28487
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
inguistic dilemma,” this special issue aims to problematize this phenomenon, exploring its origins, causes and impacts, thereby reflecting on how to interpret and advance the study of Chinese citizenship.
Why do citizenship practices in China often occur in the form of absent, concealed, or distorted language of citizenship? What political, social, and cultural factors contribute to this case? How does the change in citizenship language impact citizenship practices and actions? Is there consistency, misalignment, or conflict between citizenship language and practices? How should we understand these relationships? How can we comprehend this phenomenon from a historical perspective? What insights do these considerations provide for our understanding of Chinese politics and society in general?
We invite scholars to join us in exploring these issues. We welcome research from a range of disciplines and methods, particularly those interested in employing the approach of citizenship to analyze everyday struggles and creative acts that may not be explicitly recognized as citizenship in public and private life. We encourage researchers to reflect and explore the diverse named and unnamed citizenship practices in everyday interactions, revealing their profound theoretical and practical significance for understanding contemporary Chinese politics and society.
For further information about the call for papers and the target journal to which the organizers aim to submit selected papers, Citizenship Studies, contact Canglong Wang (c.wang@brighton.ac.uk). Selected readings
* "Citizenship and syntax (updated, and updated again)" (7/25/18)
* "Chinese nationality" (2/20/22)
* "Linguistics Required for British Citizenship" (11/1/05)
[Thanks to June Teufel Dreyer]
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Language Log
The language of citizenship
The PRC does have a word for "citizen", namely, "guómín 國民" (lit., "person of a country"), but it is a bit more problematic to find a Chinese word equivalent to the abstract concept of "citizenship". If we mean by "citizenship", "the status / condition of being a citizen of a certain country", the legal term "guójí 國籍", which signifies the country in / to which an individual enjoys certain rights, duties, and privileges, will suffice. If, however, we are searching for a term that conveys the notion of "a person's conduct as a citizen" (Collins) or "the character of an individual viewed as a member of society" (Random House), it is difficult to find a comparable Chinese term.
It is interesting that PRC citizenship in the latter respect is defined pretty much in terms of its absence
Below is a call for papers that engages on this subject: Chinese Citizenship in Linguistic Dilemma:
Civic Practices and Social Struggles in the Xi Jinping Era
Overview
In the study of Chinese citizenship, a perplexing and understudied phenomenon persists—how does the enactment of citizenship remain possible despite the stringent regulation and elimination of citizenship language in public and private discourse? This issue can be theoretically addressed by drawing on Engin Isin’s conceptualization of citizenship as an apparatus of government, as outlined in his new book, “Citizenship: New Trajectories in Law” (2024). According to Isin, there is a gap between the ordinary language of political thinking in emancipatory citizenship practices and the language of political thinking in dominating citizenship practices. This gap generates sites and senses of social struggles, through which citizens and noncitizens construct various ordinary languages to raise questions of social justice, rights, equality, and solidarity, performing their rights regardless of their status of citizenship. It is these ordinary, situated, and enacted performances that disrupt hegemonic languages by performing citizenship without explicitly naming it.
This special issue, however, focuses on China under Xi Jinping’s leadership, examining social struggles that do not explicitly invoke citizenship in a context where control and restrictions on individuals and organizations have visibly intensified. It aims to reveal the profound theoretical and practical implications of these struggles for understanding the complex relationships between the state and society, and between the state and individuals in contemporary China. We view citizenship as an open, dynamic, creative, and performative concept, filled with possibilities for struggling against dominating power.
We define the official, authorized language that directly employs the terms of citizenship and core elements (such as rights, obligations, and public participation) as the “language of citizenship.” We refer to the “language for citizenship” as the everyday discourses along with relevant practices that indirectly relate to and point towards terms of citizenship. While the use of the language for citizenship in socio-political struggles is common across different polities (Guo 2022; Isin 2024; Wang 2022), it becomes more complex in China. Particularly over the past twelve years under Xi Jinping’s rule, the concept of “citizen” has been intentionally and systematically diminished and excluded from everyday public discourse by dominating political power (Stern and O’Brien 2012). In recent years, the use of the citizenship term and its related core elements (especially citizen rights and public participation) has surprisingly reduced, if not completely disappeared, from both social discussions and academic research, as well as from public life and individual actions.
Does this mean the enactment and practice of citizenship in China have diminished or disappeared as wel[...]
ams of study dedicated to it is unclear.
The Daily Nous article reproduces a visual-textual pun on the university's logo: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/valparaiso-good-school.png This is not as drastic or as sudden as what happened to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, but it's another straw in the higher-education wind…
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Language Log
"Conservative"?
