ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 introduces the key aims of the book, namely: (i) identifying the language used in reporting on severe mental illness in three leading Chinese-language newspapers from greater China; (ii) determining the extent to which such language engages or contests salient discourses in play in Chinese societies, in particular cultural, political, and institutional discourses; and (iii) evaluating the degree to which the reporting contributes to or challenges the intense cultural stigma against severe mental illness in Chinese societies across the globe. The chapter reviews related discourse analytic work on genre apart from mass media reports – government pronouncements, psychoeducational brochures, personal life stories, films, and literary works. It also reviews the large body of content analytic and discourse analytic work on reporting on severe mental illness in the West, together with the small amount of purely content analytic work on greater China to date. It further justifies the book’s use of discourse analysis, and details and contextualises the specific approach it employs in Chapters 2 to 5.
