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LUCC Monthly

April, 2021, Vol.2, Issue 6. Edited by Zeng Jiru

LUCC's research seminar series continued last month with linguist Dr. Vittorio Tantucci presenting On the culture-specific aspects of formulating opinions in Chinese: A multidimensional and comparative approach. Co-hosted with the LU Confucius Institute, the presentation analyses pragmatic and textual mismatches that exist from Mandarin Chinese to American English Interaction. A video recording is available here.

We also recently welcomed Dr. Yupei Zhao from Zhejiang University on April 27 for a seminar titled From eSport industry to players: understanding the platformalization of infrastrucutre and digital culture in China, and Yiqin Huang, a PhD candidate from Lau China Institute, King's College London on 16 March with the theme Confrontation or Misperception — Evaluating Trump’s ‘New Path’ in North Korea Policy.

LUCC and LUCI's seminar events will continue on 18 May, with Dr. Didier Soopramanien from Loughborough University and 25 May with Yu Fu & Zoe Zhu from Management School, Lancaster University. Please see below for more details.

3月18日，研究中心同事Vittorio Tantucci博士主讲了主题为“从多维比较的视角观照汉语意见表达的文化特性”的研讨会，并在会上分享了他的研究。该研究采取了语料库方法，分析了从普通话到美式英语的互动过程中所存在的语用和语篇失配现象。点击此处可观看研讨会视频录像。

除此之外，研究中心在4月27日迎来了浙江大学赵瑜佩博士主讲的研讨会，主题为“从电竞产业到电竞玩家：理解产业基础设施的平台化和中国的数字文化”；并于3月16日举办了由伦敦大学国王学院博士生Yiqin Huang主讲的研讨会，题为“对抗还是误解：评析特朗普对朝政策‘新路径’”。

接下来一个月中，研究中心将于5月18日和25日继续开展研讨会活动。我们将会迎来拉夫堡大学Didier Soopramanien博士关于“中国消费者环境行为：场所依赖、责任和道德规范的作用”的研讨会；以及兰卡斯特大学管理学院Yu Fu和Zoe Zhu主讲，主题为“走向非本质主义文化范式：关于中日管理文化的研究”的研讨会。详情请见下文。

More LUCC news

UPCOMING EVENTS

活动预告

18 May: Chinese Consumers Environment Behaviour: the roles of place attachment, responsibility, and norms

5月18日：中国消费者环境行为：场所依赖、责任和道德规范的作用

• Speaker: Dr. Didier Soopramanien, Loughborough University
• Place: online via Teams - jointly hosted by the Lancaster University Confucius Institute
• Time: 11:00 - 12:00, London Time

Environment Laws and regulations in China are becoming stricter. One notable/interesting example is the compulsory sorting and recycling of household rubbish and, when this started in Shanghai in 2019, apps had to be developed to help consumers recycle. But pro-environment behaviour can also be framed as an ethical/moral decision which one ought to be doing rather than being forced to or be rewarded for complying. With my colleagues based in China (Beijing) Dr Song Zenning (Beijing Foreign Studies University) and Lancaster (Dr Ahmad Daryanto) respectively, we have studied and are studying the role of place attachment in promoting pro-environmental behaviour. Place attachment refers to peoples’ affection and relationship with a place. The more attached people are to a place, they are more likely to take care of that place and thus engage in environmentally friendly behaviours that will benefit that place. This presentation will discuss research that we have conducted in China about that relationship and, importantly, we focus on some other intervening factors that may influence how place attachment positively influences pro-environment behaviour of Chinese consumers. More attention will be devoted to on-going work using data collected in Beijing where we specifically study the roles of two factors that can influence how place attachment affects pro-environment behaviour. These two factors are: environmental responsibility and social norms. We find, firstly, that attachment to a place activates a personal sense of responsibility which may counteract the well-known constraining effect of social dilemma to engage in environmental behaviour. Secondly, the place attachment effect on responsibility that promotes residents’ environment behaviour is stronger when individuals perceive that others are also engaging in similar behaviours (i.e., the effect of norms). But the characteristic of the groups of individuals performing these behaviours is important: what neighbours (local norms) are doing or ought to doing matters less than colleagues, friends, and relatives/parents (subjective norms).

Speaker's bio: Dr Didier Soopramanien is currently a Reader in Marketing at the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University. Didier holds a PhD from Lancaster University and was also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Science from 2002 to 2011. Prior to moving back to the UK in 2018, Didier worked as an Associate Professor at the International Business School of Beijing Foreign Studies from 2012 to 2018.

