From the perspective of actual usage shown in ancient Chinese corpora, the overlap of different first-person pronouns at various semantic levels indicates philosophically that as human beings carry out communication activities in different aspects of existence, the awareness of the self also emerges and gradually deepens in the process of interacting with others on different dimensions. In Classical Chinese, the first-person pronouns in the ordinary sense are primarily three forms: wo 我, yu予(also written 余,台), and wu吾. The pronoun wo chiefly denotes the self as externally manifested and set in contrast to others, with the meaning of the embodied “person” or “body” at its core. By contrast, yu tends to function as a more general term of self-reference, emphasizing the individual as an integrated unity of body and mind. “吾” does not truly emerged untilg the Spring and Autumn Period. It refers to the inner self and denotes the authentic subject. Its appearance marked a deepening of self-cognition and represented a new stage in the development of self-awareness.“思(sī)”(thinking, introspection) is the primordial capability of “吾” and the fundamental way for the subject to confirm the conrcete reality of its own existence, thereby restoring the wholeness of being. In this way, existence and value are rendered fully identical.  “毋我(wú wǒ)” (freedom from ego attachment) is an essential requirement for individuals to participate in experiential communication activities with the “己(jǐ)” (self) that roots in the true reality. “吾丧我(wú sàng wǒ)” (destruction of the ego with the Self) requires 吾as the subject to immune from the dualization of the “己” so that to keep the wholeness of existence of the self. The realization of “己” is not only the restoration of an individual’s reality of existence and the realization of the subjectivity, but also the realization of his value of existence in the current interreaction context, thereby unifying the existence and its value. Through the analysis of the usage of different first-person pronouns in ancient Chinese text, analyzing the function of si 思, and interpreting the meanings of wu wo 毋我and wu sang wo 吾丧我, this paper structurally reconstructs and expounds on the philosophical ideas embodied in the first-person pronouns in classical Chinese.

The language rehabilitation industry represents a specialised sector within both the broader language industry and the Greater Health industry. There is a need to develop a “Greater Language Rehabilitation Industry” that aligns with the principles of Greater Health, serves the entire population throughout the life span, and transcends the traditional confines of hearing and speech rehabilitation. Focusing on individuals with language disorders, the language rehabilitation industry possesses dual characteristics: it functions as both a public good and an industry, offering products and services that span language commodities and language welfare. Currently, the market size of China’s language rehabilitation industry exceeds 30 billion RMB, yet a substantial gap between supply and demand persists, indicating a significant market potential that could reach several hundred billion RMB. The industry’s current capacity falls short of meeting the rehabilitation needs of the tens of millions of people affected by language disorders. Addressing this critical issue requires dedicated efforts in three key areas: redefining industry perception, strengthening the human resource system, and enhancing welfare policies. This paper constructs an ecosystem framework for the language rehabilitation industry and argues that language health is an essential component of national health, without which individual well-being and happiness are difficult to achieve. Furthermore, the capacity to provide language rehabilitation services should be regarded as an integral aspect of a nation’s language competence. Achieving “language health for all” should be recognised as a shared goal within the broader “Healthy China” initiative.

Compared with second-generation immigrants born in the host country, the so-called 1.5 generation immigrants—those who migrate during childhood or early adolescence with their parents—generally face the dual challenges of heritage language attrition and the reconstruction cultural identities. This study focuses on 1.5-generation Chinese immigrants who moved to Australia between the ages of 4 and 13. Drawing on the critical period hypothesis and a “time–space–identity” model, it examines how age at migration shapes distinct language trajectories and identity formations through spatiotemporal interaction. Based on data collected from 25 adolescents and their parents through family questionnaires, interviews, ethnographic observations, and voluntarily provided written materials, the study reveals: (1) Children who migrated between ages 4 and 7 typically undergo systematic attrition of Chinese and tend toward an Australian dominant, unidirectional identity orientation; 
(2) Those who migrated between ages 8 and 10 generally retain basic oral Chinese proficiency but experience a precipitous decline in literacy, accompanied by instrumental orientation of cultural identification; and (3) Adolescents who migrated between ages 11 and 13 demonstrate fluent spoken Chinese but limited academic literacy, resulting in a functional division between “everyday Chinese” and “academic English”, alongside a pronounced ethnic identity and ongoing processes of identity reconstruction. Overall, the findings reveal a clear “age gradient effect” and propose a tiered intervention model—remedial, transitional, and integrative—to support heritage language retention and identity development. This research offers theoretical grounding and policy insights for international Chinese language education in overseas Chinese communities.

Since the 1990s, the development of automated essay scoring (AES) has progressed through three major phases: feature-based statistical machine learning, neural network-based deep learning, and generative pre-trained language models. Throughout this evolution, scoring rubrics and language intelligence techniques have intertwined and advanced synergistically, driving AES toward greater efficiency and rationality through their competitive pursuit of dominance in the AES. AES research has evolved from focusing on superficial statistical linguistic features to exploring complex semantic and formal features, enabling comprehensive scoring along both formal and content-based dimensions. Research on AES for Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) has primarily focused on the MHK test and the HSK test, which are designed for domestic ethnic minorities and foreign learners of Chinese, respectively. It lacks the verification of the effects on various neural network models or large-scale datasets. Technological advances in Large Language Models suggest potential solutions to current problems concerning AES for CSL. Future AES research needs to move from resembling the outcomes of manual scoring to imitating the thinking of manual scoring, transition from holistic rating scoring to analytic rating scoring, and enhance AES model reliability and interpretability through both chain-of-thought fine-tuning and high-quality corpora.

