Events
CUHK LAW CCTL Transnational Legal History Group Seminar – ‘By Law or Persuasion? Learning to Speak a National Language in Early Twentieth-century China’ by Prof. Janet Y. Chen (Online)
7 Feb 2023
8:00 pm – 9:30 pm
Online via Zoom
Janet Y. Chen is Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University and her B.A. from Williams College.
cctl.law@cuhk.edu.hk
This seminar draws from Professor Chen’s forthcoming book, The Sounds of Mandarin, which investigates the social history of China’s spoken standard language. The book covers a long time span, from the creation of a national language (國語) in the early Republic, its fate under Nationalist rule and during the Sino-Japanese War, a cross-straits journey to postwar Taiwan in 1945, and its reconfiguration as the common language (普通話) of the People’s Republic after 1949. The presentation will explore the relationship between law and language in the early twentieth century, when reformers and officials sought to compel linguistic change through diverse methods, including invoking the force of law in different permutations.
Language: English
