LANGUAGE AND POLITICS DURING THE CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: A STUDY IN LINGUISTIC ENGINEERING A Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the University of Canterbury by Ji Fengyuan ? University of Canterbury 1998 CONTENTS Abbreviations vi Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 I PRELUDE 1. linguistic Engineering: Theoretical Considerations 1.1 The Language of Speech and the Language of Thought 8 1.2 Sapir, Whorf and the Categories of Thought 11 1.3 Concepts, Schemas and World View 24 1.4 Primitive Affective and Associational Processes 31 1.5 Code, Context and Relevance Theory 49 1.6 A Framework for Multi-factorial Persuasion: Information Processing and the Elaboration Likelihood Model 61 1.7 Timeless Theories and Empirical Case Studies 64 2. Linguistic Engineering before the Cultural Revolution 2.1 Origins of Linguistic Engineering in China 66 2.2 The Institutional Basis of linguistic Engineering 72 2.3 Formulae, Codability and Processing Efficiency 81 2.4 The Language of Class Analysis 84 2.5 Language, Love and Revolution 98 2.6 The Discourse of Collectivization 101 2.7 Discourse of the Great Leap Forward: From Martial Language to Disillusionment 103 2.8 Emerging Mao Worship: Prelude to the Cultural Revolution 110 2.9 Linguistic Engineering in China before the Cultural Revolution: an Assessment 117 ii II THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION 1966-68: MASS MOBILIZATION, LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION 3. Context and Interpretation: Mao's Manipulation of Meaning 3.1 Background to the Cultural Revolution 123 3.2 The Protagonists: Mao's Supporters and their Victim 128 3.3 Mao's First Shift in the Context of Interpretation: the Campaign against Wu Han 131 3.4 Mao's Second Shift in the Context of Interpretation: the Campaign against Deng Tuo and 'Three Family Village' 133 3.5 Mao's Third Shift in the Context of Interpretation: Nie Yuanzi's Big Character Poster 144 3.6 Putting the New Interpretive Assumptions to Work in the Schools and Universities 146 3.7 Mao's Fourth Switch in the Context of Interpretation: Entrapping Liu Shaoqi and Declaring War on the Party ISS 3.8 Rogue Assumptions in the Context of Interpretation: the Red-Class Red Guards Misread Mao's Message 159 3.9 Mao Finds an Audience with the 'Correct' Context of Interpretation: Rise of the 'Rebel' Red Guards 170 3.10 Mao Loses Control of the Context of Interpretation: the Descent into Chaos 175 4. Revolutionary Conformity, Public Criticism and Formulae 4.1 'A Language after Mao': the Cult of the Word 181 4.2 The Public Criticism Meeting: Discourse, Ritual and Formulae 192 4.3 Conflict, Mao-worship and the Ideal World of the Formulae 208 4.4 Control, Self-Annihilation, Liberation and the Formulae 211 4.5 Reference ASSignment, Victims and Mao's Responsibility 220 iii 5 . Dichotomies, Demons and Violence 5.1 Linguistic Dichotomies: the Symbolism of Good and Evil 224 5.2 The Language of War 234 5.3 Language and Violence 238 III THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION 1968-76: CENTRALIZING CONTROL OF LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION 6. Institutionalizing the Cultural Revolution: Creating Referents, Controlling the Word, Policing Interpretation 6.1 Re-building the Institutions of Centralized Control 252 6.2 Creating Referents: The 'New Born Things' and the Context of Interpretation 254 6.3 Controlling the Written Word: (1) the Press 260 6.4 Controlling the Written Word: (2) Dictionaries 264 6.5 Controlling the Written Word: (3) Private Letters 269 6.6 Orchestrating the Spoken Word: Linguistic Rituals and Mao-Worship 275 7. Controlling Culture: Literature and Dramatic Art 7.1 Literature and Art in Maoist Theory and Cultural Revolution Practice. 284 7.2 Dramatic Art: the Modern Revolutionary Opera 289 iv 8. Educating Revolutionaries: the Case of English Language Teaching 8.1 The Cultural Revolution and School Curricula 304 8.2 Foreign Language Teaching: . Aims and Pedagogy 306 8.3 The Textbooks: (1) Maoist Discourse 308 8.4 The Textbooks: (2) Vocabulary 315 8.5 The Textbooks: (3) Grammar 318 8.6 Language Teaching, Discourse and World View 322 IV ASSESSMENT 9. Mao's Experiment in linguistic Engineering: Success and Failure 9.1 Success 324 9.2 Failure: (1) Language versus Experience 331 9.3 Failure: (2) Language versus Itself 338 9.4 Failure: (3) After Mao 343 10. Implications for Linguistic Engineering 354 Bibliography 366 v ABBREVIATIONS CCP Documents CCP Documents of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 1966-1967. Union Research Institute, 1968. LRB 'The Little Red Book' (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1966). OTD On the Docks: A Modern Revolutionary Opera (English translation). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1973. PLA People's Liberation Army. RGP Red Guard Publications. 