This article focuses on the global phenomenon of the marketization of higher education and how it has shaped the discourses of China’s top universities. By analyzing the university presidents’ messages published in the websites of 36 top-ranked universities in China, the aim is to ascertain the extent to which this institutionalized genre imbricates a marketizing role with other ideological imperatives. Informed by the theoretical principles of Critical Discourse Analysis and adopting a genre analysis methodological approach, we first examined the macro-level rhetorical structure followed by a micro-level analysis of the discursive strategies used in the presidents’ messages. The findings reveal a dynamic interweaving of three distinct discursive strands – bureaucratic, conversational and advertising – constructed in and around the move structure of the presidents’ messages. This interdiscursive analysis reveals competing imperatives and contestations that reflect the dual role of the presidents’ messages to project a globalized, international outlook while maintaining an allegiance to political ideologies and national interests that top-ranked universities in China have to simultaneously negotiate.
Against the backdrop of English being the academic lingua franca, Chinese medical doctors are under tremendous pressure to get their research published in English-medium journals. This paper reports on a multiple-case study of Chinese medical doctors’ scholarly publishing in English. Drawing on multiple types of data collected from two doctors at a major hospital affiliated with a top research-intensive university in mainland China, we explored the focal participants’ perspectives on their difficulties in scholarly publishing, their strategies for addressing these difficulties, and the factors and resources at work in their navigation of the publishing processes. Informed by Activity Theory, we identified contradictions within the doctors’ scholarly publishing activity systems. We focused on the rules and tools that framed the doctors’ scholarly publishing activities, and our findings revealed how they drew on an array of tools and signs to resolve the contradictions and meditate their scholarly publishing endeavors. Our study points to the need for institutional policies and initiatives to support Chinese medical doctors aspiring for international publication.
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