Early on, your work mainly focused on the pre-modern period. More recently, you have written at length on how the Chinese language is evolving under the influence of technological, political, and economic forces. What prompted this expansion in focus?
Two reasons:
a. I am by nature a philologist. That means I am interested in language and linguistics. Consequently, I have long taught a popular course called “Language, Script, and Society in China” at Penn, and that has led me to devote a considerable amount of my attention to what is happening to Chinese at the present time.
b. Although I am still decidedly a premodernist, I feel that it is my duty to understand what is going on in China at the present moment, because I used to travel there frequently and have many friends there. I want to know what is happening to them.
The third edition of the Dictionary of Modern Standard Chinese was recently released to much fanfare. Many news outlets have remarked on the decision not to include the popular saying “leftover women”. What do you think about this decision, and what do you think it might say about language policy in China?
All dictionary makers have to make decisions about what to include and what to omit. The editors of the new edition of the Dictionary of Modern Standard Chinese probably felt that the term is unnecessarily demeaning and that it was transitory (would not last). That’s their call.
The upcoming Alibaba IPO is currently making waves in the financial papers, a sign of the growing importance of the Chinese e-commerce to global markets. Meanwhile, the so-called “Great Firewall,” and the other various censorship mechanisms of the Party show no sign of weakening, leading Chinese netizens to employ a wildly creative variety of slang terms to get around the censors. How do you think the Chinese internet will develop in the future?
We now know that the Alibaba IPO was wildly successful, bringing in $25 billion, but we don’t know how long the euphoria will last. What really matters is how well Alibaba will deliver on its promised services.
As for censorship of the media in China, I think this is a hugely important issue, one which will have serious implications for the health of the Chinese economy and society. If the crackdown continues to intensify, as we read in the news every day, the internet simply cannot continue to function as an effective and unfettered means of communication.
On your group blog, Language Log, you recently criticized the Chinese language start-up Chineasy for their misleading approach to Chinese language pedagogy, and for several glaring factual errors in their promotional materials. At the same time, this company was able to raise over 300 thousand dollars in their month-long Kickstarter campaign, and they have recently signed a contract with a well-known publisher. What is it about Chineasy that you think appeals so much to would-be language learners?
It’s perceived to be a painless quick fix, plus it has clever graphics and a very effective marketing team. But the linguistics behind it is horrendously poor. Chineasy is deceiving and harming countless individuals who believe that it will help them learn Chinese quickly and easily. It will do neither. In the end, it will only frustrate those who use it in an attempt to learn Chinese.
As China’s economic influence in the world grows, some are predicting we will see a concurrent growth in linguistic and cultural influence as well. You have posted on supposed Chinglish borrowings in English several times on your blog (for example, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=12245), finding that unlike Japanese, for example, few Chinese words have successfully entered the English lexicon. What barriers to entry are limiting the spread of Mandarin-language movies, television, and music into other countries?
If China wants to have a cultural impact on other countries in movies, television, music, literature, and so forth, it needs to develop greater creativity and originality in all of these fields. It can’t just rely on advertising, propaganda, and so forth.
In your long career as a sinologist, you have seen enormous changes in the attitude of the Chinese government towards the cultural and linguistic heritage of China. How do you see this shift in attitude influencing the Chinese education system in the future, both in mainland China, and also in the larger “sinosphere†of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities, like Vancouver?
Overseas Chinese communities will tend to be more conservative in their ideals, though progressive in their actual lifestyle and usages. Mainland China will continue to race to the future, because its overwhelming desire is to be preeminent in science, technology, commerce, and so on, and it cannot achieve those aims without modernization across the board — or so its leaders think.
