Bettina Mottura | Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy) (original) (raw)

Papers by Bettina Mottura

Asia maior/Asia Maior, 2022

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Altre Modernità

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The paper focuses on a work-in-progress comparative research on Chinese and Italian manuals for t... more The paper focuses on a work-in-progress comparative research on Chinese and Italian manuals for the specialized language training of civil servants published since 1993. The selected sources are considered parallel texts and their content and structure are discussed with the aim of identifying what kind of language skills are requested for the documents\u2019 drafting in the public administration in China and Italy. In particular, the paper tries to assess similarities and differences in the training discourses promoted in the two realities and to outline which kind of professional identity is planned for the civil servants in the future

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The paper, based on the analysis of a corpus of primary sources in Chinese, focuses on the role o... more The paper, based on the analysis of a corpus of primary sources in Chinese, focuses on the role of language in the process of definition of Chinese civil servants\u2019 professional identity, in a context where the role of public administration is being radically modernized and re-organized, and a new body of civil servants is being forged. In the 21st century, by imposing a repertoire of codified textual genres and training employees to become proficient in their discursive production, the People''s Republic of China reinforces civil servants\u2019 perception of their institutional identity and their sense of belonging to a professional discourse community, at the same time simplifying procedures and increasing the efficiency of public administrative work

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The chapter deals with the use of the Internet by the Government of the People's Republic of ... more The chapter deals with the use of the Internet by the Government of the People's Republic of China. Its website is identified as one of the crucial media to perform two public administration functions: spreading information to the general public and collecting feedback from society. The analysis reveals the choice of linguistic resources recently adopted by the Chinese public administration in order to perform this two-way communication flow with the citizen. Findings indicate the simultaneous presence of traditional bureaucratic genres and of textual forms derived from other professional communities, identifying the functions they serve. In particular, the paper looks at the genre of the online interview, devoting specific attention to three interviews with former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao conducted since 2009 which are examined with the underlying hypothesis that their linguistic features are heavily influenced by the distribution channel

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The paper, based on the analysis of a corpus of relevant sources in Chinese language, will focus ... more The paper, based on the analysis of a corpus of relevant sources in Chinese language, will focus on the lexical changes occurred in the Chinese civil service terminology in the 21st century. The relevance of the chosen terms was checked through interviews of high-ranking officials and professors, developed with the objective of pinpointing the intended connotations of the terms for the professional community. Besides, the materials selected for this work were civil service examinations textbooks and the official press, two typologies of texts which would convey the new terminology to a larger community of readers and contribute to their standardisation. The author aimed at verifying to what extent the reform of public administration in China has become established in a new discourse which has been accepted in the community at large, testifying therefore to the effectiveness of conceptual changes within the public administration

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Chapter Four, by Bettina Mottura, contains a genre-based analysis of Xinhua news agency dispatche... more Chapter Four, by Bettina Mottura, contains a genre-based analysis of Xinhua news agency dispatches on Chinese politics. Mottura argues that Xinhua news agency news production of Chinese internal politics in different languages is influenced by the agency\u2019s multifaceted organizational identity, which can be described as both ideologically driven and consumer oriented, as well as by the targeted audiences\u2019 culture and language. Her contribution draws on a corpus of Xinhua news agency press releases (in Chinese, English and French) regarding the 2015 Premier report on the work of government to the Chinese National People\u2019s Congress, shedding light on the basic characteristics of the Chinese official media\u2019s multilingual news production on Chinese politics. In order to better discuss the peculiarities of the news agency\u2019s discourse, the textual findings are interpreted through the lens of keywords concerning the relations between the media and the political syst...

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Edizioni Unicopli, 2020

The fundamental assumption in this book is that \u2018Constitution\u2019, \u2018Party\u2019 and \... more The fundamental assumption in this book is that \u2018Constitution\u2019, \u2018Party\u2019 and \u2018Talent\u2019 are complex, culturally defining words, functioning as a record of historical facts or ideas and as resources around which discussions and political actions revolved since the late XIX century in China. Discursive resources exploited by Chinese public institutions in order to build a strategic representation of the political system and its values. On the basis of these premises, by tracing the incidence of the three keywords in Chinese political language in a diachronic perspective, the book aims at showing how they are currently used, polysemous, categorical, actively contested and part of a cluster. This work is based on qualitative analysis of selected primary sources in Chinese language. Legal, political and newspaper texts were identified in this book as realizations of the genre repertoire of contemporary Chinese politics. Hence, the sources were considered connected to one another in a sequential chain of action, concurring to the discursive strategy to strengthen the political institutions and to disseminate their ideology by actively fostering consensus on the selected keywords