This article argues that the systematic character of language can be adequately examined only through a metalanguage capable of reflecting on language from a higher-order standpoint. It first considers formal (mathematical) logic as a candidate metalanguage: although it can capture truth relations among propositions, its restricted semantic range prevents it from serving as a metalanguage for the full spectrum of thought. It then revisits Wittgenstein’s notion of language games as an alternative metalanguage that translates meaning into a set of socially rule-governed uses. While this approach offers an external and publicly inspectable point of reference for semantics, it remains limited to reflecting on the nature of rules and does not account for language’s thought-laden dimension. The paper next turns to large language models (LLM) as a contemporary, non-traditional metalanguage. LLM operationalize a grammar of signs grounded in correlational relevance—probabilistically optimized linkages among tokens—and evolutionary updating, whereby empirical Bayesian adjustment continuously recalibrates the credibility of these correlations. On this view, LLM can process relations at scale, yet the resulting sign system remains a mapping that fails to represent the wholeness of objects and the world; it therefore lacks genuine understanding. The essence of thought lies in “selecting” a particular “possible world”. At its core, thinking is an act of “choice”: it selects and commits to a certain possible world among alternatives. Against this background, the article proposes a speculative “grammar of thought” and associated metalanguage built on negation and verbs. Negation secures the essential function of thought as selection—the capacity to choose among possible worlds—while verbs provide the generative structure through which possible worlds are constructed. The author suggests that this framework could upgrade mere mapping into a morphism oriented toward holistic intelligibility, offering a methodological route toward a next-generation of AI “world model”. Its putative advantage lies in simultaneously opening unlimited possibilities, supporting causal explanation, and enabling reflexive analysis of any language from within natural language itself, thus obtaining a better metalanguage.

The neurodiversity framework offers a transformative alternative to the traditional medical models in autism research. The concept of neurodiversity posits that human neurodevelopment is inherently heterogeneous. Although certain neurotypes are more prevalent within the population than others, there is no singular “correct” or normative type. This article begins by introducing the concept of neurodiversity and critically examines existing language and cognitive-behavioural studies on autistic children within traditional medical frameworks. It argues that, from the neurodiversity perspective, the core objective of language research on autistic children is to investigate their natural trajectories of language development so as to identify their strengths and communicative resources, to foster inclusive communicative environments, and to support them in using language for effective communication, and ultimately to enhance their autonomy, agency, and well-being. To achieve this goal, this article proposes a three-level shift in research approaches. First, at the philosophical level, it advocates the construction of an autonomous framework for language research on autism that does not rely on neurotypical traits as a comparative baseline. Second, at the methodological level, it emphasizes the incorporation of first-hand accounts of autistic experiences and taking autistic traits seriously as part of the research design. Finally, in terms of research content, it argues for a focus on pragmatic competence, particularly on how autistic children use language in social interaction, with the goal of empowering them as confident and effective communicators.

“Center” (中) and “loyalty” (忠) are fundamental words in the Chinese language, with the latter deriving from the former. The early cognitive mechanism of the Han people, which transitioned “from spatial orientation to temporal concepts, from the concrete to the abstract”, played a fundamental role in driving the semantic derivation of the latter. After the emergence of “loyalty”, its meaning shifted from “sincerity” to “loyalty” within a very short period. The underlying force driving this change was the political-ethical belief in the “integration of family and state”, while its solidification was achieved through habitual collocations from morphology to syntax. In this regard, the ethical propositions and linguistic applications of Confucianism and Mohism exhibit a certain degree of divergence. Regarding the concept of “loyalty to the ruler”, Confucianism, which emphasizes hierarchical order, does not reinforce it in linguistic combinations. In contrast, Mohism, which advocates “universal love” and “elevating uniformity”, frequently employs it in written works, even solidifying the term “loyal minister” (忠臣) as a fixed expression. Once a strong linguistic collocation is established, it can shape value judgments that influence social consciousness, allowing people today to perceive the epistemological significance in the philosophy of language.

Scientific research has progressed through experimental, theoretical, computational, and data-intensive paradigms, and is currently advancing toward the fifth paradigm: artificial intelligence-driven scientific discovery. AI is not only an auxiliary tool but also a collaborator and inspirer in knowledge production. Language research, due to the unique nature of its object, is at the forefront of this transformation. The fifth paradigm of language research is essentially a systematic reconstruction of language research “human-machine collaborative generation mechanism.” In knowledge production, this manifests in four fundamental shifts: the cognitive subject is reconstructed from human researchers to a human-AI composite cognitive system; the generation mechanism shifts from an interpretative model to a generative mechanism; the production structure shifts from a linear process to a cyclical system; and the presentation form shifts from rule-based to distributed, parameterized probabilistic representations. In research practice, this transformation manifests in five key areas: the research object has expanded from human language to human-machine hybrid language; in terms of methodology, AI is not only the object of analysis but also a methodological tool for generating data, conducting simulations, and assisting in analysis; the research goal is not only to understand human language but also to construct language intelligent agents capable of generating, understanding, and interacting; the research subject has upgraded from individual scholars to human-machine collaboration; and the disciplinary structure has shifted from a single discipline to a multidisciplinary integration. This transformation brings significant opportunities for language research, such as a leap in research capabilities and room for theoretical innovation. However, it also brings profound challenges, including an interpretive crisis, weakening of theories, concentration of knowledge power, risks to the language ecosystem, and ethical issues. Faced with the systemic reconstruction of the fifth paradigm, language researchers should not merely be followers of methodology, but rather critics of technological governance and builders of language ethics, maintaining human initiative and upholding ultimate human rights.

