Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Sino-Platonic Papers, 27 (August 3 1. 1991)
"living by platitudes", "public morality", "confucian sense of group
responsibilities", "afraid of being an individual in public", "cautious",
"respectful", "confident", "positive", "optimistic", "gracious", "wordy",
"inviting flattery", "more than polite deferential".
"Humble" was used to suggest false humility as well as possibly
genuine humility, but it is interesting to note that only one informant
explicitly comments:
"treating the audience as 'children', patronizing".
The original Chinese text seemed unambiguous to its readers. By
contrast with readers' reactions to the English translation, reactions from
Chinese informants were more consistent, i.e. that it is typical speech of "a
local cadre", "speech symbol of their status", "their qualifications for having
been in the revolution", "used by higher or similar ranking officials toward
lower or similar ranking officials", "children, when imitating cadres, all use
ma", "a signifier for characterizing conservative cadres portrayed in
movies", etc.
Turning from my English or Chinese speaking informants to examples
of speech of Chinese officials it appears that this last observation is an
oversimplification. We can observe that not only conservative cadres, but
also well-known reform-minded high cadres use this speech code liberally.
For example, in a recorded interview of Hu Yaobang by the journalist Lu
Keng in 1985, Hu's speech to Chinese students in Japan, Zhao Ziyang's
press conference after the 1 3 th plenum in 1 987, etc.
But this confirms that the vast differences between the reactions of
my two sets of informants can be attributed to the sociolinguistic
competence of the Chinese speakers among them rather than to linguistic