Discourses of the Developing World ─ Researching Properties, Problems, and Potentials of the Developing World

Against the large body of discourse scholarship emanating from the Western cosmopolitan centres, this volume offers a development-centred approach to unfamiliar, marginalised or otherwise disadvantaged discourses of the Third world or the global South. By leading researchers based in Asia, Africa and Latin America, this book reconstructs Eastern paradigms of discourse research with special reference to the non-Western, subaltern, and developing societies. It draws attention to and makes critical interpretations of the problems, complexities, aspirations, and dynamics in their practical, everyday discourses. As methodological principles, the authors i) adopt the cultural-political stance of cultural diversity and common prosperity at both scholarly and ordinary-life levels, ii) draw upon Asian, African and Latino scholarly resources in critical dialogue with the existing mainstream traditions, and iii) make sense of the discourses of Asia, Africa and Latin America from their own local as well as global, historical and intercultural perspectives.

Shi-xu is Changjiang Distinguished Professor and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Discourse Studies, Zhejiang University, China.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah is Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Maria Laura Pardo is Researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Director of the Department of Linguistics at the Philosophical and Cultural Anthropology Research Center (CIAFIC-CONICET), Professor of Analysis of the Languages of the Mass Media at the Faculty of Arts, University of Buenos Aires, Director of the UBACYT (University of Buenos Aires and Science and Technical Secretary.