directory
Contents
About the discipline itself
The knowledge structure of the discipline
Professional prospects
Professional cultural atmosphere
The author | Wang, graduated from the Department of Chinese of Peking University with a bachelor's degree and is currently studying for a master's degree
About the discipline itself
The "Chinese" in this article refers to the three first-level disciplines of "Literature (05)" under "Literature (05)" in the "Chinese Catalogue of Undergraduate Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities" of the Ministry of Education, "Chinese Language and Literature (050101)", "Chinese Language (050102)", and "Classical Philology (050105)" in the "Catalogue of Undergraduate Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities".
—S—
For Chinese Chinese literature, or Chinese for short, everyone will always involuntarily generate some imagination of wind and snow. The emphasis on aesthetic education and creation in the middle and high school language education makes liberal arts students look forward to a holy festival of feelings and dreams in their college careers. However, what may disappoint everyone is that at the beginning of the school year, students Chinese will hear a classic cold water: "Chinese department does not cultivate writers." This is not an overly modest statement, nor is it Chinese pretentious and high-minded in the marketization of literary creation. In fact, as an academic category with its own complete system, Chinese has its own unique path and knowledge context.
Chinese literature has an extremely rich and long tradition, from cangjie to the spring and autumn zi, to the Qin, Han, Wei and Jin dynasties, to the six dynasties, tang and song dynasties, flooding the Ming and Qing dynasties, and accompanied by China's destiny to modern and contemporary two major transformations. Literature is an important component of Chinese civilization, presenting the spiritual thoughts and fires of countless innocent and great hearts in the times.
“
To study literature is to study China at the level of sexuality and spirituality
The fundamental question of the direction of literature
In the face of the vast number of ancient books, how to read and use them?
In the face of the poet's particularly difficult emotions, what did he experience?
What differences will be made between the languages and languages of different eras and regions?
How will the genre of literature influence literary creation?
……
To study literature is to study China at the level of sexuality and spirituality. All kinds of such problems will naturally emerge in reading and become academic problems that need to be solved in the academic direction of Chinese. In the face of the current complex cultural phenomena, how should movies, games, and Internet discussion spaces, a series of cultural phenomena that make up our contemporary life experience, be understood and accepted? This also constitutes an important concern for the study of literary directions.
What is even less well known is that in addition to literature, Chinese generally have two directions: linguistics and classical philology. Linguistics is committed to the study of the laws behind the phenomenon of language, is a discipline closer to science, its content not only includes grammar, phonology, sound methods, psychological and pathological effects on language and other theoretical content, but also includes interesting fieldwork, speech experiments and other content, and artificial intelligence on natural language processing and other technical issues are closely related. Philology focuses on the collation and research of the vast expanse of Chinese classics and ancient books, and strives to clear the source of the original text, clarify the editions, words and sentences of important classics, and carry out a deeper level of research on the basis of proofreading. Both also have a fascinating academic attraction, waiting for Chinese students to discover.
The knowledge structure of the discipline
01
Undergraduate curriculum system and subdivision direction
For the cultivation of Chinese students, each school has its own special characteristics, which is closely related to the tradition of each university.
For example, Peking University pays more attention to the education of literary history (especially modern literature), Fudan University will pay more attention to classical literature-literature education, while Beijing Normal University, Nanjing University and other universities are more inclined to cultivate students' literary and artistic theories.
However, on the whole, Chinese students should receive comprehensive training in the three aspects of literature, linguistics and philology during their undergraduate period, and the subdivision direction of the discipline can also be specifically divided into three parts: literature, linguistics and philology. Before entering these three directions of study, it is necessary to complete the study of professional basic courses.
—S—
Professional Foundation Courses:
Generally speaking, the major direction will be divided in the senior year of undergraduate. Therefore, although the course itself has different subject backgrounds, the following subject content still requires all students Chinese to start with. This type of course is included
Ancient Chinese: Usually completed in the first year of freshman year, this is an introductory course for reading ancient classics and the first professional course for students engaged in historical linguistics. The course will help you establish basic historical language concepts, understand the differences between ancient Chinese, Middle Chinese and modern Chinese, teach you how to use reference books to examine the meaning of words, how to use the "Explanation of Words" to understand the original meaning of words, understand the annotated styles of ancient books, understand the principles of exhortation, and so on.
