerp), the U.S.A. (Cornell), The Netherlands (Nijmegen)
and Thailand (Thammasat, Bangkok). He is also Vice President of the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), in charge
of Academic Publications and Research. He has undertaken research, development, and advisory work around the world and is known as the author of journal
articles and books on such topics as international and development communication; ICT and media policies; intercultural communication and language; social
change; and human rights and conict management.
Shi-xu received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam and has been a research fellow at the University of Amsterdam, lecturer at the National University of Singapore, and reader at the University of Ulster, UK. His research interests include discourse studies, cultural studies, intercultural communication and
cultural psychology. Among his numerous publications are two other books in
English, Cultural Representations and A Cultural Approach to Discourse. He is
the founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Multicultural Discourses. Currently
he is Professor and Director of the Institute of Discourse and Cultural Studies,
Zhejiang University, China.
Kwok-kan Tam is Professor in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has held fellowships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the East-West Center and ASAHIL. Since 1995, he has been
working on various projects on the politics and culture of globalization. His publications on language and culture include the books, Shakespeare Global/Local:
The Hong Kong Imaginary in Transcultural Production (co-edited, 2002), Sights
of Contestation: Localism, Globalism and Cultural Production in Asia and the
Pacic (co-edited, 2002), Anglophone Cultures in Southeast Asia (co-edited,
2003), and English and Globalization; Perspectives from Hong Kong and Mainland China (co-edited, 2005).
242
Contributors
Guofang Wan is Associate Professor of the College of Education at Ohio University, U.S.A. Her research interests center on comparative and cross-cultural
education and media literacy education. She has published journal articles and
presented at national and international conferences in these elds. She is a coauthor of Media Savvy Students. She received a Masters degree in English from
the Shanghai International Studies University in China, and another Masters degree in modern British studies from the University of Warwick, UK. She holds
a Ph.D. degree in curriculum and instruction from the Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A.
Lawrence Wang-chi Wong received his Ph.D. from SOAS, University of London, in modern Chinese literature. At present, he is Professor at the Department
of Translation, concurrently Director of the Research Institute for the Humanities and Director of the Centre for Hong Kong Cultural Studies, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong. He is series editor of Hong Kong Cultural Studies.
Apart from publishing on modern Chinese literature and translation studies, he
has three books on Hong Kong cultural studies, including The Burden of History: On the Hong Kong Histories Published in Mainland China (2000), Historical Contingencies: A Study of Modern Chinese Literary Histories in Hong Kong
(1997) and (co-author) Hong Kong Un-Imagined: History, Culture and the Future (1997). At present, he has a major collaboration project with scholars from
Shanghai and Japan on Asian City Culture.
Index
categorization, 96
colonialism, 96100, 121, 165166, 217
218
communication theory, 35, 2122, 2431,
37, 5558, 74
critical, 2728
early, 2223
western bias, 2527, 2830, 103104,
107109
contrast, 122
cultural studies, 57, 2122, 2728, 31, 33
34, 3739, 4953, 211231
epithet, 129
journalism, 177
narration, 195199
national relativism, 57, 119120, 136
244
Index
self, 5153, 60
social science, 2122, 33, 3940
structuralism, 213
subject, 216217
paradigm, 211212
postcolonialism, 165168, 173174, 217
218
power, 3437, 3944, 65, 99100
pragmatics, 140, 142
psychological, 131, 216
thinking, 53
Asian, 5355
Cartesian, 54
Western, 5355
topic, 183
tradition, 5961
modernization, 4950, 5961
relativism, 61, 64