Analysis of Self-Help Business Literature in China Based on the Book Be Your Personal Best by Li Kaifu
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Abstract
The article investigates the self-help business literature in hyper-competitive social system of China. The need to succeed stimulates the wish for self-actualization and self-realization in the context of high social pressure.
The self-help business books are being studied by adopting the interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice – Discourse Analysis. So, the discourse in the article is understood as the main component of sociocultural interaction.
Despite its popularity, the field of self-help discourse is under-researched and undervalued. Self-help books’ main intention is to give us the source to help ourselves. In self-help books, concepts, not the human characters, are the main characters.
The content of self-help discourse varies greatly. It is very rhetorical, persuasive, and manipulative. The step-like how-to format is prevailing in this genre, such books give simple steps, implementation of which would lead to achieving the big goal step-by-step along with supportive techniques to strengthen the newly gained knowledge.
The book Be Your Personal Best (“做最好的自己”, 2005) written by Li Kaifu (李开复, born December 3, 1961) is a typical representative of self-help literature which responses the user’s needs, it is a part of personal growth and transformational literature which is a branch of self-help literature that covers life and self-improvement. The main aim of the book is to show the reader how to be more effective in achieving private and professional success by means of developing habits. It gives advice and instructions on improving of personal qualities and social relations by increasing one’s potential and raising personal productivity.
It includes many formal characteristics of self-help books, such as: lists, application exercises and practices, visualization, metaphors, repetition of core concepts and ideas. The main intention is in the educational purpose, sharing of ideas, knowledge, life experience, concepts, it is a pragmatic advice-giving text.
How to Cite
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Be Your Personal Best, business discourse, China, discourse analysis, genre, Li Kaifu, self-help literature
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