Corrupting the Chinese Language (New York Times Op-Ed)

[etm001]

There was an an op-ed published in the May 26th online edition of the New York Times that might be of interest to readers of these forums. A quote from the op-ed:

 

More than 60 years of Communist hate education, inane propaganda and the comprehensive destruction of classical civilization have spawned a new style of speaking and writing. The Chinese language has become brutalized — and the Communist Party is largely to blame.

 

 I don't have a sufficient background to comment on the author's opinions, but I'd be interested to hear what others think.

 

 

[Flickserve]

Could be the Americans doing something similar with English?

[etm001]

 

 

Could be the Americans doing something similar with English?

I don't believe a comparison can be made between how the CCP manipulated the Chinese language to suit its purposes and the evolution of the American dialect. I don't think that's the comparison you are making?

 

That said, if you are making a general comparison between American/British English and, say, mainland/Taiwanese English, then that's a very apt comparison indeed.

[Basil]

NY Times seems to be blocked where I am, any chance of a repost?

[character]

 

Could be the Americans doing something similar with English?

U wot m8?

 

Don't need the Americans to corrupt English.

[geraldc]

When did anyone last use the term tongzhi to mean comrade? Most of the stuff I get exposed to is from Hong Kong, where they use the propaganda terms with extreme irony.

[Flickserve]

The reading of the comments section of the article are interesting m'lord.

Here is just one of them. A change and evolution or even death of a language is not unique.

"The problems Murong Xuecun writes about, as indicated by his use of George Orwell, are not unique to China. Beware of the corruption of US English by the forces of corporatism. Same goals, same results. E.g., multimillion dollar "earnings," "government is the problem," "war on drugs," "free markets," "corporate persons," "death taxes." These examples may obscure the bigger problem because the big problem is not the easily identified corruptions, but those that are so embedded that we fail to recognize them."

[imron]

When did anyone last use the term tongzhi to mean comrade?

Happens all the time in the north.  Often with a sense of irony, or for exaggeration, but sometimes seriously too.

[etm001]

 

 

When did anyone last use the term tongzhi to mean comrade?

For most (young) people in Taiwan, the first thought that comes to mind when you hear 同志 is "gay".

[MarsBlackman]

For those interested in this subject, the book Linguistic Engineering: Language and Politics in Mao's China might be of particular interest. From the Amazon page:

 

When Mao and the Chinese Communist Party won power in 1949, they were determined to create new, revolutionary human beings. Their most precise instrument of ideological transformation was a massive program of linguistic engineering. They taught everyone a new political vocabulary, gave old words new meanings, converted traditional terms to revolutionary purposes, suppressed words that expressed "incorrect" thought, and required the whole population to recite slogans, stock phrases, and scripts that gave "correct" linguistic form to "correct" thought. They assumed that constant repetition would cause the revolutionary formulae to penetrate people's minds, engendering revolutionary beliefs and values.

[Basil]

Wow, that book's for sale on the Chinese Amazon. Shame about the price though - 500 yuan

[889]

Head over to Abebooks and you'll find that book for about US$6.50, plus shipping.

[Basil]

Great thanks, I'd completely forgotten about that site.

[tysond]

Tell you what, I'm super-jazzed that this kind of non-compliant language isn't part of my balanced work-life or the quality time I spend with my blended family.

 

I was just work-shopping a new proposal to generate better sponsorship for corporate initiatives with my High-Performance Virtual Team Coaching Circle members last night on the conf-call and we saw significant levels of buy-in for Simplification of the Field Operations Guidance at all levels of the global organization including the G20.  We call it project "Clearing the F.O.G." - pretty snappy name that I think will help significantly in the field acceptance phase.

 

If we could encourage more lean-in and less push-back during the Town-Halls, and drove hard for wide ranging active listening skills, we could eliminate time-consuming approval loops that cause delay incidents and wastages (not to mention roll-backs!).  We agreed that the next step would be to do broad-ranging study of the current role definitions and swim lanes, and socialize this idea the appropriate stakeholders from the segments and functional leaders.  So we selected an appropriate funding source and procurement role (keeping in mind that Compliance is Our #1 Priority and our Absolute Commitment to Quarterly Accountability under Sarbannes Oxley!) in order to hire a consultant to provide an initial Vision-Scope and Preliminary Non-Binding Quotation (a ViSco-PreNoB quote) on the work required.  

