1,721,009 research outputs found
China’s National Dictionary Compilation and Publication Plans: Towards a “Lexicographical Great Power”?
Full text linkIn recent years, several Chinese scholars have argued that China has embarked on a path towards becoming a “lexicographical great power” (cishu qiangguo 辞书强国) (Wei 2015; Wang et al. 2014). In the history of the People’s Republic of China, the country’s political leadership has always attached great importance to the lexicographical sector and to the role of dictionaries within politics and society. Since the 1970s, the Chinese leadership has launched three national plans for the compilation and publication of dictionaries (1975-1985; 1988-2000; 2013-2025) (Wei 2015). These plans have been explicitly intended to boost lexicographical activities and publications in the country, as well as to improve the quality of Chinese lexicographical works.
By also relying on institutional documents, this paper aims to present the evolution of the three national plans, focusing on the relationship between lexicographical activities, politics, and ideology (Wierzbicka 1995). Moreover, the paper discusses the concept of “lexicographical great power” and its characteristics, as conceived by contemporary Chinese scholars
Un minestrone di feudalesimo, capitalismo e revisionismo: Lo Xiandai hanyu cidian 现代汉语词典 tra rivoluzione, sovversione e reazione
Full text linkLo Xiandai hanyu cidian 现代汉语词典 (il Dizionario di cinese contemporaneo) è uno dei più autorevoli dizionari monolingui della lingua cinese. Compilato dall’Istituto di linguistica dell’Accademia cinese delle scienze sociali (già Accademia delle scienze), venne pubblicato ufficialmente in Cina a partire dal 1978. Nel 1973, durante la Rivoluzione culturale, venne ristampata un’edizione di prova del dizionario, che divenne oggetto di una campagna di denuncia perpetrata da alcune delle personalità politiche più estremiste della Cina dell’epoca. Secondo i detrattori, le scelte adottate in fase di compilazione (quali la selezione dei lemmi, la redazione delle definizioni e degli esempi) avrebbero reso lo Xiandai hanyu cidian 现代汉语词典 “un minestrone di feudalesimo, capitalismo e revisionismo” (Yu 1974), dando vita a un dizionario sostanzialmente incapace di porsi al servizio delle masse e della causa rivoluzionaria. I responsabili della sua compilazione vennero così accusati, attraverso alcuni scritti, di dare voce alle tendenze reazionarie che miravano al sovvertimento del “nuovo sistema” e alla restaurazione di quel “vecchio sistema” feudale e confuciano che la rivoluzione maoista aveva scardinato.
Prendendo le mosse da fonti cinesi dell’epoca, il presente contributo intende presentare tale dibattito e mira a proporre una riflessione circa il ruolo fortemente ideologico che un’opera lessicografica come lo Xiandai hanyu cidian 现代汉语词典può rivestire nel contesto sociale, politico e culturale in cui è prodotto. Quale strumento di rappresentazione e codificazione della lingua e dei suoi significati (Benson 2001), il dizionario può, infatti, contribuire al consolidamento di una narrazione sulla realtà considerata corretta e accettabile dalle forze politiche dominanti. In quest’ottica, i contenuti del dizionario e, nello specifico, i lemmi e le definizioni, divengono un potenziale strumento per l’esercizio del potere politico (Lee 2014) e per il mantenimento dell’ordine costituito
中国的赛珍珠研究———以中国知网(CNKI)信息为例
No full textSince the 1930s and 1940, the attitude and evaluation towards Pearl S. Buck and her literary works has gone through several changes in China. By analyzing the relevant data of CNKI, we can better grasp the development and changes of the research on Pearl S. Buck and her works in Chinese academic circles in the past half century, especially the recovery process of the writer's reputation. The change of CNKI data is basically consistent with the research situation of relevant scholars, which reflects the comprehensiveness and consistency of CNKI database in collecting data and information
Education and political socialisation in contemporary China: From institutional discourse to teaching materials
No full textThis chapter centres on the People’s Republic of China (PRC), exploring the relationship between education and political socialisation from a discursive perspective. It explores how the interconnections between education, politics and the Party-State ideology are manifested and circulated in contemporary China through different instantiations of the official discourse of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on the subject. This study is guided by two interrelated research questions: (1) How is the relationship between education, politics and the Party-State ideology framed in the official discourse of the Xi Jinping Era, as represented from the selected sources? (2) What are the keywords and fixed formulations of the official discourse on education, which recur through different texts, genres and domains of this discourse? What kind of discursive frames do these activate?