Matthew Erskine, "The Meaning of Conservative: Lessons from the Valparaiso University Dispute", Forbes 7/25/2024:
Valparaiso University is seeking to sell three valuable paintings, including a Georgia O'Keeffe, to fund renovations for freshman dormitories. The university argues that two of the paintings, purchased with funds from a 1953 donation by Percy Sloan, do not meet the donor's stipulation for "conservative" art. The donation specified that the funds be used to acquire "conservative" American art, which the university claims does not include modernist works like O'Keeffe's "Rust Red Hills" and Childe Hassam's "The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate."
Here are images of the three paintings, starting with Georgia O'Keefe's Rust Red Hills: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ValparaisoArt1.webp Childe Hassam's The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ValparaisoArt2.webp And Frederic Church's Mountain Landscape: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ValparaisoArt3.jpeg The "not conservative" argument has been challenged, as the Forbes article goes on to note:
The University's decision has sparked significant controversy and mixed reactions from various stakeholders, including students, faculty, art historians, and the broader community. Critics argue that using the art collection as a financial resource undermines the university's cultural and educational mission. Gretchen Buggeln, a professor of art history, called the move "completely beyond the pale" and "unethical". Student activists have also voiced their disapproval, organized protests and are calling for alternative solutions. Richard Brauer, the museum's founding director, and Philipp Brockington, a retired professor, have filed a lawsuit to block the sale. They argue that the sale violates the terms of the original donation and the university's mission. The university has moved the paintings to a secure location pending the outcome of legal proceedings .
The Administration justifies the decision to sell the paintings as a necessary step to address declining enrollment and financial challenges. The proceeds from the sale are intended to fund much-needed renovations to freshman dormitories, which are seen as critical to attracting new students and improving campus life. The legal arguments revolve around the interpretation of "conservative” art, and that the paintings in question do not meet the donor's stipulations for "conservative" art. They claim that the modernist styles of the O'Keeffe and Hassam paintings do not align with the original intent of the donation, which specified acquiring "conservative" American art, which originally was concentrated in 19th century Hudson River landscapes. […]
The Indiana attorney general's office has not objected to the sale, and the decision now rests with Judge Michael Fish of Porter County Superior Court. The judge's interpretation of what constitutes "conservative" art will be crucial in determining whether the sale can proceed.
A possible problem for that argument is that (according to Wikipedia) Frederic Church "was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters.'
According to Art Daily ("Valparaiso University closes museum and moves ahead with selling from the collection", 8/2/1014)
Valparaiso University has closed its Brauer Museum of Art and dismissed the director, Jonathan Canning, as part of an administrative restructuring announced late last week to address the tuition-dependent school’s falling enrollment and mounting operating deficit. The move surprised the local community as it comes just weeks after the museum opened America the Beautiful, its summer exhibition of Impressionist paintings drawn from the permanent collection. It also comes as the University moves ahead with its plan to sell the museum’s three most valuable paintin[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
lardass
an overweight person, esp. one with large buttocks
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Idiom of the Day
Lady Luck
The personification of fortune, whether good or bad. (Sometimes spelled in lowercase.) Watch the video
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r.
* Zhao Shi, football player.
* Zhang Weili, mixed martial artist, ring name "Magnum". She is the first ever Chinese and East Asian champion in UFC history.
* Chang Yongxiang, wrestler.
It must have been quite a trip to live in a city where people were constantly quoting idioms, even when they wanted to ask / give directions Selected readings
* "'The old man at the pass loses his horse'" (5/2/20)
* "Mixed literary and vernacular grammar" (9/3/16)
* "I'm (like)" (8/30/21)
* "Learning Chinese is easy — not" (7/18/22)
* "Eighty-one Cantonese proverbs in one picture" (2/27/14)
* "Too tired to love: new set phrases in Pinyin" (12/23/19)
* "Chinese proverbs" (1/19/16)
* "More literary troubles for Xi Jinping" (1/3/19) — see especially this comment for the sharply diminished usage of set phrases in contemporary speech and writing
* "A [class.] zoo" (1/18/15)
* "Mistakes in English and in Chinese" (2/13/18)
* "How to learn to read and write Chinese" (8/13/19)
* "Excessive quadrisyllabicism" (2/17/18) — I was reminded of this post by this tweet from the author of the following famous article
* "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard" (8/27/91)
[Thanks to Christopher Shell]
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Language Log
When AI hallucinations are a Good Thing
Locally consistent hallucinations, anyhow… Zoë Hannah, "We pushed this ChatGPT game to the limits, but playing it the right way is more fun", Polygon 7/30/2024: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/DeepGame0.webp Apparently, we all like playing god, and we all like doing it badly. I bet none of us thought that removing the ladder from our Sims’ pools was such a universal experience until it became a pretty popular meme, and it’s no secret that lots of mods are centered on adding, uh, explicit elements to games. So, naturally, when I started playing around with DeepGame, Utile Labs’ ChatGPT-based choose-your-own-text-adventure game, I put my best sicko foot forward.
