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A Pedagogy of Leave-Taking in Chinese

Wang, Yang
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406654379

Abstract Details

2005, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, East Asian Languages and Literatures.
Leave-taking, the art of saying good-bye is one of the most basic communicative skills to be taught to language learners. For each interaction with native speakers from the target culture, language learners need to perform a successful leave-taking to extract themselves from the communication event. However, leave-taking is indeed a collaborative, achieved course of action that follows cultural conventions rather than a simple exchange of terminating expressions. This study collected 87 video clips on Chinese leave-taking in various situations from five Mandarin TV series, and specifically analyzed Chinese people’s behaviors in four major leave-taking contexts that language learners are likely to encounter in the target society. The viewing of these clips revealed that Chinese engage in various leave-taking behaviors based on their perception of contextual elements, especially the relationship with other interlocutors. More importantly, their leave-taking behaviors are substantially different from those of Americans. This has to be explained by the fact that Chinese and Americans conform to different behavioral culture expectations through implementation of politeness strategies. Correspondingly, for American learners of the Chinese language, the task of successfully achieving a leave-taking act in Chinese is to engage in linguistic and non-linguistic performances that conform to Chinese behavioral culture. It was found that the complexity of the Chinese leave-taking behaviors and the differences in American and Chinese behavioral cultures are largely ignored and over-simplified in major existing Chinese textbooks. This study proposes a pedagogy of leave-taking in Chinese based on a performed-culture approach, particularly the presentation Chinese leave-taking behaviors as performances in teaching materials and classroom instruction and the implementation of Chinese leave-taking performances into different levels of instruction.
Galal Walker (Advisor)
Jianqi Wang (Committee Member)
167 p.
Asian Literature; Communication; Linguistics

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wang, Y. (2005). A Pedagogy of Leave-Taking in Chinese [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406654379

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wang, Yang. A Pedagogy of Leave-Taking in Chinese. 2005. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406654379.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wang, Yang. "A Pedagogy of Leave-Taking in Chinese." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406654379

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1406654379
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© 2005, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.