Migrating Meanings: Sharing Keywords in a Global World
Résumé
Exploring the roots of four keywords for our times: Europe, the citizen, the individual, and the people
The English keywords are shown to be European concepts with roots in French and parallel traditions in German
Places keywords into their historical context, and shows how the existing Chinese words for people and person are transformed through contact with concepts of European origin
Establishes a complex model of political diversity for Europe’s cultures and traditions
Adopts a combination of critical and analytical methods and corpus-based research
Goes beyond a cold analysis of concepts to scrutinize the keywords that move people and get them excited about individual rights, personal destinies and the role of the people
With economic, political and cultural globalisation, our world is inseparable from the fates of other nations and peoples. But how far can we trust English to provide us with a reliable lingua franca to speak about our world? If our keywords reflect our cultures and form parts of specific cultural and historical narratives, they may well help trace the paths we take together into the future. This book seeks the roots of four keywords for our times: the people, the citizen, the individual, and Europe. By exploring these keywords in English and understanding stories related to ‘equivalent keywords’ in Chinese, German, French and Czech, this book helps us to understand how other languages are adapting to English words, and how their worldviews resist ‘anglo-concepts’ through their own traditions, stories and worldviews.