LINGUIST List 33.3421
Thu Nov 03 2022
FYI: Lecture Announcement: “Becoming White: The “Japanese” Language in the Modern Global Order” with Prof. Atsuko Ueda (Princeton)
Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everettlinguistlist.org>
Date: 02-Nov-2022
From: Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd <haedodd
gmail.com>
Subject: Lecture Announcement: “Becoming White: The “Japanese” Language in the Modern Global Order” with Prof. Atsuko Ueda (Princeton)
E-mail this message to a friend Tokyo College at the University of Tokyo be hosting a Zoom Webinar with Professor Atsuko Ueda (Princeton University) on the topic of her book, Language, Nation, Race: Linguistic Reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912) (University of California Press, 2021). The talk is on Friday, November 18th, 2022, 9:00AM-10:30AM (JST). The abstract of the talk is as follows:
Language, Nation, Race explores the many language reforms at the onset of modernity in Japan, when the “national language” (kokugo) was produced in order to standardize the Japanese language. In the mid-to late-1800s, the literacy level was low, written and spoken languages were disparate, and multiple dialects existed, the disparity of which impeded basic communication among the inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago. Faced with the threat of Western colonialism, Meiji intellectuals proposed various reforms—whether it be the rejection of Chinese characters, the use of Romanized syllabic scripts, or even the adoption of English as the national language—to standardize the language in order to quickly educate the illiterate masses with new forms of knowledge imported from the West. This was a chaotic moment in the history of modern Japan.
In this talk, Prof. Atsuko Ueda focuses on Ueda Kazutoshi’s reform. She departs from prior studies of his reforms by specifically examining his tropes of racialization. Meiji was a race war. It is crucial to inscribe race in our investigation since no analysis of imperialism or nationalism is possible without the concept of race.
For more information, including how to register, please see the following link to the Tokyo College event page:
https://www.tc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ai1ec_event/7821/ Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Ling & Literature; Sociolinguistics; Writing Systems
Subject Language(s):
Japanese (jpn)
Language Family(ies): Japonic
Page Updated: 03-Nov-2022