УДК811.581
The Linguistic Concept “Russians Are a Fighting Nation”
As a Tool to Manage Chinese
Social Consciousness
Aleksandr N. Evdokimov,
Dmitrii A. Savkin,
Baikal School of BRICS, Irkutsk National Research Technical University
Irkutsk, Russian Federation
e-mail: brics@istu.edu,iskander2@mail.ru
Abstract. The study focuses on the concept of "Russians are a fighting nation" in the modern Chinese language, which emerged in 2013 and remains unknown to the vast majority of Russians. The concept has become a total synonym for the concept of "Russians" and has a positive connotation unusual for the Chinese language in the nomination of foreigners. The article is a comprehensive study of the "fighting nation" concept with consideration of its chronological, semantic and stylistic development as an instrument of influencing the worldview of the Chinese nation and the formation of its attitude towards other peoples. The study reveals that, initially, the concept of“the fighting nation” was artificially introduced and popularized by the Chinese authorities; then its internal structure was modified from the professional historical and cultural content to its further artificial transformation in 2016 into an Internet meme among the Chinese youth; and, finally, the loss of control over the dissemination of the concept led to the need for a campaign to discredit the "Russians are a fighting nation" concept, which has achieved only limited results. As a new and effective approach to managing the development of the concept, the Chinese authorities proposed to shift the positive features of the concept from the Russians to the Chinese and formulate a new postulate that “the Chinese are the real fighting nation”, which has become the main development direction for the “fighting nation” concept for the next few years. The research findings can be applied in efficient international cultural communication, translation, as well as in a range of socio-cultural and linguistic studies.
Key words: Chinese language, mentality, concept, Russians, fighting nation, propaganda, lexical-semantic structure, connotation
Researcharea: linguisctics
Языковой концепт «русские – боевая нация» как инструмент управления китайским общественным сознанием
А. Н. Евдокимов
Д. А. Савкин
Иркутский национальный исследовательский технический университет
Российская Федерация, Иркутск
Аннотация. В статье исследуется внезапно возникшее в китайском языке в начале XXI века и получившее широчайшее распространение в китайской языковой картине мира на всех языковых и социальных уровнях (за исключением официальной дипломатической риторики) устойчивое выражение «боевая нация» (кит. 战斗民族, zhàndòumínzú), используемое исключительно для номинации жителей Российской Федерации и ставшее общепринятым синонимом к понятию «русские».
На основе изучения китайских и российских источников авторами исследуется диахроническое и синхроническое лексико-семантическое значение концепта «боевая нация», его коннотативные изменения, вызванные воздействием целого ряда внешних факторов: пропагандистская деятельность, форсирование и дискредитация концепта и т.д.; подробно анализируется структура концепта «боевая нация», с выделением центральных и периферийных компонентов; рассматриваются особенности функционирования концепта в среде современной китайской молодежи.
Ключевые слова: китайский язык, ментальность, концепт, русские, боевая нация, пропаганда, лексико-семантическая структура, коннотация.
Научнаяспециальность: 10.02.00 – языкознание
Introduction
Particular attention of the Russian philological community involved in the Russian-Chinese communication was drawn by the nomination of the Russian nation as "zhàndòumínzú" (fighting nation) that emerged in recent years and widely spread in the Chinese media space (Baidu search returns 53.3 million versatile results, both serious and not, as of 04.2021) and in the Chinese linguistic and mental picture of the world.The uniqueness of this phenomenon lies, firstly, in the use of this expression as a total synonym applied exclusively to the concept of "Russians";thus, Russians are the only nation that have recently received their own new fully functional name in the Chinese language; and, secondly, this nomination, according to all Chinese sources, has an entirely positive connotation: in the article "Fighting Nation (Russians)" in the Chinese online encyclopedia Baidu, it is emphasized that this is a comic expression in relation to Russians, which does not imply any humiliation or sarcasm (Fighting nation). Born in the Chinese linguistic consciousness and intended exclusively for internal use, the "fighting nation" concept remains unknown or unclear to the overwhelming majority of Russians; even specialists in Russian-Chinese relations do not always have a clear idea of the origin and meaning of this concept. For example, in an interview with the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on October 02, 2019, Russian Ambassador to China Andrei Denisov said: “Let us have a look at how the Chinese perceive us, and how we perceive them. Of course, there are still a lot of problems here. I will mention at least one. In the Chinese press – probably, they did not come up with it themselves, but rather picked it up somewhere in the West – there is a discourse about Russians as a warlike nation or warlike people. And our Chinese friends – I have a lot of them here – in some normal conversations, they ask questions such as: Is it true that you are a warlike nation? And why is it so? I keep on explaining, relentlessly, that we are by no means warlike, rather the opposite; it just simply because of the whirling of our historical fate, we were in such conditions, at least in the last few centuries, that we constantly had to defend ourselves from someone... We never attacked anyone, we did not start wars; instead, all kinds of dangers were constantly threatening us, and we had to defend ourselves. This is where, perhaps, this legend about us as some kind of warlike nation was born. This is what I tell our Chinese friends. This is but one example” (Andrei Denisov). It should be noted that, firstly, the West has nothing to do with the emergence of this concept in the Chinese language; secondly, the majority of Chinese specialists who speak Russian prefer to translate the expression “zhàndòumínzú” into Russian as a “fighting” rather than “warlike nation”, since the semantics of these definitions in Russian has a significant difference; and, thirdly, this name, possibly due to the use of the lexeme “warlike” in the translation, is perceived as somewhat unfair, offensive, and requiring explanations and even excuses.
Statement of the problem
At present, from the standpoint of effective international communication, it seems relevant to conduct a detailed comprehensive study of the "fighting nation" concept with due regard to its chronological and semantic development, namely:
1) to establish the time when it emerged;
2) to study modifications of its basic structure in the diachronic and synchronous aspects;
3) to single out the core and peripheral components of the concept;
4) to identify extralinguistic factors that had a direct impact on the formation of the concept;
5) to determine its impact on the mental picture of the world of the Chinese people;
6) and to clarify the semantic content of the concept at the time of the study.
Methods
The study used general research methods – comparative analysis, sampling method; general philological methods – contextological and conceptual analysis; as well as a specific philological method of semantic and stylistic analysis.