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


etm001

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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.

 

 

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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