The game, which runs on ChatGPT and is available to anyone with an account, generates stories in a variety of genres. You start off with a command like “Play a romantasy story” or “Surprise me” and let the GPT do its thing — and despite my desire to break the game, I found it much more enjoyable when I took it just a little more seriously.
DeepGame’s first response almost always begins with scene-setting followed by introducing you, the protagonist, as well as a few side characters and a clearly stated challenge or adventure. Then the game asks, “What do you do next?”
Answering the question is titillating, to say the least. There are no prompts or choices to pick from — you can go in any direction at all, and the game keeps up, spitting out several paragraphs to move the story along after each of your responses.
What’s more, if you have the paid version of ChatGPT, you can use the command “visualize” to generate an image of the current scene using Dall-E. It’s a feature that’s easy to forget about if you treat the game like reading a novel — at least for me, since I typically create an image in my head as I read — but you shouldn’t ignore it, because whatever parameters the devs put on the image generator make for some truly delightful interpretations. It’s the more imperfect side of DeepGame, which is part of why it makes me so giddy — and you can always regenerate the image if it decides to throw in some random characters or elements that don’t match up with your narrative.
As Wikipedia explains,
Adventure games were initially developed in the 1970s and early 1980s as text-based interactive stories, using text parsers to translate the player's commands into actions. As personal computers became more powerful with better graphics, the graphic adventure-game format became popular, initially by augmenting player's text commands with graphics, but soon moving towards point-and-click interfaces. Further computer advances led to adventure games with more immersive graphics using real-time or pre-rendered three-dimensional scenes or full-motion video taken from the first- or third-person perspective. Currently, a large number of adventure games are available as a combination of different genres with adventure elements.
Exchanging old-fashioned parsers and story-generation rules for an LLM is an obvious development, but this is the first example I've seen. The transcript for one of Ms. Hannah's DeepGame adventures is here.
In any case, this is an application where real-world facts are not relevant — though keeping track of the state of the fantasy world still matters, and forgetting what's happened, what's been found and what hasn't, etc., would definitely be bad. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/DeepGame1.webp ➖ @EngSkills ➖
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: satirist
This word has appeared in 23 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
check in
If you check in, you give your details at a hotel's reception desk, or at an airline's check-in counter, when you arrive.
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Word of the Day
vicinity
Definition: (noun) A nearby, surrounding, or adjoining region.
Synonyms: locality, neck of the woods, neighborhood.
Usage: The plane crashed in the vicinity of Asheville, and investigators spent weeks interviewing residents who had witnessed the disaster.
Discuss
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, YouTube or X. People here interact with family friends and colleagues via WeChat and Xiaohongshu (not FB [VHM: it's like Instagram]), they watch Friends on Billibilli and YouTube or TikTok content on Douyin. As for American politics, I live in a very small town and yet I can chat about the American election and politics with a taxi driver. He’ll even know who the US Secretary of State is. I seriously doubt the opposite is true for an equally remote place in the US. What this means is that in spite of any supposed barriers, Chinese know far, far more about the ‘West’ via the internet and apps, never mind via the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Chinese students studying in North America, Europe, JP, KR, and AUSNZ posting their daily experiences and thoughts on Chinese social media. (Remind me again what the total number of US students studying in China was last year???) This is a serious knowledge imbalance that doesn’t bode well for the US and other countries in the longterm. My sense is that Americans have zero clue about the overall situation and very likely don’t care.
4. Can OpenAI/ChatGPT, etc. gain access to things inside the Great Firewall?
I asked ChatGPT4o about that!
And chatted about transparency… so a little bit about the proprietary “knowledge curation” by companies like OpenAI versus the peer review process in the academic world. And yes, I understand the peer review process is not totally transparent but academics in general tends to be a much more open playing field than a singular corporation.
In the blog you wrote "If China doesn't want its people to know about the world and doesn't want the world to know about what's going inside the Great Firewall I don't think AI Google or any other outside entity should make costly time-consuming efforts to compensate for the willful obscurantism of the CCP/PRC”. According to ChatGPT itself, that’s not what’s going on. It’s not that the Great Firewall/the Chinese government are specifically restricting access to ChatGPT etc., it's governments and companies or “content platforms” worldwide. (The NYT, among a number of other major organizations, is suing ChatGPT for snuffing up its content.) Here’s what ChatGPT4o had to say on the topic — a conversation via a number of screen-grabs gathered as a pdf — where ChatGPT admits that maybe it’s not in the best interest of everyone to let it “scrape” (nice term) content from all and sundry. And what to make of the statistic it gives of less than 0.1%… http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/chatgpt4o1.jpg http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/chatgpt4o2.jpg http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/chatgpt4o3.jpg http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/chatgpt4o4.jpg http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/chatgpt4o5.jpg (click to embiggen)
5. Which LL post were you referring to that seems to have mentioned the article by Henry Heng LUO (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) that you felt left much to be desired? This one that mentioned Luo’s article on Medium, with its poor methodology and remarkably weak understanding of differences in how the internet functions among diverse countries, never mind how people actually use the internet through devices and across apps ("So my friends it’s crucial to be mindful of your online expressions. You never know what kind of unexpected stereotypes may emerge when these powerful language models come into play.” Oi…)
I hope you can bring some attention to the knowledge imbalance aka knowledge asymmetry. This will affect the future far more than the Chinese lack of interest in VPNs or access to western websites. I just came across this interview on VOA that ends on a rather bleak note from David Moser:
David Moser, an American who has lived and worked in China for more than three decades and is the former academic director of China Educational Tours (CET) in Beijing, said that “I haven’t seen an American student in years.”