The picture shows the original West Garden Jingshe Seal Lin Guangji, equivalent to the "encyclopedia" of the Yuan Dynasty
Modern Chinese: Usually completed in the first year of college, this is a professional course in modern linguistics, which will study the phonology, sentence style, lexical, syntax and other aspects of modern Chinese to help students better understand modern Chinese. It will involve many basic knowledge of modern linguistics, such as semantic trees, vowel tongue bitmaps, etc., and also pave the way for further research.
Literary History Course: This is the longest course in the Chinese Department, and it is also one of the housekeeping skills of students in the direction of literature. It generally takes four semesters to complete the first and second year of college. The course covers the history of ancient literature I, II, III and IV, and there are six courses in modern literary history and contemporary literary history, covering from pre-Qin literature to contemporary literature and art. The course will explain literary trends in stages according to history, analyze stylistic characteristics, appreciate masterpieces, and outline a grand literary historical context. Excellent literary history vision will become an important reliance on future governance, and familiarity with the literary classics of a certain era will also help further research and exploration.
Reference Books and Information Retrieval: A method course to help students use academic resources, unlike library or school-level reference book courses, this course is designed for Chinese students, and the content will involve many Chinese special search bibliographies and retrieval tools. In the course, the four-corner number check method, important dictionaries, important databases and ancient book libraries will be introduced, which will clear the obstacles for students' academic research.
—S—
Specialized courses in literature:
Literary Theory Course: Set up for middle and senior students, its core lies in the exploration of the laws of literary and artistic phenomena, the study of literary and artistic self-cognition in different eras, and the discussion of major literary and ideological issues. Generally, it includes literary principles, Chinese literary theory and Western literary theory.
Folk Literature Course: As an important part of the direction of literature, folk literature is different from "elegant" literature and intentional creation, projecting research horizons to folk tales, songs, myths and other levels, paying attention to the interaction mechanism between society and literature, and presenting a unique research style.
Comparative Literature Course: A course that studies transnational, interdisciplinary and intercultural literature with high language requirements.
Specialized courses: Courses of a similar seminar-workshop nature offered by different teachers out of their own academic interests are generally more in-depth and involve the intensive reading and exploration of a specific classic.
—S—
Specializations in Linguistics:
Generally, it includes courses such as Introduction to Linguistics, Chinese Dialectology, Theoretical Linguistics, Rhetoric, Historical Linguistics, Pathological Linguistics, Phonology, Language Information Processing, etc., as well as internship programs such as fieldwork in dialectology. According to the different contents, it can be roughly divided into four categories: modern Chinese, Chinese dialect, Chinese history and theoretical linguistics.
Among them, modern Chinese, theoretical linguistics and other content is relatively "scientific", students need to take courses including praat (an audio analysis software) phonological processing, dialect investigation records, language and psychological relations, etc., and there will be courses involving fMRI (electroencephalogram) and other content.
Chinese dialects not only include the investigation and recording of the phonetics and vocabulary of local dialects, analyzing their flux, but also involve the special influence of dialects in contact between different languages.
Chinese history focuses more on the study of ancient Chinese grammar phenomena, and its texts are mostly Qin and Han classics, which require students to have a certain understanding of this.
Some schools will offer computational linguistics/Chinese information processing courses, involving Chinese character encoding, character library production, glyph recognition, etc., which is closer to the content of the computer department for students to choose to read.
—S—
Philology Courses:
Generally, it includes courses such as versionology, phonology, exegesis, philology, collation, bibliography and history of ancient philology, as well as participating in literature internship projects in libraries and libraries.
Philology is closely related to archaeology, and the reading of oracle bones and gold scripts is even more important in philology. Others include special documents such as Dunhuang manuscripts and Western Xia documents, which are inseparable from their corresponding historical conditions. Therefore, most of the students of philology should also have a certain degree of historical and cultural knowledge literacy.
02
Interdisciplinary
Chinese is an all-encompassing discipline, because the particularity of the object of study (literature, language and human spirit) can be widely related to many humanities disciplines, and some courses in adjacent disciplines will also play an important role in literary research.
Such as history, philosophy, art, psychology, journalism and communication, political science, sociology, law and other disciplines, the core content of which can be related to the Chinese. The two disciplines of history and philosophy are more conducive to the academic discussion of literature and philology, as mentioned above. A good literary researcher should also be able to understand both history and philosophy.