International Chinese Language Education (ICLE) is entering an era of diversity featuring the coexistence of three groups of learners, i.e., native speakers, heritage language speakers, and foreign language learners. According to surveys and estimates, Chinese-origin native and heritage language speakers account for approximately 70% of all learners, while non-Chinese-origin foreign language learners are split roughly equally between adults and young learners at around 15% for each. Previous research on ICLE has focused heavily on adult foreign language learners and failed to fully reflect its global landscape. There is an urgent need to adjust research directions to adapt to this new situation. Currently, research on native speakers remains extremely scarce and is in urgent need of comprehensive development. Studies on heritage language speakers are relatively more numerous, yet they focus primarily on heritage language maintenance, to the neglect of heritage language acquisition. In the past, research on foreign language learners has paid little attention to the growing number of young learners. Meanwhile, research on the needs for Chinese in professional and technical learning is also inadequate. Future research directions should be adjusted to focus on seven major areas: studies on the learning needs of the “three groups of learners”, studies on learning patterns, research on learning content, investigations into learning interaction, as well as the supporting research in language assessment, teacher development, and the coupling between the “symbiosis of three types of people” and the “three groups of learners”. It is necessary to proceed from reality and redefine ICLE in light of the diverse landscape of Chinese language learning. To support the adjustment of research directions, efforts should be made to promote the development of a global database of Chinese language learners for in-depth and refined research.

Across its long intellectual history, from prescriptivism and descriptivism to structuralism and generative grammar, linguistics has the ultimate goal of modelling the internal language faculty of the human mind. Despite the accumulation of extensive body of micro-level findings, a substantial gap persists between such fragmented insights and the construction of a holistic model of human language as a cognitive system. Since the 1950s, the dominant paradigm trajectory in artificial intelligence has evolved from symbolism through empiricism to connectionism. Although contemporary large language models (LLMs), powered by leveraging massive computation and vast datasets, can model human language at unprecedented computational power, they remain limited in capturing the deep cognitive regularities that are not fully encoded in surface distributions and therefore still fall short of native-speaker competence in extracting and internalizing deeper cognitive and semantic regularities that are weakly expressed in surface distributions alone. In this context, it opens a critical space for collaboration. Linguists, drawing on their theoretical sensitivity to subtle semantic, pragmatic, and structural phenomena, can contribute by leveraging domain-specific insight to uncover the deep semantic issues embedded in micro-level linguistic phenomena and to transform linguistic knowledge into high-quality, structured data for improving AI’s linguistic capabilities. At the same time, AI offers linguistics the possibility of moving beyond observational, descriptive, and explanatory adequacy toward generative adequacy. Consequently, the automated transformation of theoretical research into interactive linguistic data—evolving from manual to fully autonomous processes—constitutes a central challenge for linguists in the AI era, and addressing this challenge is essential if linguistics is to play a constitutive role in the next stage of language modelling.

主持人语 “十五五”规划中的语言学使命 / 李宇明

语言产业对建设现代化产业体系至关重要 / 贺宏志

语言研究在数字中国建设中大有可为 / 王春辉

在人类命运共同体建设中发挥语言之力 / 张天伟

积极应对人口结构变化，加强全龄语言学研究 / 黄立鹤

建设全龄儿童友好的数智化语言环境 / 李建涛

未来五年语文教育发展的四个着力方向 / 朱于国

老年语言研究赋能养老事业和产业协同发展 / 刘楚群

国家语言安全建设的四个层次 / 沈骑

国防语言建设急需从资源积累走向效能转化 / 马晓雷

加快信息无障碍社会建设的三条路径 / 郑璇

大安全大应急框架下应急语言服务的四个发力点 / 徐欣路

推动语言资源保护由静态修复向活态传承转型 / 王莉宁

Over the past two decades, research on language life, conducted primarily in China, has yielded substantial achievements. However, the theoretical underpinnings for studying language life remain relatively underdeveloped. Drawing on the accumulated scholarship and research practice, this article aims to summarize existing research findings and practices, outline the disciplinary profile of language life as well as to clarify the connotation and characteristics of language life research, and establish a coherent theoretical framework for the study of language life. Based on discussions of the unique attributes of language life, we define language life as “social life formed through the interaction between language and society”, marked by its agentivity, practical embeddedness, and interdisciplinarity. According to the interaction between linguistic functions and social factors in language use and activities, a categorical system of language life is proposed in the form of twelve analytic dimensions, delineated by the varying patterns through which linguistic functions and social factors co-constitute language use and language-related activities. From the perspective of spatial relations, the structure of language life is further described as comprising three interrelated levels: inner, middle, and outer, as well as five upper and lower tiers. Based on a comparison of the scope, research objects, and research objectives between language life research, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics, this paper proposes the establishment of language life studies as a subfield within sociolinguistics. Language life studies is not only theoretically innovative, but it also demonstrates strong practical significance, maintaining both overlap and divergence with sociolinguistics. Language life studies represents a successful effort by Chinese scholars to construct an independent knowledge system in linguistics, contributing significantly to expanding the domain of linguistic inquiry and articulating a people-centered epistemology. Language life studies also carries strong practical significance, informing national strategic planning and serving broader social development. As such, it represents a noteworthy Chinese attempt to build an autonomous knowledge system in linguistics and contributes to strengthening China’s scholarly voice in international academic discourse.

