Academics,Management,Diplomacy:An Analysis Of The Discourse Role Of The Chinese Dean Of The Confucius Institute Of The 2.0 Era

In the 21 st century of a globalized information dissemination,cultural competition is becoming increasingly fierce.“Chinese culture going abroad” is one of the major issues facing China at present.As an educational institution to promote Chinese language and spread Chinese culture,Confucius Institutes are not only different from the government,but also different from foreign-funded institutions and enterprises.It is one of the most important front for Chinese culture to go abroad.Since its establishment,Confucius Institutes have played an active role in promoting Chinese language teaching,spreading Chinese culture,telling the Chinese stories,and transmitting Chinese voices.It has become an important platform for building a good national image.Since its establishment,Confucius institutes have received extensive attention from scholars from all over the world.Most of the related researches are focused on the organizational level,particularly on the Chinese language teaching,cultural communication,overseas public opinion,long-term construction and development of Confucius institutes,but there are few academic papers taking the Chinese dean as the research object.The Chinese dean is not only one of the managers of Confucius institutes,but also the disseminator and interpreter of promoting Chinese language and culture,which is considered as one of the important factors directly related to the development of Confucius institutes.The personal ability of the Chinese dean directly determines whether,and to what extent,Confucius institute has played a role in promoting cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries.It is also the premise for Confucius institutes to successfully fulfill its mission of cross-cultural communication,tell Chinese stories,spread Chinese voices and improve China’s image.Ignoring the principal factors of the Chinese dean and discussing Confucius institutes only from the organizational level will,to a large extent,lead to the disconnection between the research and the actual situation and the lack of discussion on the deep factors.Under the background of Confucius institutes of the 2.0 era with the "Quality construction Connotation accumulation" as the core,this paper systematically studies the multiple discourse roles of the Chinese dean during their work at Confucius institutes,so as to improve the personal abilities of the Chinese dean’s discourse roles and promote the work of Confucius institutes.The first part is the introduction,including the research background,significance and innovation of the Chinese dean,and the research status and discourse role of the Chinese dean in China,adopting the approaches of literature research and Wechat interview to collect data.The second part mainly discusses three aspects: firstly,Confucius Institutes have different goals,connotations and problems in each era from the embryonic stage to the growing stage,and from the 1.0 era to the 2.0 era;secondly,the Chinese dean faces various challenges in the 2.0 era of development of Confucius Institutes in the promotion of Chinese and cultural communication,which are the cultural shock,the complicated environmental regulation and the value of discourse hegemony;lastly,it analyzes the three discourse roles of the Chinese dean,including transnational knowledge producer,cross-cultural manager and public diplomacy envoy.The third part studies the discourse role of the Chinese dean acting as a migrating transnational knowledge producer,that means focusing on breakthroughs in academic ability and academic innovation,getting familiar with the academic norms and evaluation system of the host country,actively participating in academic exchange activities,and realizing academic innovation and communication based on the reality of China.The fourth part studies the discourse role of the Chinese dean as a cross-cultural manager.They successfully solve cultural conflicts,build harmonious interpersonal relations and organizational relations,and finally expand the work of Confucius institute by attaching importance to the ability of organization and coordination,conducting cross-cultural training,exploring the third culture,and adopting strategic communication and consultation approaches.The fifth part studies the dean’s discourse role acting as the messenger of public diplomacy.They pay attention to the diplomatic ability,choose appropriate stories and suitable transmission mode in the diplomatic process,actively tell good Chinese story,Chinese voice,combining the cognitive model of event field to interpret foreign behavior to promote the success of the communicative intention,and using approaches combining new media and traditional media to better carry out public diplomacy.