Abstract：Language and script-related issues are closely associated with the cause of the Communist Party and the Chinese people’s well-being. Language and Script Planning is one of the major concerns to be addressed in assessing the nation’s governance capability and its modernization as a nation. The Communist Party of China has accumulated valuable theoretical and practical experience in language and script planning in the past 100 years. Therefore, a systematic review is critically important for the Party’s policy-making in language and script planning in the new era. Previous literature has laid a solid foundation in exploring the agents, contents, objects, approaches, and effects of the language and script planning exercised by the Party, which are especially conducive to the analysis of the its orientations during the past 100 years. A review of the orientations adopted by the Party not only allows us to retrospect on this unique facet of history but also facilitates the internalization of the valuable experience from our predecessors.
Orientation refers to a complex of dispositions toward languages and their roles in society in language and script planning. It reveals how language and script planning per se is perceived by a political party, and the fundamental role of the language(s) within a particular socioeconomic context. These perceptions may be largely unconscious and implicitly specified, yet they are at the most fundamental level of arguments about language and its planning. Orientations in language planning, therefore, oversee the language and script planning process as well as its activities conducted by a political party. Drawing on theories of language planning orientations proposed by major scholars, we established four orientations as our theoretical underpinning for further analysis: language-as-tool, language-as-means-for-cultural-adaptation, language-as-resource and governance-oriented language planning orientation. Based on crucial documentation such as public and language policy documents, speech memos of important political leaders, archives concerning Chinese Communist Party’s history, and scholastic discussions regarding language planning in China, this paper attempts to analyze the orientations in language and script planning adopted by Chinese Communist Party in the past 100 years, and reveal the orientation shift and developmental trend chronologically.
Drawing on text analysis of the aforementioned historical documentation, this paper reveals that the orientations of language and script planning adopted by Chinese Communist Party have witnessed substantial changes in the four critical historical periods. Language and script planning was first conducted for a combination of instrumental and cultural purposes within the period of 1921-1949, and then for instrumental-dominant purpose in serving the nation’s establishment and development between 1949 and 1978. In 1978-2012, the orientation witnessed a transition from instrumental-dominant planning to resource-oriented planning, which was followed by a governance-oriented language and script planning approach since the beginning of the new era in 2012. Notwithstanding the changes of orientations, the invariable focus of language and script planning by the Chinese Communist Party has always been to serve the country’s national safety, ethnic solidarity, and its socioeconomic development. On the other hand, the shift of orientations in the party’s language and script planning did not take place without weighing up the social, political, and economic context of the corresponding periods of time. This not only demonstrates the Party’s capability of self-renovating and advancing with times, but also exhibits its fact-based approach and pragmatism-oriented governance style, both of which are of enormous significance in maintaining a political party’s vitality.
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Shen Qi Zhao Dan. Orientations in Centennial Language and Script Planning by the Chinese Communist Party. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 0, (): 1-.