‘Language professions’ refer to occupational categories in which practitioners derive their livelihood from providing language products and services. They are directly related to the high-quality supply of language products and the sustainable development of the language industry, and affects the overall planning of language talent development. Language professions and talents are producers of language products and providers of language services, and creators of language productivity. These professions can be classified into “typical language professions” and “quasi-language professions” based on whether the primary output consists of language products and the extent to which task completion relies heavily on linguistic expression. This paper defines the concept of “language profession” and maps out the existing language professions and those yet to be recognized in the National Occupational Classification Codex of the People's Republic of China (2022 Edition). It further proposes a foundational research framework for language professions comprising three hierarchical levels: from the base upward, these are studies of occupational conditions, analyses of underlying dynamics and mechanisms, and investigations into development strategies. Building on this framework, the paper offers the following recommendations: for language professions with an established number of practitioners but have not yet been included in the Codex, they should be formally supplemented and recognized, and professional terminology should be standardized; emerging language professions should be actively cultivated, especially language technology professions; Starting from the study of language vocational abilities, construct a language vocational standard system; Focusing on the investigation of language occupational conditions, comprehensively grasp the current state of language professions in China; and a national database of language professions should be established to support talent development in the field and planning for the language industry.

To meet the demand for transnational communication tools during the first period of globalization (approximately 1870–1914), more than 300 planned languages were created. Among them, Volapük and Esperanto, which emerged in 1880 and 1887 respectively, are particularly well-known. The former enjoyed a brief period of popularity before quickly disappearing, while the latter grew into a “living language” with sustained social vitality. Analyzing the reasons for their success and failure, the founders and users of Volapük did not plan and use the language according to the laws of language evolution, leading to its stagnation due to centralized power monopoly. Esperanto, on the other hand, achieved a leap from a written project to a social reality by relinquishing individual rights, establishing the stability of underlying protocols, and text-driven learning. Comparing their socialization processes reveals that the vitality of a language is rooted in the social emergence of real-world use, rather than the mechanical perfection of grammatical design. The evolutionary paradigm of Esperanto foreshadows the technological logic of the contemporary large language model’s transformation from “rule-driven” to “data-driven”. Essentially, language planning is a social project, and its success hinges on whether it can achieve a paradigm shift from engineering design to ecological cultivation, and from administrative control to democratic governance. Exploring the historical experience of the rise and fall of planned languages can provide theoretical reference and historical lessons for language planning in the data-based intelligence era and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

Bai Shuo (2025) recently proposed that we should delve deeper into the first principle of language to create “small yet efficient” low-resource language models and argued that whether language is “learned” is not the essence of Chomskyan linguistic theory. We hold that, in contrast, “linguistic innateness” is the first principle of Chomskyan linguistic theory, since it is essential for humans’ innate “linguistic faculty” to endow humans with recursive abilities, allowing “infinite use of finite means”. The language ability of large language models, however, is learned, and their success is based on “finite use of infinite data”. As far as language technology and language engineering are concerned, it is infeasible or unworkable at this stage to construct “small yet efficient” language models on the first principle of language. While the theory of humans’ innate linguistic faculties still lacks sufficient scientific evidence, the statistical learning theory currently strives to prove that the brains of human infants can perceive external objects, acquire knowledge, and learn language through a conceptual system. The criticism of large language models and the pursuit of “small yet efficient” language models from the linguistic perspective that “language is not learned but an innate ability” may reflect a weakness in scholarly thinking, namely, the “theory-induced blindness”. As surveys and experiments guided by the theory of constructed emotion reveal, what classical emotion theories refer to as emotional universality, often regarded as fact by researchers, is actually the effect of experimental designs. This serves as a wake-up call for the study of universal grammar.

描写主义的描写不是漫无目的的，而是在描写工作开始之前，就已经有了一个科学研究目标。描写是围绕着科学研究目标进行的。科学研究是为了解开未解之谜，回答没有答案的问题，探求事物的普遍规律。而要开展这些工作，首先需要提出一个可以验证的科学假说。新描写主义认为，对语言事实或现象的描写、刻画和分析，需要以科学假说为驱动，因为只有在科学假说的驱动下，描写才有可能深入到不易探察的细节，深入到难以辨识的微观世界，进而发现隐性的事实或规律，从而不断逼近问题的答案，并揭示事实背后的真相。

