Global Modernity and Linguistic Universality: The Invention of Modern Chinese Language

Linguistic modernity is constitutive of our historical experience of the actuality and materiality of modernity as a whole. This essay delineates the discursive continuity between the May Fourth language reform movement in China in the early twentieth century and the universal language movement in early modern Europe. By showing the trans-historical and trans-national circulation of the idea of a perfect language, whether universal or national, the essay urges for a recognition of the need to consider the achievements of the Chinese language reform movement in close relation to modern Western linguistic thought and practice and thereby offers an example of global modernity and the pattern of its movement.