We need to know how information exchange actually[...]
Language Log
"Garbage time of history"
Economics buzzword. From the Wall Street Journal's China newsletter:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/garbagetime.png
Here's the linked article in Chinese.
lìshǐ de lèsè shíjiān 历史的垃圾时间 ("garbage time of history")
This expression reminded me of what I knew as the "garbage bin of history":
The "ash heap of history", also called "dustbin of history" or "garbage heap of history" or "landfill of history", is a figurative speech about people, events, artifacts, and ideologies. It is used about people that are forgotten or things that will be forgotten in history.
Ronald Reagan used this speech as an example and the Soviet Union, Leninism, and Marxism will eventually fall and be forgotten.
Leon Trotsky once famously used the phrase "dustbin of history" referring to when the Mensheviks walked out of a meeting during the Russian Revolution in 1917.
(Wikipedia)
I'm surprised "rubbish" doesn't figure in any of these formulations.
Selected readings
* "HouseHold GarBage" (12/6/19)
* "Quadrilingual Garbage" (8/5/10)
* "Pernicious garbage" (118/15)
* "Poisonous & Evil Rubbish" (427/21)
* "Academic rubbish" (7/13/19)
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: purportedly
This word has appeared in 124 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
knock out (1)
If you are knocked out, you are hit so hard that you lose consciousness.
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l? Certainly not. In fact, there are numerous ongoing citizenship practices and acts in China that do not explicitly invoke the term “citizen.” We acknowledge that the ordinary language of citizenship means that citizens do not necessarily directly use the concept in their actions and speech, but in the contemporary Chinese context, citizenship faces distinct, profound challenges. There are two observations about this challenge.
First, practices and actions of citizenship have increasingly adopted non-citizenship concepts, terms, and vocabularies to re-express themselves. A typical example is the emergence of numerous homonyms, neologisms, pinyin abbreviations, metaphors, symbols, and mixed signals online to obscurely express politically sensitive views, breaking through sophisticated and stringent speech censorship (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013; Nordin 2013). Additionally, recent discussions in China on food safety (Yan 2012), digital labor and the platform economy (McDonald 2019), educational involution (neijuan) (Mulvey and Wright 2022), and the 996-work regime as modern slavery (J. Wang 2020) have used everyday languages of social well-being, health, technological control, and inequality to replace the official language of citizenship. However, this replacement must occur within the boundaries allowed by socialist state power and ideology. Once these discussions cross the line or are perceived to cross it, they face the risk of being controlled, co-opted, or even blocked and eliminated.
Second, along with the diminishing voice of citizens, the official discourse of citizenship has begun to monopolistically emphasize the responsibility/obligation elements of citizenship while downplaying the equally core elements of rights and public participation. This dominant, biased, and unilateral emphasis may result in the rich connotation of citizenship being oversimplified, potentially reinforcing the instrumental nature of citizenship as a tool to build up a powerful state in modern China (Zhao and Wang 2023; C. Wang 2023a).
We emphasize that the above phenomena represent a special case of citizenship studies in China, which we call the “linguistic dilemma” of Chinese citizenship. This term refers to the reluctance of directly using citizenship terms in everyday social and political struggles over citizenship due to political control and ideological dominance, revealing the gaps between discourse and practice, and between words and actions, in Chinese citizenship.
Furthermore, this judgment is based on three reasons.
1. Politically, over the past decade, China’s socialist regime has intensified control over society and citizens, especially with the aid of artificial intelligence and big data technologies, strengthening an increasingly stringent surveillance society (Xiao 2019). In this context,
citizenship discourse and actions are more rigorously regulated, controlled, and even suppressed by state power due to their emancipatory and creative potential to escape and challenge dominance.
2. Culturally, Chinese political and social life is deeply influenced by Confucian cultural values, which are widely perceived to emphasize responsibility and obligation over rights and to stress obedience to authority over public participation (C. Wang 2023b, 2021). This potentially influences the absence of citizenship language use in contemporary China.
