METHODOLOGY: DISCOURSE, NARRATIVE AND COMPARISON

My research perspective is discourse-oriented and discourse analysis is therefore the most important method has been adopted. My analysis is conducted in the methodological frame of a historically oriented discourse analysis.

The term discourse is widely defined, for example, one of the broadest

definition is made by Fasold (1990) noted ‘the study of discourse is the study of any aspect of language use’ (65). Candling (1997) refers to the term discourse as ‘language in use, as a process which is socially situated’ (ix).

According to Fairclough (1995), ‘discourse analysis can be understood as an attempt to show systematic links between texts, discourse practices, and socio-cultural practices’ (16-17). This method has been widely used in different ways, and is often focused on the ‘relationship between language use and social structure’ (Deacon et al. 1999: 146-148). It also reflects on

‘forms of representation in which different social categories, different social practices and relations are constructed from and in the interests of a particular point of view, a particular conception of social reality’ (ibid: 148).The discourses considered in this thesis consist of the sentences and phrases, which have been used in intellectuals’ articles published in books or newspapers, school textbooks and dictionaries during the late Qing and early republican period that are linked to my research topic.

The discourses that have been identified for my research are focused on showing systematic links between discourses on the Han and the changing socio-political context of late Qing and early republican China. More specifically, I seek to demonstrate that the different ways of situating the Han discursively - as a race, a nation or an ethnic group - were closely connected to changing socio-political circumstance sin which the discourses were produced. This is particularly clear in my comparative analysis of intellectuals’

discourses, because each of the chosen intellectuals adopted a slightly different political stance, and their definitions of the Han (as well as other groups within the Chinese population and understandings of China and the Chinese more generally) differed accordingly, as well as changed over time in line with their changing political convictions. In a similar vein, the analysis of dictionaries and school textbooks shows how the discourses changed as we moved from one historical period and context to the next.

These three types of discourses - intellectuals’ discourses, school textbooks and dictionaries, could be to some extent related to the different classes, namely, elites, educated middle-classes, and wider population. At this point in

history, Chinese educational system was still open to select few (universal compulsory education was introduced only later) and it is therefore feasible to argue that school textbooks reached primarily the educated (upper) middle classes. Dictionaries were potentially read among a wider public, especially if we consider that they were likely to be used in a group or family setting with both illiterate and literate members. My thesis therefore traces the process of formation of modern national ideas among the elites and their dissemination among the educated middle-classes and the wider population (Yu, 1996:

137).

I should also clarify that while focused on the Han, my analysis also examines the discourses on other groups and identities linked to the Han, especially the Manchu and of course the broader identity of China and the Chinese, as well as the identities of relevant external others, including Westerners and the Japanese. This is necessary because any definition of the Self is closely tied to the definition of the Other (Pickering, 2001) and hence the discourses about the Han were inextricably linked to discourses about other groups that were considered as either part of, and linked to, the Chinese Self, or presented as its Other.

In terms of the specific textual analytical methods adopted, my analysis centred on two discursive elements: a) identity categories such as race, nation, ethnicity and their equivalents in Chinese and b) identity markers, for instance the different adjectives or phrases used in connection with different identity categories, such as ‘civilised’, ‘educated’, ‘smelly’, ‘yellow’ etc. By investigating the use of identity categories and identity markers together I was able to show, among other things, that identity markers we usually associate with race and racism today, and which refer to biological and physical characteristics - e.g. ‘smelly’, ‘tall’, ‘well-proportioned’ etc. - were not necessarily used only in connection with the category of race, but also descriptions of nations and ethnic groups. This alone is enough to show that a clear-cut differentiation between ethnic, nationalist and racist discourses is not particularly useful in this context.

In my analysis, I also seek to use comparison - across different types of sources and different periods - to gain a better understanding of a) the nature of debates about the Han and their links with contemporary discourses about race, nation and ethnicity in the chosen historical period; and b) the ways in which these discourses were disseminated among the broader population.

Given these aims, it is clear that my main focus is on ‘how’, rather than explanatory, even though I also seek to relate the changing discourse to changes in the broader political, social and cultural environment, and to processes of nation-building.

Another method of relevance to my analysis, especially in the analysis is narrative analysis. In historiography, the narrative has traditionally been the main rhetorical device used (Stone, 1979). The term narrative has been discussed in different ways, as it is ‘a primary act of mind’ (Hardy, 1977: 12),

‘the primary scheme by means of which human existence is rendered meaningful’ (Polkinghorne, 1988: 11), and ‘a means by which human beings represent and restructure the world’ (Mitchell, 1981: 8). Bruner (1990) summarised it as an ‘organising principle’, by which ‘people organise their experience in, knowledge about, and transactions with the social world’ (35).

One of the clearest and simplest explanations of the narrative method can be found in Connelly and Clandinin’s (1990) work, who argue that ‘humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and collectively, lead storied lives.

Thus the study of narrative is the study of the ways humans experience the world.’ (2). Griffin (1992) defines narrative as the organisation of simultaneous actions and occurrences in a consecutive, linear order ‘that gives meaning to and explains each of its elements and is, at the same time, constituted by them’ (Griffin, 1993: 1097). In line with this, my analysis of textbooks was particularly concerned with the question of which historical events or issues were chosen and how they were arranged in a narrative. In relation to this, I also examined who, or which groups, were presented as the Self and the Other in these events and narratives.

More broadly speaking, my research is also influenced by social

constructionism, a research perspective rooted in the work of the German sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as outlined in their influential book The Social Construction of Reality (1966). They argued that ‘it is important to keep in mind that the objectivity of the institutional world, however massive it may appear to the individual, is a humanly produced, constructed objectively’ (57). They therefore highlighted the contribution of individuals’ performance to an improved construction of society: ‘one must also be initiated into the various cognitive and even affective layers of the body of knowledge that is directly and indirectly appropriate to this role’ (72).

The three layers of knowledge that will be focused on in my research - intellectuals’ discourses, and the content of school textbooks and dictionaries, are all produced by different ‘individuals’, and all demonstrate different authors’ understandings and perceptions of the social phenomenon and the identity of Han. They were influenced and shaped by the social reality during the late Qing and early republican China, and vice versa. I will apply these analytical perspectives to my research to understand how ideas of the Han were socially and historically constructed and developed in Chinese intellectual discourse, encyclopaedias and dictionaries, and textbooks during the late Qing and early republican period.