To address these questions, the contribution first analyses the discourse constructed by a corpus of texts meant to encapsulate Xi Jinping’s vision on education between 2012 and 2022; second, the educational dimension is considered, with examples provided from a textbook designed to teach the leader’s thought to children
Lettere, messaggi e stampa ufficiale: la funzione interpersonale del discorso politico cinese
Full text linkNella Cina contemporanea, il discorso politico ufficiale si sviluppa attraverso un eterogeneo repertorio di generi testuali, i quali, seppur spesso prodotti da differenti attori istituzionali, sono riconducibili, in senso lato, allo stato-Partito. I generi del discorso politico contemporaneo, inoltre, trovano ampia diffusione e circolazione attraverso differenti media, tra cui figura innanzitutto la stampa ufficiale.
Questo contributo si focalizza su un peculiare genere del discorso politico cinese, rappresentato dai testi di lettere e messaggi attribuiti a Xi Jinping e indirizzati a destinatari differenti. In particolare, presenta una analisi di natura linguistico-discorsiva di un corpus di testi riconducibili a questo genere, raccolti attraverso la consultazione dei siti dei principali organi di informazione istituzionali cinesi.
Attingendo al quadro teorico-metodologico e agli strumenti dell’analisi (critica) del discorso e dell’analisi dei frame, il contributo vuole quindi illustrare le peculiarità dei testi presi in esame, con l’obiettivo di riflettere su come il linguaggio e le strategie discorsive impiegate in questo genere contribuiscano a consolidare specifiche narrazioni dominanti nel discorso politico cinese contemporaneo
Defining Chinese Lexicography : An overview of the 1990s Debate on its Terminology and Academic Status
No full textIn 1990, in the context of an unprecedented growth for lexicography in China, the authoritative academic journal Lexicographical Studies (Cishu yanjiu 辞书研究) launched a special column, intended as a discussion forum through which lexicographers and scholars on the subject could contribute to the development of the theory of Chinese lexicography. In response to the editors’ call, in the following years, many contributions were published on the topic, giving rise to an academic debate cantered on some unresolved fundamental theoretical and terminological issues which needed to be tackled to ensure the development of the discipline in China.
Mainly relying on contributions written by Chinese scholars in the 1990s, the present paper focuses on this debate and provides an overview of the most representative views and positions. Specifically, two fundamental and interwoven issues are addressed: the need for scholars to standardise the basic terminology of Chinese lexicography and achieve consistency in its scholarly usage, and the relationship that lexicography entertains with linguistics as a discipline. Moreover, the paper discusses the matter of lexicographical terminology from the perspective of translation
Chinese and German political discourse in contrast. An analysis of speeches at UN meetings on climate change from the perspective of cross-cultural pragmatics
Full text linkUnited Nations (UN) meetings are pivotal moments in international relations, during which world leaders come together to discuss topics of global relevance and that raise issues of often sensitive nature. In these contexts, speeches are delivered by the participants to the meetings (e.g., world leaders or their representatives) within a specific and ritualised framework. As a genre of political communication (Cap and Okulska 2013), speeches at UN meetings can be analysed to identify the recurrent linguistic patterns and their pragmatic functions that operate in the construction of the discourse on a specific topic. This appears to be particularly interesting when the analysis is carried out in a contrastive vein, and, specifically, when investigating, from the perspective of Cross-Cultural Pragmatics (House and Kádár 2021 and 2022), how these recurrent patterns and functions are realised by speakers of typologically distant linguacultures.
Based on these premises, the present paper explores Chinese and German political discourse on climate change in the context of UN meetings from a contrastive and cross-cultural pragmatic perspective. Specifically, it provides an analysis of a corpus of speeches delivered by China’s and Germany’s representatives during meetings held to discuss issues concerning climate change within the framework of the UN (e.g., the Conference of Parties, the Climate Ambition Summit, etc.).
