Applied Linguistics at the Turn of the Century

Author: Yu Genyuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-12-01
Features: Applied linguistics is the driving force behind the development of modern Chinese linguistics.
In the early 1940s, when I first encountered linguistics, I heard about the distinction between theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics, but my understanding at the time was quite vague. Theoretical linguistics, of course, dealt with theories, but what exactly was the "application" in applied linguistics, and what content did it study, remained unclear. In the past two decades, with the rapid expansion of linguistics' scope of application, research in applied linguistics has been widely valued in the linguistic community, and its content has gradually become more defined. I have not conducted in-depth research on applied linguistics and can still be considered an outsider. However, based on my limited understanding, the greatest feature of applied linguistics lies in its close connection with social reality and its service to practical life. If this understanding is not mistaken, then the main driving force behind the rapid modernization of Chinese linguistics in the past century may very well be applied linguistics.
Traditional Chinese textual, phonetic, and etymological studies also had their application purposes—namely, interpreting characters and understanding classics, with research aimed at the past. In the late 19th century, Ma Jianzhong's Wazhongwen Tong was published, introducing Western linguistic theories and methods and separating Chinese grammar research from textual and etymological studies. This was a powerful blow to the traditional Chinese linguistics dominated by textual, phonetic, and etymological studies. However, the subject of Wazhongwen Tong was limited to the classical Chinese of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, still oriented toward the past. Around the same time as Wazhongwen Tong's publication, influenced by Western phonetic scripts and Japanese kana, the Qieyinzi movement was booming in southern China. The Qieyinzi movement was entirely dedicated to serving social reality and quickly spread northward after its inception, laying the foundation for the development of phonetic symbols and the promotion of Mandarin. In the early 20th century, the nationwide promotion of phonetic symbols and the Mandarin movement marked a significant turning point for Chinese linguistics, shifting its focus from the past to social reality. It was the pioneer of applied linguistics in China, and its profound significance lies in fundamentally changing the direction of Chinese linguistic research.
To meet the needs of the phonetic symbols and Mandarin movement, some linguists with progressive ideas turned their attention to the modern era, publishing several works on Mandarin pronunciation and beginning to organize efforts to compile Mandarin dictionaries. The most influential was Li Jinxi's New Grammar of Modern Chinese (1924), the first systematic study of vernacular grammar in China and the formation of a complete grammatical system, playing a pioneering role in modern Chinese grammar research. The Mandarin Dictionary compiled by the Chinese Great Dictionary Compilation Office completely broke free from the old framework of dictionaries from Shuowen Jiezi to Kangxi Dictionary and was completed in eight volumes by 1945. It was the first modern-oriented dictionary in China and laid the foundation for the compilation of modern dictionaries.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the purpose of linguistics serving society became even clearer, and the role of applied linguistics became more prominent. In 1951, The People's Daily serialized Lu Shuxiang and Zhu Dexi's Talks on Grammar and Rhetoric, disseminating grammatical knowledge and guiding language use, sparking a nationwide in learning grammar and rhetoric and greatly advancing Chinese grammar research. In October 1955, the National Conference on Textual Reform and the Academic Conference on the Standardization of Modern Chinese played a crucial role in promoting the development of Chinese linguistics. Both conferences focused on applied linguistics. The Draft Proposal for Simplifying Chinese Characters and the determination of "Putonghua" approved by the National People's Congress after the conference, as well as the Hanyu Pinyin Scheme implemented after the conference, were all major events affecting the cultural life of the entire nation.
To promote the standardization of Chinese, the Institute of Linguistics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences began compiling the Modern Chinese Dictionary in 1956, with Lu Shuxiang and Ding Shengshu serving as successive chief editors. After multiple revisions, it was officially published in 1978, becoming the first highly academic standardized dictionary in China and receiving widespread praise both domestically and internationally. To support the promotion of Putonghua, surveys of Chinese dialects were conducted nationwide in the 1950s and 1960s, with a scale and scope unprecedented in history. More importantly, they trained a generation of dialect researchers, laying a solid foundation for the rapid development of Chinese dialect research in recent years.
