Research Information System
International History of East Asia Seminar, Trinity Term 2022, Oxford, England, 24 May 2022, (Unpublished)
Language
sheds light on the cultural heritage of a society, and was defined as “is the
strongest bond, that which turns society to ‘a nation’” by Doğan Aksan, who is
the founding father of linguistics in Turkey. It can be said that in
the political sphere and thanks to the rising tide of modernization movements
all over the World, the concept of “language” found itself in a strong position
with “vernacularization” projects. In this sense, its also possible to think
the emergence of “language policy” concept interrelated with modernization.
The
purpose of this study is examine and compare the early language
reforms/policies of China and Turkey in terms of similarities and differences,
whose modernization projects started nearly at the same period. This study is
an attempt to clarify in what way the language was used during the Project of
“nation-building” in these two societies, both of which had a long-established
imperial tradition. Due to the time constraints of the study, only the early
period of the language reforms and policies will be discussed. It can be said
that for both of the countries, language reforms followed a similar course
especially in the early stages of modernization. In this sense, with this study
we also aim to examine early period of written language reforms in line with
each other to understand more clearly the effects of the “egocentric” worldview
and the problems of “literacy” during the modernization process.