The objective of the paper is thus to provide an analysis of the conventionalised expressions employed in the standard situations in which the speeches under scrutiny occur, the different speech acts these expressions realise and observe them in their discourse context, also contrastively highlighting differences and similarities between the Chinese and German texts. From a broader perspective, the paper also aims to contribute to the understanding of the different discursive and pragmatic strategies employed by the political representatives of China and Germany to present to the international community their country’s endeavours in contrasting climate change, which, as a global matter of major importance, intertwines with issues related to image-building and consensus-gathering on the part of the different countries, both domestically and internationally.
References:
Cap, Piotr, and Urszula Okulska. 2013. “Analyzing genres in political communication: An introduction”. In Analyzing genres in political communication, edited by Piotr Cap, and Urszula Okulska, 1-26. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár. 2021. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár. 2022. “Political Language in Contrast: An Introduction”. Journal of Pragmatics 188: 132-137
Framing Environmental Commitment on the International Stage: Chinese and German Political Discourse on Climate Change
Full text linkAs a topic that has come to occupy a growingly central role in contemporary society, public discourse on climate change has been widely investigated from different perspectives (e.g., Sedlaczek, 2014; Marinelli, 2018). Less attention, however, appears to have been devoted to linguistic contrastive analyses of discourses on the subject. Given the global relevance of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon, it seems reasonable to posit that, in international or intergovernmental settings, different countries may construct different narratives of their environmental commitment, also because of divergent views on the policies to be enacted and the (perceived) status of each country on the international stage.
This paper aims to investigate how narratives on climate change are constructed in Chinese and German sources, two distant lingua-cultures. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological frameworks of critical discourse analysis and frame analysis (Entman, 1993; Reese, 2007; Reisigl and Wodak, 2009), it provides a contrastive analysis of two corpora (Chinese and German) of official public speeches and statements by the political leaders (or their representatives) of the People’s Republic of China and Germany in the context, for instance, of international summits and conferences, as those organised within the framework of the United Nations. Firstly, the analysis adopts an inductive approach to identify the frames emerging from the ways information is presented in the texts from the two corpora, especially with regard to the narrative that each country constructs on its commitment to facing climate change. Secondly, the morpho-syntactic, lexical means and rhetorical devices that concur to activate these frames are examined and compared.
The results are expected to contribute to the understanding of the different discursive strategies employed by the governments of China and Germany to represent their conduct in this critical field, which carries major implications for image-building and the gathering of political consensus, both domestically and internationally.
References
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51-58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x
Marinelli, M. (2018). How to Build a ‘Beautiful China’ in the Anthropocene. The Political Discourse and the Intellectual Debate on Ecological Civilization. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 23(3), 365-386. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-018-9538-7
Reese, S. D. (2007). The Framing Project: A Bridging Model for Media Research Revisited. Journal of Communication, 57(1): 148-154. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00334.x
Reisigl, M. & Wodak R. (2009). The Discourse-Historical Approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyers (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 2nd edition. (pp. 87-121). SAGE.
Sedlaczek, A. S. (2014). Multimodale Repräsentation von Klimawandel und Klimaschutz. Eine theoretische und methodologische Annäherung am Beispiel des Österreichischen Rundfunks. Wiener Linguistische Gazette. Sonderausgabe 78A: 14-33. https://wlg.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_wlg/78A2014/Sedlaczek.pd
Umiliazione nazionale, educazione al patriottismo e il memoriale del ‘Massacro di Lüshun’
No full textIn the 1990s, the Chinese leadership launched a large-scale “patriotic education” campaign. At that time, hundreds of historical sites were bestowed the status of “patriotic education bases”, playing a key role in rebuilding the collective historical memory and educating the people – above all, the younger generations – on the humiliations China had previously suffered due to aggression by foreign powers. Visits to the patriotic bases also became an integral part of school curricula.
This paper focuses on the memorial dedicated to the victims of the Japanese occupation of Lüshun (Dalian, Liaoning province), which took place in November 1894. By also relying on data collected during a visit to the site in October 2017, it aims to investigate how this “patriotic education base” contributes to the official historical narrative of both China’s past and the Sino-Japanese conflicts
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