Journal 10

In order to understand the full weight of the term diglossia a western example is revealing. In medieval Europe Latin was the dominant language regardless of the local vernacular. This trend continued until the dominant language shifted to the vernacular, but Latin remained the script of the learned. In China this same type of diglossia was evident with the shift from wényán to báihuà. The only difference being that the classical wényán  language was probably never very closely connected to the vernacular báihuà. This was important historically because in order to become a government official a strong command of the classical script was required. This forced out all of the poorer applicants due to the amount of time required to gain mastery over it. This diglossia unified the country with a common 'sacred' language which was used for official purposes, and then the common people would use their vernacular for their daily affairs.

  As a supplemental reading to be able to add some more background information I read Chen, Ping “Modern Written Chinese in Development.” Language in Society 22, no. 4 (December 1993): 505-537. The main point of this article is to show the development of modern written Chinese in terms of the literary classical Chinese (wényán) being replaced by the vernacular script of everyday life (báihuà). Wényán was the writing standard for the 2,000 years before the cultural upheavals that started in 1919. It was formed from the Chinese spoken during the pre-Qin and Han periods (206 BCE to 220 CE). Even though the wényán was closely related to the spoken language early on it soon became divorced. Báihuà was a script created during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) that was more closely aligned with the common speech. Although the vocabulary and grammar of the wényán script was different from the spoken language it was used by the literary elite who looked down on the báihuà script. Although not the elite script, báihuà gained a little higher status at the end of the Tang Dynasty and was used to write novels up to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1911).

 Another main point that I researched was about the definition of a language and a dialect. Li Jingzhong, argued that Cantonese should be considered its own language and not a dialect of Chinese. One main point for why to consider it a dialect would be on more social and political grounds than on linguistic grounds. 

 Finally, the last thing that I have been doing is editing. I have had a bunch of information that I have written down in different sections that are important for my essay, but I just do not have them all arranged in the right areas and then edited so that they all work together with the other sections. The main problem that I have been running into has been that I just have too much information to work with, and not enough time to go through all of it, edit it, and then figure out what is the most important.