EVENTS

The COVID-19 outbreak was a catastrophic event that affected people, and societies world over, causing huge loss of human life across the globe. It presented an unprecedented challenge to social health, human relationships, the food system, and many other spheres of life. Against this background, it is interesting to observe the effects of this pandemic on the Chinese language system. Many new words were devised and added to the Chinese language morphological system. From the perspective of the evolution and growth of the Chinese vocabulary, the emergence of new words was far more phenomenal during this period than any other preceding phase during the last hundred years. Historically, vocabularies were formulated because of the then social needs and under the impetus of certain exigencies that had not been experienced previously. Equally, the natural process of language decay and death is a common linguistic phenomenon, wherein some of the newly developed words survive while others become obsolete. A unique phenomenon in Chinese linguistics is that quite a good number of historical vocabularies are still extant and they are found frequently appearing in contemporary periodicals, newspapers, and journals. The seminar aims to investigate the new words that emerged in mainland China from December 2019 to December 2021 and focus on the popular approaches and methodologies in the new morphological construction, viz, old words acquiring new meanings, through a process of blending, contraction, compounding, clipping, a combination of numbers, letters, Chinese characters, etc.

About the Speaker

Somya Nayak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages, at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. She obtained her doctoral degree from the Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has presented several papers at national and international conferences. She has co-authored 1000 Powerful Chinese Lexicon (2017) and Understanding China in the 21st Century (2020). In the year 2021, she edited a volume titled Discourse on Chinese Language, Literature, and Culture. In view of her work and contribution to the field of Chinese language and culture, she has been nominated as an expert member of the Project Monitoring and Mentoring Group (PMMG) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, (DRDO) Bangalore. Her research interest focuses on the evolution and changes in the Chinese Language and Chinese Linguistics.

About the Chair

Sabaree Mitra  is a Professor of Chinese at Jawaharlal Nehru University and an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. Her teaching and research have spanned the fields of contemporary Chinese literature and criticism, Chinese cultural history, gender issues, India-China cultural relations, and regional interaction. Her latest publication is, an edited volume titled China’s May Fourth Movement: New Narratives and Perspectives, published by Routledge in 2023. She has recently taken over as Editor of the ICS quarterly journal, China Report, now in its 60th year of publication.

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