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Carocci, Jun 1, 2016

Dall'incontro della Cina imperiale con l’Occidente nel XIX secolo, il volume effettua un ... more Dall'incontro della Cina imperiale con l’Occidente nel XIX secolo, il volume effettua un percorso – che giunge fino ai nostri giorni – attraverso temi cruciali come identità e nazionalismo, Stato e governo, partito e organizzazione, risorse umane, informazione e media. Temi che continuano ad avere un notevole riscontro nel dibattito intellettuale e politico nella Cina di oggi, e che proprio nel loro rapporto con il passato trovano una rinnovata importanza e attualità. Il filo rosso che unisce e rende omogenee le scelte tematiche che danno corpo al volume è quello di narrazione. Non si tratta di descrivere l’accaduto quanto piuttosto di mettere l’accento sulla rappresentazione e il racconto che la Cina ufficiale (e non) registra mediante il documento scritto. From the encounter of imperial China with the West in the Nineteenth century, the volume follows an itinerary - up to the present - through crucial issues such as identity and nationalism, state and government, party and organization, human resources, information and media. Themes that keep on having a great relevance in the intellectual and political debate in China today, and that in their link to the past are continually rebuilt, reinforcing their importance and modernity. The thread of persisting narratives unites and makes homogeneous the thematic choices of the present volume. The aim is not to describe historic events, but rather to put an emphasis on the representation and the story that the official China (and others) records using written documents.

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In March 2018, the National People's Congress of China adopted of the fifth amendment to the ... more In March 2018, the National People's Congress of China adopted of the fifth amendment to the current constitutional text. In the five years prior to the vote, the CCP and state organs published a series of speeches and documents in order to reaffirm the centrality of the Constitution in the country's political life. The Constitution hence became one of the keywords of political discourse and one central topic in news production by national and international media. After the adoption of the amendment, the flow of media communication on the topic spread rapidly into the realm of Chinese cultural and creative industry. This paper will map how the amendment adopted in 2018 was linked to a discursive framework, built on the consolidation of a genre repertoire aimed at reinforcing political stability and regime legitimacy in China.

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Understanding China, 2017

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Altre Modernità, 2018

Institutional translation is a well established practice in the Chinese press. Although lacking i... more Institutional translation is a well established practice in the Chinese press. Although lacking in individual visibility, translators in these contexts are key mediators for the creation of an authoritative information flow at the global level. Through a corpus of journalistic texts published in 2017 by Renmin ribao online in three different languages (Chinese, French and English), this paper focuses on the interaction between the mechanism of recontextualisation of a political event in news production and the practice of translation. The aim is to discuss the effectiveness of the products of institutional translation in promoting a positive image of the country and in strengthening the legitimacy of Chinese national political institutions worldwide

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In China, modern university education in journalism started in the 1920s. Since then journalism e... more In China, modern university education in journalism started in the 1920s. Since then journalism education underwent a constant process of adaptation to local conditions in its curriculum and teaching methods as well as its targets. Today journalism education is a well-established discipline, a relevant field for research and teaching. In undergraduate programs in journalism education in China, news writing is listed amidst the course basic learning objectives. And this curriculum design feature is consistent with the collective belief that written language is a crucial professional skill for journalists. In the academic field, the widespread agreement on the centrality of language in journalists\u2019 work is testified by the variety of approaches used in language studies to examine media texts. As the writing skills are considered fundamental professional abilities to become a journalist in China, identify the scope and the targets of the news writing teaching is relevant to pinpoint the professional community profile. In order to address these issues, the paper will focus on the analysis of a corpus of textbooks of Chinese language training for journalists published between 2002 and 2014 in China. In examining the teaching materials, the attention will first be focused on the content and the structure of the books. And then the paper will highlight the relevance accorded by the authors to the identification of textual genres and to the explanation of their functions and use for didactic purposes

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The paper intends to examine how the functions attributed to Chinese institutional media by the l... more The paper intends to examine how the functions attributed to Chinese institutional media by the leadership discourse are performed. It will focus on if and how journalistic texts show traces of an effort to reinforce the knowledge and trust of the public in the Communist Party and to increase the influence and credibility of China at the international level. In order to verify if the news are effective in consolidating a national "discursive power", the analysis will focus on a case study: the representation of a recurring event in national politics in Chinese official newspapers, through the texts published on the subject by Xinhua Press Agency in 2015 and by the People\u2019s Daily in 2017 in Chinese, English and French

