The ideology of language awareness in China

China has a thousand-year long tradition of reflection over language, even though a unified concept of it started to be conceived only around the 19th century, after a first superficial acquaintance with Western linguistics, and substantially in the 20th century. During this long timespan, Chinese imperial dynasties implemented language policies, to that it is possible to state that language plans and policies were well developed long before the establishment of the Republic and then the People’s Republic. Both the theoretical reflection over language or specific linguistic phenomena and the policies about language may be considered instances of language awareness. In the last years the degree of awareness about language increased considerably, to the point that the notion of “language awareness” (yuyan yishi 语言意识) entered the lexicon of language-related institutions of the PRC and even become a key concept. The Outline of China’s national plan for medium and long-term agenda for Chinese language and characters reform and development (Guojia zhongchangqi yuyan wenzi shiye gaige he fazhan guihua gangyao 国家中长期语言文字事业改革和发展规划纲要), launched in 2012 and bound to be concluded in 2020, is the logical implementation of the Language Law (Guojia Tongyong Yuyan Wenzi Fa 中华人民共和国国家通用语言文字法), launched in 2001. In the Outline, the notion of language awareness is central, so that it is echoed in numerous other texts of studies of language policy and planning. Language awareness is essentially self-awareness, in confront with other languages; the terms of such comparison, the nature of this encounter (or clash) is different in different sources and by different authors. The present contribution will briefly sketch an outline of China’s recent LPP activities, in particular those sources dealing with “language awareness”, in order to try and formulate a hypothesis of what it means within Chinese politics and Chinese culture, but on the background of contemporary world cultural policies, and in particular in the view of the rough recent relationship with the Western, mainly Anglophone, world.