UMBC Asian Studies

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http://hdl.handle.net/11603/16702
The Asian Studies Program at UMBC offers broad opportunities for our students to explore the history, culture, languages and literature, societies, politics, economics, philosophy, art and music of Asia. Faculty members and language instructors from a range of disciplines offer an interdisciplinary course of study towards a Major, a Minor, or a Certificate. Additionally, we are proud to be one of the few institutions of higher education that offer language courses in Hindi.

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Questioning Practices and Speech Style Shifting in Korean Entertainment Talk Shows
    (MDPI, 2023-12-12) Yoon, Kyung-Eun
    This study explores the dynamics of questioning practices and speech-style shifting in Korean entertainment talk shows. While prior research has examined the topic of questioning practices in the Korean language, mostly in everyday conversation or educational discourse, this article expands this investigation to encompass semi-institutional discourse, particularly focusing on the context of entertainment talk shows. This research also contributes to understanding the pragmatic characteristics of two Korean honorific speech styles, namely the polite (-yo) and deferential (-(su)pnita/-(su)pnikka) styles, by investigating their interplay and transitions. Adopting an interactional approach to discourse and drawing upon membership categorization analysis and conversation analysis, this study analyzes the discourse of 15 entertainment talk shows, with a special focus on approximately 1500 sentential units, 325 of which are questions. The analysis of these utterances provides an account of the utilization of linguistic resources in questioning practices and the utilization of the two Korean honorific speech styles in the joint construction of social activities and identities within the entertainment talk show setting. The selection of linguistic resources for questioning practices and style shifting is closely intertwined with the management of entertainment and institutional dynamics among the participants in this particular setting.
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    “Hong Kong is Our Home”: Hong Kongers Twenty-Five Years After the Handover
    (Association for Asian Studies, 2022) Tong, Christopher K.
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    The Paradox of China’s Sustainability
    (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2019-08-06) Tong, Christopher K.
    If a civilization thrives by modifying, exploiting, and damaging its environment—and has done so for several millennia—does it make sense to call it a “sustainable” one? With its claims to be one of the oldest civilizations in world history and a rising superpower in the twenty-first century, China is a paradoxical case. Not only are China’s aspirations for sustainable development at odds with its current status as one of the world’s worst polluters, but the expansion of Chinese-style settlements and croplands has historically been a major driver of environmental transformation and degradation on the eastern Eurasian landmass. As China’s environment continues to be altered in the twenty-first century, “ecological civilization” (shengtai wenming) has emerged as an ideological framework for the type of sustainable development that China’s political leadership envisions for the country. Incorporated into the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 2018, “ecological civilization” is the newest among five guiding principles for China’s development in the post-Mao era. To address the potentialities of China’s "ecological civilization," we should first recognize the paradoxical nature of Chinese interactions with the environment. This chapter offers a critical survey of key positions on China’s history, culture, and environment to illuminate what scholars perceive to be the paradox of China’s sustainability.