The role of applied linguistics in promoting the development of modern Chinese linguistics became evident in the 1950s and 1960s. In the two decades since the reform and opening-up policy, Chinese linguistics has achieved unprecedented development under its guidance. A prominent change is the emergence of new disciplines such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, pragmatics, and teaching Chinese to foreigners, most of which are closely related to applied linguistics or are themselves part of applied linguistics. This indicates that applied linguistics has matured in China. Among these new disciplines, computational linguistics and teaching Chinese to foreigners are undoubtedly in the lead in terms of development speed and may become the main driving force behind the future development of Chinese linguistics.
In recent years, computer technology has developed at an astonishing pace, affecting research in all disciplines. In linguistics, this has given rise to computational linguistics as a new discipline, with speech engineering technology becoming a hot topic. After 20 years of effort, research in Chinese speech recognition and synthesis, natural language understanding, Chinese information processing, the construction of Chinese corpora, the frequency statistics of modern Chinese characters, and the frequency statistics of modern Chinese words and sentence patterns have all achieved remarkable results, with some approaching international advanced levels. These projects all fall under the umbrella of applied linguistics and were mostly completed through close collaboration between engineering experts and linguists.
What deserves special attention is that some speech engineering technology experts have joined the ranks of Chinese linguistic research while collaborating with linguists. Their research directions and methods have greatly broadened the horizons of Chinese linguistic research. We need more computational linguists proficient in Chinese research, and more importantly, we need to train a new generation of linguists skilled in computational linguistics. They will become the main force driving the progress of Chinese linguistics, and with their push, Chinese linguistics is likely to experience a qualitative leap in the near future.
In the past, teaching Chinese to foreigners was sometimes ridiculed as "childish," but in the past two decades, it has "emerged as a new force" and has become one of the fastest-growing and most influential new disciplines in the field of linguistics. This is naturally closely related to the country's reform and opening-up policy. Over the past 20 years, the number of international students has surged, the number of teachers engaged in teaching Chinese to foreigners has doubled, and research results have continuously emerged, finally adding a vibrant new discipline to the field of Chinese linguistics. Professor Lu Shuxiang pointed out more than once since the early 1950s that teaching Chinese to foreigners is an important force driving Chinese linguistic research. However, for decades, this force has not been fully utilized. The reasons are multifaceted: in the past, too much emphasis was placed on the political role of teaching Chinese to foreigners, and in recent years, too much emphasis has been placed on the economic benefits it brings. Neither teaching nor research has been placed in the primary position, nor has it been examined from the perspective of the development of Chinese linguistics.
There are many urgent issues in teaching Chinese to foreigners that need in-depth research, some of which may become new breakthrough points in Chinese linguistic research. Let me give two simple examples: our current phonetic research cannot solve the problem of foreigners' accented speech, and our current grammatical research cannot clearly explain the usage of "le" to foreigners. This shows that our past research was not comprehensive or precise enough, and the fundamental reason lies in the neglect of pragmatic analysis. Teaching Chinese to foreigners is a highly interdisciplinary new discipline that must be studied from various angles to promote its development and improve the research level of Chinese linguistics.
At the turn of the century, the world is facing a new technological revolution, the core of which is information technology based on computers. For linguistics, the core of this technological revolution is computational linguistics, and its development will have an immeasurable impact on all fields of linguistics. As China's international status continues to rise, the number of foreigners learning Chinese will increase at an even faster pace, and in the near future, a phenomenon known as the "Chinese fever" may emerge internationally. Our teaching and research must be fully prepared to welcome this phenomenon.
Faced with such rapid development in the objective situation, the tasks of applied linguistics have become even more arduous, and its prospects have become broader. At this critical time, the establishment of the Department of Applied Linguistics at Beijing Broadcasting University was a very visionary decision. It is hoped that the establishment of the Department of Applied Linguistics will not only cultivate specialized talents in applied linguistics but also become the driving force behind the development of modern Chinese linguistics.