491468
research-article2013
MCX40410.1177/0097700413491468Modern ChinaLee
Article
Defining Correctness:
The Tale of the
Contemporary Chinese
Dictionary
Modern China
2014, Vol. 40(4) 426­–450
© 2013 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0097700413491468
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Siu-yau Lee1
Abstract
Chinese dictionaries have long been an important tool for promoting the
political agenda of the state. Not much has changed in the twenty-first
century. A conventional assumption is that dictionary compilation has been
controlled by the state. An examination of the history of the Contemporary
Chinese Dictionary 现代汉语词典 suggests that such a claim is exaggerated.
While the state was indeed actively involved in the compilation of the
dictionary before the 1980s, the presumed propagandistic content of the
dictionary in the twenty-first century has been more a result of the profitseeking behavior of its publisher, the Commercial Press 商务印书馆, than
direct state control. In order to defend the market share of its product,
the Commercial Press needs to struggle with rival publishers to present to
the public a close affinity with the state, which has the authority to define
linguistic correctness. Consequently, the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary has
been revised in accordance with the changing political agenda of the state and
thus continues to support its nation-building project. This finding revises the
conventional wisdom on several scores, particularly by deepening the analysis
of language politics and reaffirming its importance in contemporary China.
Keywords
language politics, nation building, dictionary, the state
1The
Hong Kong Institute of Education, Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong
Corresponding Author:
Siu-yau Lee, Room 02, 2/F, Block 1, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10 Lo Ping Road,
Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong.
Email: [email protected]
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In December 2010, a broadcaster of the state-owned China Central Television
reported that students in a village elementary school in Guangxi province
were so poor that many of them could rely only on “problematic” dictionaries
for their learning. The story sparked wide concern: within just a few months
the school received thousands of dictionaries donated by citizens and corporations nationwide (Wang Meng, 2010).1 Given the poor schooling conditions in impoverished areas of China, to some observers such a problematization
of the lack of “good” dictionaries might seem outlandish. After all, since the
market reform in China, the dictionary market has experienced a significant
expansion, with more than 9,000 dictionaries being published by both private
and state-led publishers. Yet, as this article will demonstrate, it is precisely
the quotidian nature of dictionary compilation that marks the task as a potential site for the exercise of political power.
“Dictionary” is a very powerful word. It suggests authority, scholarship,
and precision. This is particularly true in China, where a unified writing script
was created in the Qin dynasty (221 bc–206 bc) and has been crucial to the
survival of the unified Chinese state since then (Kaske, 2008: 28). With the
aid of archival research and a systematic content analysis, this article explains
how the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary 现代汉语词典 (the Dictionary
hereafter) served the nation-building needs of the state in the 1950s and continues to do so in the twenty-first century, when the dictionary market has
already been largely liberalized.
In what follows, I will first explain the theoretical relationship between
nation building, language, and dictionaries. Then I will analyze how the
Contemporary Chinese Dictionary was made political by the state from the
1950s to the 1970s. A content analysis will be presented to demonstrate that
the Dictionary has continued to serve the political needs of the state in the
twenty-first century. Yet, although the political orientation of the Dictionary
has remained essentially the same, I will argue that its relationship with the
state in the twenty-first century is largely maintained out of the profit-seeking
behavior of its publisher. As such, this article complicates a simplistic explanation that the Dictionary remains political because it has been closely controlled by the state.
The Relationship between Nation Building,
Language, and Dictionaries
As used in this article, the term “nation building” refers to attempts to incorporate distinctive communities (in terms of culture, language, history, or
race) into a given state. According to Benedict Anderson, nineteenth-century
European nation building was fortified by the expansion of the printing
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Modern China 40(4)
industry because it enabled enormous numbers of people to know of one
another and imagine themselves as a community (Anderson, 1991: 71–75).
Underlying this influential thesis is an affirmation of the importance of communication technology and a common language. As Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
(1980: 117–18) has argued, without a common language, the capacity of the
printing press might have been less effective. It is therefore not surprising
that dictionaries were among the first genre of books that appeared almost as
soon as printing emerged (McInnis, 2001: 325). And it was the popularity of
dictionaries that made language standardization, and ultimately many nationalist movements, possible.
Dictionaries can be highly political precisely because of two unique functions they perform in language standardization. First, unlike other genres of
publication, dictionaries define words, the most fundamental component of
language. As Suzanne Romaine (1994: 25) explains, words are names that we
give to our experiences. Without a proper definition, the same word can mean
different things to different people (McQuarrie and Mick, 1992). A handy
example is the word “football,” which would conjure up ideas of an array of
different sports. Hence, given its apparent impartiality and scholarship, a dictionary can serve as an authority for words, and ultimately meanings, in a
community. This has made dictionaries a reference work that is required not
only by political elites who want to promote their ideas and policies but also
by ordinary people who want to acquire a “proper” education.
Second, dictionaries are unique because they reflect the boundaries of
“legitimate” words. We make sense of our world through the use of words.
Mountain people will have a word for mountains; people who live on plains
and have never seen a mountain may not have such a word. Similarly, as
George A. Miller (1991: 4) suggests, the more important something is, the
more words for it there are likely to be. Yet dictionaries are limited in coverage and cannot cover all the words still in use in a language (Williams,
1988: 15). Compiling a dictionary inevitably involves the deliberate selection of words to be defined and to be excluded (Crowley, 2005). Hence,
manipulating the range of “legitimate” words that people can get access to
is a potential means to exert control upon their behavior. In this regard, the
corpus of dictionaries can serve as an ideal representation of political elites’
effort to construct or present a social reality they perceive to be “correct.”
