31.2335, Review: Chinese, Mandarin; Sino-Tibetan; Applied Linguistics: Yuming, Wei (2019)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-31-2335. Tue Jul 21 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.2335, Review: Chinese, Mandarin; Sino-Tibetan; Applied Linguistics: Yuming, Wei (2019)

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Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 23:42:45
From: Yuqi Gao [yuqi at uni-bremen.de]
Subject: The Language Situation in China

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36609637


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-4746.html

EDITOR: Li  Yuming
EDITOR: Li  Wei
TITLE: The Language Situation in China
SUBTITLE: Volume 5
SERIES TITLE: Language Policies and Practices in China [LPPC]
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Yuqi Gao, University of Bremen

SUMMARY

“The Language Situation in China”, a book edited by Li Yuming and Li Wei,
provides a unique look at the developmental trends of Chinese linguistic life
and culture. It is a perfect addition to the other volumes of the series
“Language Policies and Practices in China,” which seeks to bring together
original studies on language, culture and society from China and the Chinese
diaspora across the world. Right from the preface, the editors offer us a
brief overview of the diglossic nature of the society and the evolving
language policies in China. These developments reflect a shift in China’s
linguistic life from being a monoglossic to a diglossic society. The authors
acknowledge that while Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) is the dominant language,
there are also other regional Han dialects across the country. After the
introduction, a meta-analysis of twenty-seven theses focusing on the Chinese
linguistic life and culture is conducted and key findings are presented in
five sections including: “Special focuses”, “Special fields”, “Hot topics”,
“Words and passages” and “Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan”. The last part contains
 the “Appendices” which include: “Chronology of major events in linguistic
life 2013”, “Notice of the State Council on the Publication of the Table of
General Standard Chinese Characters” as well as the “Notice of 12 departments,
including the Ministry of Education, on the implementation of the Table of
General Standard Chinese Characters”. One of the editors, Li Yuming, is a
leading scholar who has been closely involved in Chinese language research and
planning over many decades. On the other hand, the English editor Li Wei, is
the Chair of Applied Linguistics at the University College London (UCL) and
the Director of UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics. This newly translated
collection of papers is a summary of the work undertaken jointly by the
Chinese government and academics in establishing language policies, promoting
the standardization of Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua), protecting the dialects
in different regions of China, and achieving the mutual or multilateral
linguistic and cultural communication with the rest of countries/regions
across the world. “The Language Situation in China” goes well beyond the topic
of Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua), and it could well form a basic understanding
of the dialects (i.e. the protection of dialects, such as Shanghai dialect),
the ethnic languages (i.e. minority languages), sign language, Chinese
language education as well as China’s neighboring languages. Arguably, the
book is an excellent resource to scholars, educators, students and linguistic
enthusiasts--especially those interested in Chinese language and culture,
China’s language policies and foreign languages in China.

The book begins by reflecting on the language situation in China up to 2013
and then demonstrates the regularization of the spoken and written Chinese
language in “Part I: Special focuses”. Here, it depicts the preparation
process of the “Table of General Standard Chinese Characters”, a significant
step for implementing the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Standard
Spoken and Written Chinese Language. These norms are designed to meet the
needs of the broad application of Chinese characters in all areas of society.
The infiltration of Chinese characters across the society is considered to be
of great significance for promoting the development of China's economic,
social, cultural, and educational undertakings. Through the comparative
analysis of more than 1 billion words used by the print media, broadcast media
and online media in 2013, it was found that 99.992% of all the characters used
in these media are included in the “Table of General Standard Chinese
Characters”, indicating that the classification and quantification of this
Table conformed to the objective law of using Chinese characters. The readers
are to obtain an understanding of the preparation process of this national
standard of Chinese language through three major approaches: recurring
deliberations on grading and quantitative determinations for each grade,
appropriately handling the treatment of simplified and traditional characters,
and re-cataloguing the variant character table. Against such a macro backdrop,
the papers in the different sections are innovative and exploratory to some
extent.

EVALUATION 

In 2013, China witnessed its first steps of legal institutionalization,
standardization, regularization and informatization of language; and the
publication of the “Table of General Standard Chinese Characters” was a
landmark achievement. The standardization of Chinese languages and characters
and the multi-directional inheritance of Chinese language and culture was
vigorously promoted as legal provisions; therefore, the scholars shifted their
research interests to those “hot topics” that reflected the status quo of the
language in society.

