语篇跨文化对比的问题分析

On Cross-cultural Contrastive Discourse Analysis

随着语言学研究的基本单位越来越多地从句子扩展到语篇,近些年来跨文化的语篇对比有了很大的发展。语篇对比研究不能简单地套用分析和对比句子及其他语言单位的方法与路径来分析和对比。相比之下,语篇更多地受制于其产生和使用的语境,但两者之间的差异主要不是由语言系统的差异所造成的,也基本不反映语言系统之间的差异,尽管语篇的具体构成状况与所用语言的特点有一定关系。

As discourse, instead of sentence, is increasingly recognized as the basic unit in linguistic studies, cross-cultural contrastive discourse analysis has greatly developed both at home and abroad in recent years. However, some problems have arisen in the research and they should be seriously addressed if cross-cultural contrastive discourse analysis is hoped to make any more substantial progress in the years to come.First, there exists a strong tendency to oversimplify the discourse structures found in texts under investigation. While differences between texts of various languages are invariably emphasized, differences between texts within the same language are generally ignored. As a matter of fact, it has been indicated by not a few researches that different types of discourse patterns can invariably be found in most of the languages investigated so far in contrastive analysis. Kaplan's hypothesis, which is now accused of Anglo-centrism, has often been taken as the starting point for cross-cultural comparisons of texts and descriptions of discourse patterns across languages. As a result, researchers may not be just pointing out differences but making value judgments, in which bias is almost inevitable. Second, cross-cultural contrastive discourse analysis tends to underestimate the organizational complexities of discourses in the contemporary world, in which linguistic boundaries are changing and becoming less sharply marked, and language and culture are no longer co-extensive. Nowadays, one-to-one correspondence can hardly be maintained between discourse and language, but many researches are still conducted on the basis of national languages and try to explain the discourse features found in the text studied by simply relating them to the language in which the text is written.Third, texts have often been compared and contrasted without taking into consideration the contexts in which they were originally produced and interpreted. In recent years, though contextual factors such as genre are given more attention in today's contrastive discourse analysis, they are usually considered as static and programmatic. Many researchers fail to recognize that discourse construction of a text is, to a large extent, determined not by the language in which it is actually written, but by the particular social and cultural context in which the text is produced and used.Since culture is a too evasive concept that tends to overgeneralize, it is suggested that cross-cultural contrastive analysis should base itself on discourse systems instead of national languages, for discourse system is actually where culture is constructed and reproduced through the use of language. Therefore a theory of discourse system is necessary for us to better describe, analyze and account for the structural and organizational differences found to be existing between texts. Such a theory may help us discover what has not been noticed before and review what has been considered as known in a new perspective. More importantly, some assumptions and practices that seem to have been well-established in the research can be questioned, which will help to pave the way for further development of contrastive discourse analysis.Finally, it is concluded that discourse is not just a unit larger than sentence but is fundamentally different in many aspects. In reality, discourse is far more complicated and context-dependent than sentence in its production and use. What actually distinguish discourses are not necessarily what distinguish languages though they are, not directly as is usually assumed, related to each other in certain aspects. Therefore, discourses should not be approached and contrasted in the same way as sentences are and cultures should be regarded as more local phenomena when discourse differences are viewed and explained as cultural differences.