Modern Vernacular Construction And Western Language Elements

The modern vernacular Chinese in this paper is not confined with literary style,but includes subject,linguistic rhetoric,and even words and sentence patterns.In the same sense,western language elements are not bound to linguistic style,but including religious spirit,cultural thoughts,and rhetoric means that are digested by Chinese writers and eventually become the elements in their literary writings.From europeanization via de-europeanization to self-construction,the biggest achievement in language and literature becomes the success of the modern vernacular Chinese.The Wusi Vernacular Chinese Movement does not happen accidentally but with its origin and historical background.It is the peak time of the modern Chinese enlightenment movement.The enlightenment movement is likely to have three parts with the deepening insight of thought,from the pursuit of "a wealthy country with strong arms" to "the perfection of civil rights",eventually to the reformation of national character and brand-new culture.During the process of the deepening enlightenment movement,the so-called"Europeanization" trend becomes more and more dominant;while the Chinese national culture appearing the other way.The Westernization Movement aims to "learn the advanced skills from the west so as to conquer the west",the wuxu reform movement targets to merger the western political system so as to achieve the political system reform,and the New Cultural Movement wants a thorough reformation of the national character in accordance with the introduction of the western economic,political and cultural system.Focusing on literature,it appears in the form of the Vernacular Chinese Movement.The westernization is inevitable,during which the dominant part is the wholesale westernization proposed by Qian Xuantong,hopefully eliminating the Chinese characters which record the Confucius moral literature with the replacement of EsperantoChinese traditional culture has a history over two thousand years,the western culture as well has a comparatively long history.During the Wusi period,the western culture pours into China,forming a confrontation with the Chinese traditional culture,hence there must be the merger and by-product forming a margin between the two cultures.The construction of Chinese modern vernacular is produced on the basis of the Chinese traditional culture continuation,the Chinese modern context and the western narrative resource.Compared with the "cultural turn" after the "linguistic turn" of the western literature study,we focus too much on the "cultural turn" from the traditional vernacular Chinese to the modern vernacular Chinese with theoretical critic,neglecting "the linguistic turn" from baihua to guoyu,from the vernacular Chinese eventually to the modern vernacular Chinese literature.At present,the study of the influence of the western literature on the "linguistic turn" is still peripheral.This paper emphasizes on the relationship between the construction of the modern vernacular Chinese and the western influential elements,categorizing the new literature writers with western education background and their writings with a comparison to the traditional vernacular Chinese.In the perspective of europeanization,the influence of western elements to the modern vernacular Chinese is studied from almost every aspect——from the entrance and rhetoric of punctuation marks,to the europeanized structure of the writings,even to the consciousness transformation under the influence of europeanized thoughtThis paper is about to discuss as the followingsThe introduction chapter begins with definitions and mutual relationship between relative keywords of the modern vernacular Chinese construction,such as baihua,dialect,mandarin,guoyu,and the two written language system.The boundaries and relationship between guoyu,the vernacular Chinese movement and the modern vernacular Chinese are discussed as well.Then,the blended texture of the construction of the modern vernacular Chinese and europeanization is further analyzed from the traditional judou to the rhetoric of western punctuation marks,from orally short sentences to europeanized sentences,from traditional structure to europeanized structure,and to the consciousness transformation under the influence of the western literature tide.Eventually three classical writers,Luxun,Laoshe and Lin Yutang,are respectively chosen as the models,and their writings as well.The first chapter is made up of two parts,mainly focusing on the inner consciousness and the trigger of the vernacular Chinese novels.Part one mainly discusses the inner consciousness of A Madman's Diary,starting with the analysis of the atypical conversation,the inner consciousness conception becomes into being,which is the keyword to analyze the meaningful and specific narrative strategy of the novel.What's more,the origin of Luxun's inner consciousness and the historical and social background is illustrated.Part one ends up with a myth end leading to part two,which studies the rhetoric use of the western punctuation mark "……"(ellipsis)in A Madman's Diary.With close reading and a combination of all the writings before and after,together with the vernacular Chinese context of the ellipsis entrance into wusi,the specific function of the ellipsis,both to A Madman's Diary and to Luxun,consequently the western punctuation marks' function to the May 4th Movement.The second chapter aims to re-discover Lao She's devotion to the construction of the modern vernacular Chinese.The first part analyzes the europeanized phenomena of Laoshe's novels from respective aspects of structure,content and sentence.The content part concentrates on the "mind" literature introduced from the western literature,while the sentence part on the scientific linguistic analysis with the return to the historical being,hence clearly illustrates what the so-called europeanized sentences are.The second part is about Lao She's continuation of the traditional vernacular Chinese based on the oral vernacular,and de-europeanizes the europeanized sentences.The third part reveals the tongcheng essay's continuation in Laoshe's novel.The fourth part is about Lao She's consciousness to merger the traditional narrative resource of sound with the western figure of speech,bringing the visual and sonic beauty to the modern vernacular Chinese.The third chapter describes the europeanized spirit of Lin Yutang and his searching for the root of the Chinese traditional culture,eventually forming his aesthetic theory of the Chinese-and-western-blending-thought during the probe and practice.The basic structure is chronically arranged in accordance with several periodicals which mean a lot to Lin Yutang,so as to analyze the formation,development and growing-up of the aesthetic theory of the Chinese-and-western-blending-thought in a comparatively clear way.The absolute isolation is never meant to be.The first chapter describes the dialectical relationship between the formation of Lin Yutang's europeanized thought and his aesthetic theory of the Chinese-and-western-blending-thought.The second chapter emphasizes on his europeanized thought and sentences.The third chapter focuses on his editorship and translation of the New Critics and his entrance to literature during the lonely wandering in the wild.The fourth chapter discusses Lin Yutang's digestion and adoption of the familiar essay from the English literature during his hosting The Little Critic column in The China Critic.The fifth chapter is about his dedication to "humour",one style of the western culture,during the Lunyu period.The six chapter analyzes his success in matching the root in GongAn's aesthetic theory and its xiaopingwen style with his originally holding "expression theory" originated from the western culture,and produced his Xingling theory and eventually Jinqing theory.All in all,the paper studies the writers and their writings in the close-reading way,respectively grabbing breakthrough points into research and forming lines into planes,and eventually into stereo with the construction theory of the modern vernacular Chinese.From the perspective of western cultural influence,the paper witnesses and tries to fill the margin of "linguistic turn" produced during the process from the traditional vernacular Chinese to the modern vernacular Chinese.