The Third International Conference on Multicultural Discourses held in Hangzhou
Aug 27-29, 2010
Following the first two tri-annual conferences in 2004 and 2007, respectively, the three-day Third International Conference on Multinational Discourses was held between 27th and 29th of August at Huabei Hotel overlooking the West Lake in Beishan Road, Hangzhou.
The conference was attended by over 130 people coming from 25 countries in all Continents of the world. On the first day, eleven scholars, including Maria Jose Coracini (Brazil), Davie E. Mutasa (South Africa), Shi-xu (China) and Jef Verschueren (Beligium), gave plenary speeches representing a diversity of culturally particular problems of discourse and approaches to them. The following day was organized around five parallel sessions on themes ranging from theory and method of discourse studies, regional and intercultural issues of discourse, issues of domination and resistance, issues of ethnicity and gender to Chinese issues of discourse. Especially the last one drew enormous attention. On the final, open-session day, guests reflected on the conference and future teaching and research on the topic. At the closing speech, Shi-xu stressed the need to create multicultural approaches to generate innovative and helpful research and concluded the fact that there have been scholars coming from all cultural backgrounds, exposing all kinds of cultural issues of discourse, and exploring culturally different approaches fulfilled the purpose of the conference to increase critical awareness of that need.
The conference was organized by the Institute of Discourse and Cultural Studies and Centre for Contemporary Chinese Discourse Studies of Zhejiang University and the Centre for Discourse and Cultural Studies of Hangzhou Normal University. The Ministry of Education and the Tang Yongqian Foundation of Zhejiang University co-sponsored the conference.
Conference website: http://www.shixu.com/institute-conference/
