Comprehensive analysis of pragmatic information in Business Chinese conversational textbooks

This chapter surveys 31 Business Chinese textbooks, organized around the teaching of conversational Business Chinese in order to explicate problems evident in their conveyance of pragmatic information. The analysis is based on a rubric assessing three major perspectives regarding their overall organization of communicative functions, qualities of conversation modeling, and related pedagogical treatments. The discussion focuses on the qualitative analysis of the surveyed pragmatic information with reference to quantitative results. The findings demonstrate scant information on pragmatic input, especially in its lack of adequate contextual information and pragmatics-driven task design. Further, the application of suggested research results to Business Chinese curriculum development would potentially help learners acquire transferable skills as professionals to communicate effectively in various workplaces.