新法推进国家通用语言文字事业高质量发展 / 王 锋

新法强化语言在国家治理中的制度性要素作用 / 方小兵

新法为语言文字信息化建设提供坚实法治保障 / 张日培

新法对我国民族地区语言生活的影响 / 黄 行

依法管理网络语言生活成为新法亮点 / 汪 磊

新法为两岸语言文字事业指明了方向 / 戴红亮

新法明确中文传播以国家通用语言文字为主 / 张天伟
世界语言立法的中国方案 / 赵蓉晖

依法强化语言文字工作体制机制建设 / 袁 伟

The development of spoken interaction research has evolved through three stages: the Exploratory Period (pre-1960s), the Development Period (late 1960s–1990s), and the Flourishing Period (21st century–present). Driven by the emergence of Interactional Linguistics, the research focus has shifted from purely ontological descriptions to practical applications. In this study, CiteSpace was employed to conduct a bibliometric analysis of 4,751 publications retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. The results show that applied research on spoken interaction is primarily concentrated in five areas: 1) second language acquisition; 2) speech and language disorder assessment and intervention; 3) doctor-patient communication; 4) psychological intervention; 5) artificial intelligence. Furthermore, the study identifies four emerging trends: 1) the cross-disciplinary integration of research paradigms; 2) the development and integration of foundational research resources; 3) the industrialization of research outcomes; and 4) the alignment of linguistic data with emerging industries. To ensure the sustainable development of spoken interaction research in the Chinese context, the critical focus should be placed on the practical translation of research outcomes. It is imperative to align academic endeavors with national strategies and social demands. By integrating linguistic and multimodal data with application-oriented theoretical findings into the language industry, the field can generate substantial socio-economic benefits, which in turn will nourish further disciplinary advancement.

Humanity has long been situated in “world history”. Contemporary and future Chinese-language philosophy should move beyond its classical and modern configurations toward a future-oriented form, one that is rooted in the lived experience of the Chinese-speaking world while also articulating the new realities of “China in the world” and “the world within China”. In the face of philosophical questions shared by humankind in the context of world history, providing philosophical responses in Chinese should be regarded as a historical mission for present and future scholars engaged in philosophical research in the Chinese-speaking world. From the perspective of the traditional debate on the correspondence between names and realities, “Chinese-language philosophy” and “Chinese philosophy” each have their own objects of reflection, yet they also significantly intersect and overlap. This article rejects the notion of a “universal philosophy” advanced by some scholars, but does not deny the existence of philosophical questions common to all humanity. From a civilizational perspective, such shared philosophical questions may take distinct philosophical forms when expressed in different national languages. Within genuine world history, in responding to humanity’s shared philosophical questions, philosophies expressed in different national languages can generate philosophical answers that embody an “overlapping consensus”. One of the historical missions of contemporary and future Chinese-language philosophy is to offer its own responses to these shared philosophical questions of humanity.

China’s visa-free transit policy has undergone a stepwise expansion from 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, 144 hours, to 240 hours. Correspondingly, the language service policy has shown a development trend of systematic connection and continuous evolution. The forms and contents of language services for foreign nationales have become increasingly rich, and the coverage scenarios have been continuously expanded and have become progressively diversified. In current practice, the emphasis of language service practice for the pre-arrival stage is placed on the local implementation and targeted promotion of relevant policies; for the transit stage, efforts are made to promote multilingualism, differentiated services, and the integration of technological empowerment; however, for the post-departure stage, the continuity of services remains relatively limited. Based on this assessment, the following language service optimization paths are proposed: for the pre-arrival stage of foreign nationals, strengthen the precise publicity and introduction of relevant policies, and smooth the channels of information exchange between China and foreign countries; for the transit stage, a multi-level and multi-dimensional language service system should be established to enhance visitors’ overall transit experience in China; for the post-departure stage, language and culture should serve as key links to jointly build an interconnected and shared discourse framework, thereby precisely exert efforts to cultivate positive word-of-mouth effects, and enhance international understanding of and support for China.

This study analyzes the development of Putonghua proficiency testing products in Hong Kong over the past three decades, focusing on testing product composition, supply entities, and demand drivers. The evolution of these products can be divided into three distinct phases: the early market exploration phase (1988–1997), the policy-led diversification phase (1997–2006), and the market-driven innovation phase (2006–present). The trajectory is marked by a unique “dual-track evolution”—on one hand, collaborative development shaped by market forces, policy interventions, and technological advancements; on the other, the emergence of a tiered development system. Currently this system is dual-tiered, comprising “foundational” and “distinctive” products that align national standards with local characteristics. Looking ahead, further progress can be achieved by advancing to a three-tiered framework: “foundational”, “distinctive”, and “international”. Through differentiated design, the interactions and resource allocations among market, policy, and technology can be dynamically adjusted for each tier. This approach allows testing products to address Putonghua learning and certification needs of various target groups, ultimately integrating foundational popularization, regional adaptability, and international compatibility.

Rhetoric is both a branch of linguistics and a component of literary studies. From the perspective of literariness, language can be broadly divided into three categories: literary language, quasi-literary language, and functional language. The criterion for distinguishing among these three types is the extent to which rhetorical devices are employed. In ancient China, aestheticians and literary theorists were often also rhetoricians. Classical Chinese literary theory tended to focus more on the rhetorical art of literary works than on their thematic content. In contemporary times, literary scholars rarely express interest in rhetoric, and linguists seldom engage with the language of literary works. Nevertheless, many linguists have shown interest in the rhetorical style of Lu Xun’s works, precisely because of his rich and sophisticated use of rhetoric techniques. As a literary scholar, the author of this paper is often faced with the challenge of understanding the rhetorical features of literary language only superficially, without a deep grasp of the underlying principles. It is argued that literary researchers should cultivate a strong foundation in rhetoric in order to genuinely appreciate and evaluate the literariness of literary works.