This does not mean of course that the state can restrict the range of words
that are expressible in language through dictionaries. There are, after all,
many sources from which people can learn new words. Although a dictionary can legitimize the words in its corpus, and thus can strengthen or
weaken the power of certain uses of a language, its boundary-drawing
power is never absolute.
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The Dictionary and Its Early Development
Although dictionaries can be highly political, they do not necessarily serve
the interests of the state. Compiling a dictionary requires not just political
power but also resources and linguistic knowledge, which are not always
controlled by the state. As such, the Dictionary serves as an excellent case
study for examining language politics in China on several levels. First, the
Dictionary is a prescriptive dictionary. In lexicography, there are generally
two approaches in defining words: descriptive and prescriptive. Dictionaries
compiled according to the former approach aim at describing the language
currently in use in a given society. In the English-speaking world, the descriptive tradition was established by the Oxford English Dictionary and then followed by American dictionaries such as the Webster’s New International
Dictionary. These dictionaries claim to be “descriptive” dictionaries mainly
because they include “non-standard” English such as slang and colloquialisms. In contrast, a prescriptive dictionary, which the Dictionary has claimed
to be,2 aims at stabilizing language to prevent it from changing (McInnis,
2001: 328). It tends to be more concerned about the “correctness” of language. In this regard, the positioning of the Dictionary as a prescriptive dictionary, which implies that its lexicographers are tasked with the responsibility
to define correctness, is more likely to explicate the politics of language in
China because, as Raymond Williams (1988: 9–10) argues, the so-called correctness of language is not something natural. Rather, it is often a reflection
of the power of a dominant group. Second, the Dictionary has gone through
several radical ideological shifts in China, each of which has had a significant
impact on its contents. Therefore, it is possible for researchers to compare the
different editions to see if and how the political concerns of the state have
influenced the compilation of the Dictionary.
Officially published in 1978, the first edition of the Dictionary contained
about 56,000 entries, ranging from words, phrases, and colloquialisms to idioms, listed alphabetically according to their pinyin romanization. On top of
definitions, some of the entries were also illustrated with sentence examples.
Unlike its predecessors such as the Sea of Words 辞海 (first published in
1936) and Sources of Words 辞源 (first published in 1915), which provided
detailed explanations for a wider range of professional terms and knowledge,
the Dictionary was positioned as a prescriptive dictionary that focused at
promoting putonghua (Yong, Luo, and Zhang, 2010: 324–26, 340–41; Chen
Pingyuan, 2007). Throughout the past decades, the Dictionary has been
revised five times. Today, the Dictionary (sixth edition, published in 2012)
has about 69,000 entries and is one of the most popular reference books on
the Chinese language.3
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The Dictionary was a part of the language reform that the Chinese state
introduced in the 1950s. Beginning on June 6, 1951, Renmin ribao published
a series of articles penned by prominent Chinese linguists, most of whom
went on to become editors of the Dictionary, on how to maintain the “purity”
of the Chinese language. Many of these articles argued that there were too
many dialects in China and that in order to complete the “important mission
of unifying the people, developing the culture, and accelerating the construction of socialism,” it was necessary for the people to share a common language (Lü, 1959). Obviously, these articles were written under the auspices
of the leaders of the state. Party and state leaders during the first decade of
Communist rule were especially sensitive to the power of language because
many of them had backgrounds in publishing and editorial work.4
The publication of the Renmin ribao articles was followed by two working
conferences on Chinese language and writing held in October 1955. The key
findings of the conferences were summarized in two policy documents issued
by the State Council in 1956: “Resolution on Announcing the Scheme for
Simplifying Chinese Characters” 关于公布汉字简化方案的决议 and
“Instructions for Promoting Putonghua” 关于推广普通话的指示. In the latter, the State Council listed twelve tasks that had to be undertaken to promote
a national standardized language (putonghua), including teaching putonghua
in all primary and secondary schools, using putonghua as the medium of
instruction in the military academies, and so on. Perhaps the most significant
task was to compile a medium-sized prescriptive text—the Contemporary
Chinese Dictionary—that could be consulted conveniently by the people.
Several Chinese linguists have argued that the language reform was necessary in order to popularize knowledge and reduce illiteracy and that it was
therefore apolitical (see, for example, Zhou, 1982: 6). Such ideas are not
new: they have been raised intermittently since the 1919 May Fourth
Movement (Guo, 2004: 93; Kaske, 2008: 466). By the 1950s, most Chinese
peasants were still classified as illiterate, which Chinese leaders like Mao
Zedong and Zhou Enlai attributed to the difficulty of learning traditional
Chinese characters. However, reducing illiteracy does not mean that the
reform was completely apolitical. In fact, as Glen Peterson (2001: 218)
shows, “illiteracy” was not framed as an urgent problem until the Communist
Party needed to gain greater control of the peasants so as to collectivize rural
society in the mid-1950s. Thus, the party’s campaigns to stamp out illiteracy
were driven not only by an ideological agenda that aimed to educate the
masses, but by logistical and strategic aims as well.
The compilation of the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary was, as a 1959
article in Renmin ribao put it, “the most important task in the language
reform” (Lü, 1959). Involvement of the state was obvious from the outset.
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Unlike other dictionaries, the Dictionary was compiled by the Language
Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a national academy
founded by the State Council in Beijing on November 1, 1949, for the control
of the nation’s scientific research. Although China is not the only country
with an official science academy to foster scientific research, the Chinese
Academy of Sciences had an extraordinarily close tie with the government
and therefore exercised little academic independence.