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In the last decades, Xinhua News Agency position in the context of the Chinese media production i... more In the last decades, Xinhua News Agency position in the context of the Chinese media production is characterized by a centralized political control and market-oriented strategies. The hypothesis under discussion is that Xinhua News Agency press release production on Chinese politics is influenced both by the agency\u2019s multifaceted organizational identity, which can be described as both ideologically driven and consumer oriented, and by the targeted public culture and language. The contribution draws on Xinhua News Agency\u2019s press releases on the 2015 session of the Chinese National People's Congress (in Chinese, English and French), and it aims to shed light on the basic characteristics of Chinese official media multilingual discourse on Chinese politics. In order to better describe the discourse's peculiarities, the textual findings are interpreted through the lens of keywords concerning the relation between the media and the political system in China (i.e. strengthening legitimacy, the foreign propaganda system and discourse power)

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The chapter focuses on a new ideological formulation introduced in 2018 in the Constitution of th... more The chapter focuses on a new ideological formulation introduced in 2018 in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. The contribution aims at studying the discursive strategy in which the item is embedded, and through which it is promoted, by analysing Chinese political discourse in a diachronic perspective between 2013 and 2019. Using a selection parameter of intertextuality, the author has compiled a corpus of texts (in the Chinese language) through which this multifaceted discursive strategy is constructed. Drawing on the discourse-historical approach (Reisigl, Wodak 2009, p. 89; Wodak 2001, pp. 65-66) in a critical discourse analysis perspective, the paper will show how the discursive strategy performs a synergic action to disseminate the new ideology formulation by addressing two sub-topics, and, in parallel, how the texts intentionally promote two main macro-topics of Chinese political discourse.

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Media and politics have always been mutually influential. The media plays an important political ... more Media and politics have always been mutually influential. The media plays an important political role of its own in promoting and discussing policies, as well as conveying representations of power and ideology. On the other hand, media outlets are themselves subject to political forces that have an impact on their editorial line. This mutual influence comes to light not only in journalistic practices, but also in how news is constructed and conveyed. This volume explores the relations between politics and various types of media as expressed in different areas of the world, namely Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East. Such a complex landscape calls for a multiplicity of analytical tools and cannot ignore specific socio-political, geographic, linguistic, and cultural contexts which may be overlooked when approached from a global perspective. In this volume, a combination of senior scholars and young experts from a wide range of disciplines, such as discourse analysis, international relations, and cultural studies, come together in a conversation which recognizes the media as a global phenomenon without neglecting its local specificities

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Lingue Culture Mediazioni - Languages Cultures Mediation (LCM Journal), 2019

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Asia maior/Asia Maior, 2022

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Altre Modernità

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Edizioni Unicopli, 2020

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Carocci, Jun 1, 2016

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Understanding China, 2017

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Altre Modernità, 2018

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Lingue Culture Mediazioni - Languages Cultures Mediation (LCM Journal), 2019

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Mottura B. (2020) Keywords in Chinese Political Language, Milano: Edizioni Unicopli. ISBN: 9788840021584

The fundamental assumption in this book is that ‘Constitution’, ‘Party’and ‘Talent’ are complex, ... more The fundamental assumption in this book is that ‘Constitution’, ‘Party’and
‘Talent’ are complex, culturally defining words, functioning as a
record of historical facts or ideas and as resources around which discussions and political actions revolved since the late XIX century in
China. Discursive resources exploited by Chinese public institutions
in order to build a strategic representation of the political system and
its values.
On the basis of these premises, by tracing the incidence of the three
keywords in Chinese political language in a diachronic perspective,
the book aims at showing how they are currently used, polysemous,
categorical, actively contested and part of a cluster. This work is based on qualitative analysis of selected primary sources in Chinese language. Legal, political and newspaper texts were identified in this book as realizations of the genre repertoire of contemporary Chinese politics. Hence, the sources were considered connected to one another in a sequential chain of action, concurring to the discursive strategy to strengthen the political institutions and to disseminate their ideology by actively fostering consensus on the selected keywords.

