Robert Morrison «Dialogues and detached sentences in the Chinese Language(中文會話及凡例)»(1816년)에 나타난 사회문화상 연구 - 광동무역시기 十三行과 무역체재를 중심으로 -

Abstract

Language serving as a method that conveys thoughts and emotions of a human being, is the most important tool for relationship and is the result of cultures. Therefore, languages repeating evolution and extinction in response to the development and changes of society, reflect social system, economic condition, values, modes of thought, custom of an ethnic group or a nation. Especially in the aspect of linguistics, studies of vocabularies is an asset that leads most sensitively and quickly to social-cultural information of a certain age and region. This paper deals with the Canton System through the vocabularies that appears on dialogic styles in «Dialogues and detached sentences in the Chinese Language»(1816) by Robert Morrison, a British protestant missionary who did his missionary works in Canton, China and Macao from 1807 to 1834. Robert Morrison wrote the textbook of Chinese conversation during Guangzhou Trade Period when the trade between China and Western countries was available only through Guangzhou. The textbook shows the condition of the trade in Guangzhou as an exclusive trade zone where there were 13 traders who were exclusively in charge of Chinese foreign trade, and foreign traders who were set near Pearl River in the Qing Dynasty. It is not too much to say that «Dialogues and detached sentences in the Chinese Language»(1816), the textbook of Chinese conversation by Robert Morrison who brought Good News of Jesus Christ into China and did his missionary works in Guanzhou, China, and Macao in the days when getting a Chinese textbook was illegal as well as learning Chinese was not as opened as nowadays, is a repository to learn social-cultural backgrounds of a certain age and region.