In May 1956, a Dictionary Editorial Office 词典编辑室 was set up within
the Institute on the orders of Zhou Enlai. Twenty-four editors were recruited
or assigned to join the project.5 Many of them were faculty from different
tertiary education institutes in Beijing; others were assigned from other
departments of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IL, 1956b). Although the
list of editors had to be approved by the State Council, the editors were, in the
main, highly professional linguists. For example, the chief editor/lexicographer of the project, Lü Shuxiang 吕叔湘, was a very prominent linguist.
After he had returned to China from his studies at the University of Oxford
and the University of London, he published articles and books on a wide
range of linguistic issues, making him one of the founders of modern Chinese
linguistics research. As professionals, the scholars-editors tended to pay little
attention to political “correctness” in their work on the Dictionary (IL, 1956a:
16). For example, in the first edition of the “Compilation Manual” written by
Lü Shuxiang in 1958, he mentioned that “examples given [in the Dictionary]
need to be ‘authentic’. . . don’t make them look like propaganda” (Lü, 1958:
120). Therefore, in addition to the twenty-four editors, the Language Research
Institute further assigned three persons to form a validation committee 审订
委员会 that was to be solely responsible for conducting political censorship
(IL, 1956a: 15).6 In the end, therefore, the principles that Lü Shuxiang set
forth in the “Compilation Manual” were not strictly followed by the lexicographers (IL, 2004: 76, 79).
Ironically, the political nature of the Dictionary was most evident when
the state suspended its compilation during the Cultural Revolution. In 1973,
a “trial edition” of the Dictionary was published for students. Although just
a trial edition, it nonetheless immediately incurred harsh criticism from the
leftists in power who supported the further radicalization of the Cultural
Revolution. Starting from March 1974, Yao Wenyuan launched a largescale political campaign 批鬥 against the Dictionary, condemning it as a
“return of revisionism and capitalism,” “a disruption of the anti-Confucianism movement,” etc. (Yang Deyan, 2005). The publisher of the Dictionary,
the Commercial Press, was ordered to destroy all the copies of the
Dictionary. (The press chose not to follow this order and secretly hid the
copies instead.)
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According to Chen Yuan 陈原, who was working at the Commercial Press
and was responsible for the publication of the trial edition, people criticized
the Dictionary for three main reasons. First, it contained “reactionary elements” 反动成份. Basically, any words that describe or imply the structure,
values, or operation of the imperial era or capitalist society could be considered “reactionary.” Therefore, entries such as imperialism 帝国主义 and
tenant-peasant 佃农 were singled out for condemnation (Chen Yuan, 1979:
102). The same label was also applied to, in the most extreme cases, words
that were considered too common or simple. Chen Yuan (1979: 98) provides
an excellent account of the rationale behind such labeling: “Scallions, fresh
ginger—who doesn’t know what these things are? . . . Only the landlords and
the bourgeoisie don’t know what scallions and fresh ginger are; and yet you
have included these words in the Dictionary. What is your intention for doing
this? You are wholeheartedly serving the landlords and the bourgeoisie.”7
Second, as the Dictionary contained too many reactionary words, it did
not include enough revolutionary terms such as Great Leap Forward, Mao
Zedong Thought, Chinese Communist Party, and so on (Shen, 2007: 72–77).
Third, the Dictionary contained too many “pessimistic” terms 消极词, meaning words, such as diseases and immoral behaviors, that involve denial, prohibition, refusal, absence or removal of something that causes happiness or
stimulation (Wen and Wang, 1994). Influenced by the revolutionary model
operas 样板戏, the critics argued that the socialist revolution should be joyful
and conducted in an optimistic manner (Chen Yuan, 1979: 101). Therefore,
for example, sorrow 悲 and other terms that contain the character 悲 had to
be removed.
The Dictionary is thus by no means an apolitical reference book. It is a
potential site for the exercise of political power and a reflection of the authorities’ attitude on how reality should be generalized and conveyed through
words. To sustain the image of a utopian Communist society during the
Cultural Revolution, the leftist leaders in power needed to carefully eliminate
all the elements that did not conform to that image. Not surprisingly, such a
radical and ahistorical approach to nation building would foster creations that
are extremely flexible and arbitrary, allowing those in power to define words
based on their own political needs (Mitter, 2005: 209; Schoenhals, 1992: 22).
In this regard, the Dictionary was suspended by the state not because it was
neutral or apolitical, but because it represented a different approach to nation
building, one which emphasized stability and responsible use of language.
Because of the above criticisms, the Dictionary went through a large-scale
revision during the Cultural Revolution. According to the lexicographers
involved in its compilation, the impact of the Cultural Revolution was evident
in the first edition (outside of the “trial edition”) of the Dictionary as they
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needed to publish it within one year after the end of the Revolution (i.e., 1977)
and did not have time to remove the “revolutionary elements” (Gao, 2005). As
a result, in the first edition of the Dictionary, not only were terms like Mao
Zedong Thought and Chinese Communist Party included, in many cases, we
also see “revolutionary elements” were added deliberately into the definitions
of the words. For example, for the word to lead/to direct 导, the lexicographers explained it with an example: “direct the revolution” 导向革命 (IL,
1977: 195). And in a similar fashion, patriotism 爱国主义 was defined as “the
love for one’s own country. It is a concept with class character. The working
class’s patriotism is integrated with the fundamental interests of the laborers in
our country, and connected to internationalism” (IL, 1977: 4).
