Publications

Publication details [#48172]

Ramsay, Guy. 2008. Shaping Minds. A discourse analysis of Chinese-language community mental health literature. (Discourse approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 32). John Benjamins. ix+149 pp.
Publication type
Book – monograph
Publication language
English
Language as a subject

Annotation

Mental illness is an increasing concern of government health services across the globe. It is timely, therefore, that community education about mental illness is subject to discourse analysis. Shaping Minds explores how the psychoeducational message is presented to Chinese-speaking audiences in China, Taiwan and Australia. The book examines community education materials in a language rarely examined by discourse analysts, but which is nevertheless spoken by around a fifth of the world’s population and constitutes an important ‘minority’ language throughout the Western world. The book identifies the discursive features that characterise the Chinese-language texts and analyses them cross-culturally, highlighting the impact of cultural traditions, political systems and dominant conceptions of society.