Tien, Adrian (2016). What does it mean to “commemorate”? Linguistic and cultural evidence from Chinese. The Irish Journal of Asian Studies, 2, 1-11.
What does it mean to “commemorate”? Is commemorate or its derivations in English understood and accordingly practiced in other languages and cultures? This article demonstrates, through the case of Chinese language and culture, that people do not all share the same understanding about “commemoration” or practice it as it is in the Anglo context. Even though commemorate is translated into Chinese as jì niàn and these words show certain linguistic similarities, jì niàn is not an exact translational equivalent of the English word. Furthermore, evidence is presented to show that jì niàn is likely a recent word in Chinese, based on contemporary Chinese notions of something like to “commemorate” that reflect possible influences from the West. In drawing evidence from conventional Chinese linguistic and cultural practices, this article illustrates how Chinese “commemorate” in ways that are indigenous to them. As part of this, semantic analyses using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) are performed on the Chinese words jì niàn and zhuī yuǎn, lit. ‘to recollect the distant past’. These are then compared with the semantic analysis for commemorate in English, for an in-depth appreciation of what makes Chinese understanding of something like “commemorate” unique.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
