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

[Guest realmayo]

I think Roddy means that going forward there are exciting opportunities for stakeholders to optimise ongoing dialogue in an adjacent space.

 

I've often wondered about the Communistisation of Chinese, but perhaps it's too difficult to disentangle everything else that was going on at the end of the Qing when language reform certainly wasn't just a Commie thing and I think enouraged some western grammar into the language that didn't even exist in spoken Chinese at the time? Don't know if anyone can recommend any books about this?

[Basil]

I understand where he is coming from, his request has been fully reviewed, lessons have been learnt and we will strive to endeavour to conduct optimisations of relevant and/or related dialogue in an adjoining space at some unspecified point in the very near future.

 

 

Can't recommend any books, but I can't help but feel that novels got a hell of a lot simpler post glorious liberation.

[roddy]

If you ever get a chance, pick up a dictionary from a few decades back. You'll likely find example sentences featuring bumper agricultural harvests, revolutionary martyrs, brave peasants and cowardly landlords, etc, etc. I read something recently (anyone remember?) about the use of military metaphors - 前线、战线、战场.

[li3wei1]

There is a tendency to regard any change in any language that has happened since you were, I don't know, around 25, to be 'corruption'. Especially if it is initiated, or you think it might have been initiated, by people living somewhere else, or of a different color, or of a different social class.

 

Whatever has happened to the Chinese language, it is still the language by which 1.4 billion people go about their business and get things done. A few elites in a back room are not going to steer that ship without at least a little cooperation from the masses. I suspect a decent rock star/blogger has as much influence over the language as a member of the Revolutionary Language Reform Subcommittee. It may be nice to think about what the language may have been like if . . ., just as it's fun to speculate about what life in a nazified Europe would be like, but what's the point? Languages grow and change, in ways that we don't understand, can't predict, and have very little influence over (most of us).

[Guest realmayo]

Except that words do matter: to quote from the Perry Link article that the OP's link links to:

 

But how much do unnoticed linguistic habits reflect conceptual approaches to the world—or even, as Sun suggests, shape them? Sun quotes George Orwell that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” ... Since the 1950s, the Party’s Propaganda Department has disseminated lists of words for the media “to stress” and “to downplay” as political needs come and go,¹ and the unchanging assumption has been that this word-engineering helps to “guide thought.”

 

There is much evidence that it works, too. I was recently talking with a Chinese-language teacher whom I had not seen since 1989 in Beijing. Trying to recall our first meeting, she asked me, “Was that before or after the dongluan [turmoil]?” Teasing her, I asked, “What do you mean by dongluan? Student dongluan or government dongluan?” She replied reflexively: “Student dongluan, of course.” Then she peered at me for a moment, realized what I had meant, and said: “Oh, yes! Government dongluan. The massacre!” Then she went into a long apology to me: she herself had been a student protestor in 1989, had been in Tiananmen Square in the days before the massacre (but not during it); she was on the students’ side; she agreed with me. And yet the phrase “student turmoil” now rolled off her tongue as easily as “Wednesday.” How much conceptual baggage went along with it? How much does this kind of induced linguistic habit reinforce state power? And how much does this sort of thing affect Chinese writers? 

 

[Basil]

Perry Link writes some really insightful stuff.

[AdamD]

The Orwell reference comes late in this article, but it's there. It's always there.

 

China's use of euphemism is not that different from the putrid rhetoric some democratic goverments spew in order to justify repugnant policy and sheer disregard for the people they're supposed to govern (I'm thinking Australia here, and I've seen plenty of voters slurp up plenty of disingenuous rhetoric without stopping to question what they're being told, not to mention journalists who parrot the rhetoric with a straight face).

 

Having spent the past three months elbow-deep in sociolinguistics, and more recently China's development of Standard Chinese in the past 100 years, I'd like to see some peer-reviewed research to back up Murong Xuecun's argument, because to me it looks like he's angry that China's doing more or less what every other country is doing.

 

And the busting kid whose mother says “坚持”: Really? What else is she going to say? Perhaps Orwell can answer that.

[StChris]

 

 

If you ever get a chance, pick up a dictionary from a few decades back. You'll likely find example sentences featuring bumper agricultural harvests, revolutionary martyrs, brave peasants and cowardly landlords, etc, etc.

