Official and popular literacies in the People's Republic of China: A search for shared perspectives.

Abstract

This dissertation reconstructs the lexicon of adult literacy education within the linguistic and historical framework of China in light of China's cultural heritage, official policy and popular will. The study describes the present adult literacy situation and reinforces the importance of taking a diachronic, synchronic and ecological view of literacy. The matrices guiding this thesis are the theoretical setting of literacy, the Chinese linguistic and orthographic setting, the historical setting, the modern and contemporary setting. Key research questions are: (1) What are the theoretical perspectives on the nature, value and consequences of literacy in general? (2) What has been the effect of the Chinese linguistic and orthographic setting on literacy in China? (3) What was the historical setting for the "perceived value" of literacy by the government and the people of China? (4) What is the current status of the "perceived value" of literacy in light of China's official policy? The framework for this study was a qualitative perspective, juxtaposing official mandates against descriptions of popular action for the purpose of trying to understand the seeming lack of a shared perspective on the nature and value of literacy in the PRC. Newspaper articles were particularly useful sources of information about desired behaviors from an official perspective and about behaviors that were not in keeping with China's goals of rapid modernization. Unstructured interviews, used primarily to substantiate the information from the newspaper articles, government documents and directives, verified that official and popular perspectives on literacy are at variance, and that within the framework of the present reorientation towards a market economy, official literacy policies receive a great deal of policy and newspaper attention, but in fact receive "benign neglect" in that funding is no longer available for implementation and practice. As of the first half of 1989, the Responsibility System offers opportunity to strike it rich, making the acquisition of the "People's money" a greater popular priority than the acquisition of literacy.