3. Historically, since the concept of citizenship was introduced to China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it has been treated as a tool for building a strong modern nation-state, preventing the development of liberal citizenship (Guo 2014; Zhao, Wang, and Guo 2023). Under the socialist regime, citizens continue to play an instrumental role in achieving Chinese-style modernization, with socialist collective values prioritized over individualistic values, leading to citizens being constantly dominated by power in their speech and actions.
Despite the lack of attention from Chinese citizenship researchers to the “l[...]
Word of the Day
exiguity
Definition: (noun) The quality or condition of being scanty or meager.
Synonyms: leanness, meagerness, poorness, scantiness.
Usage: With an exiguity of cloth that would allow only one dress to be made, she selflessly offered that her sister go to the ball in her stead.
Discuss
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gs to fund renovations of freshman dormitories. […]
The museum’s former director, Richard Brauer, and former VU law professor and museum donor Philipp Brockington delayed the sale by filing suit against the university. They claimed it would violate the terms of the original gift agreement between Percy H. Sloan and VU. Sloan donated the Church landscape and established an acquisition fund with which Richard Brauer bought the Hassam and O’Keeffe in the early 1960s. Ultimately, the Court denied Brauer and Brockington standing. Indiana State Attorney General Todd Rokita stepped in to review the case, but recently opted not to oppose a sale. […]
In its May petition to Porter County Superior Court, the University claims that the three paintings have become too valuable for it to keep them safe. The petition cites an example of European environmentalists throwing paint at the Mona Lisa. VU estimates that security upgrades would cost between \$50,000 and \$100,000, and professional guards, as opposed to students, would add an additional \$150,000 to the museum’s annual staffing costs. It also argues storage fees at the undisclosed secure location, to which the paintings were transferred last Fall, are wasteful given its financial predicament. […]
VU also argues that the Hassam and O’Keeffe paintings should not have been bought with Sloan’s funds because of a stipulation that they be used to acquire only “conservative” paintings. Claiming that Richard Brauer first broke these terms, VU appeals to be released from all other restrictions, especially the requirement that revenue from sold paintings be deposited into the Sloan Purchase Fund. In response, Brauer has appealed to be heard by the Court, asserting that the University has misinterpreted his actions and overlooked the fact that Sloan’s executor, given full discretionary authority under the gift agreement, authorized both purchases.
Whether the judge engages in the art historical debate, he must determine if the enlargement of the student body, attracted by upgraded dormitories, cleaves closely enough to Sloan’s stated desire to educate students in the appreciation of art to allow the sale. As part of the dormitory renovations, the university will construct a gallery in which freshmen can examine examples of “conservative” art from the Sloan Collection.
In related news, "Valparaiso University considers cutting academic programs", NWI Times 3/4/2024 :
Valparaiso University is considering cutting nearly 30 undergraduate and graduateprograms due to low student enrollment, according to a memo sent to faculty members Friday.
The academic programs being considered for possible discontinuance include a number ofscience and medical studies, some foreign language majors, theology, music and cybersecurity,among other subject areas.
"We have too many majors, minors and graduate programs for the number of students andfaculty we have," Eric Johnson, the university's provost and executive vice president foracademic affairs, said in the memo.
And according to Justin Weinberg, "Valparaiso to Eliminate Philosophy Program", Daily Nous 7/30/2024:
Students at Valparaiso University will no longer be able to choose philosophy as a major or minor, according to a plan announced by the school’s president, José Padilla. […]
The philosophy programs at Valparaiso are currently housed in the Philosophy and Theology Department.
Meanwhile, according to the Chicago Tribune, “over the next year, the faculty and the provost’s office will develop a new major and required courses in the field of religion.”
The university says that “the freedom to pursue truth wherever it leads is at the heart of Valpo’s sense of community” and that “the university aims to foster in its students a lifelong commitment to this search for truth, encouraging the development of a sense of personal vocation as well as the intellectual and professional skills needed to pursue it.” How that aim is better achieved by the elimination of the very progr[...]
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: defamatory
This word has appeared in 73 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
throw out (1)
to discard something you don't want, usually by putting it in a rubbish bin or a garbage can
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Word of the Day
elfin
Definition: (adjective) Having a magical quality or charm; fairylike.
Synonyms: fey.
Usage: The ballerina moved across the dimly lit stage with elfin grace.