25 May: Toward a non-essentialist paradigm of culture: A study of Chinese and Japanese management culture

5月25日：走向非本质主义文化范式：关于中日管理文化的研究

• Speaker: Yu Fu & Zoe Zhu, Lancaster University Management School
• Place: online via Teams - jointly hosted by the Lancaster University Confucius Institute
• Time: 11:00 - 12:00, London Time

This study reviews and compares the Chinese and Japanese national culture values and norms discussed in the management studies to illustrate the importance of non-essentialist paradigm of culture facing the key cross-cultural issues faced by organisations when designing and implementing management policies and practices in East Asia. This paper addresses Nathan’s (2010) call of non-essentialist approach on culture studies by acknowledging the importance of exploring and respecting local culture when developing organisation strategies. A comparative review on the notions in the Confucianism shows the limitation of essentialist scholars who used the functionalist approach on culture. The simplification of culture based on functional and essentialist perspective and the lack of interpretive and non-essentialist analysis on the core of its management culture will result in confusing the corporate ideology (what the company say they do) with the reality (what they actually do). Only through an analysis of the continuity, change, and context of a company, we can better understand the culture behind the mask. Thus, the authors contend that the development of national cultural values and norms and their impact of management policies and practices in Japan and China, needs to be investigated in a dynamic context through a long-term view.

Speaker's bio: Yu Fu is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Management School, Lancaster University. She delivers lectures in the areas of Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour. Her research interest lies in international HRM, particularly national cultural factors in employment. The main focus of her research is to investigate the impact of Chinese cultural values on the Western Transnational Corporations’ HR policies and practices in their Chinese subsidiaries.

Zoe Zhu is an International Teaching Fellow in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Management School, Lancaster University. She teaches management and marketing in the China campus as well as the Bailrigg campus. As an ethnographer, she is interested in corporate culture in the era of globalization, in particular in the formation, dissemination and interpretation of corporate ideology at Japanese company in East Asia.

NEW PUBLICATIONS

最新发表

Temporal variability in the impacts of particulate matter on crop yields on the North China Plain

华北平原大气颗粒物对作物产量影响的时间异变性

Along with his fellows, Oliver Wild published an article in Science of The Total Environment discussing the pullution and crop yields in the North China Plain, in which The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) crop model is used to assess the net impact of these competing changes in light on maize yields.

READ MORE HERE:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721002011?via%3Dihub

How Does Age Shape Social Interactions?:Interviewer-Age Effects, Normative Age Distance, and Gender Attitudes

年龄如何塑造社会互动？采访者-年龄效应，规范化的年龄距离和性别态度

Analysing data from the European Social Survey, our fellow Yang Hu exploit the case of a survey interview as a microcosm of social interactions on an article on European Sociological Review to examine the ways in which age influences respondent–interviewer interactions and shapes people’s articulation of gender attitudes. He disentangles whether interviewer’s age influences respondents’ gender-attitude reports directly or via its interaction with respondent’s age. And he develops the concept of normative age distance in gender attitudes—the young–old inter-cohort difference in gender attitudes in a given country–year—to examine how it moderates interviewer-age effects. The results suggest that respondents draw on the normative age distance to associate stereotypical gender attitudes with the interviewer’s age and to make sense of their age distance from the interviewer when reporting their gender attitudes.

READ MORE HERE:

https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/150687/

Non-Wh Internal and External Topics in Classical Chinese and Their Similarity to Equivalent Constructions in Modern Mandarin

文言文中的非特殊疑问内外部主题及其与等价结结构现代汉语的相似性

LUCC fellow Aiqing Wang has an article published on International Journal of Language and Literary Studies. The article discussed that Non-wh internal and external topics in Classical Chinese can be analysed in parallel with their counterparts in modern Mandarin. Pronoun fronting in the context of negation in Classical Chinese is on a par with object preposing in modern Mandarin that is argued to be internal topics. Base-generated topics in Classical Chinese are Aboutness topics which permit DPs exclusively. In terms of moved external topics, they are constituted of preposed objects and preposed predicates: the former allow DPs and TPs, whereas the latter allow DPs and AdjPs. Moreover, moved topics can be further divided into Hanging Topics and Left Dislocation Topics, similar to those in modern Mandarin.

READ MORE HERE:

https://ijlls.org/index.php/ijlls/article/download/405/170

MEDIA ENGAGEMENT

媒体参与

LUCC member Andrew Chubb published:

• “China Warily Watches Indian Nationalism,” on the Australian Centre on China in the World’s China Story blog. Read the article at: https://www.thechinastory.org/china-warily-watches-indian-nationalism/
• Chubb was also quoted in POLITICO's China Watcher column in March, on the trend of European navies' increasing engagement in the South China Sea dispute:: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-china-watcher/2021/03/11/beijings-visions-of-american-decline-492064

ALUMI RELATIONS HUB

校友中心

INTRODUCTION

Alumni Relations Hub at the Lancaster University China Centre (LUCC) provides support for research, teaching and public engagement for members of staff across the University. The Hub now offers an In-depth and Breadth Database for Research through cooperation with Lancaster Alumni Centre, where data of 148,000 graduates in more than 180 countries is stored. The Hub nurtures a personal touch for engagement, which is particularly important in China, and supports efforts at pedagogic development by learning from our Chinese alumni’s experience.

For any inquiry, please contactrebecca.liu@lancaster.ac.uk.

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