Work

The discourse of Xinmin

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: Focusing on Liang Qichao’s campaign of national moral character reform, this article examines the discourse of xinmin ( 新民 new people) as a social engineering project that sought to remold the mindset and behaviors of the people a means of nation-building in the 1900s. Drawing on Koselleck’s idea of conceptual history, it analyses how the idea of qun ( 群 ) was deployed as a discursive building block of xinmin to cultivate a sense of membership in the political community of Chinese nation. It argues that the xinmin discourse facilitated a fundamental restructuring of the mental-cognitive framing of society in changing China from a Confucian cultural entity to a national political identity.

Source: Chinese Language and Discourse An International and Interdisciplinary Journal

DOI: 10.1075/cld.21032.cao

Author: Qing Cao

Institution: Durham University

Language: English

Topic: Chinese history and philosophy

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W4220928370

FWCI:

Cites: 24

Cited by:

Related to: 10