The construction of the book meshes well with its organization and lends
itself successfully to the study of different topics covered in the Chinese
language. Each part of the book consists of several papers under specific
topics and provides a detailed account of various aspects of the Chinese
linguistic life through observations, surveys and other pieces of evidence.
Some of the papers are qualitative descriptions, while the others are full of
quantitative analysis. Based on the background of the “Table of General
Standard Chinese Characters”, a panorama of the language situation in China is
gradually but logically presented: dialects, minority languages, sign
language, China’s neighboring languages, the foreign languages in China,
language services and some popular phrases, Internet slang and emoticons...
even the language situation (mainly Traditional Chinese) in Hong Kong, Macau
and Taiwan are presented to the readers in the Western community. The
orderliness of the book conforms to the academic requirement. However, while
each section creates a neat package, certain areas seem forced to conform to
the structure of the original Chinese version. For instance, “Part II: Special
fields” includes topics that focus on China’s neighboring languages. This is
followed by the topic of “dialects” and the “protection of dialects” as well
as topics relevant to “minority language” and “sign language”. Surprisingly,
the topics of “language and education” and “language services,” as well as a
topic focusing completely on the overseas Chinese language and its
dissemination also appear in the same section. These topics could be covered
in a better way by creating another section or by including them into either
earlier or later parts of the book. In this case, the authors provide good
material and content but the quality of the book is hampered by poor
organization. Unfortunately, the intriguing papers may confuse the Western
readers because the organization and coherence of the topics covered in every
section are unclear, resulting in the distortion of the flow of the whole
book. In addition, the title of each section is not aligned with the
“Contents” of a book that is originally written in English. However, the
existing structure in its original language of publication is in line with
Chinese linguistic habits. The inevitability of translation loss and the
consideration of retaining the original flavour of this book may have
contributed to this phenomenon.

Overall, a detailed story of the situation of language development in China is
shown in a readable and inspiring style. Each paper makes use of tables and
figures to indicate the statistics of every linguistic phenomenon in 2013.
These firsthand data and accounts provide deeper insight into relevant
linguistic phenomena. For example, “The state of language services in the
healthcare industry” paper offers the readers a full account of a study, from
the survey design to the empirical analysis, as well as the reflections and
recommendations. It vividly presents and describes the role of language and
accompanying language services in the context of the increasingly intensified
doctor-patient disputes in China, with the suggestions of “strengthening
awareness of language services among medical personnel”, “creating a good
healthcare environment as part of hospital administration” and “increasing
understanding and tolerance between doctors and patients” in the final
section.

“The Language Situation in China” is a collection of significant events in
Chinese linguistic life accented by the scholars who studied it and is
correlated with cultural communication worldwide. The book’s abundant use  of
vivid figures and statistics helps to make the linguistic phenomena concerning
the Chinese language, characters and culture comparable with that of other
languages. It is made clear that the linguistic phenomena of the Chinese
language are something more than significant events on a timeline. The authors
present a broad and in-depth analysis of various aspects of Chinese
linguistics at home and abroad, furnishing a panoramic sketch of major events
in linguistic life in 2013. The highlight of this book is the reflective view
of Chinese linguistic developments in society despite its interactive nature
as a means of interpersonal and cross-cultural communication. These papers
contain unique insights into the thinking behind much of the contemporary
Chinese linguistic phenomena. Its publication does build up the possibility of
cooperation between Chinese and Western scholars in the study of language
standardization, language and culture, languages of Chinese diaspora in the
world, Chinese as a Second Language (CSL), and Chinese as a global language.
However, it should be noted that this book is only a glimpse of the Chinese
linguistic life in the year of 2013, an updated 2019 version in Chinese is now
available.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Yuqi GAO is a master student specialized in linguistics at the University of
Bremen, Germany. Her current research interests are World Englishes, corpus
linguistics, language testing, translation and intercultural communication.
She is a former linguist (editor/translator/English teacher) respectively in
ASIAL(TEN)N Pte., Ltd and Beijing New Oriental Vision Overseas Consulting Co.,
Ltd in Singapore and P. R. China. She is also a CATTI Translation Test
Examiner as well as a certified member of TAC and IATIS.





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