Lecture by Professor George Xinsheng Zhang

A glimpse of Chinese culture through the lens of linguistic analysis

with comments on the learning and teaching of Chinese in the age of AI

Abstract

This talk will look at two related aspects of the topic – relationship between Chinese language and culture from the linguistic perspective, and debate on if Chinese is difficult to learn and/or teach, especially in the current age of emerging AI technologies. A lot of attention and efforts have been dedicated to Chinese culture in the learning and teaching of Chinese (to the speakers of other languages), with a common understanding that there is a close relationship between language and culture, and language learning and teaching cannot be effective without knowing the relevant culture. However, little attention seems to be given to the cultural traits quite prevalent in Chinese language, possibly due to the lack of consensus of what culture is. Chinese language is in fact an embodiment of Chinese culture full of Chinese cultural DNA. The speaker will illustrate this with examples of key linguistic components of the language at phonetic, lexical, syntactical, and discourse levels as well as Chinese characters used for its written form, in contrast to English wherever possible. It is hoped that an understanding of these linguistic cultural traits in Chinese is beneficial not only for gaining an awareness of the likely impacts Chinese language may have on the way the Chinese think and behave, but also for demystifying the long-standing myth that Chinese is a difficult language to learn for English speakers, with a few remarks on what foreign language learning and teaching is about in today’s multilingual and multicultural Europe in the technological age of AI.

Speaker

Prof. George Xinsheng Zhang 张新生 教授

Dr George X Zhang is a professor at Richmond American University London, UK. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguistics (CIoL), Vice President of the International Society of Chinese Language Teaching (ISCLT) AND President of the European Association of Chinese Teaching  (EACT), and a visiting professor/ senior researcher in a number of universities like INALCO, France, Tongji University, Shandong Universities, Shandong and Tianjin Normal University, PR China. Previously he worked as the Director of the Language Centre and London Confucius Institute of School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He also served as the chair of the British Language Teaching Society (BCLTS) and led and coordinated the EU funded European Benchmarks for Chinese Language project (EBCL). He has researched and published on language policy, language standards, language learning and teaching and teacher education, including the award-winning Chinese textbook series “Chinese in Steps”.

Host: Professor Yuxiao Su, Chinese Director of the Confucius Institute at Newcastle University

No booking required, all welcome.