Viewed through a sociolinguistic lens, Xu Zechen’s fiction presents a multi-dimensional portrayal of and profound reflection on “language life”. At the micro level, his perceptual writing transforms a dialect into an aesthetic symbol and an instrument of power that conveys nostalgia, confirms individual existence, and negotiates identity, thereby revealing the deep linguistic identity anxieties of the individual. At the meso level, the Grand Canal-centered narrative space constructs a trans-lingual field integrating ancient and modern times as well as local and global contexts, demonstrating the complex interactions among the social stratification of language, translation ethics, diachronic transmission and multilingual landscapes. At the macro level, his aesthetic construction of “language as method” is particularly prominent, manifested as stylistic awareness based on elegance and propriety, the recognition that language has evolved from a practical tool into a “token of trust” and a “pathway”, as well as methodological support from empirical investigation and knowledge-based intertextuality. Altogether, the three dimensions elevate the aesthetic representation of language life into a paradigmatic literary practice. Xu Zechen’s works not only record the linguistic changes in modern and contemporary China, but also address three core issues at the intersection of literature and linguistics: the value of literary texts as research materials for language life, how fictional narratives transcend empirical research, and the possibility of in-depth interdisciplinary integration to jointly construct the panorama of language life.

Modern Chinese dialect studies originated from the nationwide Folk Song Collection Campaign launched by Peking University in 1918. An examination of articles on dialect issues published in the Folk Song Weekly reveals that these studies have evolved from verifying dialectal pronunciations and vocabulary for collected folk songs to developing phonetic symbols for dialects, as well as from focusing on the textual research of sounds and meanings to advocating field investigations. Through the efforts of scholars such as Shen Jianshi, Wei Jiangong, Zhou Zuoren, Dong Zuobin, Qian Xuantong, Rong Zhaozu, and Lin Yutang, dialects have evolved from a subsidiary issue in folk song collation into an independent research topic. This has promoted the establishment of the Dialect Investigation Society and eventually secured an independent status for dialect studies. Discourses during the campaign on the definition of dialects, survey methods, recording tools, and research content have largely become consensus in modern academia. The discussions on dialects during the campaign have also promoted the “external study” of dialects, thus laying the foundation for disciplines such as Chinese ethnolinguistics and cultural linguistics.

A clear and accurate professional positioning is crucial for improving both the quality of academic program development and talent cultivation in higher education. Focusing on the positioning of undergraduate programs in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages within the framework of the “Double Ten-Thousand Plan”, this study investigates 24 national-level program construction sites through their official program information forms, as well as interviews with program directors or department heads from 13 of these institutions. A thematic analysis of the texts and interview data reveals that program positioning should be based on the needs of three main stakeholders: society, universities, and students, and include five key themes—talent cultivation, professional development planning, professional roles, serving regional and national needs, and strengths and unique features—each corresponding to one of five guiding orientations for program development. Based on the combinations of these themes, ten types of professional positioning can be identified. The characteristics of these positionings include: talent cultivation as the core element, a focus on the program’s practical and international dimensions, and increased attention to development planning goals. However, the study finds that most construction sites still face key challenges: their positioning is not well aligned with the requirements of the “Double Ten-Thousand Plan”; their understanding of professional positioning remains unclear; they lack a strong sense of their own advantages and unique features; and their approach to talent cultivation is not keeping up with contemporary trends. In the future, it is necessary to clarify the foundational role of undergraduate education within the overall talent cultivation system of international Chinese language education, specify the key elements of professional positioning, place emphasis on “social” and “distinctive” orientations, and address both graduate career pathways and societal needs.

Reference serves to connect language with reality and constitutes one of the primary notions in the study of sentence meaning and philosophy of language. Drawing on classical discussions by Russell, Strawson, Donnellan and others, this article proposes the perspective of the “social emergence of reference”. From this perspective, reference enters communicative contexts through sentences; it is shaped by context while also reshaping the nature of context. Thus, reference cannot be grounded solely in the identification of referential objects, but must be understood within a communicative framework in which speaker and hearer construct shared meaning. The article argues that definite and indefinite forms of reference reveal a dual orientation between language and reality: identification and interpretation. Definite reference tends to foreground the identification of objects in reality, whereas indefinite reference often foregrounds the interpretation of sentence meaning and the transmission of knowledge. Only in social activity, and in relation to the communicative purpose of an utterance, can referential meaning emerge. On this basis, the article explains the asymmetry between referential forms and referential objects, clarifies the relation between particularity and generality, and outlines the social regularities governing the use of referential expressions.

