A New Perception on "Rule of Tongwen" in the Qing Dynasty
"The rule of Tongwen"is a basic state policy of the Qing Dynasty,but its connotation and essence are still not very clear until today.Being initially a proposition of language philology,however,due to the absence of linguists and philology at the initial stage,there remain many aspects yetto be clarified.From the perspective of philology,this paper demonstrates the important characteristics of"the rule of Tongwen"in the Qing Dynasty from seven aspects.Firstly,It is the continuation of the"unity of Chinese language"since the Zhou and Qin dynasties,and it is an important national policy of the Qing Dynasty to govern the multi-ethnic country on the premise of the idea of unification of the world and to legitimize its multi-ethnic rule as an extremely critical theory and practice.It is an important way for Emperor Qianlong to realize his concept of being a"sage emperor".Secondly,"the rule of Tongwen"in the Qing Dynasty is the"governance of unified culture".It is the coexistence,co-occurrence,communication,exchange and integration of all ethnic groups in language and culture aspects under the premise of the unification of culture and morality represented by Confucian culture and the popularization of Chinese culture.Thirdly,"the rule of Tongwen"has always adopted Chinese language as the lingua franca,and using Chinese is a tool for learning and annotating other languages and a bridge for communication between various languages.Fourthly,the backbone nature for"the rule of Tongwen"in the Qing Dynasty is the great unification,standardization of"lingua franca",with diverse languages and writing characters being all existed as the superficial phenomenon.Fifthly,"the rule of Tongwen"is embodied in the translation,research and mutual learning of various languages.Sixthly,"the rule of Tongwen"is the normalization and standardization of various languages,including the lingua franca itself.Seventhly,"the rule of Tongwen"also includes the promotion and popularization of national standard general pronunciation for both written and oral languages,or the promotion of the official pronunciation.
Qing Dynastythe rule of Tongwenlinguistics and philology
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