20 vols. Photo offset from microfilm. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a thesis imposes constraints on social activities. However, it does not have to be a lonely experience, and I have been blessed with help and support from many sources. lowe particular thanks to my supervisor, Kon Kuiper. He played a crucial part in making it possible for me to enrol for a Ph.D. in the first place, and I have benefited from his knowledge of university procedures many times over the years. He has been invariably encouraging, and he retained faith in my abilities even when I myself had doubts. His interest in oral formulae made me conscious of their importance in Mao's China, and he introduced me to Relevance Theory, which plays an important part in the thesis. At just the right time, he suggested that I was engaged in a study of what could be termed 'linguistic engineering'. I have found the concept an extremely fruitful one, and have used it to bring out the significance of my material and relate it to a central theme. Other members of the Linguistics Department have played their part. Elizabeth Gordon supervised my early work on English Language textbooks in China, and some of that research has proved useful in the different context of this thesis. She has helped to make the Linguistics Department a warm and welcoming place over the years. Lyle Campbell and Kate Kearns both read parts of my work and gave valuable advice while Kon was overseas. And Andrew Carstairs has always offered friendship and encouragement. I have been greatly assisted by friends in both China and New Zealand. Sun Xiurong, Liu Minghua and Li Xingzhong collected old English language textbooks for me; my well-thumbed copy of Sperber and Wilson's Relevance was a gift from David Weston; Professor Yang Jingnian discovered a Cultural Revolution dictionary for me; Wang Tong assisted with the retrieval of information from the Chinese press; You Ji supplied books and articles on the Cultural Revolution and clarified points about Chinese politics; Wu Xiaoming offered constructive comment on Chapter 5; Xu Gang's efficiency and helpfulness as a teaching colleague made it possible for me to make vii rapid progress at a crucial stage; and Susan Bouterey was an unfailing source of support when I needed it most. Authors and thesis writers often say that their greatest debt is to their families. In my case, this is no conventional piety. I would never have completed the thesis without their help. My father, Ji Mingshan, and my brother, Ji Cheng, laboured over the People's Daily, sending me information when I asked for it. My father was also able to clarify points for me in discussion, while in his own scholarly life he has been both an inspiration and an example. The two people most deeply involved in helping me to produce this thesis, however, are my sister, Ji Yiyuan, and my husband, Chris Connolly. Yiyuan gave me six months of her life, helping me to look after little Daniel, cooking, cleaning, and doing everything possible to make sure that I could work on the thesis. She was also an invaluable source of advice, and our discussions helped to clarify many issues. Not for the first time in my life, she has been more than a sister to me. Every Ph.D. student should be married to someone like Chris. He shared with Yi Yuan the burden of freeing me to work on the thesis, and after she returned to China he took it all on himself. He has also encouraged the development of my ideas. Whenever I struck a difficulty, he was there to talk the matter through. Whenever I had a new inspiration, he was my initial sounding board. He persuaded me to read a lot more psychology than I had intended; and when it became clear that an assessment of linguistic engineering required historical skills, he was a professionally qualified advisor. And, of course, he has polished my English. All his love and support have made the thesis possible. Finally, lowe a debt to the librarians whose work underpins scholarly endeavour. The staff at the Main Library at the University of Canterbury interpreted the limits on borrowing liberally and sensibly, while staff at the National Library of Australia and the library at the University of California, Los Angeles, helped me to make the best use of the limited time which I could spend there. Their efficiency and helpfulness have speeded my research. viii INTRODUCTION In the appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell imagined a future society in which everyone accepted the official ideology, and in which punishment and terror were unnecessary. Instead, people were kept under control because they spoke, heard, read and wrote only a single, specially contrived language - the language of Newspeak. Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism.