‘文明語言’의 개념에 대한 小考

Abstract

This paper was launched by the purpose of studying in depth on the concept of ‘Wenming Yuyan’. To this end, I have given a lot of thought to what implications the keyword of ‘civilization’(Wenming), which becomes a destination point for the current social development of China, has. It was found out that unlike ‘culture’, ‘civilization’ has a dynamic characteristic and has been projected into various fields since it was initially introduced to China in modern times. After ‘civilization’ permeated a linguistic area, resulting in ‘linguistic civilization’, it became a direction the public has to pursue in their language life. ‘Wenming Yuyan’ is one of the key elements that constitute language civilization. This paper was developed inductively into three components, namely accuracy, appropriacy and courtesy. In other words, based on accuracy, it features appropriacy in terms of usage and can lead both communication parties to a desirable relationship. Presently, various levels of schools, public offices, businesses etc. in China are conducting a campaign to promote ‘Wenming Yuyan’, which means Chinese people’s language life is now considerably polluted or destroyed. Scholars mainly attribute this problem to market economization in China society. Of course, this phenomenon, far beyond the language sphere, can be witnessed in the mental area such as a view of morality or order that is represented by the language. The slogans like ‘The Reconciled Society’(‘和諧社會’) or ‘The Chinese Style Socialism’(‘中國特色社會主義’) on which the current Chinese leaders frequently put emphasis are intended to restore the traditional ethics that are heavily damaged and combine it with the system of China’s own unique socialism. An enlightenment movement is commonplace in China. It is needed to keep our interest in how the enlightenment drive for using ‘Wenming Yuyuan’ will affect the public’s language life and also develop hereafter. In addition, it can be worth comparing and analyzing Korea’s policy on language use.