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Article published In: Media Language and Discourse in Cultural China
Edited by Doreen D. Wu, Ming Liu and David C.S. Li
[Chinese Language and Discourse 13:1] 2022
► pp. 122–142

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The discourse of Xinmin

Mindset remodeling and nation-building in early twentieth-century China

ORCiD logo with link | Durham University
Published online: 29 March 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.21032.cao
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.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The discourse of xinmin: People-making as nation-building
  • Qun as a discursive building block of xinmin
  • Significance of xinmin discourse
  • Notes
  • References
References (32)
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