The Dictionary in the Twenty-first Century
Have the political concerns of the state continued to influence the compilation of the Dictionary in the twenty-first century? To answer this question, we
need to compare different editions of the Dictionary. If the Dictionary is still
a tool used by the state to maintain its symbolic domination, we should be
able to identify some striking examples from the corpus that can reflect the
changing nation-building discourses promoted by the state.
To perform this task, I compare the first and the fifth editions, published in
1978 and 2005 respectively. They are worth studying not only because they
were the first and latest editions of the Dictionary when I conducted this
study, but also because they represent two significant shifts in the nationbuilding scheme of the state, which were marked by two important events—
the Cultural Revolution and the economic reform. By comparing the two
editions, we will be able to better reveal the political nature of the Dictionary.
The revision for the fifth edition, which began in 1999 and concluded in
May 2005, was the most comprehensive since the Dictionary’s initial publication. Apart from adding and removing entries, the lexicographers revised
the existing entries by adding/removing examples, giving new definition(s)
for words, updating pronunciation, providing further specifications of the
words, and so on (Commercial Press, 2005).
The differences between the revolutionary and reform eras are of course
many, and no one can reasonably be expected to exhaust all of them. However,
in order to formulate testable hypotheses for the content analysis, this article
focuses on the ideological shifts that define the nation-building project of the
state in the reform era.
One such shift, of course, would be the rise of market/capitalist values.
While discourses in the revolutionary era were characterized by socialist values aimed at building an egalitarian state under the leadership of “centralized
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planning” (Solinger, 1994: 12–16), the reform discourse is decidedly more
market-oriented. As is well known, when Deng Xiaoping came to power in
1978, he took action to reverse Mao Zedong’s revolutionary path in order to
guide China in a new market-oriented direction—an approach that came to be
known as the “reform and open door policy.” Chinese reformers increasingly
adopted neoclassical categories to rationalize their policies. Instead of condemning foreign investment as a “national betrayal,” slogans like “let some
prosper first so that others may follow” and “to get rich is glorious” took root
in Chinese society and policy circles from the 1980s to 1990s (Gittings, 1990:
244). And alongside a series of reforms that promoted privatization—such as
the household responsibility system—was a set of market values, or “qualities” 素质, such as efficiency (e.g., lower-price but higher-quality goods),
individual material enjoyment (e.g., investment, buying new flats, etc.), individual responsibility for one’s personal fate, etc. (Anagnost, 1997; Murphy,
2004; Kipnis, 2006).
Another major shift in the reform era has been the emphasis on “harmony.” Although it was not until the 2005 National People’s Congress that
the notion of “constructing a harmonious society” was explicitly proposed,
similar concepts—such as “stability”—had been emphasized by the Chinese
leaders after Mao. The notion of class struggle has been repudiated by the
Chinese leadership since 1984 (Ling, 1996: 11). The increasing calls for a
harmonious society have been in response to the problems that the rapid pace
of economic development has brought to the country, including, but by no
means limited to a highly divided society, government corruption, and illegal
confiscations of land. By the time Hu Jintao officially came into power in
2002, “public order disturbances” in China had increased in scope, size, and
frequency, and continued to escalate thereafter, growing by nearly 50 percent
from 2003 to 2005 according to official sources (Hurst, 2002). As a signature
of Hu’s policy drive, therefore, the concept of building a “harmonious society” was put forward and became a new vehicle of nation building in China.
In general, it encourages stability and sustainable development rather than
conflicts and uncontrolled economic growth. To deal with the immense social
inequalities, the Chinese government has promoted the principle of “putting
people first” 以人为本 in policy making. Equality and justice thus have come
to be linked to the maintenance of a stable society. For example, in 2002, a
Shanghai mayor’s office staffer said, “The rich have to realize that irresponsible spending could threaten stability” (Beech, 2002).
The final ideological shift in the reform era has been the advent of pragmatic nationalism. In the reform era, the state could not hope to continue to
unify its subjects with socialist ideology. The market system and the widening income gap are hardly consistent with socialist egalitarian principles.
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Therefore, throughout the reform era, Chinese leaders have been searching
for a new ideological justification for their leadership. While it is true that the
leaders have not put much effort in developing a coherent set of normative
principles, the reform has nevertheless been characterized by a strong inclination to a loosely defined “pragmatism” and a flexible approach to different
ideologies, as long as they can help create a strong and productive country.
Therefore, the reform era has witnessed a number of ambiguous theories generated by the central leaders, such as “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which have tried to combine the relevant elements in socialism and
capitalism to justify one-party rule on the one hand and the market system on
the other. In addition, cultural elements such as history, language, and myths
have been deployed again to craft a national identity that can be traced back
two thousand years (Suisheng Zhao, 2004: 227).
The above ideological shifts, then, provided the context in which the
Dictionary was revised. If the Dictionary has continued to be a part of the
state’s nation-building project, then we should be able to see how it has been
modified in accordance with the changing nation-building discourses. Based
on what this article has discussed so far, I propose two hypotheses:
1. In the fifth edition of the Dictionary, compared to the first edition,
there will be more entries/explanations (examples, definitions, etc.)
that link the state or the people (the readers) to the structure and operation of the market economic system and the concept of the harmonious society; and
2. In the fifth edition, there will be fewer entries/explanations that link
the state or the people to the structure and operation of socialism and
class conflict.