 

We are "all-in" on this one kids!  (provided leadership agrees it aligns with our strategic vision and it falls in our 2015 rationalized scope of course!).

 

But imagine if we had to change all this simple English language to suit some kind of hegemonic overlord and their goals to guide our thinking!

 

We would be distracted from our relentless focus on Delighting our Customers and Contributing to the Success of Others.  Could we truly say we are a People First company then?  And would we be able to maintain our laser focus on integrated innovation while maintaining our unwavering commitment to execution excellence?  Wouldn't all this messing around with language distract us from continuous improvement against out 3+1 core operating models, particularly the Balanced Scorecard (with its 35 multivariate measures) which has only just been approved by the Global Operations Committee and will be announced on Tuesday by the president of operations himself who will then go on a 22 city tour to launch the initiative?

 

No thank you, overbearing paper-pushers.  That would be against the 6 company values and the 4 pillars of our performance management strategy.  Not to mention, last time I looked, "Political Speak" is not one of my 6 role based competencies (although "Generating Support for your Ideas" is one of the 7 general employee competencies, although I heard that model is considered out-dated and is going to be reviewed next year with a view to right-sizing 2 of the competencies, so who knows?).  

 

And I certainly don't want the valuable employees that are in my span-of-control distracted during our mission-critical People Perfect Pre-Planning Preparation Period (or 6P as we usually call it now, at least in the CIG group during KYR period before CNY, according to JA and TP this kind of acronym needs to go in the AD - Acronym Directory - before it can be an accepted regular acronym for using in formal leader-led communications level 4 or above, so we just use it informally for now and say "screw you" to the internal comms auditors, better to ask for forgiveness than permission eh!).  

 

Anyway, elimination of unnecessary change is the #2 opportunity for reduction of per-headcount churn related operating expenditure (according to the Corporate Playbook on Change-Management of Simplification Initiatives - Volume 2- Manager Guidance - 2015 Phase 3 out of 7, East Asia Edition).  So it's important to stay vigilant.  Although I hear they are re-ranking the opportunities in the winter.

 

So I salute the NYT for its ongoing vigilance in this area.  At least within the current fiscal period, perhaps not on an ongoing basis.

[stapler]

Haha that's great tysond. My only disappointment is that you didn't use "deliverables" or "KPI"!

[imron]

@tysond.  You forget to include "moving forward" somewhere in all of that.

[tysond]

Thank you for your feedback.  As you know this is a group effort and only by working together can we ensure synergistic benefits are exploited for maximum effect!

 

As I am sure you are aware, I was time constrained and was trying to reply with utmost agility to a fast moving opportunity.  Moving forward I will be sure give my recommendation that we adopt your global best practices within the deliverables for this project.  Extended v-team feedback is a core KPI in our performance stack-ranking process so I trust our mutual co-operation extends into the 360 degree feedback period.

[studychinese]

While the writer is probably right about the infliction of political correctness (Chinese version) in the Chinese language, it is doubtful that the NYT will be taking issue with the same thing that has happened in the English language (as the NYT supports it). What the Chinese government has done is rather easy to do. Create 'media majorities' in which the media toes a single line, and actual majority opinion gets swayed from one position to even an opposite position over time. Gay marriage has to be the biggest swing in opinion in the decade. I know people that have swung from 'against' to 'for' as the media majority changed to support. The cognitive dissonance is so bad that they deny they even held their original opinion.

 

So has the Chinese government used and abused language? No doubt. But saying it deserves some global context, which the article lacks.

[Basil]

The Euro Referendum is the another one, just before the UK election, a chart on the telegraph showed that the number of people wanting out had been slowly rising to around 60% over the last 20 years, all of a sudden the chart shows that support for Brexit has dropped from a peak of 60% in 1990 to around 35% now. 

[roddy]

Oh hush. It's an op-ed piece by a regular contributor, not the NYT 'taking issue', and given the writer is an award-winning Chinese writer who's spoken out in the past about related issues, it's hardly surprising he didn't put in a sappy 'on the other hand' paragraph to keep the 'we're all as bad as each other' crew happy. The man doesn't even speak English.* What's he meant to do?

 

*I think. I've seen him speak at English-language events through a translator.

 

Anyone who wants to discuss the failings of the non-Chinese press, please do start another topic.