Elastic Language in Persuasion and Comforting

This innovative book examines the discourse of reality television, and the elasticity of language in the popular talent show The Voice from a cross-cultural perspective. Analysing how and why elastic language is used in persuasion and comforting, a comparison between Chinese and English is made, and the authors highlight the special role that elastic language plays in effective interactions and strategic communication. Through the lens of the language variance of two of the world's most commonly spoken languages, the insights and resources provided by this book are expected to advance knowledge in the fields of contrastive pragmatics and cross-cultural communication, and inform strategies in bridging different cultures. This study highlights the need to give the elastic use of language the attention it deserves, and reveals how language is non-discrete and strategically stretchable. This book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students engaged in elastic/vague language studies, cross-cultural pragmatics, media linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and communication studies.

Proposes a rigorous account of how language is stretched in reality television discourse Presents real-life and stimulating empirical evidence to support the account Provides pragma-linguistic and cross-cultural data analysis of English and Chinese

Autorentext

Grace Zhang is Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia.

Vahid Parvaresh is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Anglia Ruskin University, UK.

Klappentext
This innovative book examines, from a cross-cultural perspective, the elasticity of language in the popular talent show The Voice. The study discusses how and why elastic language is used in persuasion and comforting. The comparisons made throughout the book between Chinese and English highlight the important role elastic language plays in effective interactions and strategic communication. The insights and resources provided in this book are expected to advance our knowledge in the fields of contrastive pragmatics and cross-cultural communication. The study emphasises the need to give the elastic use of language the attention it deserves, and reveals how language is non-discrete and strategically stretchable. This book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students engaged in elastic/vague language studies, cross-cultural pragmatics, media linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and communication studies. It will also be useful for educationalists involved in language teaching, cross-cultural education and professional communication training, as well as those who have a general interest in language and communication.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Theoretical Foundations.- Chapter 3: Methodology.- Chapter 4: Elastic Language in the Chinese Data.- Chapter 5: Elastic Language in the English Data.- Chapter 6: Comparison Between the Chinese and English Findings.- Chapter 7: Elastic Language and Impact Factors.- Chapter 8: Conclusions.