New books make Chinese language more accessible

New books make Chinese language more accessible

Two new books by University of Queensland scholars further demystify the Chinese language for students and academics alike.

Asian Languages and Studies Department head Professor Kam Louie co-authored The Politics of Chinese Language and Culture: the art of reading dragons (Routledge) with the University of Western Sydney's foundation professor of humanities, Bob Hodge.

Asian Languages and Studies Department senior lecturer Dr Ping Chen has authored Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics (Cambridge University Press), an analysis of the development of Chinese language and writing over the past century.

Dr Chen said Chinese was a complex language with many dialects. Some, such as Mandarin and Cantonese, were as different as English and German, he said.

Many Hong Kong students were now coming to the University of Queensland to learn Northern Mandarin because of its increasing importance in Hong Kong, Professor Louie said.

The two new books would help University-level teaching and learning of Chinese language, he said.

His book with Professor Hodge examines the ideology of the Chinese language and how it is expressed in the nation's culture such as comic books, literature and film.

He said the book provided students with practical information on how the language was used in China.

"Even though cultural studies have been popular in the West for the past 20 years, they are only now being applied to China. The Chinese language is an important part of the nation's culture but its relative difficulty to learn has been a barrier to any meaningful study from the interdisciplinary perspective presented in this book," Professor Louie said.

The book compares the uses of the language in different contexts; for example, in a Perth Chinese community newsletter as opposed to official Part texts, and in a Jackie Chan film tailored to a Western audience and The Wedding Banquet.

Dr Chen's book examines the origins and development of the standard Chinese language since modernisation of the country in the late 19th Century.

"Modernisation motivated language reform and better language in turn contributed to modernisation," he said.

He said the book's findings had a general validity which could be used by socio-linguistics and historical linguistics experts working with other languages.

"I look at the relationship between the Chinese language and writing systems. Most linguistic studies concentrate on the phonographic or sound-related elements rather than the logographic (meaning-related) writing of Chinese. My book looks at both," Dr Chen said.

"Without studies based on language using logographic writing, any understanding of the relationship between language and writing systems is incomplete."

Professor Louie received a Quality grant from the University of Queensland which enabled him and Professor Hodge to work collaboratively. Dr Chen received grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the University of Queensland for several research projects culminating in his book.

For more information, contact Professor Louie (telephone 07 3365 6336) or Dr Chen (telephone 07 3365 6341).