The French Language and the Making of Modern Chinese Intellectuals

This book offers the first interdisciplinary study of how different generations of Chinese individuals learned and used the French language as an intrinsic part of their engagement with new worlds—both tangible and envisioned—and with their emerging selves.

Drawing from Wittgenstein understanding of language as a “form of life”, learning a foreign language is, therefore, a social, cultural, and epistemological activity of traversing from one form of life to another. Through such “traversing,” one sees a new world and becomes a new self. The book explores not only how Chinese individuals acquired the language, including its ideological and cultural dimensions, the sociocultural milieux, the methods and materials involved and created, the institutions and networks formed, and the memories and emotions evoked, but also how they used the language to communicate new worlds and selves to different audiences. It demonstrates that, more than a tool for accessing Western science, thought, and culture, the French language profoundly shaped their development into, and their identity as, modern Chinese intellectuals.

This book is suited for readers interested in the history of language and the history of modern Chinese intellectuals, while its interdisciplinary scope and transnational approach would also resonate with those passionate about Sino-French exchanges.