I admit I am not a connoisseur of Chinese puns; I don't show off at parties in Shanghai by dropping puns in Mandarin. With that said, I was confused and alarmed when I learned that word play has been banned in China. This is no laughing matter (bad pun intended). The Chinese State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (which could do with a more precise name rather ironically, perhaps they are upset they couldn't think of one) has banned all forms of word play to prevent what they see as they bastardization of their language, citing the "cultural and linguistic chaos" wordplay jokes cause.
Particularly precious to the Chinese government are their idioms: “Idioms are one of the great features of the Chinese language and contain profound cultural heritage and historical resources and great aesthetic, ideological and moral values,” and as such they have been given a kevlar vest from potential pun enthusiasts.
That’s the excuse, at least. What this move really represents is an attempt to further control the media not only from a structural point of view but also as a means of general content control: this is further practice for the government’s censorship machine. David Moser, the Academic Director for CET Chinese Studies at Beijing Capital Normal University claims “I wonder if this is not a preemptive move; an excuse to crack down for supposed ‘linguistic purity reasons’ on the cute language people use to crack jokes about the leadership or policies. It sounds to convenient.”
With all of the obvious political implications aside, out of this conundrum come many interesting questions about language in general. For one, it will be interesting to see if the attempts to ban word play are in any way successful. If they are, it will likely represent the biggest ever top-down change in language usage (except for when newly state mandated languages have been imposed, like in Belgium in the 19th century), and perhaps lay the way for languages to become much less organic in the future. The very nature of language as being a prescriptive, inorganic thing fascinates me and I would love to here your insights and examples in the comment section.
What’s more, the question no one is really taking seriously given the context is: are puns and other forms of word-play actually “bad” for a language? A theme very enthusiastically put forward in this class has been that linguistic variation is by no means a qualitative thing, be it amongst or within languages. While this is all well and good from a political point of view, there are some cases where linguistic variations can help or hinder, for one example refer to my blog post about the Piraha, who as a result of their language cannot comprehend basic numeracy. If we view a language as something that is purely meant to deliver meaning, then doing away with word play can simplify a language greatly (especially for foreign speakers), and with this in mind I would be curious to hear of other examples you may have of elements of language that you may think are either advantageous or disadvantageous to a particular language or dialect.
I, like most people in the West, believe a central criteria for modern citizenship is freedom of speech, and I believe that we should be free even beyond what is put under the umbrella of Locke’s famous “harm principle”. As such I could never condone the censorship of punning, and I believe the measure is as alarming as it is comical
This sounds like quite an incredible story. I would really appreciate seeing whatever article or source that you learned this from. Although censorship is pervasive in China, I don't see why the government attempts to regulate, or even cares about, word play on the Internet. Censorship policy in China has been predominantly driven by filtering politically sensitive content. Honestly, I'm not aware at all about this ban on "word play", as you called it.
ReplyDeleteI can read between the lines and take a guess at what the government might be doing that you described as a ban on word play. Since Internet filtering means parsing the text and finding keywords such as "Tiananmen Square Protest" to block certain IP's or sites, puns make it difficult to detect these "sensitive" keywords when people are discussing political content. For example, Mao Zedong is a highly sensitive keyword the filtering algorithms look for. However, many puns and variations have arose on the Internet. For example, Mao Ce means 'toilet' and is used frequently to refer to Mao in a derogatory way. Puns like these make censorship more difficult and could be the cause of what you described as a ban.
This is a very interesting example of government over reach. I wonder what desired effect they really hope will stem from this policy given that it is almost impossible to enforce. Does anyone know whether being punny was getting seriously (or relatively) out of hand in China?
ReplyDeleteEither way, I agree that it would be extremely interesting to see how this plays out in reality given that it would constitute the most dramatic top down measure instituted in language. My hypothesis is that it is not going to have a great effect on spoken language in non-public settings.
It's interesting to hear an instance of how the government attempts to control something as widespread as language. Language is so easy to conceal, and in a private environment, it would seem that any human can say whatever they want. At the same time, a change implemented by the government can definitely have lasting effects on language usage.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the ban on Hawaiian language when the Hawaiian government was overthrown by the US in 1896. It was banned from public places, and it was also banned from being taught or used in an education setting. This was obviously problematic, especially for those who only spoke Hawaiian, or for families who wished for their children to speak and understand Hawaiian. Even though these families could continue doing so in their private homes, the ban of it's use in public made it a much less-appealing language to learn at all. The negative stigma that accompanied the ban on the language also did not help, as native speakers were looked down upon. In this way we can see the lasting effects of a government's ruling on language usage.