Discuss
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Language Log
Streets named after idioms
The Paper (simplified Chinese: 澎湃新闻; traditional Chinese: 澎湃新聞; pinyin: Péngpài Xīnwén; lit. 'Surging News'), a Shanghai-based, state-owned online newspaper, has an article in Chinese reporting that the city of Handan in Hebei province is changing the names of more than a dozen of its roads that are named after chéngyǔ 成语 ("idioms; set phrases"). The reason given for changing these road names is "bùyì shíjì dàolù 不易识记道路" ("it's not easy to remember the streets").
yīyánjiǔdǐng Jiē
一言九鼎街
"'one word is worth nine sacred tripods' street; 'words of enormous weight' street; 'solemn promise' street" origins of the expression in the 4th c. BC, annotations, commentary, explanation, occurrences throughout history, contemporary usage zhìzàisìfāng Jiē
志在四方街
"'aspire to travel far and make one's mark' street" source in a late Ming dynasty historical novel by Feng Menglong (1574–1646)
The irony of all this is that Handan is the city of idioms par excellence:
Handan is hailed as the capital of Chinese idioms. As a prosperous city and cultural center during the Warring States period, Handan attracted many scholars. Over 1,500 idioms and proverbs are attributed to the city. The following are some of the most well known idioms.
*
* 邯鄲學步 (literally: "to study the walking method of Handan"), meaning to badly imitate others, and lose one's individuality in the process.
* 黃粱一夢 (literally: "millet dream"), meaning a pipe dream.
* 頂天立地 (literally: "stand upright on one's two legs between heaven and earth"), meaning to be fiercely independent.
* 圍魏救趙 (literally: "to besiege the State of Wei to rescue the State of Zhao"), meaning to relieve a besieged ally by attacking the besiegers.
* 不可同日而語 (literally: "musn't speak of the two things on the same day"), meaning incomparable.
* 驚弓之鳥 (literally: "a bird frightened by the mere sound of shooting arrows"), a panic-stricken person.
* 鷸蚌相爭，漁翁得利 (literally: "when the snipe and the oyster fight, it is the fisherman that wins"), when two parties fight, it is always the third one who wins. King of Yan sent a representative to King Hui of Zhao to relay this message in order for him to rethink his plans of war.
* 曠日持久 (literally: "drawn out and protracted"), meaning to be protracted.
* 完璧歸趙 (literally: "returning the Jade to Zhao"), meaning to return something to its owner in good condition.
* 价值连城 (literally: "to be worth numerous contiguous cities"), meaning priceless.
* 怒髮衝冠 (literally: "one's hair raised to the hat in anger"), meaning to be furious.
* 負荊請罪 (literally: "carrying thorned grass and pleading guilt"), meaning to offer someone a humble apology.
* 紙上談兵 (literally: "to discuss military tactics on paper"), meaning to be an armchair strategist.
* 青出於藍，而勝於藍 (literally: "green is born of blue, but beats blue"), meaning to outmaster the teacher.
Handan is also the hometown of many notable Chinese people throughout history, some of whom were featured in idioms:
*
* Lian Po, a military general of Zhao. Regarded one of the four greatest generals of the Warring States period.
* Lin Xiangru, politician of the Warring States period. He's featured in two idioms, "Returning the Jade to Zhao" and "Carrying Thorned Grass and Pleading Guilt".
* Xun Kuang, Confucianism philosopher.
* Xu Huaizhong, novelist.
* Qin Shi Huang, founder of the Qin dynasty and was the first Emperor of China.
* Cao Cao, Han chancellor, poet, and warlord. One of the central figures of the Three Kingdoms period.
* Huang Hua, senior Communist Chinese revolutionary. The county-level city of Huanghua, Cangzhou, was named after him.
* Feng Jianming, literature scholar.
* Fang Lijun, an artist based in Beijing.
* Yang Luchan, martial arts teacher.
* Deng Shu, father of Teresa Teng. He was a soldier of the Republic of China Armed Forces.
* Sun Qingmei, football playe[...]
Language Log
"Asylum"
Like me, you may have been puzzled by Donald Trump's repeated references to Hannibal Lecter in his rally speeches. Given the contexts, I figured it was a connection between "political asylum" and "insane asylum" — and Miles Klee has the receipts ("Why Is Trump So Obsessed With Hannibal Lecter?: A Complete Timeline", Rolling Stone 7/30/2024):
How an off-script moment from early in the election cycle led to a bizarre MAGA ritual celebrating a fictional cannibal
[…] How did Trump end up name-checking Lecter as part of his pitch to the MAGA base? Responding to a request for comment on the matter, campaign communications director Steven Cheung replied, “President Trump is an inspiring and gifted storyteller and referencing pop culture is one of many reasons why he can successfully connect with the audience and voters. Whereas, Kamala [Harris] is as relatable as a worn-out couch.”
Absent any further explanation, a forensic review of the former president’s speeches over the past year is in order. What’s clear is that this all began with a simple misunderstanding — or several.
You can read the whole article for the detailed timeline, Trump's non-canonical Hannibal Lecter descriptions, and a final speculation about the connection:
Political observers outside the MAGA faithful still want to understand the connection Trump keeps making between the border issue and The Silence of the Lambs. Some have wondered on social media whether Trump initially conflated the term “insane asylums” with the concept of “asylum seekers” — that is, migrants fleeing persecution and human rights abuses in their own countries. The Trump campaign’s description of the GOP nominee as “an inspiring and gifted storyteller” neither confirms nor dispels this theory.
