“This is a sophisticated, well-argued, richly documented study. . . . Ji Fengyuan has take what, on the surface, appears to be an arcane, repugnant topic—linguistic engineering (a type of brainwashing)—and has shown how it had a brutal impact on the daily lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese from 1949 until . . . the 70s.” —Sino-Platonic Papers (August 2004)

“Facinating. . . . The linguistic part of the book is written non-technically, in a clear style, and thus makes pleasant reading even for a wide audience.” —IIAS Newsletter (December 2005) (Read full review)

“The great strength of this book is the many sources that the author draws on. She has an extensive bibliography and uses numerous primary sources in support of her argument. . . . Her multidisciplinary approach is its second advantage. Just as she stresses the importance of context in interpreting Mao’s message, so the socio-political context of the entire period is important when dissecting the language changes of the time and Ji does not try to separate them. This was, after all, also an attempt at social engineering.” —Journal of Sociolinguistics (9, 2005)

“As the chasm between language and experience widened and deepened over time, the official language survived by virtue of the power of the state that sponsored it, but cynicism, disillusionment, and mockery increasingly became the hallmarks of popular deployment. Ji treats these and other issues in a sensitive, nuanced, and balanced manner, as one might expect from someone whose formative teenage years were spent in the jarring Orwellian world of late Cultural Revolution China.” —China Review International (fall 2004)

When Mao and the Chinese Communist Party won power in 1949, they were determined to create new, revolutionary human beings. Their most precise instrument of ideological transformation was a massive program of linguistic engineering. They taught everyone a new political vocabulary, gave old words new meanings, converted traditional terms to revolutionary purposes, suppressed words that expressed "incorrect" thought, and required the whole population to recite slogans, stock phrases, and scripts that gave "correct" linguistic form to "correct" thought. They assumed that constant repetition would cause the revolutionary formulae to penetrate people's minds, engendering revolutionary beliefs and values.

In an introductory chapter, Dr. Ji assesses the potential of linguistic engineering by examining research on the relationship between language and thought. In subsequent chapters, she traces the origins of linguistic engineering in China, describes its development during the early years of communist rule, then explores in detail the unprecedented manipulation of language during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976. Along the way, she analyzes the forms of linguistic engineering associated with land reform, class struggle, personal relationships, the Great Leap Forward, Mao-worship, Red Guard activism, revolutionary violence, Public Criticism Meetings, the model revolutionary operas, and foreign language teaching. She also reinterprets Mao’s strategy during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, showing how he manipulated exegetical principles and contexts of judgment to "frame" his alleged opponents. The work concludes with an assessment of the successes and failures of linguistic engineering and an account of how the Chinese Communist Party relaxed its control of language after Mao's death.

Ji Fengyuan is lecturer in Asian studies at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Read the introduction (PDF).