These hypotheses will be tested with reference to the data collected from
a systematic content analysis, a research method that has gained momentum
in Chinese studies (see, for example, Guobin Yang, 2003; Chang, 2004;
Sasaki, 2010).
Data and Methodology
In order to yield a manageable set of entries, Robert Chapman (1977) suggests that random sampling of a corpus should be used. First of all, to allow
each page of the Dictionary to have an equal chance of being selected, seven
numbers, ranging from 12 to 1830 (the total number of pages in the fifth edition), were drawn randomly through a random number generator. A ten-page
sample was then selected from the fifth edition. For example, if a number, say
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18, was picked randomly, then a sample ranging from page 18 to page 28
would be selected. Using this method, 70 pages were selected from the fifth
edition of the Dictionary. Finally, the corresponding pages in the first edition
were selected. As entries in the Dictionary are listed alphabetically by their
pinyin romanization, the range of entries that needs to be studied in the first
edition can be located conveniently with reference to the fifth edition.
For the purpose of this research, only differences between the two editions
were coded and analyzed. Of the 2,735 entries in the 70 randomly selected
pages of the fifth edition (i.e., 3.5 percent of the total pages) that this analysis
has examined, 1,028 entries were found to be different from the first edition.
These differences come in one of the following forms: adding entries, deleting entries, adding definition/examples, deleting definitions/examples, or
changing the definition of the words/vocabulary items.8 The data are summarized in Table 1.
We can see that out of the 1,028 differences between the two editions,
entirely new entries accounted for 507, or 49 percent, of them. This conforms
to the publisher’s description that the corpus of the Dictionary has expanded
throughout the years.
In order to test the two hypotheses, the revisions were further categorized
as “reform,” “revolutionary,” “sciences and technology,” “arts and humanities,” and “other.”9 The “reform” category consists of entries that demonstrate the specific characteristics of the reform era discussed above. Words
and revisions within this category might include harmonious society 和谐社
会 [word], mortgage 按揭 [word], to lay off a babysitter 辞退保母 [example], and so forth.10 In contrast, the “revolutionary” category consists of
entries that demonstrate the specific characteristics of the revolutionary-era
discourse, such as promotion of class struggle and condemnation of capitalism and imperialism. Words and revisions within this category might include
distribution according to need 按需分配 [word], defeat the evil spirits 战胜
邪崇 [example], and so on. (Perry and Li Xun, 1993). Finally, there are also
entries that are not specific to either the reform or revolutionary eras. They
are included in the other categories of “sciences and technology,” “arts and
humanities,” “religion,” and “others.” These categories, like all categories,
are inevitably artificial (Bauer, 2000). They were created, however, because
they could provide an overall description of the revision. Rather than relying
only on a sporadic selection of examples to examine the nature of the revisions to the fifth edition of the Dictionary, a content analysis based on categories can provide us with a more objective and systematic description of the
revision.
To ensure that the results of the content analysis are valid, it is important
to measure interrater reliability—the degree to which two or more coders
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Table 1. Overview of the Differences between the 1979 and 2005 Editions.
Types of changes
Additions: Entries in the fifth
edition that were not in the first
edition
Deletions: Entries in the first
edition that are no longer in the
fifth edition
Changes:
New examples/words (without
deletion of words/ meaning)
Deleted examples
Change in meaning (either
because of addition of
examples/ definitions/ etc.)
Number of entries
%
95% Confidence
interval
507
49.32
46.26–52.38
104
10.12
8.28–11.96
417
264
40.56
37.56–43.56
60
93
N = 1,028
Source. Content analysis on the first and fifth editions of the Dictionary.
evaluate data and reach the same conclusions. A high interrater reliability rating suggests that others would recognize and interpret these categorizations
in the same way. To perform this task, I recruited a female political science
undergraduate as a second coder. I provided her with a coding manual that
delineates the categories, and additional training to familiarize her with their
definitions. Finally, we conducted a pilot test using samples drawn from other
pages of the Dictionary.11 Table 2, a contingency table, reports the number of
agreements between the two coders.
I calculated interrater reliability using Cohen’s kappa. As a convention,
scores between .41 and .60 are considered moderate interrater reliability,
between .61 and .80 as substantial, and .81 and greater as almost perfect
(Landis and Koch, 1977). The interrater reliability for the coders in our exercise was found to be κ = .91 (p < .001), which is not surprising given that the
categories in our analysis are highly distinctive.
Analysis of the Findings
Using the data represented here in Table 1, I conducted a cross-tabulation
analysis to test the two hypotheses. The results are summarized in Table 3.
Table 3 shows, first of all, that the data generated from the content analysis
supports very well the first hypothesis (that the fifth edition will contain more
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Table 2. Number of Agreements between Two Coders.
First coder
Science and Arts and
Reform Revolutionary technology humanities Religion Other
Second coder
Reform
Revolutionary
Science and
technology
Arts and
humanities
Religion
Other
252
0
2
0
81
4
1
0
194
0
0
2
1
1
0
11
2
0
6
0
0
69
0
1
0
27
0
6
0
2
0
1
14
0
0
351
Notes. N = 1,028; κ = .91 (p < .001).