I have no idea whether Trump is confused about the difference between "political asylum" and "insane asylum", or just expects or hopes that his audience will be. But since this is Language Log and not Political Psychiatry Log, let's look into the usage history and the deeper etymology.
The OED's first entry, dated to 1439, is
1.a. A place of sanctuary for criminals and debtors, offering protection from legal retribution; a place of refuge and protection from the law. Now historical and rare.
Then, from 1596,
1.b. gen. A secure place of refuge, shelter, or retreat.
From 1842, 2.b. Protection and (usually temporary) permission to stay granted by a state to a refugee, esp. a political refugee, from another country. Cf. political asylum n.
And also, from 1775, 3.b. spec. A secure institution or establishment for the confinement and treatment of people diagnosed with severe mental illness; a psychiatric hospital. Also: a prison for mentally ill criminals. Now chiefly historical.
recorded earliest in lunatic asylum n.
Terms such as psyciatric hospital [sic] are now generally preferred.
The OED's etymology:
< classical Latin asȳlum refuge, sanctuary < Hellenistic Greek ἄσῡλον refuge, sanctuary, use as noun of neuter of ancient Greek ἄσῡλος (adjective) safe from violence, inviolable < ἀ- a- prefix + σύλη, σῦλον (usually in plural, σῦλαι, σῦλα) booty, seized cargo, (in Attic) right of seizure, perhaps < συλᾶν to strip off, to rob, plunder (if this is not from the noun); ultimate origin unknown.
And you may enjoy perusing the Greek stem's relevant entries in Liddell-Scott-Jones, which include
* σύλη "the right of seizing the ship or cargo of a foreign merchant",
* συλάω "strip off (esp. the arms of a slain enemy)", and
* συλεύς "privateer".
I should note in passing that Steven Cheung's "relatable couch" simile raises rhetorical puzzles of its own…
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
sax
saxophone
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Idiom of the Day
labor under the illusion of/that
To live, operate, or function with the unyielding belief in something, especially that which is fanciful, unrealistic, or untrue. Primarily heard in US. Watch the video
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transpires in China, and what the implications of that modus are for Chinese perceptions of what is happening outside of their country. It's not a simple matter of an absolute divide between what is inside the Great Firewall and what is outside the Great Firewall. Although, from the standpoint of the CCP, that would be an ideal situation with regard to knowledge spheres and information flows, it simply is never going to be that way, because China is too inescapably tied into the global politico-economic system, with China leading the way with such grand projects as the Belt and Road Initiative (founded 2013).
There are millions of Chinese living in the United States, some of whom have been living here for a century or more, some more recent immigrants, and hundreds of thousands who come and go as students, workers, tourists, etc. Needless to say, information seeps into China with all of these individuals who come out, communicate with their families and colleagues inside, and often go back to visit or resettle there. Selected readings
* "China VPN redux (7/17/24) — with extensive bibliography
* "God use VPN" (12/28/15)
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Language Log
What it's like inside the Great Firewall
By now, we've had dozens of posts about the Great Firewall, VPNs, internet censorship, and so forth, but they're all from the vantage of the outside trying to look in. Of course, that gives us a skewed picture of what the situation is really like with regard to the internet inside and outside of the PRC. This is not a healthy situation, for nearly one fifth of the world's population (17.72%) live inside the borders of China. To be ignorant of how they are living is dangerous, for we may make erroneous assumptions about what one fifth of humanity is doing and thinking.
Fortunately, at last I have found an American expat who has been living and working in the PRC for more than a decade at a remote location and is well connected with many Chinese colleagues. He is an active scholar and very well informed about the internet, AI, databases, and so forth, both inside and outside of the PRC. I should note that he does not live among expats. In fact, he is the only Westerner where he is located, quite far from major metropolitan areas, so he truly understands what Chinese of all walks of life do on a day-to-day basis.
1. Do you use a VPN?
Absolutely. Everyday. My ability to do research would be severely impacted if I couldn’t access databases outside of China and use Google scholar, for example. I also want to keep up on news and culture from western media such as the NYT, Guardian, Economist, NYRB, and of course easily keep in touch with family and friends.
2. How important are VPNs for Chinese and for expats?
I would say for most expats pretty much indispensable. For Chinese, it really depends on the demographic. I asked numerous people on this one just to get a sense anecdotally — I seriously doubt there are dead-on accurate figures — and the replies in numbers never exceeded 1-2% of the entire population, so perhaps 14-28 million people max. That’s still a guess, but at least one based on Chinese friends' and colleagues’ day-to-day experiences. Is a VPN important for Chinese? For academics in the hard sciences much more so, for those in social sciences less, and for those in humanities far less. Some elite universities actually give faculty and students access to VPNs within restricted areas, e.g., on campus, in the library, etc., so a recognition of the importance of accessing information and information flow. In this regard, it’s crucial that universities as institutions with their administrations, like the Chinese government and Party, are not understood as simplistic monoliths with singular voices and views, as I typically see in western media. As for demographics, it also depends generationally: older people I would say very, very little. For the youngest segment, guys in their teens and early twenties definitely more, and specifically for online gaming and other youthful distractions. But the vast majority of Chinese have no need and no interest in using a VPN.