This paper adopts the scientific perspective of “Logical Certainty” (Li Bi) derived from the Qian-Jia School to explore pathways to construct an autonomous knowledge system for Chinese language and script. Through a comprehensive analysis of four key relationships—namely, period-specific graphonomy and small seal script structure (the necessity of principled intentionality in the strokes of Chinese characters), metrical-tonal syllables and phonological stress (the necessity of relative prominence and F0-Unifunction Principle), prosodic grammar and relative prominence (the necessity of binary structure and bio-prosody), and register grammar and communicative distance (the necessity of Form-Function Cogenesis Principle)—this paper demonstrates the universality and explanatory power of the Logical Certainty across various linguistic and script-related dimensions. It is proposed that the Logical Certainty constitutes the intellectual core of the Qian-Jia School, serving not only as a methodological foundation for constructing a knowledge system rooted in Chinese scholarly tradition but also as a robust academic framework capable of integrating Chinese and Western perspectives and synthesizing multiple linguistic levels. This approach aims to advance Chinese linguistics from a “land of materials” to a “land of theories”, thereby facilitating the modern construction of an autonomous knowledge system.

Modern linguistics has developed in close connection with the philosophy of language. The emergence of evolutionary linguistics not only challenges the static orientation  of traditional linguistic research but also opens up  a new direction for research on the philosophy of language. Evolutionary linguistics emerged against the backdrop of modern linguistic science, and its fundamental ideas are primarily derived from  the natural sciences. Yet, when evolutionary methods are applied to the origin and development of human language, evolutionary theory itself still faces many unresolved challenges. Language evolution is not a simple biological evolutionary process, nor can its complex process of linguistic evolution  be adequately explained through a purely scientific mode of thought; other explanatory approaches must be employed simultaneously. Modern philosophy of language, with its central concern for how language represents the world, offers particularly profound insights into the evolution of human language. From a philosophical perspective, the archaeological examination of the transition  from signal to symbol represents a significant achievement of evolutionary linguistics and provides crucial scientific grounds for philosophers to advance their study of language toward abstraction and logical analysis.  The transition from signal to symbol is not only a decisive  turning point in the evolution of human language but also a great revolution in humanity’s way of understanding the world.

In Chinese dictionaries, it is necessary, feasible, dynamic, and complex to generalize the meanings found in single character entries so that they fully cover the morphemic meanings involved in multi character entries. This mechanism is essential for constructing a lexicographical knowledge network and helping readers understand the motivations behind word formation in commonly used words. Decades of compilation and revision experience with the Modern Chinese Dictionary has shown that this goal can be effectively achieved by adding new sense items or refining definitions. Whenever a dictionary adds multi character entries, it must take into account whether the single character entries adequately cover the corresponding senses. Given the complexity and ambiguity of semantic relations, certain associations may be temporarily omitted if unclear; otherwise, it is necessary to summarize and establish such connections. There are five main methods to achieve this: defining and summarizing shared semantic components; providing definitions combined with related multi character words; explaining meanings using synonymous multi character words; co-interpreting with two related multi character words; and illustrating associations with examples of multi character words formed from shared morphemic meanings. To further improve quality, authoritative dictionaries need to supplement or fine tune new words whose senses exist in multi character entries but are absent in single character entries, continue to add and enhance well-accepted new words and meanings, and maintain consistency between the characters in the main word forms of multi character entries and the standardized head characters of single character entries. To enhance the efficiency and scientific rigor of compilation and revision, it is urgent to optimize computer aided lexicographical database platforms. Authoritative dictionaries should innovate their compilation and revision paradigms, accelerate the improvement of high quality content, and better meet social needs.

Literature is a crucial domain of language life. Literary works not only reflect language life, but also actively shape it. Therefore, literary works should be included as an important subject in language life research. The language life represented in literary works can be analyzed on three levels: textual language life, the language life of the subject, and objective language life. Based on the relationship between the time of creation and the era depicted, literary works can be categorized as recording, retrospective, or reconstructive types, with the research value of the textual language life gradually decreasing across these types. The language life presented in literary works is characterized by concreteness, integrity, and continuity, offering human-centered qualitative data for language study. Research on language life in literary works can use speech acts as basic units, constructing a reduction system across three levels (“micro—meso—macro”), three dimensions (“text—writer—society”), and two perspectives  (“internal—external”). Research in this area not only responds to calls in the literary community, but also aligns with the linguistic tradition of focusing on literature, thus redefining the role of literature in language life. Such research broadens the perspective of language research in the literary community, enriches the resources of language life research, and contributes to the construction of both a history and a high-quality practice of language life. The value of studying language life in literary works deserves further recognition and in-depth exploration.

Literary works constitute a special domain of language life. They record the temporal changes of language life and participate in the construction of sociolinguistic life through emotional and aesthetic expressions. For over a century, Chinese poetry themed on workers has advanced side by side with the times, serving as a spiritual epic of the working class. From the perspectives of language and identity, the narrative persons and personal pronouns in modern worker-themed poetry have undergone a historical shift from the third-person pronoun “he” to the first-person pronoun “we”. Among the four major genres of contemporary workers’ poetry emerging since the reform and opening-up, a prevalent transition from “we” to “I” has emerged. Differences in narrative persons stem from variations in subjective identity, and they also determine how narrators choose their words, organize sentences into coherent texts, and thereby depict a picture of language life imbued with temporal traits and group characteristics. Approaching the subject from this angle enables an in-depth exploration of the spiritual world and emotional structure of the creators of contemporary workers’ poetry. The “I” that has broken away from the collective “we” is regaining strength, piecing together fragmented spirits, and embarking on the reconfirmation and development of a new subjectivity.

