Daur Language and Society Culture

Author: Ding Shiqing
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-07-01
Features: Language is a cultural phenomenon. On one hand, language itself is culture, an important component of the overall cultural system. On the other hand, language contains rich cultural content and serves as an information system that reflects and understands culture. Therefore, observing and studying language from a cultural perspective has become an important aspect of linguistic research. Researching society and culture through language has a long tradition in China, with ancient works like Erya and Shiming as well as Qing Dynasty glossaries contributing significantly to the examination of ancient artifacts and institutions through linguistic analysis. However, from a modern scientific perspective and methodology, the study of language and culture is perhaps best exemplified by Luo Changpei's book Language and Culture, published in 1950. Applying materials from languages of various sizes and origins across China and the world, Luo studied cultural relics, cultural contact, ethnic origins, migration, and marriage systems from six aspects—etymology, word formation psychology, loanwords, place names, personal names, and kinship terms—pioneering the field of language and culture studies in China and establishing it as a foundational work in contemporary cultural linguistics. Thirty years later, a cultural linguistics wave swept across China, with scholars from all walks of life publishing extensively, marking a period of unprecedented vibrancy and optimism. Ding Shiqing, Associate Professor, focused on the language of a single ethnic minority from a cultural perspective, further advancing the study of cultural linguistics. He is a member of the Daur ethnic group, familiar with the Daur language as well as modern Turkic languages like Uyghur and Kazakh. He majored in linguistics, taught language courses for a long time after graduating, and has delivered the "Cultural Linguistics" course multiple times. With a solid foundation in linguistic theory and expertise in specific linguistic materials, writing this book was a natural progression for him. Through the Daur language, the book explores the Daur ethnic group's marriage and family life, religious beliefs, personal and place names, and cultural exchanges, spanning over 200,000 words. It covers everything from the vastness of heaven and earth to the intricacies of psychological concepts, with ease and fluency. The book is rich in material, accurate in detail, and well-organized, making it a meticulous and uniquely distinctive new work in the field of cultural linguistics. Its publication is sure to be welcomed by readers interested in cultural linguistics. In the author's view, cultural linguistics should also investigate deeper issues such as the overall attributes of language, language families and cultural types, the relationship between language structure and modes of thinking, and the cultural temperament of language. Through linguistic research, it aims to construct a comprehensive cultural image of an ethnic group. Today, linguistics is no longer just about "studying language for the sake of language." Linguistic research should take humans as its starting point, focusing on the relationship between language, society, and culture. In terms of methodology, it is not only necessary to inherit the effective methods of traditional linguistics but also to emphasize nonlinear linguistic analysis, ultimately achieving a transformation in the framework of linguistic thinking. Within the same framework of thinking, science cannot achieve qualitative leaps, and linguistics cannot continue to develop in the same framework.