Language, Nation, Race: Linguistic Reform in Meiji Japan (1868–1912)

Language, Nation, Race explores the various language reforms at the onset of Japanese modernity, a time when a “national language” (kokugo) was produced to standardize Japanese. Faced with the threat of Western colonialism, Meiji intellectuals proposed various reforms to standardize the Japanese language in order to quickly educate the illiterate masses. This book liberates these language reforms from the predetermined category of the “nation,” for such a notion had yet to exist as a clear telos to which the reforms aspired. Atsuko Ueda draws on, while critically intervening in, the vast scholarship of language reform that engaged with numerous works of postcolonial and cultural studies. She examines the first two decades of the Meiji period, with specific focus on the issue of race, contending that no analysis of imperialism or nationalism is possible without it.

Prospects and challenges of gender neutralization in Russian

Feminist linguistic activism has gained prominence among Western feminists as a way to eliminate sexism in language and everyday life. In Russian, gender specification (known as feminitivy) represents the mainstream approach practiced by grassroots feminist reformers. However, alternative approaches aimed at gender neutralization proliferate. The paper examines the prospects and challenges of gender neutralization both in writing and oral speech. Results of a survey documenting attitudes of Russian-speaking feminist and LGBTQI communities to language reform attempts are presented, with a special focus on comparison between gender specification and gender neutralization.

THE LANGUAGE SITUATION OF KAZAKHSTAN: SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Language is a social phenomenon that exists in human society. Any language the Society performs communicative (means of communication), expressive (means of revealing thoughts), constructive (means of thinking), accumulative (skills acquired from experience and knowledge), cumulative (accumulation), transformative (transfer), etc. These are the main functions of the language, which are inherent in different levels of development at different stages and are innate components that do not change in their own system. In addition, the social functions of the language are a reflection of the use and use of the same basic functions of the language in different social environments, spheres of public life, and in different purposes and situations. The factors influencing the formation of the public environment in the Kazakh language are the system of Education, Culture, mass media, departments and departments of language development in each institution that monitor the conduct of office work in the state language, etc. institutions and public organizations, as well as the state authorities themselves. At the same time, the problem of the language situation in modern Kazakhstan is reflected in the address of the head of State N.A. Nazarbayev “New Kazakhstan in the new world” in 2009, where in order to ensure the competitiveness of the country and its citizens, it is proposed to gradually implement the cultural project “trinity of languages” in accordance with the need to develop trilingualism, i.e. Kazakh as the state language, Russian as the language of International Communication, and English as the language of successful integration into the global economy.In this regard, a number of scientific studies are currently underway to study and analyze the social problems of the Kazakh language. In terms of the language reform associated with the transition to a new alphabet in Kazakhstan, it is particularly relevant to republishing and defining the viable parameters of the language.

Reading Distance: Port Louis, Cairo, Beijing

This essay uses a case study of Lin Shu (1852-1924) and (1876-1924) to argue for an approach to world literature called “reading distance.” Through a close reading of Lin Shu's and translations of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie (Paul and Virginia) into Chinese and Arabic and a consideration of their work as translators and intellectuals, the essay reads between peripheries—places like Cairo and Beijing—to understand how intellectuals in those places grappled with difficult questions concerning translation, language reform, and changes in reading publics. By thinking with models of distant reading but also engaging with materials that are usually excluded from those models, the essay examines an important point of overlap in the intellectual and cultural histories of the Arab and Chinese enlightenments of the early twentieth century.