The article on the topic of mass media/language peculiarities

I’ve just read an article on the rt.com. It’s called “China’s no pun zone: Regulator cracks down on internet slang in media” and, as it was published today, it’s very updated and touches burning issues.

The topic of the article is Chinese language in mass media. The author (Carlos Barria) tells us that broadcasters were ordered to conform to regular Chinese language in programs and ads, virtually prohibiting use of wordplay and puns that are borrowed from foreign languages or disfigure Chinese proverbs.

SARFT (or The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television) considers the use of non-standard Chinese language by the media to be “contradictory in spirit to the promotion and continuance of excellent, traditional Chinese culture.” That’s why it’s necessary for radio and TV authorities to take severe measures against inaccurate use of the Chinese language.

A lot of attention was paid to Chinese idioms and proverbs, which are often misused. It’s inadmissible because they contain cultural heritage and great moral and ideological values.

Moreover, author attracts our attention to a large number of homophones in Chinese, due to which the language is very convenient for puns, wordplay, and which lead to quite rude humor.

One of the reasons of such language evolution, in which traditional sayings lose their esteem and many borrowings are introduced, is the Internet. This is especially true for younger generations. A lot of new words were invented by use of borrowings from other languages, especially from English. The author gives us an interesting example of “Chinsumer”. That means “a Chinese person spending a lot of money on luxuries while traveling abroad.” And such words become more and more popular. SARFT wants mass media to avoid this internet slang in order that youth won’t get false ideas about their native language and culture.

However, there are other opinions concerning this topic.  Huang Anjing, executive editor of Yaowen-Jiaozi, is among the people who consider such rules important, but see them as too draconian and overly conservative. He points out that this slang enriched our lives. There are other quotations, showing that language evolution shouldn’t be denied, that new rules are excessively severe.

In the end of the article, the author says about Russian laws concerning language, giving as an example the foolish idea of banning all words of non-Russian origin borrowed since the 1990s from the media. Fortunately, this initiative failed.

Nevertheless, Russia prohibited swearwords from the media in summer this year. The rule affects bloggers as well, since blogs with a number of readers over a certain threshold are considered media outlets.

As for me, I think that language is a part of culture and we must protect it, but the process of its evolution is unavoidable and it is not as harmful as it’s thought to be. Of course, there are good sides. For instance, many borrowed words are very innovative; they embellish our language and not spoil it. They can mean and expess things that have no proper names in our language. Moreover, I think pans and wordplay could be just funny and not offensive. However, the native language shouldn’t be forgotten, we mustn’t replace all words by the new ones.

I believe that we must bring up and educate children in order they don’t neglect their history and culture, but that should be done not by prohibitions but by development and dissemination of classic language.

I offer all of you to read this article. Here’s the link.

What do you think about language evolution? About such prohibitions which are discussed in China? How should we protect our language? I'll be glad to listen to your opinions.