Yan Jiang

Dr. Yan Jiang is a Professor at SOAS University of London's School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, specializing in Chinese linguistics with particular expertise in Mandarin and Shanghainese dialects. With a publication record spanning from 1998 to 2025, Jiang has established themselves as a leading scholar in the fields of pragmatics, semantics, and syntax of Chinese languages.

Dr. Jiang's research interests center on the intricate relationship between form and meaning in Chinese languages. Their work explores sentence-final particles, counterfactual conditionals, rhetorical structures, and lexical meaning construction, with particular attention to how pragmatic context influences interpretation.

• Specializes in temporal semantics of sentence-final particles in Shanghainese
• Investigates the pragmatic functions of connectives and adverbs in Mandarin Chinese
• Examines counterfactual reasoning patterns across Chinese varieties
• Studies the rhetorical traditions in Chinese discourse

Analysis of Dr. Jiang's publication record reveals a consistent trajectory from theoretical linguistics toward more applied and interdisciplinary work. While early publications focused on formal semantics and logical structures in Chinese, recent work has expanded into translation studies, discourse analysis, and educational applications of linguistic research. Their scholarship bridges traditional Chinese linguistic analysis with contemporary Western linguistic theory.

Dr. Jiang has supervised multiple doctoral students including Li (2024), Xue (2023), Zhou (2023), and Wang (2021), whose theses address topics ranging from lexical meaning construction to tense and aspect in Shanghainese. This mentorship demonstrates Jiang's active role in training the next generation of Chinese linguistics scholars.