Source. Content analysis on the first and fifth editions of the Dictionary conducted by the
author and his research assistant.
entries that link the state or the people to the reform nation-building discourse). Within the “reform” category, there is a large net addition of entries
(=156). We also see that changes in the explanations of existing entries
worked in favor of the reform discourse: among the 264 entries for which
explanations were revised by adding new examples or definitions, 92 are
classified under the “reform” category, suggesting that the newly added
examples or definitions reflect the ideological shifts outlined above. In order
to confirm this point, I formulated a null hypothesis which proposes that the
Dictionary’s revision is independent of China’s nation-building project. The
bracketed “expected values” in Table 3 delineate the number of entries that
one should expect to see if the null hypothesis were true. And it is very clear
that the net differences between the actual and expected values in the “reform”
category (as well as the “revolutionary” category) are much larger than those
in other categories. I also conducted a chi-square test to examine the statistical significance of the relationship. It (χ2 = 311.23, p < .001) suggests that the
relationship presented in Table 3 is extremely unlikely to have been obtained
because of chance variation.
A few quick examples here will suffice to illustrate this finding.
1. Vision/hope 愿景 and Recognition 体认: According to the lexicographers of the Dictionary, these two words were included for the first
time in the Dictionary shortly after the historical visit to China by
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Table 3. Summary of Classification.
Change in explanation
Addition
Deletion Addition
Deletion
Change
Total
Reform
Revolutionary
Science and
technology
Arts and
humanities
Religion
Other
156 (142)
22 (45)
97 (97)
2 (29)
21 (9)
51 (20)
92 (74)
11 (23)
16 (51)
6 (17)
32 (5)
12 (12)
31 (26)
5 (8)
21 (18)
287
91
197
35 (36)
6 (7)
22 (19)
2 (4)
7 (7)
72
13 (8)
184 (180)
0 (2)
24 (37)
2 (4)
121 (94)
0 (9)
8 (21)
1 (1)
28 (33)
16
365
Note. The figures in parentheses give the expected values for each cell; N = 1,028; χ2 = 311.23;
df = 20; p < .001.
Source. Content analysis on the first and fifth editions of the Dictionary.
Lien Chan, the then-chairman of Taiwan’s Nationalist Party in May
2005, which was the first by a Nationalist leader since the end of
China’s civil war in 1949. The visit was considered a landmark breakthrough in China and Taiwan’s relationship. The two words, yuanjing
and tiren, which are very popular in Taiwan, became keywords of
Lien Chan’s visit and examples of the peaceful development of China.
They expressed the leaders’ hope for mutual understanding and recognition in the future and were therefore emphasized by Lien Chan at
the joint press conference after the meeting. In fact, according to the
lexicographers, by the time they decided—or were asked—to add
these words to the corpus, the fifth edition of the Dictionary had
already been typeset, but the Commercial Press suspended the printing so that this two words could be added (Chen Jia, 2005). The incorporation of these two Taiwanese words into the Dictionary was
obviously not just a gesture of respect; it also symbolized the improved
relations between the mainland and Taiwan. These two words are thus
good examples of how political agendas have played a determinative
role in the Dictionary’s revision.
2. Advent/arrive 到来 and Rise 爬升: A comparison of the two editions
also allows us to uncover much more subtle changes. The entries daolai (IL, 2005: 278) and pasheng (IL, 2005: 1014) are two of the many
instances in which reform-era ideology is conveyed through the insertion of new example sentences such as “a new height of economic
development has arrived” and “sales continue to rise.”
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Regarding the second hypothesis (that there will be fewer entries that link
the state or the people to the revolutionary nation-building discourse), the
data also suggest that revolutionary terms/explanations have been removed
from the Dictionary. This seems to be a false conclusion at first glance
because the number of deleted “revolutionary” entries (=21) is smaller than
the number of newly added revolutionary terms (=22). But what we have to
consider here is that the corpus of the Dictionary has been expanding.
Therefore, proportionally speaking, the reduction of revolutionary terms
should still be fairly significant. This can be confirmed by observing the differences between the actual and expected values in the category “revolutionary.” It is very clear that the number of revolutionary entries that have been
deleted (=21) is well above the expected number (=9).
That being said, however, why does the fifth edition of the Dictionary still
contain so many revolutionary terms? In fact, a more in-depth examination of
the Dictionary suggests a picture more complicated than simply one of an
increase in the number of reformist terms and a reduction of revolutionary
ones. On one hand, there are examples that clearly suggest that revolutionary
ideas have been removed from the entries. For example, the word undercurrent 暗潮 is included in both editions of the Dictionary. However, its definition has been revised. In the first edition, it was defined as “a metaphor for
things that are still in the planning stage (it mainly refers to social struggles
and social movements).” In the fifth edition, the parenthetical “revolutionary” element was removed from the definition.
However, many revolutionary entries, such as class struggle 阶级斗争,
Mao Zedong Thought 毛泽东思想, and the like, remain in the Dictionary.
This gives rise to the question: If class struggle is no longer promoted by the
state, why have the political authorities retained these entries in the
Dictionary? Would not this be a sign that the Dictionary is apolitical?
In fact, I argue, the retention of these not-often-used revolutionary terms
is evidence that the Dictionary remains very political in the reform era. A
straightforward explanation for this is that the state is intent on maintaining
control in the field of language and thus has continued to exert influence over
the compilation of the Dictionary. There is certainly truth to that, but it suffers from several weaknesses. First, in the reform era, the state has loosened
its control over the publishing sector, one of the consequences of which is
that the number of dictionaries published by private publishers has increased
significantly. According to Li Xingjian 李行健 (2010: 20), from 1979 to
2008, around nine thousand Chinese dictionaries were published in China. If
the state is keen to uphold its claim to be the sole authority in defining correctness in language, allowing the liberalization of the dictionary market
would present an almost insurmountable obstacle to that goal. Second, the
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state’s power in the reform era has been confronted by forces arising from
globalization, the advancement of communication technology, and market
liberalization. Under these circumstances, maintaining effective control over
the compilation and revision of all dictionaries becomes extremely costly and
unrealistic.