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Bosc Franca, Failla Osvaldo, Foschino Roberto, Valentini Marta e Riva Natalia (a cura di), Dizionario dei vini e vitigni d’Italia (italiano-cinese) 意大利葡萄酒和葡萄品种词典, Roma: Gambero rosso. ISBN 9788866411604

Il Dizionario dei Vini e dei Vitigni italiano - cinese costituisce un utile strumento lessicograf... more Il Dizionario dei Vini e dei Vitigni italiano - cinese costituisce un utile strumento lessicografico/terminologico per favorire gli scambi e la comunicazione tra esperti di enologia, consumatori e appassionati del vino italiani e cinesi. Il Dizionario comprende le definizioni di DOCG, DOC, IGT e vitigni prodotti in Italia. Ogni voce è stata costruita in italiano attraverso la consultazione di testi settoriali e dei disciplinari; il lavoro di traduzione, grazie all’uso di fonti cinesi autorevoli e a un originale lavoro di standardizzazione, ha stabilito il termine più adatto a identificare un vino o un vitigno nel rispetto delle migliori tradizioni culturali cinesi.

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Dall'incontro della Cina imperiale con l’Occidente nel XIX secolo, il volume effettua un percorso... more Dall'incontro della Cina imperiale con l’Occidente nel XIX secolo, il volume effettua un percorso – che giunge fino ai nostri giorni – attraverso temi cruciali come identità e nazionalismo, Stato e governo, partito e organizzazione, risorse umane, informazione e media. Temi che continuano ad avere un notevole riscontro nel dibattito intellettuale e politico nella Cina di oggi, e che proprio nel loro rapporto con il passato trovano una rinnovata importanza e attualità. Il filo rosso che unisce e rende omogenee le scelte tematiche che danno corpo al volume è quello di narrazione. Non si tratta di descrivere l’accaduto quanto piuttosto di mettere l’accento sulla rappresentazione e il racconto che la Cina ufficiale (e non) registra mediante il documento scritto.

From the encounter of imperial China with the West in the Nineteenth century, the volume follows an itinerary - up to the present - through crucial issues such as identity and nationalism, state and government, party and organization, human resources, information and media. Themes that keep on having a great relevance in the intellectual and political debate in China today, and that in their link to the past are continually rebuilt, reinforcing their importance and modernity. The thread of persisting narratives unites and makes homogeneous the thematic choices of the present volume. The aim is not to describe historic events, but rather to put an emphasis on the representation and the story that the official China (and others) records using written documents.

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In China, modern university education in journalism started in the 1920s. Since then journalism e... more In China, modern university education in journalism started in the 1920s. Since then journalism education underwent a constant process of adaptation to local conditions in its curriculum and teaching methods as well as its targets (Guo Zhongshi 2010). Today journalism education is a well-established discipline, a relevant field for research and teaching (Guo Ke 2004).
In undergraduate programs in journalism education in China, news writing is listed amidst the course basic learning objectives (Ke Guo 2010, Dombernowsky 2014). And this curriculum design feature is consistent with the collective belief that written language is a crucial professional skill for journalists. In the academic field, the widespread agreement on the centrality of language in journalists’ work is testified by the variety of approaches used in language studies to examine media texts (Zelizer 2004).
As the writing skills are considered fundamental professional abilities to become a journalist in China, identify the scope and the targets of the news writing teaching is relevant to pinpoint the professional community profile. In order to address these issues, the paper will focus on the analysis of a corpus of textbooks of Chinese language training for journalists published between 2002 and 2014 in China. In examining the teaching materials, the attention will first be focused on the content and the structure of the books. And then the paper will highlight the relevance accorded by the authors to the identification of textual genres and to the explanation of their functions and use for didactic purposes.

Keywords: written language training, journalism education, Chinese language

References

Bai, G. / Peng, H. 2013. 当代新闻写作 Dangdai Xinwen Xiezuo (Contemporary News Writing). Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe.
Dombernowsky, L. 2014. Chinese Journalism Students: Balancing competing values. In Svensson, Marina / Sæther, E. / Zhang Zhi’an (eds). Chinese Investigative Journalists' Dreams. Autonomy, Agency, and Voice. Lanham: Lexington Books, 53-73.
Gao, X. 2012. 新闻语言学 Xinwen Yuyanxue (News Language and Linguistics). Nanjing: Nanjing Shifan Daxue Chubanshe.
Guo, K. (2007), Journalism Education in China: An Introduction, paper presented at the World Journalism Education Congress, Shanghai, 25-28 June 2007.
Guo, K. 2010. Chinese Journalism Education and Chinese Curricula, paper presented at the World Journalism Education Congress. Rhodes University, 5-7 July 2010, 9-12.
Guo, Z. 2010. Through Barbed Wires: Context, Content, and Constraints for Journalism Education in China. In Josephi Beate (ed) Journalism Education in Countries with Limited Media Freedom. Bern: Peter Lang, 15-32.
He, C. 2012. 当代传媒新闻写作教程 Dangdai Chuanmei Xinwen Xiezuo Jiaocheng (Handbook of News Writing for Contemporary Media). Xiangtan: Xiangtan Daxue Chubanshe.
Hong, J. / Li, Jun 2014. 怎么样写新闻 Zenmeyang Xie Xinwen (How to Write News). Hangzhou: Zhejiang Daxue Chubanshe.
Wu, L. / Li, Zhan 2014. 新闻写作 Xinwen Xiezuo (News Writing). Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe.
Zelizer, B. 2004. Language Studies and Journalism. In Zelizer, Barbie Taking Journalism Seriously. News and the Academy. Thousand Oaks: Sage publications, 111-144.