Professional prospects
01
Where undergraduates graduate
The department of Chinese has a fairly good promotion rate, and nearly 70% of the students will choose to continue their studies in domestic and foreign universities. The rest of the students also engaged in a wide range of work, including the Party Central Committee and state institutions, large news media, publishing industry, education industry, etc., and many students also embarked on the road of literary creation.
—S—
First, let's look at the way out of further education. Chinese department generally has a good research rate (between 50% and 70%), and many students can enter colleges and universities without exams. Moreover, after undergraduate, you can flexibly enter the Department of History, the Department of Philosophy and other neighboring disciplines.
In addition to the top universities in the mainland, the department of Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Department of East Asia in Europe and the United States, and the Department of Chinese and Chinese Languages and Literature in Singapore, Japan, can all become the targets chosen by the students. Overseas research has a very different academic atmosphere from that of mainland research, and it is quite beneficial to academic progress under mutual enlightenment.
If the research is not successful, the examination and research is also a choice, but with the closure of the road abroad caused by the epidemic, many students choose to study in China, making the examination and research track crowded, and this trend should not change much in the short term.
—S—
Then look at the employment side. The Department of Chinese has always been known as the Golden Oil Major, and the rich knowledge and excellent writing ability brought by undergraduate training can help students shine in different occasions.
In addition to directly engaging in primary and secondary school language education and Chinese as a foreign language education, which is a professional counterpart, the government and enterprise clerical positions and management positions are also quite favored by students from the department of Chinese. The news media, the publishing industry, and even film and television editing and directing, game copywriting, can be seen everywhere Chinese students.
But with this flexibility, students in Chinese departments also need to continue learning in different positions and acquire additional skills to help their work run smoothly. For example, the teacher qualification certificate in the teaching profession, the photography in the film and television industry, drama theory and so on.
Becoming a writer is a more peculiar path, which requires students to maintain creation and submission in addition to undergraduate academics, continuously enhance their grasp of words and the unique ability to organize plot language in reading, gradually develop their own writing style, and complete their lives in continuous writing and submission. If you do not enter the writers' association, the writer's income is highly dependent on the sale of books, which will make the writer's life into a period of instability, so it is necessary to make corresponding preparations (such as half work and half creation).
In addition, students in linguistics and philology also have their own unique employment directions.
In recent years, with the development of artificial intelligence technology and speech recognition technology, natural language processing has become a very hot position, which happens to be the employment direction of linguistics. And because most of the positions are Internet companies and new technology companies, salaries and benefits are often not cheap. Students of philology can not only enter the libraries and cultural industries in various regions, but also integrate into the field of archaeology, and shine in the fields of epigraphy, artifact dating and ancient history reconstruction.
02
The current state of the academic community
At present, the academic faculty of humanities in colleges and universities is in a highly saturated situation, and it will be quite difficult for doctoral students who graduated from the top 985 to stay in school, and generally there will be a job prospect of top2 to top 985, top 985 to general 985. Young teachers also have considerable pressure to teach and research.
But overall, compared to the fast-paced, over-the-lane training presented by science departments (such as 6 years from undergraduate to doctoral, doctoral direct teaching, etc.), most of the departments in the humanities category will have a certain degree of flexibility, allowing students to complete courses and thesis writing with sufficient time. Moreover, graduation generally does not have a requirement for the number of articles issued by the C journal (key journal), so it is generally possible to successfully graduate.
As far as young teachers are concerned, because the new policy of six years of non-promotion and walking is generally adopted in China, which requires young teachers to complete many thesis topics and publish a certain number of monographs in six years before they can continue to teach in school. This is undoubtedly also a greater pressure on young teachers. So once you've made up your academic mind, you have to be prepared to meet these challenges.
Professional cultural atmosphere
Chinese department is known for its romance and feelings, inheriting the literary temperament of the 1980s and exerting a free and useless spirit. Coupled with the fact that the coursework is not complicated, students in the Chinese department can often harvest a rich, interesting and fulfilling university life.
The so-called "drinking and singing empty days" is not impossible in the Chinese department. Students can freely choose their own literary and artistic hobbies, and can exert their expertise in various fields such as travel, photography, painting, etc., and make friends for a lifetime. Of course, juvenile travel does not mean a wandering skeleton, after entering the senior year of undergraduate, most students will still choose to spend the day in the library to brush books and brush literature, and finally complete a satisfactory paper. Chinese department has nearly endless freedom, a variety of different options, waiting for the choice of students.
Source| Jizhi CI