Language issues occupy a special and significant position in the field of folklore studies, not only because folklore has the inherent characteristic of “oral transmission and practical teaching”, but also because oral language serves as the carrier of folk literature and the core medium of cultural heritage. As the founder and leader of 20th-century Chinese folklore studies, Zhong Jingwen places particular emphasis on linguistic phenomena related to folklore. From the perspective of a folklorist, he elaborates on the nature and functions of language, and the relationship between language and folklore. His works cover fundamental concepts and dual attributes of language, as well as the academic value, historical development, theoretical perspectives, and research methods of linguistic folklore studies. He stresses that language research cannot be separated from its users, social activities, and cultural factors, explicitly stating that “folk language is a folkloric phenomenon” and placing special emphasis on the value of oral language. He strongly advocates the establishment of “linguistic folklore” as a vital branch of folklore studies, proposing clear conceptualizations regarding its name, disciplinary status, research perspectives, and methodologies. His ideas have laid the theoretical foundation and provided methodological insights for subsequent research, thus playing a pivotal pioneering and guiding role in advancing linguistic folklore from fragmented observations to a systematic discipline.

The language used in online forums of Hong Kong is highly colloquial and provides an authentic representation of language use among Hong Kong netizens. Meanwhile, the theoretical perspective of translanguaging offers valuable insights into their multilingual lives, enabling an effective exploration and in-depth analysis of the construction of Hong Kong netizens’ cultural identity. Through classification and analysis of the language use in Hong Kong online forums, this study identifies the following characteristics of Hong Kong netizens’ translanguaging practices: (1) multicode integration, as reflected in Cantonese–English mixing, multilingual borrowing, and the use of mixed semiotic resources; (2) diverse linguistic innovation, manifested in the creation of new words through transliteration and homophony, compound formation, functional shifts of word classes, and new interpretations of existing words; (3) strong community specificity in online buzzwords. Based on these, the cultural identity of Hong Kong netizens can be characterised by hybridity, local subjectivity, fluidity, and innovative selective appropriation. In particular, its fluidity reflects their construction of national identification after Hong Kong’s return and deepening recognition of their identity as Chinese, national development and the integrated development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Translanguaging serves as symbolic representations through which Hong Kongers actively construct their cultural identity. In turn, it also reinforces Hong Kongers’ awareness of identity boundaries, sense of cultural belonging, emotional attachment, and capacity for continuous innovation. Such translanguaging practices concretise Hong Kong’s cultural diversity through language, while demonstrating the resilience and creativity embedded in Hong Kong culture.

Face-to-face conversation is the most fundamental and pervasive form of language use. The success of language generation by large language model (LLM) technology therefore depends crucially on whether it can maximally exhibit the social and communicative properties of human language use. In this regard, interactional linguistics offers more communication-sensitive criteria than traditional linguistic approaches. By rendering tacit regularities of verbal conduct and their underlying interactional mechanisms explicit and empirically testable, it reveals how speakers deploy linguistic resources to accomplish natural social interaction and, by extension, how artificial systems might be designed to do so. In this regard, interactional linguistics offers insights that better profile the nature of communication than traditional linguistic approaches. It uncovers patterns of speech behavior and related interactional mechanisms, revealing how humans manipulate language to achieve natural social interaction, and by extension, how machines should do so. As a matter of fact, some core concepts in interactional linguistics have already been incorporated into the annotation frameworks of AI dialogue systems. TRP (Transition Relevance Place), for one, has been introduced for the prediction of potential turn-ending points, enhancing LLMs’ “interactional awareness” of when to take the floor, thereby enabling smooth turn-taking in human-machine interaction. Moreover, even in the pre-LLM era, AI developers at Google and elsewhere had already figured out that being too fluent is unnatural, and embedded discourse markers and other “disfluencies” into machine language output. In light of the linguistic concepts already adopted by AI developers, this study collects dialogues conducted between large language models and compares them with naturally occurring human conversations. It further examines discourse markers, pauses, elongations, repairs, and other “disfluencies”, as well as turn overlaps arising from TRP-based predictions. The analysis reveals that these linguistic features all carry interactional functions in human speech and exhibit observable regularities, while in LLM language output, they are relatively scarce or even entirely absent. These findings point to two priorities for future research: on the one hand, linguistics studies should place greater emphasis on the recurrent patterns of speech interactional behavior in verbal interaction; on the other hand, greater efforts should be devoted to building multimodal corpora, which will form a solid empirical foundation for language design in artificial systems.

大多文字学家都认为，甲骨文、金文和战国竹简文字证明，有不少小篆字的构形并不符合这些字的原始构形；并根据这一事实得出结论：这类小篆字的构形是错误的。有的学者还进而质疑：以存在着错误小篆的系统为基础而得出的规律，如何能够具备有积极性的学术意义？

《全民阅读促进条例》对国家文化建设具有重大意义 / 顾青

文史学者应为全民阅读多出思想文化精品 / 刘跃进

全民阅读需要培养亲近文字的真正阅读者 / 张圣华

国民经典图书的四大选择标准 / 吴晓东

阅读全面培育语文核心素养 / 聂震宁

阅读课程：为学生语言能力奠基 / 程翔

在科学阅读中培养科学精神 / 吴国盛
与父母共同翻开书页 / 汪书畅