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Xinhua News Agency was founded in 1931 with the aim of moulding public opinion and of contributin... more Xinhua News Agency was founded in 1931 with the aim of moulding public opinion and of contributing to the consolidation of the Chinese Communist Party’s political influence and rule over China (Xin Xin 2012: 33-48). At present this function has evolved, as Xinhua News Agency is trying to acquire a key role in the international news production market and to establish itself as one of the most influential news agencies worldwide (Hong Junhao 2011). Nonetheless, the Agency as an institution continues to be part of the political Establishment. Xinhua News Agency is an organ of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (the government) and it is identified in official documents as the major accredited source for the flow of information regarding Chinese political activities to be published in the national and international media (Zhonggong Zhongyang Bangongting 2003).
In light of this premise, Xinhua News Agency can be considered a relevant actor in shaping national and international media discourse on Chinese politics, as testified by the publication of the news agency website (http://xinhuanet.com) in 9 different languages. The hypothesis is that Xinhua News Agency press release production on Chinese politics is influenced by the agency’s multifaceted organizational identity, which can be described as both ideologically driven and consumer oriented. If the hypothesis were borne out, we could expect the reports on Chinese political events in different languages to show similarities possibly determined by ideological constraints in representing China to international public opinion, as well as discrepancies, possibly due to the need of adapting the flow of information to different audiences characterized by their own language and culture.
This paper draws on Xinhua News Agency’s press releases on the 2015 session of the Chinese National People's Congress and on the agency’s position in the context of the Chinese media production, characterized by a centralized political control and market-oriented strategies. The corpus includes texts on the activities of the annual session of the Chinese parliament published by Xinhua’s website in three different languages: Chinese, English and French.
The aim of this paper is to shed light on the basic characteristics of Chinese official media discourse on Chinese politics. In order to better describe these peculiarities, the textual findings will be interpreted through the lens of keywords concerning the relation between the media and the political system in China (i.e. strengthening legitimacy, the foreign propaganda system and discourse power). By highlighting regularities and differences in the Chinese, English and French-language press releases, the paper will discuss if and to what extent the discursive realisations of the representation of Chinese politics are affected when the information is targeted at different (national or international) publics.
Keywords: media discourse, China, international broadcasting, Xinhua News Agency, public opinion
References
Brady, Anne-Marie 2008. Marketing Dictatorship. Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China. Lanham: Rowman and Littlelfield.
Hong, Junhao 2011. From the World’s Largest Propaganda Machine to a Multipurposed Global News Agency: Factors in and Implications of Xinhua’s Transformation Since 1978. Political Communication, 28(3), pp. 377-393. Liang, Yan 梁岩 / Xie, Fei 谢飞, 编著 2010. Zhongguo yingwen meiti gaiguan 中国英文媒体概观. Beijing 北京:
Zhishi Chanquan Chubanshe 知识产权出版社.
Liu, Xiaoyan 刘小燕 2010. Zhengfu dui wai chuanbo 政府对外传播. Beijing 北京:Zhongguo Dabaike Quanshu
Chubanshe 中国大百科全书出版社.
Mottura, Bettina 2014. Mediazione e stampa cinese in lingua inglese. Lingue culture mediazioni, 1(1-2), pp. 187-206. Xin, Xin 2012. How the Market is Changing China’s News. The Case of Xinhua News Agency. Lanham: Lexington
Books.
Zhonggong Zhongyang Bangongting 中共中央办公厅 2003. Zhonggong Zhongyang Bangongting yinfa ‘Guanyu jinyibu gaijin huiyi he lingdao tongzhi huodong xinwen baodao de yijian’ de tongzhi 中共中央办公厅印发《关于进一步改进会议和领导同志活动新闻报道的意见》的通知.

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