A more plausible reason for the Dictionary remaining political, therefore,
is that this will not only benefit the state but also secure a strong market share.
In the reform era the Commercial Press needs to be responsible for its profits
and losses (Commercial Press, 2004). This holds true even if the Dictionary
is compiled by the government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences (established in 1977, formerly a division of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences). Facing keen competition from other dictionaries, there is a strong
incentive for the press to secure a good market for its products. And given the
authoritarian political system of China in which the state has long regulated
the use of language, proclaiming a close relationship with the state will enable
the press to claim authority in defining linguistic correctness, widely deemed
a crucial feature of a “good” dictionary in China (see, for example, Cui,
2010). Under this strategy, numerous books and articles have been published
by the press in the reform era describing its relationship with the party state
(see, for examples, Wang Shouben, 1998; IL, 2004). Incidents such as the
press serving as a secret focal point for the Communist Party’s communication during the 1920s, or the Commercial Press building on Baoshan Road 宝
山路 being selected by Zhou Enlai as a Military Command Center in one of
the Communist Party’s military uprisings (Wang Shouben, 1998: 259), have
been reiterated in those books, creating an image that the press, which was
actually established by the Jesuits in 1897, is a long-standing partner of the
Communist Party.
More obvious attempts to advertise the Dictionary with this strategy can
be found in the news stories released by the lexicographers of the Dictionary
before the publication of the fifth edition. An example, discussed earlier in
this article, is how the incorporation of the words vision 愿景 and recognition 体认 led to the postponement of the printing of the Dictionary. The
story was widely circulated on the internet in 2005 and was mentioned by
the lexicographers in their interviews with newspapers such as Renmin
ribao and Dongfang zaobao 东方早报 shortly before the fifth edition
Dictionary was published. There is no reason to believe that the lexicographers experienced any political pressure to release a story like this. It is also
unlikely that they did so simply out of ignorance. The behavior of the lexicographers reveals how the Dictionary’s political appearance—its presumed close connections with the party and the state—is treated as a
profitable resource.
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The lexicographers’ actions should also be considered within the wider
context of China’s highly competitive dictionary market, in which making
the state present has become a marketing strategy. One of the most striking
examples occurred in 2004 when an academic press, the Foreign Language
Teaching and Research Press 外语教学与研究出版社, published a dictionary entitled the Prescriptive Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese 现代汉语
规范词典 (the Prescriptive Dictionary hereafter).12 According to the publisher, the Prescriptive Dictionary is “prescriptive” in the sense that it strictly
complies with the linguistic regulations and standards issued by the state,
such as the “List of Generally Used Characters in Modern Chinese” 现代汉
语通用字表. Thus, as its name suggests, the proclaimed strength of the dictionary is the involvement of the state. Like the Commercial Press, the publisher also claims that the Prescriptive Dictionary was commissioned by the
state in line with its project to regulate the Chinese language (FLTRP, 2010a).
A book launch of the dictionary was held at the Great Hall of the People in
Beijing to symbolize this relationship (Liu, 2004).
The Prescriptive Dictionary is not as authoritative as it claims, at least in
the view of Jiang Lansheng 江蓝生, who was a vice president of the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences and a delegate of the Chinese People’s Political
Consultative Conference (CPPCC). During the CPPCC in March 2004, she
criticized the Prescriptive Dictionary for claiming to be “prescriptive” (Feng,
2004). We cannot tell if this criticism was made in order to protect the authority of the Dictionary, but it was echoed by many scholars and netizens, whose
comments were later collected in an edited volume titled Rescuing
Dictionaries 拯救辞书, published in August 2004, by Xing Dongtian 邢东田
(Xing, 2004). According to the critics, the Prescriptive Dictionary is full of
mistakes and therefore the term “prescriptive” in the title is misleading. Some
of them argued that this incident revealed a long-standing problem in the
Chinese dictionary market in which many greedy publishers produce “lowquality dictionaries” 劣质辞书 to make money (see, for examples, Jiu, 2004;
Lu, 2004). Nevertheless, the Prescriptive Dictionary was able to survive the
criticisms—mostly because of the inaction or even support of the state. State
media such as Renmin wang 人民网 (the Renmin ribao website) maintained
a rather impartial stance in the dispute by just creating a special coverage
page titled “Should the term ‘prescriptive’ be used cautiously in titling a dictionary?” 辞书应慎用“规范”冠名? that listed both criticisms and defenses
of the Prescriptive Dictionary. On occasion, the state has taken more supportive action such as advertising the publication of the Prescriptive
Dictionary on the website of the State Language Commission 中国语言文字
网 (State Language Commission, 2004).13 This kind of support has boosted
the market’s confidence in the dictionary. According to the publisher, by June
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2010, approximately two million copies of the Prescriptive Dictionary had
been sold (FLTRP, 2010b).
The controversy raised by the publication of the Prescriptive Dictionary is
significant in that it suggests that endorsement by the state is open to competition among different organizations. It also demonstrates how state influence
has been made explicit by publishers so as to maximize their profit. Unlike
the revolutionary era when the state actively controlled the compilation of
dictionaries and intellectuals tried to mediate between the state’s prescriptions and their individual inclinations (Volland, 2009), the reform era has
witnessed a more sophisticated mechanism in which publishers deliberately
compete for and publicize directives from the state. As such, it is not surprising to see state officials being invited by dictionary publishers to attend conferences on their dictionaries (see, for example, Zhang, 2005; FLTRP, 2010c),
or publishers working with local governments to promote literacy in the
countryside (Qu, 2011).