 

 

You don't even need to dig out a dusty old dictionary to find example of this. For anyone who regularly uses Pleco, just take a look at the sample sentences next time you look up a word, you'll often find references to counterrevolutionaries and grain harvests. If I just look at my search history from today (I've been looking up vocab from a modern Chinese drama I've been watching) I can find the following:

 

气魄   daring, boldness of vision (sample sentence: 以无产阶级革命家的气魄 "with a proletarian revolutionary's boldness of vision")

 

揭发  expose, unmask (sample sentence: 揭发检举反革命分子 "expose and denounce counterrevolutionaries")

[Angelina]

 

It's not good, I also don't like what is happening to the Chinese language now. And the way 'foreigners' are learning fast-food Chinese. And all the bad translations from English.

 

Can we start a new thread where we promote good Chinese? There is nothing wrong with change per se, languages always change. 

[Basil]

 

 

The Orwell reference comes late in this article, but it's there. It's always there.

 

Orwell got far too popular, mainstream, and like any faddish term in common currency, has become hyper-inflated.

 

I'm pretty sure that the people who lazily insert references to Orwell rather than think up a better more apt analogy deserve a good kicking. 

 

It'd be a shame if after the orwell hyperinflation we all give the ghost of orwell such a good kicking that no-one can ever mention his name or ideas again, even when they are the most pertinent analogy, without being ridiculed.

[Kenny同志]

Since the 1950s, the Party’s Propaganda Department has disseminated lists of words for the media “to stress” and “to downplay” as political needs come and go,¹ 

 

 

The Party's Propaganda Department is now known as the Publicity Department. 

[Simon_CH]

Oh come on! Can't we discuss a topic about China/the Chinese language for once without retorting to bad analogies (corporate speech) or whataboutery? 

 

I for one read the article with interest and would like to hear more (informed) opinions on it. 

[tysond]

@Simon_CH - fair enough - my point about making a post mocking English corporate speech was that to point out that there are trends in (for example, English) about using the language in a kind of "political" way.  Sorry it has detracted from the conversation on Chinese.

 

My thinking was - what does it mean to "brutalize" a language?  What is the "correct" state of a language and what is an aberration?  Do we accept political correctness or business speak or realpolitik language but criticize China for propitiating revolutionary and military terms?  Yes, this is "what aboutism".  Sorry about that.

 

Slogans are a part of life in the PRC, just as much as corporate language is a part of life in large companies.  I think many people in the PRC are able to use such language without necessarily believing it as literally true, or 100% reflecting their culture.  In other words, they are having a tiny bit of fun with the language while keeping a straight face.

 

Others - maybe not.  Are there true believers?  I am not sure.  People need to do and say what they need to do and say.  What you get accustomed to becomes reality & culture.  Language carries culture.  There's a good example of Korean Air retraining their pilots to use English in the cockpit after accidents that were attributed to cultural norms that can be avoided by jettisoning the cultural baggage of Korea (two airline puns there, sorry!).

 

The culture of the PRC is intertwined with its politics & media - otherwise what use would a propaganda department be.   There's not much opportunity for people to argue against the official phrases except in private life.  When we complain about the language being "brutalized" - it has to be seen in the context of censorship & media control.  Do farmers really believe their neighbour is a metaphysicist?  Or is it just a negative word they heard and repeated, like a child swearing?  Does it change anything? 

 

Are authors unable to criticize certain topics?  Certainly, with or without the language to do so there are many controls.  If they couch their thoughts inside official terminology and stories of fancy can they at least explore some of their history and ideas?  Maybe.   

 

But I don't think the language trends are anywhere near as important as the restriction of expression.  The largest concern is not (like in a big company) that there's a trend to use words that have modified, political meanings.  I can and do criticize that.  My concern is there's no way to debate this trend and introduce different language.  Lately, even the introduction of (let me call it) "new chengyu" has been censored -- phrases that could be use to mock official stances using plays on words.  

 

So to me, the argument that Chinese is being "brutalized" may be true but what of it?  Many people are smart enough to criticize it but they can't be heard.

 

Sorry if this is not informed enough, I too would like to hear expert or even just honest opinions.  What's yours?

[gato]

Restriction on speech is definitely a bigger problem than the government-influenced vocabulary. You can see the effects in the movie industry, where many quality movies about modern life are not allowed to be shown because they are politically incorrect. The less experience people have with freedom of speech, the more they are apt to act like sheep and unable to tolerate anything that's different.