![]() ![]() Many Chinese characters in use today can be traced back to the late Shang Dynasty, about 1200–1050 BCE, though the process of creating the characters is thought to have begun some centuries earlier. Some characters are pictographs or ideographs, depicting objects or abstract notions they denote others are either logical aggregates in which two or more parts are used to yield a composite meaning, or phonetic complexes where one part indicates the general semantic category of the character and the other part the phonetic value, which are known as semantic and phonetic radicals, respectively. a character generally represents a syllable in spoken Chinese) it may be a word on its own or part of a di- or polysyllabic word. The Chinese writing system is roughly logosyllabic (i.e. The Chinese script and the Chinese uni-scriptal ideology Simultaneously, they are examples of how the ‘ordinary’ can be both linguistically ‘playful’ and ‘subversive’, commonly practised in spite of various official efforts to censor their usage and minimise their sociocultural impact. ![]() Understood from the analytical perspective of translanguaging, we emphasise how such subversion occurs through the usage of ‘non-Chinese’ language resources and how such practices are ‘ordinary’ linguistic phenomena created and circulated by ordinary people in everyday, digitally mediated social interaction (Dovchin, 2017 see also Androutsopoulos, 2007 Blommaert, 2015). While we want to highlight the creative processes of tranßcripting, our main purpose is to explore the socio-political dimensions of the phenomenon, in particular, the playful subversion it represents. This article focuses on the emerging phenomenon of creating scripts that defy the writing conventions of Chinese by incorporating elements that are deemed ‘foreign’ or by manipulating the structural norms of Chinese written characters, including their traditional sound-meaning mapping process and visual representation. Nonetheless, new writing inventions appear all the time in China, and most of them are intrinsically tied to social, cultural, political and economic changes. They believe that the Chinese script is one of the oldest continually used writing systems in the world that it has had a major influence on other East Asian languages and beyond and that all attempts in history to change the system have failed. This incident is only one example of how strongly the Chinese feel about their writing system. They argued that the dictionary was not intended to dictate what was acceptable but to record words in common usage. The dictionary compilers, many of whom were senior academics in public office, had to issue lengthy explanations. Those who argued for the acceptance of alphabetic words were in the minority and seen as rebels. The vast majority seemed to be on the side of the complainants who evidently felt that the Chinese language was under threat from foreign influence. 1 A national debate ensued, with unprecedented media coverage. The letter writers claimed that the inclusion of words such as NBA, CPI, and PM 2.5 violated the Chinese laws regarding the protection of the Chinese writing system, because the Chinese script is not alphabetic but logographic. On 28th August 2012, a group of over 100 language enthusiasts, public figures and academics in China wrote an open letter to the State Administration of Press and Publication and the State Language Commission to protest the inclusion of 239 so-called alphabetic words in the latest, 6th edition of the popular dictionary A Dictionary of Modern Chinese. ![]()
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