Conclusion
My investigation of the Dictionary has at least two implications. First, that
Chinese dictionaries have remained highly political is not merely a result of
state control. While the state may still be keen to regulate the dictionary market and the linguistic environment at large, its relationship with society has
become much more complicated in the reform era. The lasting presence of
the state in the dictionary market, as this article suggests, is at least partly the
result of the keen competition among profit-oriented publishers, which
induces them to maintain, or even exaggerate, their relationship with the
state. This finding not only provides a more complicated explanation for the
political appearance of Chinese dictionaries but also extends Mun Young
Cho’s (2011) recent study of the health care sector in Harbin, where the state
is similarly mimicked and appropriated by market actors.
Second, market liberalization does not immediately imply that the claim
of the state to legislate the field of language will be weakened. In fact, as this
article suggests, the struggle between dictionary publishers for the authority
to prescribe language is likely to strengthen the legitimacy of the state as the
producer of “correct language.” This conforms to Antonio Gramsci’s (1971:
12–13) proposition that the formation of hegemony can be a “spontaneous”
process in which different social groups deliberately partake in practices that
disseminate certain paradigmatic “direction[s] imposed on social life by the
dominant fundamental groups.”
It remains unclear under what specific circumstances the private sector in
China deliberately chooses to cooperate with the state in the process of nation
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building. In fact, despite the robust research undertaken in the past twenty
years, the production of legitimate language in China is still understudied,
and, moreover, studies on Chinese dictionaries have been limited to their
lexical significance only. For those who take the political nature of China’s
dictionaries for granted, the changing role of the state in legislating the field
of language has not been seriously examined. Nevertheless, as David D.
Laitin (1998) and Elizabeth J. Perry and Li Xun (1993) have demonstrated,
language can be a helpful lens for researchers to examine a wide range of
social and cultural issues such as nation building and state-society relations.
All this calls for a more rigorous investigation of how meanings are fashioned in China. In this sense, my examination of the development of the
Contemporary Chinese Dictionary may contribute to identifying a more critical framework through which the political nature of words and language can
be analyzed.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Kathryn Bernhardt, Timothy Brook, Nik Krause,
Rachel Murphy, Patricia Thornton, James Tilley, and two anonymous reviewers for
their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article. The author is also grateful
for Shu-yun Ma’s and Philip Chan’s inspiration and Yim-fong Yu’s research assistance. Earlier versions of this article were presented at seminars and conferences at
the University of Oxford (2009), the London School of Economics and Political
Science (2011), Syracuse University (2011), and Fudan University (2012).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article:
This research was supported by Swire Educational Trust and a research grant
from the Oxford & Cambridge Hong Kong Association.
Notes
1. For examples of similar incidents, see Ding, 2003.
2. See, for example, the preface of the first edition of the Dictionary.
3. According to the publisher, as of 2004, 40 million copies of the Dictionary had
been sold in China (Zhao Chenyu, 2004).
4. For instance, Chen Duxiu had served as the chief editor of New Youth Magazine
新青年, Zhou Enlai as the chief editor of Tianjin Student Union Newspaper 天
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津学生联合报, Mao Zedong as the chief editor of Xiang River Review 湘江评
论; Qu Qiubai 瞿秋白as chief editor of Rexie Daily 热血日报, and Hu Qiaomu
as head of the General Press Administration of the Central People’s Government
中央人民政府新闻总署 (Li Baijian, 1999: 100–101; Ye, 2007: chap. 6). Party
documents also reveal that the leaders were very much concerned about the
appropriate use of words. For example, Mao Zedong once instructed his aides
on how the phrase “absolute power” should be used (Party Central Committee
Document, 1967).
5. Administrative and temporary staff members are not included. For a complete
list of the members, see IL, 2004: 57–58.
6. In addition to the Validation Committee, there were more than 100 linguists
responsible for reviewing the entries.
7. For additional evidence of this type of criticism, see National Publication
Administration, 1975: 7. While it is not a direct comment on the Dictionary, it
confirms the description by Chen Yuan (1979).
8. There are also other types of changes in the Dictionary. However, for the purposes of this article, what I am focusing on here are revisions that directly affect
the meaning conveyed. Therefore, changes regarding style, pronunciation, organization, and grammar will not be examined. Minor changes that have no impact
on meaning are also not considered.
9. For a more detailed description, see the Coding Manual available on my personal
website: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~corp1598.
10. If a “reform” word (entry) is defined in a way that detaches the reader from the
word, then it is not classified in the “reform” category. For example, if the word
capitalism is defined as “a socioeconomic system that was used in the past or in
the Western world,” then it is not included in the “reform” category. For a more
precise description, see the Coding Manual.
11. This is a standard procedure in communication studies. See, for example,
Johnson and Holmes, 2009.
12. Guifan 规范 is sometimes rendered as “standard” or “normative” in China.
However, “prescriptive” is a more appropriate translation in this case because it
is a widely accepted term in lexicography.
13. The State Language Commission is the organ responsible for regulating the use
of the Chinese language.
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Author Biography
Siu-yau Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian and Policy Studies,
Hong Kong Institute of Education. He received his doctorate in politics from St.
Antony’s College, the University of Oxford, where he was a Swire Scholar.
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