3. Does it matter that Google, FaceBook, Twitter/X, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc. are not available in China?
Google a little given the impotence of Baidu, but cn.bing.com is an ok-ish alternative to google. The others definitely not. Facebook and Twitter/X are especially irrelevant to most of the Chinese population. There are quasi-equivalents to Wikipedia on Baidu and other platforms that fulfill a similar need (I can’t speak to quality).
Does it matter…for whom. There’s a massive knowledge asymmetry (akin to information asymmetry) and definitely not in favor of the US. The vast majority of westerners don’t care about what’s going on in China and know very little about the country, but like the rest of the world China has to deal, de facto, with the US and its military-political and cultural power. Cultural power can be attractive, but it need not necessarily be accessed through FB[...]
Language Log
Yay Newfriend in a pendant
Boone Ashworth, "Wear This AI Friend Around Your Neck", Wired 7/30/2024:
The latest attempt at an AI-powered wearable is an always-listening pendant. But it doesn’t help you be more productive, it just keeps you company.
AVI SCHIFFMANN SHOWS up to the WIRED office with a Friend hanging around his neck. It dangles there like a pendant on a necklace. It’s about the size and shape of an AirTag—a soft, round little puck that rests right next to Schiffmann’s heart, just atop the Dark Side of the Moon logo on the shirt behind it.
The Friend, to be clear, is an AI wearable. It’s a pal, a buddy, but mostly an AI chatbot that lives inside the pendant. It always has an opinion to share about what’s going on around it, which it communicates using text messages and push notifications on the phone it’s paired to.
Schiffmann and his Friend (this one’s name is Emily) have come to WIRED’s San Francisco office to meet with me and my colleague Reece Rogers to talk publicly about this new AI wearable for the first time. Before we get started, I tell Schiffmann I’d like to record our chat and ask if he’s cool with that. This is considered a good journalistic practice, sure, but also it’s a legal requirement in California, which requires two-party consent before taping a private interaction. So I ask permission to turn on a tape recorder and Schiffmann just laughs.
“I am the last person who would mind that,” he says.
That makes sense. After all, the pendant around his neck has already been listening to us this entire time.
“Always listening” is one of the main taglines of Schiffmann’s as yet unreleased AI device. The Friend has an onboard microphone that listens to everything happening around the wearer by default. You can tap and hold it to ask it a question, but sometimes it will send messages—commentary about the conversation you just had, for example—unprompted. It is powered by Anthropic AI’s Claude 3.5 large language model, which can engage in helpful conversation, offer encouragement, or rib you for being bad at a video game. Friend is (apparently) audio-input, text-output only — but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there are multi-modal similars, maybe integrated into devices like Meta's Ray Bans.
And the Wired article explains:
He tried making an AI for productivity but found it lacking. The first iteration of what evolved into the Friend was Tab, a productivity-focused device that Schiffmann wanted to use to monitor work and personal tasks But he found himself frustrated by building a device that tried to do everything at once. The feeling came to a head in January this year, as he traveled through Japan and found himself alone in a skyrise hotel in Tokyo, talking at his AI prototype that was supposed to do so much for him. He was going through a lonely spell and wanted somebody to talk to. Why couldn’t the AI assistant just do that?
It's worth noting that the linked article about "Tab" has the title "Avi Schiffmann’s Tab AI necklace has raised $1.9 million to replace God" — which offers an alternative interpretation for the "G" in AGI…
The Friend article ends:
Before Schiffmann leaves after laying out his vision, I ask if he can check in with the Friend he’s wearing to see how the meeting went. He squeezes the pendant and asks it how the interview went. We all wait for a few seconds, and then he gets a text—labeled simply as Emily in his chat window—that reads: “Dude, you’re killing it! They seem super into your vision.”
I wonder, if I had an Emily, if it would tell me something similar.
"It"? Surely it should be "she"? Or maybe, given that the withdrawn launch of Tab was just a few months ago, a later re-iteration's reference will be something like "Elohim"?
Some relevant past posts:
"Yay Newfriend", 4/20/2024
"Yay Newfriend again", 4/22/2024
"More on AI pals", 5/9/2024
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
intro
introduction
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Idiom of the Day
(someone) (just) doesn't know when to quit
Someone would be better off not doing something or acting a certain way because it is or may become destructive, counterproductive, futile, or undesirable. Watch the video
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