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During the nineteenth century, changing political and social relations between China and the West, together with changes in material conditions, brought growing numbers of missionaries, diplomats, merchants and other Westerners to China and created new conditions for the study of the Chinese language. Knowledge of the Chinese language gradually became more accessible and verifiable (Klöter, 2024). These changes were accompanied by the expansion and gradual institutionalisation of Chinese studies in the West, as reflected in the establishment of the first professorship related to Chinese studies in France in 1814 and the proliferation of Chinese dictionaries, grammars, textbooks and other linguistic works.
These changes in Western studies of Chinese have attracted scholarly attention. Previous research has, for example, debated whether a shift from Nanjing Mandarin to Beijing Mandarin occurred around the mid-nineteenth century, drawing on works by Western scholars (e.g., Lu 2007, Simmons 2020, Li and Meng 2024), as well as the growing emphasis on spoken Chinese in Europe during the same period (e.g., Klöter, 2024). These observations raise a broader question: were these relatively separate developments, or did they form part of wider shifts in the study of Chinese over the course of the nineteenth century?
Building on previous scholarship, this panel examines shifts in nineteenth-century Western studies of Chinese across areas such as grammar and script. Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive history of Chinese-language studies during this period, it aims to bring together research on different aspects of the language to ask what changed in the objects, approaches, and purposes of Chinese-language research, when these changes occurred, and what factors were associated with them. It further considers whether these changes suggest distinct phases in nineteenth-century Chinese-language studies and how they were related to the broader historical context. Taken together, these studies may also contribute to an understanding of the relationship between nineteenth-century research and subsequent studies of Chinese in the twentieth century.
English will be accepted as the working language at the symposium
References
Klöter, Henning. 2024. “Interwoven Processes in Linguistic Historiography: An Integrated Perspective on the History of Chinese Language Studies in Europe”. Historiographia Linguistica 51. 299–329.
Li, Yan 李焱 and Meng Fanjie孟繁傑. 2024. “Cong Taixi shijiao kan Qing zhonghouqi Beijing Guanhua yu Guanhua de guanxi 從泰西視角看清中後期北京官話與官話的關係 [The Relationship between the Beijing Dialect and Mandarin in the Mid- to Late Qing Period: A Western Perspective]”. Journal of Jilin University (Social Sciences Edition) 1. 196–211.
Lu, Guoyao 魯國堯. 2007. “Yanjiu Mingmo Qingchu Guanhua Jichu fangyan de niansan nian licheng- ‘cong zifengli kan’ dao ‘cong zimianshang kan’ 研究明末清初官話基礎方言的廿三年歷程——‘從字縫裡看’到‘從字面上看’” [Twenty-Three Years of Research on the Dialectal Basis of Mandarin in the Late Ming and Early Qing: From ‘Reading between the Lines’ to ‘Reading the Text at Face Value’]. Linguistic Sciences 6 (2), 3–22.
Simmons, Richard VanNess. 2020. “What was standard Chinese in the nineteenth century?”. In: H. Klöter and M. S Saarela edit. Language Diversity in the Sinophone World: Historical Trajectories, Language Planning, and Multilingual Practices. London/New York: Routledge. 13–38.
These changes in Western studies of Chinese have attracted scholarly attention. Previous research has, for example, debated whether a shift from Nanjing Mandarin to Beijing Mandarin occurred around the mid-nineteenth century, drawing on works by Western scholars (e.g., Lu 2007, Simmons 2020, Li and Meng 2024), as well as the growing emphasis on spoken Chinese in Europe during the same period (e.g., Klöter, 2024). These observations raise a broader question: were these relatively separate developments, or did they form part of wider shifts in the study of Chinese over the course of the nineteenth century?
Building on previous scholarship, this panel examines shifts in nineteenth-century Western studies of Chinese across areas such as grammar and script. Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive history of Chinese-language studies during this period, it aims to bring together research on different aspects of the language to ask what changed in the objects, approaches, and purposes of Chinese-language research, when these changes occurred, and what factors were associated with them. It further considers whether these changes suggest distinct phases in nineteenth-century Chinese-language studies and how they were related to the broader historical context. Taken together, these studies may also contribute to an understanding of the relationship between nineteenth-century research and subsequent studies of Chinese in the twentieth century.
English will be accepted as the working language at the symposium
References
Klöter, Henning. 2024. “Interwoven Processes in Linguistic Historiography: An Integrated Perspective on the History of Chinese Language Studies in Europe”. Historiographia Linguistica 51. 299–329.
Li, Yan 李焱 and Meng Fanjie孟繁傑. 2024. “Cong Taixi shijiao kan Qing zhonghouqi Beijing Guanhua yu Guanhua de guanxi 從泰西視角看清中後期北京官話與官話的關係 [The Relationship between the Beijing Dialect and Mandarin in the Mid- to Late Qing Period: A Western Perspective]”. Journal of Jilin University (Social Sciences Edition) 1. 196–211.
Lu, Guoyao 魯國堯. 2007. “Yanjiu Mingmo Qingchu Guanhua Jichu fangyan de niansan nian licheng- ‘cong zifengli kan’ dao ‘cong zimianshang kan’ 研究明末清初官話基礎方言的廿三年歷程——‘從字縫裡看’到‘從字面上看’” [Twenty-Three Years of Research on the Dialectal Basis of Mandarin in the Late Ming and Early Qing: From ‘Reading between the Lines’ to ‘Reading the Text at Face Value’]. Linguistic Sciences 6 (2), 3–22.
Simmons, Richard VanNess. 2020. “What was standard Chinese in the nineteenth century?”. In: H. Klöter and M. S Saarela edit. Language Diversity in the Sinophone World: Historical Trajectories, Language Planning, and Multilingual Practices. London/New York: Routledge. 13–38.